So I hit my breaking point. I had a tech-explosion where I had too much on the go, too much running ‘in beta’ and no clear vision of what I wanted.
Let me back up.
I try everything I read about, whether it’s in Twitter or Pinterest or…. Well just anything. And sometimes I dive in completely just to ‘play.’  I think this childish glee I get from trying new things really is one of the best parts of my teaching practice, but I starts to run one ragged rather quickly.

A few weeks ago I turned around and realized that in one school day I used all of the following:

1. Google classroom
2. Google drive
3. Google forms
4. Google docs
5. School web
6. Plickers
7. Socrative
8. Confer
9. Stick picks
10. Sesame snap
11. Pic collage
12. A standard mark book, and
13. Google sheets.

Oiy.
And all because I poke everything I find and want to play with all of it.

But it’s just too much to ‘do it all’ all of the time.  So in planning for next year, I think I’ll use the apps that best suit the tasks and focus more on good feedback than app mechanisms. Here’s my assessment plan for 2015-16:

1. Language and History: Exclusively through Google classroom
2. Math – interactive notebooks on google docs, linked on my site, built daily
3. Art- sesame snap (post snaps of work plus self-reflections)
4. Science- still working on an idea for this…. inquiry vs traditional?
5. Health – Google forms and Google Drive

So now I do see the light at the end of the tunnel, and for once it’s not the train. 🙂

yup. I completely fell off the wagon, got disorganized, and forgot to blog. 
Sigh. I really meant to but…
So now I get the chance to talk about the end of the year last-ditch-attempt to get my life, and home, and classroom, ready for the end of the year. 
“But you get two whole months off! You can organize then!” Nope. I can’t. Because my husband and I are both teachers, and during the summer it’s about us and the kids. So the work has to be done now. 
Over the last few weeks my kitchen island counter has become 4-inches thick with papers to be filed. As a matter of fact, 90% of them are supposed to be in my lovely coloured home binders (thanks to a Bowl full of Lemons) which live downstairs a mere 25 feet away. But I just can’t seem to get there. 
Part of it is lack of energy, and part of it is fear that it will grow into a bigger job than it needs to — and that’s where this post comes full circle again. 
When we ask a student to find a missing sheet and it escalates to a desk dumping, we’ve managed to make our student feel like he has a major problem, not a minor one. It focuses on spiralling messes and disfunctional habits, and still doesn’t find us that missing sheet. And it makes our students dread looking for anything. 
So plan your classroom (and home) workflow to support students and minimize their issues from the get-go. In my classroom, this relies heavily on GoogleDrive:

1. Every sheet exists online. print another if you really need to (rather than spending 45 minutes cleaning a desk)

2. Complete the work digitally. Students can submit a link to their work digitally to a google form, and now you can’t lose it

3. Email or post feedback digitally. So they can’t lose it. 
How does this apply to home? Well that’s what we’re going to see. At the moment I have come up with the following workflow:

1. All incoming paper goes in the inbox

2. The inbox gets sorted every Saturday morning (bills paid, papers filed, etc)

3. My to-do list goes into the Eisehower app, organized by priority

Hopefully this will help keep the paper clutter down, keep us more on track, and stay ahead of the challenges of the week 😉
If it doesn’t, could you come dump my desk?

So today was the first day after spring break. 

I’m exhausted. 

But I’m also really, really excited. Why? Because I’m starting with new ‘stuff’ that excites me. I rolled out a new forensic science unit today, and the kids are completely hooked. And I’m starting a new online portfolio program for the rest of the year. And I added two new classes to Google Classroom. 

I was sharing this at lunch and had a colleague ask ‘how do you find time to do all of this ‘stuff’?  That’s when I realized my gifts: giving myself permission to overplan, and letting kids know ‘this might not work.’

Overplanning. 

My bright idea was to create five CSI-themed centres, which my classes of 30 could rotate through in 5 groups. I started with researching forensics-related skill online, and then created activities to fit each skill. I came up with a fibre burn lab, a chromatography lab, a fingerprinting lab (one with powder and one with crazy glue), a hair ID lab, a substance ID lab, a spatter analysis lab….. And realized I had too much. 

So I reorganized it as two 5-day rotations, found a few more ideas for centres, and started work in earnest. First, I planned what info I needed, as if I was making my own ‘teacher notes’ pages.  Then I saved a copy of that file, and made it a kid-friendly ‘student info’ file. I left just enough information in to act as an INFO card, one per station, and removed any of the teacher prompts that the kids really didn’t need to see. Finally I created a third file where I made handouts to support each centre, pages that could go in a ‘case file.’  I spent a few days finding supplies around town, including buying crime scene tape and borrowing a magnetic powder wand from the local Police department. I spent one afternoon sorting everything into 10 trays, ready to be placed on centres. I spent another afternoon cutting up fabric samples for a burn lab and testing reactions for a chemistry lab. And voila: a two week unit that essentially runs itself, leaving me to float and assess my kids while they get to play Crime Scene Investigator. On the fifth day, while they are on their last centres, I can prep anything needed for Rotation 2. 

And as I was doing all of this Planning and prepping I realized that *this* is the first key idea: plan for everything big to be a future resource that can essentially run itself. I have the added motivation of sometimes selling resources online, but really, this is the key to my success in the classroom. I front-load the creation of units to purposefully free me up to work from within my class, and see what they’re learning. This is when I get to see the most, and learn the most about how my kids learn. All that extra time at the beginning gets the ‘sage off the stage’ and puts me right beside my kids. 

Here we go….I hope 

The second key to my ‘try everything new’ reputation is starting small and letting kids know, unapologetically, that an idea may flop. A few weeks ago I learned about an amazing new app from Sesamehq.com. The app and web site work together to build online portfolios of student work. Kids and teachers can post work. Assessment creation is built in. Curriculum strands are built in. Communication with parents is built in. It’s an incredibly rich app, which is actually very easy to use. But I’ve warned my kids that we may stumble a bit. I have committed to rolling it out in only one strand of language to start, to give myself time to play with it, but not add unnecessary stress to my world. If it works, I’ll try new strands in the fall. If I stumble, I only impact one strand. Overall, it’s a good risk/reward balance. It’s kind way for me to try something new. 

And that’s it really. Starting small, and front loading classroom planning to make room for authentic assessment while the kids drive the inquiry forward. With these two guiding principles I stay in touch with my kids during the day, and focussed on my family in the evenings. My class gets rich, authentic tasks, strong feedback, and new ideas, but I stay within my available energy and time. 

And tonight I think I’ll do a puzzle with my daughter, since I made myself the time. 

MPJ 

So most folks have heard of the 40 days of Lent. Most of us on social media have run across #40bagsin40days – a massive decluttering — or ‘de-crapifying’ challenge.

Well, I have my own classroom take on this.

Like most teachers, my room has a fixed shape and a fixed volume. It is not, sadly, a TARDIS. (Whovians feel my pain).

I’m taking 40 school days and purging one recycling box of paper resources and one garbage can of crap from my classroom every day.

Last week, on Monday, I tackled my dead plant corner. Oh the shame. Took 5 minutes and made a very visible improvement.

On Tuesday I tackled my back sink area. I filled a bin with coffee mugs (mostly TMP – ‘Tacky Music Paraphernalia’), cutlery, boxes of tea etc., and donated them to the staff room. It took 7 minutes.

On Wednesday I sorted one pile on my teacher table. Half of it landed in a bin to be shredded, some was handed back to eager students (whoops…. Must have forgotten to hand those quizzes back…), and everything else in the pile was recycled. It took 11 minutes total.

Thursday was monumental. I opened a filing cabinet drawer I haven’t opened all year, and dumped it directly in the trash. After all, if I haven’t used it in the past 8 months, it’s not relevant now. This took 48 seconds. I had a kid time me.

Friday was cathartic too. I took an entire shelf of curriculum supports for courses (and grades) I will never again teach, and chucked ’em. 15 seconds flat.

Insert satisfied smile here.

It’s very easy to tackle one pile, or shelf, or drawer, each day. At the end of 40 days you’ll be more organized, less discombobulated, and have more space to work with.

And giving up clutter is much easier than giving up chocolate.

So I challenge you. Whether at home, or at school, chuck one bag a day for 40 days (take weekends off too!) If it stresses you out, toss a small bag of stuff. If you feel inspired, get a few giant contractor-sized garbage bags.
But cut the Crap, and the stress, from your teaching space.

Meg

#40bagsin40days #WishITaughtInaTARDIS

Hello.  My name is Megan, and I’m a Washi-addict.

Update in my Erin Condren Planner and how it’s working for me —

I have settled on using Washi-tape to mark off my weekends, to visually help me set that time aside and remind me to not ‘cross the line’ when planning my own activities and time.

I’m also using Washi to mark out events for me and the kids- just bands of colour for Brownies, rehearsals, and dance classes.

I made a dashboard that clips in, which has four sections: today, within 48 hours, within a week and within two weeks. I’m adding sticky-notes to this dashboard, and they move around based on what I accomplish each day. It’s my Eisenhower matrix, and it’s the one thing I do on paper that I take the time to out into my Eisenhower app too. My dashboard is my accountability guarantee, and my liaison between paper and digital worlds.

Am I more organized? No. But I am more aware of what I have due, what’s coming, and important deadlines. I’m also able to visualize my week more clearly even when I’m not in front of my planner. I’m a visual person, and the clear image of the visual-business of the week is proving helpful, as I feel more on top of things, and therefore feel less stressed.

Now THAT means it’s working.

Even if I fill in a day retroactively, I like feeling that I know where I am with my responsibilities. I also like that my students watch me add things to my planner as they add things to theirs. Modelling always helps. But modelling authentically actually changes how kids function, and helps them value new routines.

Now, I also got horribly distracted this week with a thirty-one catalog trying to find the perfect case for my planner and accessories, but that’s ok. My distraction led me to considering sewing my own, which reminded me that the basement still isn’t working efficiently for all of our family space needs, and this led to a new design project.

And a plan to go to ikea soon. Wheeeeee.

So off I go to plan a new room layout, task-specific centres, and flexible seating options. And a shopping list. And maybe an app to play with furniture… And maybe a new Raskog…. Oh, and some washi tape…

1. Google Classroom assignment waiting for you in your gmail 🙂

2. Lawson draft needs to be shared and then pasted into the drop box (student stuff –> lawson)

3. Grade 8s: gather the forms you need for registration please – proof of address, utility bill, photocopy of birth certificate, etc. The complete list is on your forms.

4. curvy shatter art due wednesday at the latest – moving on with light and reflection

Things will move quickly from here to June people — stay up to date and ahead of deadlines!

MPJ

With January comes New Years Resolutions — and report cards.  As a household with two teachers and two students, report card season is a huge challenge.  We adults try to eek out time to get ours written, and the wee children start worrying about receiving their own.  Along with the specific timing, post New Years, many students decide to ‘try harder’ or turn over a new leaf around this time of year. I’m sure this accounts for all of the tutoring-service ads and join-this-gym offers I have seen lately, but I digress.

So, while I am a super-organized teacher, I am not — in any way, shape, or form — an organized parent.  Truth be told I’m a scatter-brained, forgetful, disorganized mess when it comes to staying on top of my household.  But I am trying, and it is getting better.  My New Years resolution was to stay more present. Present in the lives of my kids and husband when at home, and more present in my job when I’m there.  This is taking a lot of patience and planning on my part, and a lot of patience on the part of my guinea pigs…. err…. students.

In order to be present for my children at home, I need to stay on top of their schoolwork and responsibilities.  While I subscribe to the email lists for both of their schools (yes, between the four of us we represent four different schools…..) I still miss ‘stuff’ if I don’t make an effort.  So I check their teacher’s websites once a week, print off any schedules I need to know about, and check their planners.

Most school age children have planners these days, or a communication book of some kind.  My daughter has one the school provided, geared to her age-group.  My son has one we bought him, which is often bypassed and I receive a sheaf of loose papers instead.  I am trying to train my own children in a routine where they come home, dig out their planner and any paperwork that needs seeing or signing, and place it on the homework station for me to see.  This designates it as ‘my homework’ for later in the evening, to be completed while they are working on theirs. I have added my own basket to the homework station, which includes envelopes, checks, and a pen, so that forms and field trips can get taken care of right way.

I parallel this at school with my students.  I have several kids who are ‘planner prisoners.’ These kids have to bring me their planners before they pack up at the end of the day.  I can check to make sure they have copied down the homework off the blog, check for parent notes, and ensure that communication is clear between my room and home.  Usually I just have to glance quickly to see that yes, the homework is there. Other times I have to jot a quick note or a request. I have some colleagues who streamline the process by printing mini labels that say ‘incomplete work,’ or ‘please sign,’ etc. This allows them to simply pull off a sticker and bam! Planners are done! I’m thinking of getting a few re-inking stamps made.  Maybe one that says ‘Check the Blog,’ another that says ‘Check Website,’ and a last one that states ‘Please Book a meeting.’ (For a great entry on how to make an online calendar so parents can schedule their own appointments out of slots you choose to offer, try here.) Other students don’t need the planner check-up, so they are left to be independent.  It’s a routine that some, however, really benefit from.

And, since the goal here is to retrain me along with my children, I need to do the same.  Every night I need to put my ‘homework’ on the homework station.  This includes bills to pay, the budget book to update, and my own planner to update. Every night I have to clear out the pile and make sure all of my homework is finished.  I also need to put everything away, so that it doesn’t appear as though an office supply store has exploded in our dining room. Eventually, with a little luck, I’ll be able to get us all on track. 🙂

Now, I should go book an appointment with myself to do report cards… sigh

Happy organizing!

I’ve spent the past hour or so reading posts and watching videos by @AliceKeeler — my tech and Google Guru. She has a great series of posts on gamification in the classroom for which I, as a gamer, absolutely go nuts.

The premise is simple: make learning fun by reminding students that, with enough effort, every task is ‘winnable.’ I have spent some time putting this into a beta version of my own — conceptually. I see this working if some tasks in my room are required of everyone, and are created at a level that guarantees success. Other tasks could leave room for extension and exploration. Still others might only work well for certain kids. In a sense, I could create location quests (appropriate for everyone and based on where we are right now as a class on this map), class-quests (hard for mages, easy for paladins), and boss quests (these would take every skill you’ve got, and a team of collaborative partners to help). Instead of grades, students could earn levels, and would be driven by a collaborative sense of competition within the room. They could earn badges and temporary buffs, and could acquire Loot and Gear throughout. They would WANT to level-up! Woot! Epic win!

But how?

I write a lot of my own novel studies for grade 7/8. Last year I created one for the novel ‘Z for Zachariah’ with multiple options for each question. I told my class ‘all of you can do the first one with a little effort. The second option takes it a little deeper, and the third attacks the same question from a broader context. You pick which one to answer.’

I thought I was doing a great job of offering choice, and my hope was the illusion of choice would get all kids trying at least one of the questions. In that sense it worked because every student finished the tasks….

But what I found was that some kids completely missed the point and did all three questions for each task – seemingly unaware that they were tripling their workload unnecessarily. Others chose the first option throughout, when they could have tackled the tougher ones. And while I began the whole project with gamification in mind, when it came to assessment I fell back on rubrics and grades, leaving the metaphor behind. I completely abandoned the context that might have made the learning more meaningful.

Phooey.

So I decided that I needed more contact with gaming to get more inspiration, and went back to playing World of Warcraft (purely for academic purposes, I assure you…it had nothing to do with really wanting to have a cute little Gnome-Mage with a blue mechanical ostrich and the ability to turn bad guys into sheep.)

Ahem.

Regardless…I think I have rediscovered why I love World of Warcraft…er… gamification in education. It’s about the pride in levelling up, it’s logging in and seeing your level-24 hunter on the screen. It’s celebrating how far you have come and where you are at the same time. And that’s the piece I missed with my class. I completely forgot to acknowledge that each of my students began this task with others already completed which had paved the way in terms of skills. Of course I new that these tasks were a natural evolution, but it wasn’t transparent to my students. They didn’t see that everything was winnable.

Ding! level 41

Next quest: re-sequence my assessment tasks in Language as Quests, identify significant pieces of writing or research as Level Bosses, and figure out how to reframe collaborative tasks as Raids.

But first, I still have two days of Christmas break left and I really want my mechanical ostrich.

So the day began, of course, with a trip to Michaels.  How else do you begin a new planner system?

Seriously though, after watching a multitude of videos on YouTube and reading a pile of blog posts on how to use the Erin Condren Life Planner, I decided I needed a few essential supplies.

Pens: I have a love of colour, and a passion for fine-felt-tip pens. Especially purple and orange.  I also knew after my research that attributing colours to certain kind of tasks would make life easier when it gets busy.  I also discovered that, since my kids are young and don’t drive, their activities can be classed as ‘Mom’ or ‘Dad’ based on who is driving them.

Stickies: I hate to commit.  So, a collection of stickies was needed so I could add notes to my planner, and rip them out easily if I didn’t like them.  Yes, I do that.  I hate being ‘stuck’ with something that is icky.  So I stickie. 🙂

Project Life Journalling Cards:  Please celebrate me. I had will-power.  I was tempted to go gung-ho and buy every project-life accessory I saw, but I didn’t.  I did however fall in love with the lined, round-cornered journalling cards with lines running in two directions (for vertical or horizontal layouts). I decided that, since they were on sale, the 100-pack would give me lots of clip-in options, and a few stash nicely in my planner’s back pocket.

Compulsive design moment:  I came home and decided that I really needed a planner Dashboard — a place where I could park the ‘Do This Today’ notes and jots that could hold my place in the planner at the same time.  The clip in dividers from the Condren site are awesome, but pricey once you consider shipping to Canada. So  I quickly whipped up a 7 x 9 colour version in Word, using  a modified Eisenhower Table, and PDFd it to Staples to print in colour and laminate with 5ml poly.    I can punch the edge tomorrow when I pick it up and voila — a clip-in dashboard. At the same time I created a meal planner card to help me stay on top of feeding us each week.

Washi:  Yes, I bought some Washi tape.  Following the recommendation of another blogger, I’m using a strip of Washi to mark off my weekends, and to highlight important days. So far I’m pulling colours out of the month pages and keeping things simple.  The goal, after all, is to help make life easier, not add more work to the day.

And so, onward and upward I travel toward Planner Nirvana.  I’ll update with pics once I feel as if I’m in a groove or a routine, and let you know how I adjust once school starts up again. It may all fall apart once the days get busier, but for now I’m loving my life planner, and excited to see where it leads.

Meg PJ