6 Tips for a Successful Back to School Week

Can you believe it is AUGUST?! What happened to the summer? I'm pretty sure I say that every year, but seriously! It goes quickly!

Whether you are going back this week (like me) or next month, this post will help you have a great first week back. That first week is critical but can also be stressful, emotional, and definitely exhausting. Here are 6 tips for the first week back to help you stay sane.

1. ROUTINES AND PROCEDURES
I cannot stress this enough... spending at least two weeks on implementing and practicing routines and procedures with your students is CRUCIAL. If you'd like a smooth year, take the time now to teach these things. You might think your class will know to raise their hand to speak, but odds are that after 2 months off from school, they're going to need that practice again. Ultimately, it is a new year with new kiddos and to them, YOU are a new teacher. Set your expectations, because you are probably a lot different from their teacher from last year. If you are in search of a fun way to practice new routines and procedures, check out this board game that I use every year to practice with a partner!

2. PLAN WITH YOUR TEAM
If you are part of a team of teachers, I always suggest to plan together. This can be difficult at times, but having other people around to share the load with you is worth the time invested up front. Set aside time to plan the first week out. They might have ideas you've never thought of or can remind you of things you haven't thought about in a long time (and vice versa). Teamwork makes the dream work!

3. GET ORGANIZED NOW!
If you're like me, you've been known to shove last minute messes into a cabinet and shut the door... only to frustrate yourself in a few weeks. I am very Type B... so organizing early is not one of my favorite things to do. This year, I sucked it up and did what needed to be done! And I am so excited that I can now focus on the things that are much more important: my students and their learning. You have a lot on your plate throughout the year. Make it easy on your future self and get it together now.

4. PLAN YOUR HOME LIFE
You don't want to spend the first days and weeks of school rushing around figuring things out for your home. Figure it out now so you can focus on back to school. Every year, I set aside a day before I go back to work and I cook for hours. I make tons of meals ahead of time and freeze them with instructions on how they need to be heated or cooked when I get home. This means: NO grocery shopping for dinner for a while; NO eating out when you're too tired to cook; and NO big loads of dishes to do during the work week! If you're looking for some freezer meal ideas, I used this blog and it was so helpful! I made enough dinners for my family of three for two work weeks for just $150.

In addition to figuring out meals, don't put off finding childcare. Wait lists are CRAZY! I also suggest treating your tired self when you go back to work and hire someone to thoroughly deep clean your home. This one time service is totally worth your time and energy. Plus, it is amazing to come home to a clean house. I mentioned I'm pretty Type B... so my house after being professionally cleaned is WAY better than when I do it. Hello, Hotel Home!

5. RELATIONSHIPS FIRST, LEARNING SECOND
Once you're at school and you've met your darling little nuggets for the year, start to REALLY get to know them as early as possible. This sets the stage for a positive community in your classroom and learning can truly begin. Try to sit down and talk to your students to find out more about them. Take a moment each day to call a couple of parents to let them know who you are, answer any questions they might have, and let them know how excited you are to have their child in your class. That early relationship building goes a long way.

6. DON'T FORGET TO BREATHE
This is the most overwhelming time of the year. Exciting? Yes! Exhausting? Double yes... Listen to your body and your emotions. If you are feeling frustrated, reach out for help or reach out for clarification. If you are feeling exhausted, what you're working on CAN wait. Take a nap or go to bed early. You owe it you yourself after the exhausting few weeks of Back to School.

Back to School season is a lot of things and I hope for you that it is exciting! Happy 2018-2019 school year!

4 Time-Saving Hacks for Lesson Planning

It's almost time for school to start back up and that means designing engaging and purposeful lessons that your students will remember and retain. Sounds dreamy, right? I think I can speak for most teachers when I say that we don't have time for every lesson to be detailed and perfect. I know I don't! Here are the 4 time-saving hacks for lesson planning that help me year after year to remain organized and prepared but without wasting hours each week.

1. DIGITAL LESSON PLANS
We are living in the digital age, y'all. I absolutely ADORE those beautiful teacher planners and calendars and teacher binders and have wound up purchasing them... and never touching them. I know some people are different than me in this aspect, but every time I use a physical plan book, I leave it at home or at school when I need it, I misplace it, and get upset that my handwriting isn't beautiful. Those are my silly reasons, but they just don't work for me!

I originally started simply typing up my lesson plans on an Excel spreadsheet, but then I would lose my flash drive or forget to email myself something. Therefore, I moved to Planbook.org and then finally to Google Drive. I love the weekly templates you can easily create in Planbook and that you can add standards right in with the drop down menus. However, I wanted something I could personalize a bit more and that was easier to share with my team.

Google Drive is the answer for me. You can find tons of calendar and planning templates available to enter and edit directly in Google Drive. You can have shared folders like I do above, where teammates can access and edit along with you. And as long as you have internet connection, you can access it. No more notebooks and flash drives to worry about losing. This has saved me time by being completely editable and has saved me many headaches of misplacing/losing my physical lesson plans. This has also been a BREEZE to turn in my lesson plans at the end of the year which is the requirement of my district. If you are working in a district that requires seeing your lesson plans weekly or daily, simply link them to your digital plans!

2. DAILY TEMPLATES
I am lucky enough to have an interactive white board in my classroom. However, I only just received it in March of 2018 so I understand if this bullet point does not apply to you. If you use Smart Notebook for your Smart Board, this is an awesome tip for you that will save you time and will make your day move so smoothly. At the start of the year, create a daily Smart Board template. I put an image on each slide that shows that part of the day. For example, when students walk in, the page displayed says, "Morning Work" at the top and every morning, I simply type what their morning work is.

That "Morning Work" is part of my daily template saved directly onto my school desktop. Following that page is a page that says "Morning Meeting." Once students see the page change, they put their things away and come to the carpet. This is all quiet and practiced. Any information I want displayed for the Morning Meeting, I simply type right into it. This originally started for me as the OPPOSITE of a time-saving hack. I will tell you, that it takes some time to get used to and some playing around to get it the way you want it. But once the students are used to it and you are accustomed to inputting all the pieces you want to show, it is AMAZING and will make your day flow so smoothly.

3. GRAB THE TEACHER'S GUIDE
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. Sometimes our curriculum leaves a lot to be desired. I get it. We all strive to be that perfect teacher with the supplies ready and color coded with lots of fun where students are creating and moving and discussing. But listen... sometimes, you just gotta go with the pre-made lesson in the Teacher's Guide that doesn't take a lot of prep. Got a doctor's appointment this week and can't plan like you usually do? - Grab the Teacher's Guide. Have a toddler at home (like I do) that really isn't cool with you working while he so obviously needs you to play with him (like I do)? - Grab the Teacher's Guide.

My tip with the Teacher's Guides are to take some sticky notes or sticky tabs and tab all the lessons you actually like. When my district used Wonders, I bookmarked all the Literature Anthology stories that I liked that had great follow-up questions. BAM. Done. When I was in a rush, there they were. And when I finished that story, I moved the tab inside the page so I could reuse it next year but it didn't stick out the side to distract me later.

4. BEG, BORROW, AND STEAL
Don't try to reinvent the wheel! There are MILLIONS of amazing ideas out there for great lesson plans. Use them! Did you just see the cool writing project your teammate did? Ask them to show you what they did and tweak it for your own needs. We have an amazing job where collaboration can literally save the day.

Teamwork makes the dream work! <3






Headed back to school soon? Check out these awesome Back to School Resources!

Return of the Teacher

Disclaimer: This post contains sponsored content, affiliate links, and review products. Regardless, these are 100% my own opinions.

I'm BACK! After taking a year off from working to stay home with my son, I have returned to the classroom for the 2017-2018 school year. I just finished my first week back and I am thrilled to be there. I miss my baby, of course, but I belong in the classroom and I missed it tremendously. Baby is home with work-at-home Dad and is growing like a weed! He just turned ONE and I can't believe it! Here's a collage from all his monthly photos. <3

A new year means a new bunch of kids and I feel refreshed and ready for this new start. I decided to change up my classroom this year and went with a fun and exciting Star Wars and outer space theme. I am excited with how it turned out! I got many of my decorations at the usual IKEA, Dollar Tree, and Target, but I also snagged some amazing goodies at Oriental Trading this year, too. Take a look at the photos I took of my classroom setup!

I made that long poster and sacrificed a LOT of black ink to make it a reality. But it is definitely my favorite classroom decoration! It was worth it! I snagged the Vader poster at a yard sale for FREE! And with it being at the entrance to the classroom, students are asked what their expression is for that day. Let's hope it is a good one!

The next classroom view is to the left of the door. You can see my shelving unit and some classroom seating. I have a "Paw Wars" poster also found at a yard sale and some cheap DVD shelves for some DVD case centers. If you'd like to store your centers in DVD cases, here's a FREE template to make the covers!

Here's a better look at my shelf. Some cases are still empty so they are blank, but you can easily see how the printed template wraps all the way around so you have spine label, too!

This view shows my Jedi Focus Wall! I am loving my sparkly blue border paired with the plain black border from Oriental Trading. I used black fabric this year, which is something new for me. I usually do paper, but I'm tired of the fade!

The next few photos are just a tour around the room.

Why, yes, that is a sideways IKEA bookshelf.

How adorable are these library pockets from Oriental Trading?! Paired with the space name tag labels, also from Oriental Trading, they are perfect for Exit Tickets on the door! They have a ton of designs of name tags and they come in rolls of 100! Click HERE to see what they've got. I'm sure they've got your theme, too.

Plain and boring now, but those cabinets will be covered with Science Vocabulary as the year goes on!

Hard to see, but those blue labels are the CUTEST Star Wars stickers of all time. The folders will house recording sheets or corresponding worksheets that go with the centers in the same color (and sticker label) bucket which are on the shelves to the right (not pictured here).

Those are the colored buckets mentioned above. They are the colored drawers from those drawer systems from Michael's... but sadly... the metal part didn't hold up.

Probably one of my favorite B2S purchases are these Star Wars buckets. Students who are seated at that area place their pencil pouches inside and their notebooks underneath. Nothing fancy needed and they LOVE the characters on them!

Here's what they look like up close:

I LOVE LOVE LOVE these star and moon garlands that I attached to tension rods for this huge window in my classroom. I got them on Oriental Trading and they are HUGE! I was surprised at the size of them. They go across the entire massive window with no problem and they are perfect for my Star Wars/space classroom this year. The cool part, too, is they are made of foam. Not cheap cardboard. They will hold up a long time!

The VIP Desk! This is the first time I've ever used a VIP Desk. Do you have one in your room? I have an awesome antique desk, which was a gift from my mom, cozy IKEA pillow, a VIP journal, and that box is filled with all kinds of special supplies... including the highly sought after "shuttle pens" which are super cheap on Oriental Trading right now:

Kind of reminds me of my childhood! These pens were all the rage! They come in a pack of 12, ya'll. Can you say, "epic rainbow write?!"

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you are having an amazing back to school season.

Teacher Wish List Feature!

You guys, I discovered something pretty awesome a couple of weeks ago. Let me break it down for you:

I am (hopefully) having this baby soon.
My husband and I got a lot of cool things as gifts from our baby registry.
I thought... It would be cool to have a teacher registry for those little things. I mean, I get parents and personal friends asking me all the time if they can help.



Yeah... it exists, ya'll...

Disclaimer: This post contains sponsored content, affiliate links, and review products. Regardless, these are 100% my own opinions.

Oriental Trading has started this new Wish List feature and it is basically a registry and with their amazing teaching supplies at reasonable prices, I made one. It was so fun! Just like making my baby registry, I loaded that thing up! Upon researching more about it, you can give the link to the wish list to anyone and your information is not given out, they can easily order something, and it gets shipped straight to you. This would have been a life saver for my first year teaching or the year I moved grade levels, so new teachers, listen up!

I then decided to do some searching around for some new goodies. Although I'm not in the classroom at the moment (seriously, why have I NOT had this baby yet??), I'm itching for new fun things to use! I also have a sub that could benefit, so why not now? I've got the time on my hands to shop, right? Right.

Here are some things I recommend for a Teacher Wish List: (click any of the images to head to the product on Oriental Trading).

Index Card Boxes

The pack on Oriental Trading came with 12 boxes! Two of six different colors. What I am most excited about is that I JUST discovered (it's been an enlightening month...) that it is possible to PRINT ON INDEX CARDS. This is a game changer, people. Look for a post in the future on how to print on index cards. Can you imagine the time saved from cutting out task cards?? And index cards are cheap!

I am also excited that there are 6 different colors. In the reading curriculum my district uses, there are 6 units, which means I can color coordinate task cards per unit for easy storage and ease of use for the kids! If you use Reading Wonders, check out the units I have available in my store. Kindergarten is all done and the 2nd grade bundle is growing!

Foam Math Dice

How useful are these bad boys?! This picture does not do the pack justice... because it comes with 144 dice!!!! I love that they are foam, because nothing is more distracting than loud dice rolling around the desks and floors during Math centers and I love how there is a mix of numbers, dots, and symbols. These are something that can definitely be used year round in multiple ways.

I can't WAIT to pair these with the dice games I use in my classroom. Take a look:

Large Pocket Dice

Speaking of dice... I have seriously wanted one of these for SO LONG, but the ones on Lakeshore were too expensive and then when I finally bit the bullet and went to buy them I couldn't find them on their site anymore! Thank you Oriental Trading! Definitely less expensive and I can't wait to use these for.... pretty much everything.....

Library Pockets

Aaaaaand, speaking of pockets... I love library pockets, ya'll. I usually order the ugly boring kind from the ordering system at school, but I had to have these. Look at the pretty colors! They had a ton of different designs, but I went with just the rainbow set. They also have an adorable Eric Carle set that was super tempting. Maybe I'll just plop it on my wish list and see what happens....

Number Order and Sequencing Cards (or what I like to call, Hundreds Chart Cards)

Where are my fellow 2nd grade teachers?? I LOVE THESE SO MUCH! They are dry erase, ya'll. Dry. Erase. And there's 50 of them. I have a feeling this will be used to death in my class. Not only are they dry erase and 50 of them, but they are front and back. The product description on the website does not do this justice. I was so excited to see how awesome these are. This is a fun unit to teach and I can't wait to pair it with my Hundreds Chart Activity Pack. The pictures included are similar to the activity in this product, but there are tons more activities included in this set like Diagonal Sums and Compatible Pairs. LOVE!

But for real, won't these cards go so well with this unit??

Composition Book File Folders

This image is from Oriental Trading's website. I did not get a chance to take a photo of this one, but will certainly do so in the future. I have a great writing lapbook idea that I can't wait to try out! I was going to just use regular file folders, but I mean... it's a WRITING lapbook... and these look just like the kiddos' writing notebook... so... how could I pass this up?! Future post for sure, so keep your eyes peeled!

Music Note Scratch Art

Okay, I didn't take a picture of this either... but it's because this is a present for my mom! She is a Music teacher and I thought it would be kind of neat for some of her students to help decorate the classroom with these cuties for the beginning of the year! If she remembers to take some photos, I'll post those to my Facebook and Instagram, so be sure to follow me! (PS- it was really tempting to open this and scratch them all up. I really had to remind myself that they were for the kids...)

I am loving my new goodies from Oriental Trading! I have more on the Wish List and would totally put the link in newsletters to families or even post online! You never know who is willing to help out a classroom in need. All you need to do is head over to Oriental Trading's website, make an account, and on any item you would like for your classroom, just click the little heart button that says "Add to Wishlist." 

Here is my current Wish List so you can get an idea of what other people will see when they go to it. As you will see, your personal information is not given out, just like a baby registry! :)

If you make a wish list, share it in the comments! I'd like to see what ya'll are shopping for! It will probably make me double the length of my own wish list... but... It's fun!!!