Lessons from the Limb #3 - Presenting Our Third Teaching Partner ... the Timer

Well, this is awkward. In trying to determine which number "Lessons from the Limb" we were on, since it's been ... ahem ... a little while since we posted, we realized that while we left off after number 7 we never did a lesson number 3 ... whoops. Well, since the chronology of this blog is already shot, we're calling this lesson #3 (shhhhhh ... don't tell anyone our mistake).

We want to show you the single best purchase that we made this year (until Kristie bought a pencil sharpener ... LAWD, don't get her started on that!).

Kristie's unhealthy love for our her new pencil sharpener

This purchase was what helped us achieve our fantasy plan of teaching 40 first graders in small groups for our Reading block. Are you ready to see our miracle purchase, our third teaching partner, the backbone of our Reader's Workshop schedule? Well ...

Drum roll, please

PRESENTING ... our timer

Do you see the size of that bad boy? Your eyes are not deceiving you; it is HUGE and we love it!

So here's the background. We had just gotten to the point where we were working with the children in small groups, and it was going great except that we were having the hardest time keeping to our schedule. First we were having a hard time getting through everything that we wanted to get through with the students each day. Things were taking FOR-EV-ER and we were getting stressed that maybe we couldn't get the students to transition efficiently enough to maximize our Reader's Workshop time like we wanted. Soooooo to solve that problem we turned to a trusty teacher tool - the timer. Both of us had used timers in the past to keep both ourselves and our students on schedule so it was a natural go-to tool for us. And it worked ... kind of.

The thing was the only timer we had was small, a kitchen-sized timer, and our classroom is ... uh ... decidedly not small. It was virtually impossible for either of us to see the timer while we were teaching. The timer was doing its job keeping us on time because we were both standardizing and limiting the amount of time we were spending with each small group, BUT we never really had any idea how much time we had left for our groups because we could not see that dang itty bitty timer. It was eye-opening to realize just how critical being aware of the time is for pacing. This may sound obvious, but to us it was a revelation at just how challenging it was to teach without any idea of how much time had passed or how much time we had left. Just another one of those things that teachers manage without even thinking about it while they are teaching, we suppose. Anyway, back to the timer - what we really need was a gimongous timer and there on Kagan's website (link for anyone who's interested: http://www.kaganonline.com/catalog/JMT/), our dreams came true.

Finding the perfect timer online

Unfortunately, it also cost us $49 before tax and shipping ... YIKES!!!

Discovering the outrageous price for the perfect timer

But in the end, it was truly worth it. We can see our timer from anywhere in the classroom and we used it constantly, c-o-n-s-t-a-n-t-l-y last year. It truly became our third teaching partner and we feel like we could not have achieved the maximizing of our school day that we did without it. It kept us on time, it kept us moving along, it helped us pace, and it helped the children monitor their independent worktime as we would use the countdown feature to help them visualize how much time they had left. We trained the children to freeze and raise their hands in the air when the timer went off. This told them that their time was up and a transition, with teacher directions of course, was about to occur. See, it really was a teaching partner; it even had its own classroom management systems!

So, what's the lesson here you may be wondering, our wise FLY AWAY? It is as simple as this: you can't do it all alone. Every teacher, no matter how dedicated, no matter how talented, no matter how simple awesome, can do everything alone all the time. Everyone needs help - be it a teaching partner, ideas from a blog, or a bangin' timer. So reach out and take the help you need! There's no time (Get it? Time ... hee hee) like the present.

We love our Mega Timer!

From the limb,

Benefits of Collaborative Teaching #2 - The Dance of Critical Mass

One of the best things about collaborative teaching, in our opinion, is what we like to call "The Dance of Critical Mass". Have you ever experienced the frustration of having most of your students finished with an activity or an assignment, but there a still a few stragglers who are not quite through? Now we're not talking about those little beans who stalled or chit-chatted or generally wasted their work time; we're talking about those kids who need more think time, who work a bit more slowly, and perhaps methodically, than their peers, who are truly focused and putting their best effort forward but at their own laborious unique pace. Every class has kids like that - and their needs become diametrically opposed to the "zoomers", the kids that plow through everything and are ready for more ... more ... more ... next ... next ... next.

When we were teaching alone, we continuously faced a conundrum - do we hold up the class until everyone is finished, allowing for as much work time as needed for each child OR do we move the class on when most of the children have finished, creating an environment of perpetual unfinished work for our "stragglers"? It was always frustrating to have to choose, to have to suppress the needs of the few in order to meet the needs of the many, BUT then we realized ... working together, we no longer had to choose!

So what is this mythical "Dance of Critical Mass" you are now wondering? Well, sit back and relax while we perform:

Our dance begins in a classroom, just at the close of a dynamic and riveting writing mini-lesson in which the students are filled with inspiration and the insatiable need to complete their writing assignment. Their eyes aglow with ideas and their fingers itching to record their thoughts, they surge off the rug and find little workspace nooks about the room where they can do their best work. The room is buzzing with the gentle sounds of productive work ....

WHAT? This sounds a bit fantastical. Well, it's our retelling so we can remember as we want, o-kay!! Anyway ...

Suddenly, a voice is heard above the noise of the classroom, "Teacher, I'm finished, what should I do now?" That lone voice quickly becomes a chorus, filling the room with an ever-rising cacophonous chant: "What should I do now? What should I do now? What should I do now?" As the music rises, the teachers survey the scene, "How many students need more time?" "Me! Me! Me!" softly rings out above the crowd and so the dance begins. One teacher waltzes the majority of the class on to a new activity or engages in a read aloud or guides a meaningful reflection, while the other teacher tangoes with each student - coaching, assisting, motivating. And so the Dance of Critical Mass.

Ok, so that was a little bit silly and we sure did stretch that dance metaphor to it's limits, but we get to have fun on our own blog, right?!? Goofiness aside, the technique is sound and satisfying. We get to engage the majority of our learners in a new activity where they benefit from explicit teacher direction, while we also get to support our "stragglers" in a smaller group setting where they benefit from individualized attention and, most importantly, enough time to finish their work. Now as a disclaimer, we still have children with unfinished work. Even in collaborative teaching where we have been able to find new and creative ways to maximize our schedule, we must still bow to the demands of having ... well ... a schedule. This is not a magic wand to wave away the frustrations of unfinished work (if only!), but it's something that has helped ameliorate the problem and so during the day when we inevitably have children that need more time ... we dance!

P.S. This is us dancing. You're welcome.

From the limb,

We're B-AAAA-CK (and we're sorry we left, too)

Hello Everyone,

Happy summer!!! We have been out for a few weeks now and are finally getting our heads back together after our whirlwind year. We want to start by apologizing for beginning our amazing blog, making you fall in love with us, and then ... poof ... vanishing ... no word, not even a post-it note break-up ... just gone! We began this blog with the best of intentions and then we became completely swept up in the reality of running our classroom and we just plum ran out of time and creative energy to invest in our blog. And we feel really bad about it ...

Guity face

Sheepish face

But you can't change the past, you can only move forward so we are going to try again and hopefully this time, now that we've passed the "this is my first year teaching this way" hurdle, we are optimistic that we will have more time and mental energy to invest in this baby - our blog.

The reason we actually started this blog was as a tool to support our reflection and share our experiences teaching in a collaborative classroom together. While we did not end up sharing out most of our reflections via this blog, we still engaged in the process continuously throughout the year so we thought we'd take this wonderful gift of summer vacation to do a little post-mortem (sorry for the morbid terminology, but it's really the most accurate word for it) of our school year and share what we learned, even though it will not be in real time.

Besides summer is really the best time for reflection and planning for next year, so really you might say we planned it this way. Yes, that's what we'll say ... we planned it this way ... yeah, that seems just right.

From the limb,

Update on Our Behavior Tree

Right before school began we proudly presented to you our Behavior Tree (Behavior Tree Post). We wanted to update you on what has happened now that we've implemented the system because we know you've been just dying from curiosity ;).

First we'd like to report that the children were very excited about the system and that excitement has maintained even a few months into school. The system is clear and we are now to the point where we can tell a child to move their bird for themselves and they know what to do. We even have some children who are already on their fourth bird!!!

We've also had some parent push-back about the behavior bird system. There have been parent concerns that it's competitive, that the children are reporting at home that they are being "good" so why aren't their birds being moved, and that the children are unclear why their birds are moving up and down the tree. While parent push-back can always be a little scary, it's also served to help us clarify our purpose behind our system and improve the way we are using the system in the classroom. Here's where our thinking is at now:

Purpose
The purpose of the behavior tree/behavior birds is to provide a concrete visual for the children as they define, practice, and internalize the behaviors of successful learners and of caring community members.

Defining "Good" and "Excellent" Behavior - Moving from the Abstract to the Concrete
In order to help our children understand what it means to have "good" behavior in the classroom, we turned to old trusty - Pinterest. We found these lessons inspired by No, David!  (Peacemakers/Peacebreakers Lesson). After reading the books and discussing David's behaviors, the children defined appropriate and inappropriate behavior for the classroom. This behavior was added to either a "Peacemaker" or a "Peacebreaker" poster. We constantly reference these charts when we're discussing the children's behavior and choices with them.

Additionally, we take advantage of the fact that there are two of us to model and role play through behavior situations that arise in the classroom. We might model how we would work together and share materials, or how we would solve the problem of partner readers wanting to read two different books. We magically turn the students into teachers and ourselves into students. Then we have the students observe us while we work through a scenario. Finally, we call on the students to tell us what they observed us doing as we were role playing.

Weekly Behavior Goal Setting
We have been setting a weekly class behavior goal focused around the Character Counts pillars for the month. For the last month, the pillar has been Responsibility. On Monday, we choose an example of a behavior that responsible students engage in and we define it with the students. We have used the following goals:

1. Choosing a good spot on the rug during instruction
2. Choosing a good spot to work in the classroom during independent work time
3. Choosing a good partner

We spend time defining each of these goals on Mondays. We then reinforce them continuously throughout the week, reminding the children about the goals and having children move their birds up when they are showing the goal behavior. In order to help the parents stay on the same page, the children fill out a special paper on Mondays as part of their daily reflection journal in their H.A.W.K. binders that state the focus for the week and the weekly behavior goal.

Some of the benefits of this addition to our program is that we discuss a specific behavior and define it in the language of the children, we give the children one specific behavior to focus on and practice all week, and it provides the parents with a concrete behavior to discuss with their children. Eventually, we would like to have the children set their own weekly behavior goal and reflect on their progress throughout the week, but ... baby steps ... baby steps.

Providing Explicit Feedback
Every time we have a child move their bird up or down the behavior tree, we make a concerted effort to inform them of exactly why their bird moved. We stated the behavior and make a connection to why that behavior is important to engage it. This honors the child and also provides a teachable moment for the other children as they are able to connect an actual action or behavior to the movement of a bird.

In order to keep on top of the behaviors we're observing, we each carry a pack of post-its and a pencil both during lessons and independent work time. We don't like to interrupt lessons with a lot of bird moving so we record our observations and have the children move their birds at the closure of the lesson during the transition to the next lesson.

Teaching appropriate behavior is one of the most challenging parts of our job, in our opinion, because it's sort of an invisible curriculum and it seems to get parents' back up more than anything. We have really stuck to our guns with what we're doing though, while of course refining and improving where it makes sense and matches our objectives, because we firmly believe that appropriate behavior needs to be defined for children, practiced, and reinforced continously until it is internalized. This is not a quick or easy process. In our opinion taking short cuts in behavior instruction results in children who don't see themselves as active participants in their own education, who don't make the connections between their choices and the outcomes of their learning, and who need an adult to tell them what to do in every situation.

And now we will climb down from our soap box and slowly back away :).

P.S. The FLY AWAY is "teach appropriate behavior, y'all!"

P.P.S. We have been learning from some of our parents that their children have made their own behavior trees at home with a behavior bird for each member of their family. They then proceed to move their family members up and down the tree at their discretion. Hilarious!

From the limb,

Conference Week

We did 40 conferences ... 40 ... forty ... foooorrrrrty ... did you get that we did 40? In one week and 2 days, btw.

Now did we have to do 40? No. But, as with everything we do, we had some good reasons, okay!

1) We both are their teachers and we wanted to make a clear statement about that.
2) We both work with the children continuously throughout the day and we both had important things to share with the parents about their child and the growth they've made.
3) We wanted to meet and talk to all 80 of our parents since we haven't had the opportunity to have extended one-on-one conversations with most of them.

It actually wasn't as bad as it sounds. We split up the talking time and it was fun to do it together so the time went quickly. But don't get us wrong, we sure were happy to have a 3-day weekend. In fact, this is how we felt after our last conference on Friday:

Happy Veteran's Day! (P.S. Kristie judged me for color-coding this but doesn't it look more festive this way. So unpatriotic, tsk tsk!)

From the limb,

Lessons from the Limb #7: One of Us Had a Cold but We Survived!!!

Okay, it happened ... the dreaded moment ... one of us needed a sub. OH MY! Poor Ms. B held on for two days fighting a nasty cold before she succumbed to it and needed to stay home. Now getting a sub when you're sick is drama enough when you're teaching in a classroom by yourself. It's always a balance between needing the day to be productive but not wanting to leave too much essential instruction in case the day goes awry. You would think that having a collaborative classroom would negate that issue but it actually added another lay of complexity. On one hand since Ms. H was going to be there, we were able to continue our instruction without worrying about the way our lesson plans were interpreted or carried out. On the other hand, we are no longer running our classroom as a whole class for the majority of the day. In fact, we had just reached the point where our children were getting independent enough that we are able to pull small groups. We were so excited to get here, we were all planned, and then BAM!! Ms. B gets sick. Classic! We had to can all of our small group instructional plans and go back to whole group because it was too complex to hand over to a sub. It was interesting because Ms. H was able to run the classroom and keep the children on pace instructionally, but it felt like we were losing ground because we had started to tap how much differentiation could occur when the two of us are in the classroom.

Having this experience with a sub taught us a few lessons. The first FLY AWAY is that in a collaborative classroom when one teacher is absent, the day does NOT grind to a halt. Though you may not be able to carry out the day at the same level of rigor and productivity as you would when both teachers are present, even teaching in whole group all day is probably providing the children with more instruction than if the day fell entirely into the hands of a substitute teacher.

The second FLY AWAY has to do with the collaborative relationship. Ms. H got a first hand taste of how it feels to be thrown into a collaborative situation with someone with whom she had no prior relationship. Ms. H had to keep complete control of the day and tell the subs what to do all day (She was basically Ms. Bossypants - though Ms. B might argue that is her natural state :). There was no collaborative relationship, there was instead a hierarchy out of necessity. Of course, this was of no fault of the substitutes - they were both lovely, helpful, and flexible - but there is just no way to replicate the relationship and the synergy that we have through our relationship and the time we've invested in forming our classroom and our vision together. The FLY AWAY is that without the time, the trust, and the communication between two teachers trying to collaborate, the experience becomes completely different. In this case, all of the responsibility fell on Ms. H for the entire day and she became the "boss" of the classroom. Had the substitutes been different people, this could have manifested into a daylong power struggle with the two teachers. Thank goodness that it did not!! In order for collaborative teaching to really work, in our opinion, you need trust and communication, and the time to get on the same page in order to make your vision work. We're not saying that this is realistic in terms of having a sub, but the experience further emphasized the ingredients for successful collaboration for us.

The final FLY AWAY is that things always go wrong when you have a sub. What is up with that? In our case, on Wednesday, one of the students accidentally set off the fire extinguisher. WHY?!?!?!!?! It sent this powder all over the corner of one classroom. This caused Ms. H to run around like a crazy person trying to wrangle 41 overly-curious first graders and get them packed up for the day. Oh did Ms. H miss Ms. B in that moment. Bottom line is we all survived and Ms. B is feeling much better. And while Ms. H loved her dear teaching partner Ms. B before, her absence made the heart grow even fonder :)

From the limb,

Lessons from the Limb #6: Keeping Ourselves Organized

Hello there. So you survived the tome ... I mean post ... on how we organize our students and you've come back for seconds. WE LOVE YOU!!! Thanks for caring about our obsessive ways :) We would now like to share with you how we keep organized between ourselves. While teaching together has made our job easier in many ways, it has also presented us with new challenges like staying on the same page with each other without spending every waking moment together (even though people probably think we do ... but we don't ... we swear!). Just think about it, how many times have you cooked up a lesson plan while shampooing your hair or made a split second decision about your classroom while driving home from school. As teachers we keep so many ideas, task lists, and plans up in our heads all the time. BUT when you're collaborative teaching you can't just make that split second decision in your head on the way home from Target, you have to be on the same page as your teaching partner. Not only was this a challenge, but we also have opposite schedules and working schedule preferences. Both of us having different committments after school. Kristie prefers to work early in the mornings and Kristin ... well ... doesn't, she's a stay-later.

So what were we to do with these problems? Make a plan, of course! Shocking course of action for us to choose, I'm sure :)

First we recognized that it's not going to change that we are both thinking about, planning, and generating new ideas for our classroom on our own all the time; it's both an ingrained habit and a inherent part of being a teacher. Instead of trying to fight that, we acknowledged it and came up with some systems so that we could stay on the same page. We also realized that we couldn't do anything about our schedule differences so prioritized our time and made a schedule. Come along as we take you through the details of our plans:

Our Schedule

In our collaborative classroom, it is essential to us that we plan together so that we are both on the same page and we know exactly what we're doing in the classroom. Since we didn't want to compromise on this and split up the curriculum, we decided to set aside one day per week (it's Mondays, ok!) as "protected planning time" after school. While this is not 100% perfect because sometimes Kristin has meetings on that day, for the most part it provides us with a common, uninterrupted, extended planning time that we can use to plan our weekly curriculum.

We also feel very lucky that our children leave for a 45-minute pull-out every Monday through Thursday so that provides us with some common planning time. That 45-minutes is great and we're really grateful to have it but it gets eeked away very quickly for this reason or that reason so do NOT recommend relying on that time for your only common planning time every week. We feel that you really need a long uninterrupted time so that you can have important conversations about your curriculum and your pedagogical approach to the delivery of the content. One of the things we like the best about teaching together is collaborating on our plans, discussing the efficacy of different instructional strategies, pushing each other's thinking, and analyzing new ideas in teaching; all of this we feel helps us to become better teachers. But ... if you want to have time for those difficult but essentials conversations, you need the time to have them ...

So now you're probably thinking to yourself, they meet to plan every week but how do they get their stuff done ... Well, we'll tell ya!

Shared Email

So, um, yeah ... we have a shared email ... ummmmm ....

We chose to have a shared email for a number of reasons. First, we wanted to present a message to our parents that we are BOTH their child's teacher. The email goes to both of us AND we respond from both of us ... united front, baby! Second, we both wanted to see the correspondence from parents so we could know what's happening with our students, and we did NOT want to keep forwarding things back and forth ... ugh!

Kristie tries to check the email first thing in the morning when she gets in and Kristin checks it in the afternoon. We respond to things that don't need both of our attention on our own and save bigger emails for when we are both together ... like those prep periods. Any email that we read but didn't respond to we re-mark it as unread so that we know it hasn't been dealt with. This is Kristie's system. Kristin's system would involve an elaborate hierarchy of color-coded stars but collaborative teaching is all about compromise :)

Google Tasks

Since our district uses Gmail as the host for our email services, we are able to use a wonderful little tool called "Tasks" to keep ourselves organized. This is part of our shared email (see it's good to have :). It is an on-going task list ordered by due date that can pop-up as part of our email screen. This is how we get our prep done even though Kristie is working in the morning and Kristin is working in the afternoons. This is genius, so brace yourself ... you ready for this amazing-ness? Here it is: While we are planning, we always have our tasks list open so when we are writing our plans, we enter in everything that needs to be prepped and the date by which is needs to be done. Once all the tasks are in the list then it doesn't matter who is working when because we knock off tasks and then cross them off the list. Here's a picture of a piece of our current tasks list:

We live by this creed:

Not only is this immensely satisfying but it also helps us know that the prep has actually been completed, not just left off the list. Peace of mind!

Dropbox

We also use another technological bit of magicalness called Dropbox. Dropbox is a file-sharing website that allows users to share folders on their computer so they can share files. We have a Dropbox account that is always hooked up on our computers so that we can share files if we need to.

The folder we use the most is the "Things to Print" file. This is very helpful because often Kristin makes things on her computer at home and then Kristie prints/preps them in the morning. It allows us to easily pass documents back and forth without clogging up our email.

Our Magical Lesson Plan Books

Here's another shocker for you ... we do not like to use a pre-made lesson plan book. We like to customize our own (can you believe that we would do that?!?). We have two lesson plan binders that we use, one constantly and the other for reference.

First, we have a lesson plan binder for our weekly plans:

Our Magical Lesson Plan Book

No, your eyes do NOT deceive you ... that IS a legal size binder ... BAM! We use a template that we made on the computer for our weekly lesson plans (we just luv to customize!).

This is the lesson plan page that we work together every week to fill out. The pink highlight is a lesson that Ms. B is teaching solo and the purple highlighter is a lesson that Ms. H is teaching solo.

Now for some lessons, a more detailed lesson plan is appropriate. For example, many of our math lessons get a more detailed lesson plan from the basic outlined that we agreed upon during our common planning time. For example:

These lessons get stored in our other magical lesson plan binder (yes, it really is called that ... see):

This allows us to archive our lessons for reference and hopefully, for future use! (Fingers crossed!)

Handy Dandy Reference Binder

After school started, we realized we had all of these important papers and reference materials that we needed to have easily accessible but we didn't have a good place for them so the "Handy Dandy Reference Binder" was born:

Our Handy Dandy Reference Binder

In this binder we keep anything we need to refer to. For example, we have parent contact information, student birthdays, our pull-out schedule by house, class check-off lists, a list of our students by house and number, etc. We also keep our records of homework in this binder. It lives in one spot in the classroom and is available for reference whenever we need it without creating a huge pile of random papers to store and weed through.

Lesson Plan Totes

Can we start by saying that we heart our lesson plan totes. We saw this idea on pinterest and we LOVED it! We bought three lesson plan totes at Lakeshore Learning to keep us organized and mobile, two critical tenents of our classroom structure. In these totes we store all the instructional materials we need for the week from lesson plans to copies to materials that will physically fit. We have one tote for whole group instruction that we share. We also each have our own tote for small-group instruction. Each tote has a different color hanging folder for each day of the week. When we prep materials, we place them in the appropriate tote so they are available for us when we need them. This system has worked very well for us so far because it keeps our materials organized and gives us a place to deposite prepped materials for the week.

Ms. H's lesson plan tote

Our whole group lesson plan tote; you can see the files for each day

Communication Clipboards

Keeping on top of what's happening in the classroom does not just happen before and after school. We have to work to continuously be on the same page during the day as well. One thing that is really important for us is that our roles in the classroom are always fluid; either one of us could grab materials at any time and lead the planned lesson be it whole group or small group. This is a great ideal in theory, but in practice it takes organization and coordination. And thus, communcation clipboards were born. These clipboards hang, literally, off our file cabinet so they are easily accessible to both of us at any given time. Here are our clipboards:

Our clipboards are hanging on our file cabinet or resting on top of the binders

Mini-Lesson Planner

This clipboard is where we quickly jot ideas that we noticed most or all of the students would benefit from; ideas for whole-group mini-lessons in Reader's Workshop, Writer's Workshop, or Math Workshop. We use this to remind ourselves about what to work into the plans for the week.

Strategy Group Planner

This clipboard is super essential to us. We use it to write down areas where we see, either through observation or formative assessment, that certain children need a reteach or additional practice with a concept. Right now, we are still working towards our little firsties being independent enough to hold a small-group with targeted instruction. Until we get there, we are taking advantage of the whole-group nature of our Math Meeting time to have one teacher lead the meeting while the other pulls small groups or individual children for assessment or a mini-lesson. We can grab the clipboard and see who immediately needs some extra practice. When we have met with the children, we write notes about when we met, who participated, and what we did so that either one of us could pick up that group next and know exactly where to continue the instruction.

Formative Assessment Tracker

The final element of keeping on top of our students' progress is our Formative Assessment Tracker clipboard. This is where we note any children who did not demonstrate mastery over a certain skill on our last assessment (so far, we've been using this system in math). When we graded the children's first math assessments, we noted anyone who struggled with a certain skill on the Strategy Group Planner and then we listed them on the Formative Assessment Tracker as a reminder to check back in on that skill after they had participated in a reteach group. Once the child has participated in a reteach group they can be given a quick oral or written assessment around the concept and then either put back for more reteach or crossed off the tracker. This is just the beginning of this system we have created so we will provide an update blog in the future to let you know how it's going. We are really trying to make sure no students fall through the cracks and to use the fact that there's two of us to actually get some reteaching going. Fingers crossed!

Data Binders and Student Files

Doesn't the phrase "Data Binders" just get you excited? Come on, you can admit it ... we won't tell :) We like to keep our student data in binders and, of course, we had to organize them by house color! Did you expect anything less? (insert major eye roll from Kristie here!) This is where we store all of our students' assessment data throughout the year from benchmark data to formative assessment data gathered inbetween report cards. This system allows us to easily access our student's information and lends portability as the binders can easily be grabbed on the go. We use these binders to track students achievement, plan for small group instruction, and send home monthly progress reports (more about that amazing-ness in another post :).

For all other information relating to students that doesn't fall into the "academic data" category, we have students files, again organized by house, where we keep notes from parents and other odds and ends.

Each of these things we've told you about have a specific home in the classroom where they can always be found. That way we're not roaming in circles trying to locate them and wasting time. We both make a conscientious effort to put things back so as not to try the other one insane (aren't we considerate?).

So now we come to our FLY AWAY about teacher organization. Sit down and make of list of all the things that you need to effectively run your classroom. Then brainstorm how you can make common systems that will allow you to plan together and use your time efficiency without having to spend evey waking minute together getting on the same page. Think about fluid systems that can be picked up by either teacher at any given time. Once you've made your systems, stick to them! They won't work if you can't be sure that yourself or your colleague is following them; if you can't trust your systems then you're just wasting time. Stick to them until they are second nature :) And now your favorite OCD teachers will leave you with the following to consider:

Think about it!

From the limb,