Friday Freebie, ROCKSTAR Binders, and organizational idea

Back to school...back to school.... As much as I LOVE my profession, I am not really looking forward to the early mornings, staff meetings, and paper grading. Although reluctant, I headed back to school again today to get things organized and ready for my kiddos. I was able to check a few things off of my growing "to do" list.

First and foremost, I have been trying forever to find a way to organize all of my activity cards, vocab cards, and vocab dominos for each reading story. Last year I found this great bin at Ollie's. However, once I started putting all of my cards and resources inside, it was A.MESS! I bought all kinds of things to put inside to keep it organized even better....butter dishes turned upside down (not too bad, but not perfect), Tupperware containers (terrible...too big). I FINALLY found these drawer organizers at the Dollar Tree. I put six containers in one drawer. There are five stories in each unit in the Treasures series. Each container was dedicated to a story. The sixth container is for the review at the end of the unit. They work perfect!

Before....what a mess!

The containers that fit inside.

After...so organized!

Another unit

The outside

Next, I’ve been working on putting together the organizational binder that my kiddos use. This year I am doing a Rock Star theme. The binder is called ROCKSTAR (Really Organized Children Keeping Stuff Together And Ready). Here are a few pics. Obviously, it doesn’t have any papers or anything in it yet.

Finally, I put together the students’ progress pocket. We do addition and subtraction timed tests on a regular basis. The students chart their progress on graphs. We also do fluency checks. To help me stay organized (and to have the charts in one place for conferences), I put together a progress pocket for each child. I simply took a folder with the three clasps inside and clipped the three graphs inside. I am considering putting other progress charting materials inside. Here is the fluency graph that I created. Enjoy!

Click on image to download

Happy Weekend!!!