File Folder Centers

File folder centers can really help you differentiate instruction, allowing extra practice for those who need it and also allowing fast finishers to move on to additional activities that will challenge them.

You can use books like those from Scholastic’s  Mini File-Folder Centers in Color series to create centers. Just cut and paste — no copying or coloring needed. Carson-Dellosa, whose copy and color center games books provided hours of occupation for so many of us back in the day, even has ready made centers in a box, such as Science File Folder Games: Skill-Building Center Activities for Science.  They also have new cut and paste books like Colorful File Folder Games. These centers are available for PK through elementary in practically every subject. Our Princess and the Pea unit works well for centers, too.

You can also make your own, though. Here are some basic recipes for creating file folder centers from leftover classroom decoratives.

Worksheet style centers

Janie Blagg made this one, decorating it with bits cut from the header of her bulletin board (we never throw away those headers!) and then she laminated it. As long as kids use erasable markers, they can erase the answers and you can reuse the same sheets for years.

Pick and Put centers

Myra Grayson showed us how to make these, and I can’t count how many we’ve made since then! The central idea is to put pockets with items to be sorted, plus pockets to sort the things into. In this example, little ones sort clock faces saying 12:00 from those with other times, as a first step toward time telling (it fits with a Cinderella theme).

We like it for any kind of true/false question, sorting into groups like living/nonliving or plant/animal/mineral. We’ve used it to sort things true about Native Americans, European American settlers, and both.

As you can see in the example below, you don’t have to use pockets (though we love Peel and Stick Book Pockets  for the convenience).  The center below hasn’t yet been glued into its file folder, but we’ve used die cut frog cutouts for Fact and Opinion and then written facts and opinions on the backs of little frog mini accents.  We adhered the paper to the folder and added the clear pocket full of statements.

For the example below, we used cutouts for the sorting files, leaving the edges unglued so kids can tuck the slips into place. This center compares words like “mandible” with words like “animal” and “beetle,” focusing on the different spelling patterns for the same English sound. We wrote words on paper slips, leaving off the endings so kids can sort them according to the spellings. We were working with an insect theme here, so we’ve got D.J.Inkers’ Ladybugs Cut-Outs, but  anything will work. We actually cut the storage pocket (the red pocket where the word slips are stored when the center is not in use) from paper, since we didn’t have a library pocket on hand.

 

Mini timelines

Mini timeline centers are versatile, and they make make great use of those leftover border strips. For this one, we used a fiesta themed border and wrote events from Mexican history on craft sticks. We taped the border down with double-sided tape just along the bottom and laminated the folder. Then we used a craft knife to slice open the top only of the border, creating a long pocket. One strip of an ordinary bulletin board border will make a two-pocket file folder center like this one.

Students arrange the sticks in the pockets created by the border. We put the dates on the back of the sticks to make it self-checking.

We’ve used this for history stuff involving dates, of course, but also for steps in a process, events in a book, the alphabet — anything that needs to be put in order.

Okay, now invite your friends over for an evening of file folder center creation. Have them bring all the leftover decoratives from their classroom closets so you can swap and get a good assortment of goodies, put on a fun movie, and make a party of it!

 

Special Deals for Back to School

Back to School deals available right now:

• From August 19th to August 30th at Barnes and Noble online, Buy One, Get One 50% off ALL Young Reader and Teen books.
• Back to School Savings with HearthSong – Save $10 Off Your Purchase of $50 or More – Use Code: BTS10HS
• Discount School Supply Back To School Sale : Save 10% off of ALL In-Stock Orders for Back To School — use code: BTSATDSS — 10% off all in-stock orders and goes from July 5th – September 6th
• For the last weeks of vacation, from Barnes & Noble:Best Selling Paperback Sale! Buy Two, Get your Third FREE !
• Save up to 30% off retail on Crayola at Discount School Supply.
• Take an EXTRA 10% OFF all in-stock items!
• Also at Discount School Supply: Shop Dollar Days! Popular items on sale for only $1!
• Mindware.com- Clearance Products! Click here!
• Back to School Savings with HearthSong – Save $10 Off Your Purchase of $50 or More – Use Code: BTS10HS
• From LeapFrog: Leapster Games Sale! $5 off all Leapster games over $19 with promo code LEAPSTER. (Excludes hardware bundles). Offer valid now through August 31st!
• B&N exclusive FEED/Read Tote Bag – Every purchase provides 3 books and 3 meals to a child in need
• Not exactly a special deal, but Chronicle Books has a contest going to win 10 super cool posters of bears from around the world. Free is a pretty good deal, right?
• Now here’s a deal from Chronicle: Journals, stationery & more – 30% off with FREE shipping on ChronicleBooks.com! Use promo code PAPERGOODS Don’t miss the awesome Moleskine notebooks.

Classroom Communication

We hope that everyone had a fantastic school year. Still, one of the things we’ve always liked about teaching is the opportunity to make changes, perfect our approach, and try something different every term. Summer is a great time to think about some changes we might like to see in our classroom next year.

If you’d like to change anything at all, it might be the communication patterns in your classroom. Maybe this is the year to make a serious effort to get rid of tattling, teasing, persistent interrupting, and verbal abuse in your class. We don’t think that just writing the word “respect” on the wall is going to do that. We do think that a few lessons can make a big difference.

Let’s start with some books. We’re going in order from the shortest and most direct to the more complex, subtle,  and lengthy:

• Words Are Not for Hurting by Elizabeth Verdick is a board book with sweet line drawings of children and adults in daily situations. It begins with several pages about words, and then says, “Some of your words are kind. But some of them are not. Words are not for hurting.” The book goes on to give sensible advice about not using hurtful words, and about what to do if “your words come out before you can stop them” — apologize. There’s no story here, just a straightforward recognition that words can hurt, and that even little children are responsible for their words.
• My Mouth Is a Volcano!by Julia Cook has a bit of a story. Louis always has lots of important things to say — so much so that he can’t keep himself from interrupting others when they speak. When classmates interrupt him during his “Student Star” time, he feels that they “started talking right during my fifteen minutes of fame! She ruined my important words. She almost stole my moment.” Discussing this experience with his mother, Louis gets a strategy that helps him control the volcano in his mouth.
• From the same author, A Bad Case of Tattle Tongue follows Josh as he learns the Tattle Rules (in a dream, from the Tattle Prince), gives up tattling, and becomes more popular with his fellow students, and with his teacher, Mr. Cool. Okay, this may not be great literature, but it does offer a set of sensible rules for deciding when speech is tattling and when it isn’t. we’d do some Tattle Tale Tongue craft projects, giving cut-out people from magazines the “tattle tale tongue”described in the story, and use them along with the rules to make a bulletin board on tattling.
• If I Were a Lion , by Sarah Weeks, is a fun read-aloud with charming water color illustrations by Heather M. Solomon. It begins with the narrator “sitting in my time-out chair because my mother put me there.” She has been “wild,” and the rhymes mesh with the illustrations to show the various wild animals that she thinks demonstrate what wildness is like. “Am I howling? Do I bark?” she asks, pointing out the contrast between herself and “wild.” “Wild’s ferocious. Wild will bite. I’m precocious and polite.” She is good now, she apologizes, and at the end of the story she is happy and forgiven. We like the way that the book shows that temporary wildness can be fixed by a return to civilized behavior.
• For the older students, try “Toads and Diamonds,” a fairy tale that makes the idea of kind and unkind words very concrete. The link is to our lesson plans for the story, and it includes some instructional ideas for concentrating on kind and unkind language.

Having read and discussed a suitable book on language behavior, take the next step with some activities:

• Have students design awards for kind and appropriate language behavior. Allow students to give awards to one another whenever they see a classmate using suitable language, controlling an urge to interrupt or tattle, or apologizing sincerely for unkind language.
• Offer students licenses to interrupt or tattle (licenses for unkind language are not available!) under special circumstances. Assign groups of students to develop a license application form and the guidelines for allowing interruptions or tattling. Assign other students to review applications. In the process, discuss the kinds of situations that make interruption or reporting bad behavior appropriate.
• Give students the opportunity to send a “Sorry Bear” ecard to a fellow student whose feelings they’ve hurt.
• Do some research! Do some intensive observation and analysis to define “interruption” (hint: it can be different, depending where you come from), and then analyze the interruptions you observe in the classroom. Do boys interrupt more than girls? Do people interrupt girls more often than boys? Do teachers interrupt students more often or vice versa? Do friends interrupt each other more than strangers? After some preliminary observation, design an experiment and see what you can learn about interruptions in your classroom. A final question: did the experiment affect the behavior being observed? I’d love to hear your results.
• A lesson plan about online bullying makes some essential points about language behavior in cyberspace.

The Organized Teacher

We think that one of the secrets to a happy, relaxed school year is starting out very organized. Then a certain amount of chaos can creep in without making you feel completely stressed out.

Organize your goals

Start with some goals, whether for yourself apart from school, yourself as a teacher, or for your class. If you’re going nowhere in particular, somebody once said, you’ll probably get there. You need some goals, and you need to commit to them by writing them down somewhere. Then you need a system to keep you actually taking action steps toward those goals. A few options:

• Mini Goals Notepad  from Chronicle Books has a variety of tear-out lists, from lists of two things you’ll get done today to Every Day lists to lists for stuff to be done right after coffee. All with encouragingly cool illustrations to inspire you. This and all other journals and planners (including Moleskins) are  30% off at ChronicleBooks.com with the special code PAPERGOODS.
• Check out our post on GTD for Teachers. Lots of links and resources there, as well as the basics of the Getting Things Done system.
• MindTools on setting goals. They have free interactive tools for your smartphone.
• If you like more direction, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Personal Workbookis a classic.
• Mix goal-setting with social media at 43 Things. You list your goals, report your progress, and everyone cheers each other on.

Organize your stuff

Do you want to be the teacher who spends the first ten minutes of class pawing through your desk/drawer/briefcase looking for your rollbook/pen/lesson plan?

• If you use a big tote or book bag, use an organizer insert  to keep everything findable.
• If you use a briefcase, use file folders to hold papers and stuff.
• If you keep things on the desk, use expandable files
• If you have more flexibility (and more stuff) use our absolute favorite, the Copernicus Reading/Writing Center , which is not just for reading and writing. We think every teacher should just get issued one of these. It rolls around, in case you need to schlep stuff to more than one classroom. Copernicus has a variety of rack arrangements for different needs.

Organize your classroom

Classrooms inevitably have lots of stuff in them, and all that stuff is an invitation to chaos. Get it organized before school starts so you’ll have a fighting chance at keeping it that way during the year.

• Jonti Craft makes lots of sturdy wooden cases with plastic storage bins. The shelves/cubbies and bins system seems to work best for most of us.
• Child’s Play is another source for classroom organizing furniture, and right now they’re having a special offer. Click the link for details.
• Tot Tutors makes the kind of shelf that holds the bins at a slant so kids can reach in and see in.
• If you don’t have a choice when it comes to furniture, you can still use the bins. There are so many options here that you’re bound to find exactly the right kind with a little measuring. One choice that we like is the Sterilite 66-Quart See-Through Storage Box but the key is to measure both the shelves and the stuff you’re going to put inside. Then put labels on both the container and the shelf you put it on, to encourage everything to find its way back to the right place.
• Then take a leaf from Harry Wang’s The First Days of School: How to Be an Effective Teacher, and spend the first class session practicing getting things out and putting them back in the right places. It seems like a waste of time the first time you do it, but then you don’t have to keep telling kids the same thing over and over, which is the real waste of time.

The Lunchroom Challenge

If you’re tired of cafeteria food, flying through the drive-through, and the temptations of lemon bars in the staff lunchroom, we have an alternative.

Pack yourself a snazzy lunch. We like bento boxes, Japanese lunch boxes that keep food tightly packed and therefore not squashed. You can use leftovers or do some weekend cooking to have basics to pack during the week, and get your lunch packed in about 15 minutes the night before.

We bought our first bento boxes in Little Tokyo in L.A., but you can get them online:

• Amazon has a bento box with bag, cute Panda Face bento box , and sophisticated bento boxes.  Also lots of tools, like special cutters and rice presses. You can see a rice press in the photo above — push hot rice into it and your end up with a teddy bear made of rice.
• SuperBuzzy has bento boxes from Japan with surreal not quite English sayings like, “welcome to our home party!”  They’re also an excellent source of super cute bento toys.

• Heliotrope is another source of cute bento boxes, with a great selection of designs by Shinzi Katoh, one of our favorites.
• If you like the convenience of bento boxes but not the cuteness, Laptop Lunch has utilitarian sets, and LunchBots   does modern streamlined ones in stainless steel.

Bento boxes have little stacking trays for all your food. There are moveable dividers in many bento boxes, and you can also use lettuce leaves, cupcake liners, or special bento dividers like the elephants above. Pack rice, pasta, or other grains tightly into a bento container while it’s hot and then let it cool before closing the container. This gives you a solid foundation. Add protein foods like eggs, small wrapped cheeses like Babybel or Laughing Cow, slices of meat, fried chicken nuggets, or cut sandwiches next to the grains using a divider. Put stews in a separate container.

Tuck in fruits and vegetables. Be sure to fill all the spaces tightly; if you have empty spaces, add small fruits or veggies to keep everything packed and not moving. Salad dressing and sauces can go into small bottles like those shown above, or you can use picnic packets.

Tightly packed in your bento box, your lunch will not end up soggy, squashed, and unappetizing. There’s room for a whole plateful of food (traditional estimates say a typical two-tier bento lunch of the kind we’re showing has 300-500 calories), and you can plate it and microwave it if you prefer to eat that way. We think you can put any kind of food in your bento box, except soup (Thermos containers are your best bet for that), but there’s also an art-oriented bento subculture, as well as a cute food movement.

Online resources for these hardcore approaches to bento lunch:

• Lunch in a Box
• Adventures in Bento Making
• Bento Lunch

Books:

• Cute Yummy Time: 70 Recipes for the Cutest Food You’ll Ever Eat

• Yum-Yum Bento Box

• Kawaii Bento Boxes: Cute and Convenient Japanese Meals on the Go

• Bento Boxes: Japanese Meals on the Go 

While the sheer cuteness of our bento gear may have you thinking that this is girl stuff, we think guys need good lunches, too, and a well-packed lunch box gives you healthy and filling alternatives to the cafeteria or fast food. Just pick the larger size of bento box designed for guys. If even the manly bento boxes don’t hold enough food for you, tiffins work on the same principle. We can get these at our local Asian food market, or click the link to find an online source.

Choosing a Gradebook

Buying a gradebook is like buying underwear: you use it every day, few people will look at it but it can be important to those who do, there aren’t many big differences among the different kinds, and the little differences among them can make a big difference in how well your day goes.

The typical gradebook includes a list of names down the side, space for dates across the top, and grids in between into which you can write your letter or number grades. Usually there are extra columns on the right-hand side for recording absences, tardies, or calculations. Nearly all have 10 weeks on a 2-page spread.

Essentially, you can lay out half a dozen gradebooks together — and I have — and you will find that they all look the same.

So how can you choose among them?

Size

While size probably isn’t the most important thing, it’s a distinction if it matters to you. Most gradebooks run 8.5 x 11 inches, but Rediform does a half size one that could fit nicely in a purse.

The size of the book doesn’t necessarily correlate with the number of spaces for student names, which is very important. Ward’s grade book has space for 45 students, while most have 32- 28 spaces.

Color

The level of contrast in the grids makes a big difference for some teachers. Carson Dellosa’s School Days Gradebook  has all black and white pages, with gray alternating lines to help keep you in the right spot. Scholastic Daily Record Keeper has red dividing lines for even greater clarity. On the other hand, many people find a green or blue grid easier on the eyes. Teacher Created uses blue lines, while Ward has green and brown grids.

Added features

This is where you really come to love a particular gradebook.

• Record Book Plus  from Lee Cantor has behavior management and parent communication sections as well as the grade sheets.
• The Teacher’s Friend Record Book includes a lot of extra resources like proofreaders marks, precentage charts for quickly calculating grades, and stuff like that.
• Eureka Dr. Seuss’s Cat In Hat Lesson Plan/Record Book  combines the gradebook with a plan book, so you have just one thing to carry. Eureka does the combo with several different covers, too, if the Cat in the hat doesn’t suit your style.

Covers

This is where things get really different. Plastic covers are key if you drink coffee while you grade, of course, but otherwise it’s strictly an aesthetic choice.

TCR has a peace sign record book to go with your groovy retro classroom theme and a Mary Engelbreit design that announces “I’m in Charge Here!” among many others. For sheer cuteness, TCR is probably the winner.

Many who keep grades online also use a paper gradebook. It adds a step to keep both, but many find that the portability of the paper gradebook makes it essential. Being able to note in a grade quickly, consult a student’s record immediately, or take that stack of papers to mark along to a neighborhood sidewalk cafe is a must for lots of teachers. Then you can efficiently transfer the data to the database all at once.

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