The Promise of August
January 1, 1970
Welcome To Issue Six!The Promise of August
“To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream, not only plan but also believe.” Anatole France
Just as students wonder about what the new school year will bring, so do their teachers. While students daydream about classes where they will always know the right answer and never have homework, their teachers daydream about well-behaved students who rush to turn in A+ assignments.
Even though both of these intriguing daydreams are not exactly realistic, it is important to allow your dreams and beliefs guide your heart and mind as you undertake a new school year. According to conventional wisdom, if you are going to dream, dream big.
Why not?
Without fail, before the school year begins you will choose how you are going to proceed. You can decide now that no student is ordinary. That no class is ordinary. That no school day will be ordinary.
Think of the difference such a choice could make.
Instead of dragging yourself off to school just in time to be tortured yet again by unruly, bored students and mounds of paperwork, you will spend your days focused on helping students reach success.
When they succeed, you succeed.
Welcome Back!
In this month’s newsletter contains information designed to help you launch your school year successfully. Here is what you will find in this issue:
• A checklist of before-school chores
• A list of supplies you may need
• Some ideas about how to find supplies
• An interesting new site for all teachers
• How to learn your students’ names quickly
• Five ways to be an efficient teacher
• Templates you can use
• Two writing-to-learn activities
• Discipline tip of the month
Next month, look for how to use sticky notes, more writing activities, more Web sites, ten activities to access prior knowledge in reading assignments, and much more.
Your Before-School Chores Checklist
Here is a quick checklist to help you keep track of all the chores you need to accomplish before the first day of class.
1. Clean and arrange your own desk and workspace.
2. Arrange furniture and student workstations with careful attention to traffic flow.
3. Obtain a stapler for students to use and two trashcans—one near the door and one near your desk.
4. Decorate your classroom so that it is inviting, safe, and student-friendly.
5. Create a seating chart and plan how you will let students know where they are to sit.
6. Obtain all the other equipment you may need—projectors, carts, etc.
7. Set up your file cabinet.
8. Set up an efficient way to manage your electronic files.
9. Make a welcome sign for the door.
10. Carefully survey your classroom for safety issues.
11. Get your textbooks ready to be assigned to students as soon as possible.
12. Be sure you have the supplies you need to start school.
13. Decide on the supplies your students need. (Keep it as simple and inexpensive as possible.)
14. Be sure to have extra supplies on hand for the students who don’t have theirs at the start of school.
15. Set up a system for sharing supplies to avoid problems caused by missing pencils and texts.
16. Organize the books and materials (scissors, crayons…) that you students will need from time to time.
17. Figure out what materials your students will need in their Welcome Packets (a good idea for all ages) and assemble them.
18. Set up a system for recycling.
19. Learn the district and school policies that apply to you and your students. (For a comprehensive list, see The First-Year Teacher’s Survival Guide. )
20. Learn the procedures for emergencies, drills, and other disruptions.
21. Get yourself organized. Have blank to-do lists ready, your calendar annotated with important dates…
22. Obtain plenty of the forms you may need to record attendance, record parent contacts, refer students to the office, collect money, and other routine tasks
23. Organize the material in your faculty handbook with tabs, sticky notes, or other markers so that it is easily accessible all year.
24. Organize technology equipment and file passwords and protocol information.
25. Create your class rules procedures, and consequences.
26. Plan how you will teach your classroom rules and procedures to your students.
27. Confer with the school nurse, counselors, special education teachers, bilingual education teachers, gifted teachers, and others responsible for the specific needs of your students.
28. Establish a folder to hold contact information and other paperwork for each student.
29. Brainstorm or find a list of icebreaker activities that will allow you to get to know your students.
30. Prepare student information sheets and inventories. Plan how you will store these for easy reference all year.
31. Plan how you will introduce yourself to your students. What do you want them to know about you?
32. Look over your roster to familiarize yourself with your students’ names.
33. Make sure you thoroughly know the state and district’s objectives for your course.
34. Figure out how you will organize the various types of planning information and plans you will need to keep. Do you want to create electronic templates or a separate planning notebook?
35. Outline your plans for the semester and for the units you plan to teach.
36. Create three weeks of daily plans.
37. Have plenty of alternative plans or activities ready for those times when you need to be flexible about an assignment.
38. Create a list of warm up activities so that your class always begins with pizzazz.
39. Create a list of transition activities so that your students don’t waste time. (See the Works page for a list of 101 of these.)
40. Plan the routine for ending class smoothly each day.
41. Make a list of possible activities to jazz up your lessons. (See the June/July newsletter for a list of these.)
42. Devise a way to maintain accurate attendance records.
43. Set up your grade book—paper and/or electronic versions. Be sure that your method of averaging grades is in line with your district’s guidelines.
44. Prepare a letter to send home to parents.
45. Set up your class Web site.
46. Set up your e-mail and voicemail programs so that you can communicate easily with parents
47. Organize your professional wardrobe for the first few days.
48. Pay attention in faculty meetings. Take notes when necessary.
49. Pay your hospitality dues.
50. Join the PTA.
51. Photocopy materials as far in advance as you can.
52. Make sure to create a folder with information that a sub may need.
53. Create your own first-aid kit. Include items for your own use such as band-aids and pain relievers—just in case.
54. If you are an experienced teacher, make a point to help a beginning teacher. If you are a beginning teacher, don’t hesitate to ask for help.
55. Make plans successfully manage your own stress this year.
56. _________________________________________
57. _________________________________________
58. _________________________________________
59. _________________________________________
60. _________________________________________
A Supply List
Here is a very brief list of the essential supplies that you may want to keep on hand. This list is adapted from The First-Year Teacher’s Survival Guide.
• Pens—blue and black
• Colored pens for grading
• Pencils
• Calculator
• File folders
• Hole punch
• Calculator
• Overhead transparencies
• Overhead pens
• Transparent tape
• Computer disks
• An easy-to-find key ring
• Rubber bands
• Reward stickers
• Staplers (one for students and one for you)
• Paper clips of all sizes
• Three-ring binders
• Tissues
• Display boards from old science fair projects
• Poster mounting putty
• Crayons
• Glue
• Get-well cards
• Thank you notes
• Envelopes
• Labels
• Scissors
• Needle and thread
• Dental floss or fishing line (great for hanging things from the ceiling)
• Board erasers
• Safety pins
• Plastic bags
• Discarded books from libraries
Okay. I Have the List. Where Can I Find This Stuff?
Even though many of the supplies you need are ones that are reusable or recycled items, you may still need to purchase more. After you have exhausted all of your local sources, here are some sites you may want to check out for the great deals they offer this time of year.
• www.smilemakers.com (Free shipping if you order before 8/17/07)
• www.dollardays.com (You may have already tried your local version of this type of store.)
• www.teacherstorehouse.com (Huge variety.)
• www.orientaltradingcompany.com (Especially good for tangible rewards)
• www.wonderbrains.com (Unique items)
• http://www.kalama.com/~zimba/freeforteachers.htm (Lots of links to sites with free resources.)
One on the best ways to network with other teachers to share ideas, materials, problems, and solutions is to join an online community. Although the idea of networking through an online community has been around for several years, few sites offer the various kinds of information that teachers need. That changed in July when a new site for teachers (www.TheApple.com) launched.
With the debut of The Apple last month, teachers now have an opportunity to join a community of other educators with just a click or two. Here is what you can find at this great new site: news about education, videos and other entertainment related to education, career advice forums and information, information about degree programs, products and resources for teachers, an opportunity to correspond with other teachers, and a library of lesson plans. Although the site is new, it already offers plenty of useful and easy to access information for teachers. Check it out!
Learn Your Students’ Names Quickly
Adapted from The First-Year Teacher’s Survival Guide
Learning how to correctly pronounce and spell your students’ names is one of the most important tasks you will have to master as the school year begins.
Learning all of your students’ names on the first or second day of school is not very difficult. These quick tips will make it possible for you to go home on the first day of school confident that you know the students in your class well enough to get the term off to a good start.
• Put in some preliminary work! Organize your seating charts, study class rosters, and prepare nametag materials.
• Make sure that your students sit in their assigned seats for the first few days so that you can more quickly associate names with faces.
• If you have students fill out a student information form, when you read what your students have written, mentally match their faces to the information in front of you.
• While students are working on an opening-day writing assignment, walk quietly around the room, checking the roll.
• Ask each child to say his or her name for you. Repeat it as you study the child’s face.
• Mark pronunciation notes on your roll sheet. Also, make notes to help you match names to students. For example, you can write “big smile” or “very tall” next to a student’s name. These little clues will help you when you are struggling to recall a name on the second day of school. Make sure that you pay attention to characteristics that are not likely to change, such as height or hair color.
• When you cannot recall a child’s name, admit it, and ask for help. When you hear it again, write it, repeat it, and try again until you can recall it.
Five Ways to Be an Efficient Teacher
Right now is the perfect time to decide how you can be an efficient teacher. Efficient teachers enjoy school more because they are not always scrambling to get their work caught up, know when meetings are scheduled, and can find keys, phone numbers, and their grade books.
Here are five quick tips to consider if you want to be an efficient teacher this year (And who doesn’t?).
1. Write it down. Use calendars, agendas, to-do lists, and sticky notes to make notes about what you are supposed to do and when you are supposed to do it. The life of a teacher is too complicated to keep in your head. Find a method that works for you and stick to it.
2. Don’t get behind. Grade papers and record those grades as soon as you can. Follow advice from veteran teachers such as: stagger due dates, file papers daily, don’t grade every single paper, and record grades electronically every few days.
3. Delegate what you can. Even young students can tidy a classroom, put away books, and help maintain a bulletin board. Your classroom is full of helping hands.
4. Do it right the first time. Any task that you do well the first time means that you will not have to spend time reworking it later.
5. Plan how you will use your time. Some teachers create schedules where they perform specific tasks each day (Monday is planning, Tuesday is photocopying…) Still others make sure to make one trip only to the office each day. Whatever action you decide on, be sure to plan how you spend you time at school so that the week just doesn’t drift by.
Templates You Can Use
Save time at the start of school by using templates for the important documents in your school day. Just about the best source for templates of all kinds and links to even more sites for templates is www.educationworld.com. Just use “templates” as a search term on their home page to access templates for letters home, rules, planning, and forms of all kinds. Many of these forms can be manipulated as you download them.
Two Writing-to-Learn Activities
1. When you have new words to introduce before teaching material, try giving students just the words in advance and ask them to speculate on what their meanings could be. Then, after reading and discussion, ask students to write out a new meaning based on what they learned. As the class discusses the words and their meanings, students will learn much more than if you just ask them to look up meanings or give them the definitions.
2. When you find assign a reading passage of any type, ask students to write out one line that they find interesting, questionable, odd, well expressed, or confusing. Then, ask students to write a response to that quote that stretches their thinking such as: how it ties it in with previous knowledge, explains why they chose it, or asks questions about it.
Discipline Tip of the Month
When you set up your classroom, pay careful attention to the traffic flow. You can prevent lots of discipline problems if students have access to a work station to turn in their papers, a trash can near their desks or the door so that they do not have to disturb classmates, and can find books and other supplies without disturbing their classmates