Tales from the science classroom

This is my front counter. This is what my front counter looks like every single day. I straighten it and 1 class later it looks like this. I have a habit of putting papers on it and losing them. When I try to organize I will put papers in books and then forget which books I put what papers in. Then months later I will find the papers in some odd place. I have tried so many things and yet it ends up like this every time. So today I'm going to try something new. When my class leaves I will take some time to straighten it out, again, and have a way to keep it organized. I have an idea, I just hope it works. So I just did it and it seems pretty darn awesome. I have a file tray for each period of the day (not each class) and one on top for misc. stuff. I put these trays on the side table that I have and that leaves my desk nice and clean. I can just throw things in the tray for the period and use it when I need it. If it's for classes the next day or next week, I will put it in ...

I think I have figured out my organizational issues, though they really still are a work in progress. I have the wikispaces set up for all my classes, so that's good. I actually gave up Planbookplus and switched to Chalk.com for my online planning. I gave up on OneNote, for now. I may do that at a later date, but right now I have enough to keep up. I love the Wikispaces and am working hard to keep that up to date - that is just a habit I need to cultivate. I also love Chalk.com. What I do with that is spend a little time on Sundays laying out my general plans for the week. I will put it in Chalk and then attach any files I plan on using. I also make notes in my written planner on what I plan on doing and then I check it off as I go through the day. Then on Thursdays or Fridays, I sit down and update Chalk with what I actually did. I figure this will give me an accurate accounting of what actually happens so I will have it for next year. I love this and it's working out well so ...

I'm having trouble organizing my lessons. There are a number of technology things that go with my lessons. I am trying to use Planbookplus to create my lesson plans: Which is great but has its limitations. So I thought I would keep all of my files in One Note so I could have access anywhere. That will be good but it is almost like creating lesson plans all over again. Then I have a class blog where things need to be uploaded and offered to the kids. As a result of trying all three of these things, I have completed nothing. All of them are half done and we have just completed the 2nd full week of school. I tried an external hard drive and thought that would be a good way to do it. It has proven to be more of a nightmare than a help. Ugggggggghhhhhhhhhhh!!!! What to do???? How do I organize all the electronic information I have???? How do I keep track of things and not make myself crazy??????? So that is my struggle this weekend. I am going to complete one or tw...

In spite of the fact that I am starting my 9th year of teaching, I have never had to create lesson plans. Weird, I know. This year I also have 4 preps - yikes!!! And, I've been teaching chemistry for all of the 9 years and yet every year I have to figure out how to start, where to go, what to do, etc. So my school is having us create curriculum maps and unit plans and eventually lesson plans. I have jumped the gun and got all my curriculum maps done and my unit plans are pretty well in place. All I need is to get the lesson plans done. So that has been my focus, along with getting school started. I'm using an online planbook - planbookplus - and I'm working on getting things put in there. I figure if I can sit on the weekends when I usually do nothing and get the previous week updated and sketch out the coming week, not only will I be ahead of things when the week starts, but I will be building a base for coming years. In some ways, I feel like I'm starting over, but...

We teachers returned to school on July 24th and the students returned on August 2nd. That means we had the kids 2 days last week, Wednesday and Thursday. And it went well. This year I had to revamp my classroom management system and I think I have something that will work for me. Let me explain; My first 7 years of teaching was at private schools. Even though these private schools were at the lower financial end of the spectrum and most of our students were on financial aid, they were nevertheless private school students. Classroom management was not a huge priority as these students did their work and listened and were respectful and all that stuff. So my classroom management was a little lax because it didn't need to be really strict and tough. Well, now I'm at a public school. And in spite of the fact that this is a charter school and parents have to go out of their way to send their students here, it is still a public school. Last year I handled my classroom management l...