Gearing Up for the Start! Post #1 - Prep Work

I cannot believe that there is only one week left before school begins!  Officially I have to report back to work on Wednesday.  Unofficially…. I've been back on and off for about 2 ½ weeks now.  Some summer in the future I'll have enough planned and ready that I'll have at least a month where I don't have to think about school :).  Not so right now…  But that's okay, because I love everything that I've been putting together in my classroom and with my two new 8th grade math teachers!!

Here are some things I've been working on:

1. Getting supplies purchased and put together;
2. Organizing thoughts from Minds on Mathematics (book study);
3. Decorating (obviously…);
4. Creating a "Math Around the World" bulletin board and notebook;
5. Math Survival Guides (woo-hoo!!!!), aka interactive notebooks;
6. Lesson plans;
7. I'm sure there is more and I'm just not thinking of them right now… :).

I'll be posting lots more soon on all of these topics - with pictures!

One of the things I've done is to create little notes that I'm going to laminate and tape into my plan book with reminders about all of the awesome prompts that I were in Minds on Mathematics (Wendy Ward Hoffer).  A huge shout out to Melanie from Confessions of a Grade 6 Math Addict who originally created these and allowed for sharing.  I've tweaked mine some, but I loved her outlines and colors.  I think these will be great reminders to me for class discussions and reflection time in the MSGs.  

(Okay… totally cool… this is the first time I've figured out how to embed a .pdf file in my blog.  Here's the website I used.)

Speaking of plan books… I was on Pinterest the other day (can you say LOVE, LOVE, LOVE!!!) and came across a pin about teacher plan books from Erin Condren.  Now, I am pretty fussy about my calendar.  I use Outlook on my computer because I get a lot of meeting appointments sent my way electronically, but I'm still an old-fashioned, big picture girl.  I like to see the long term plan ahead of me, so usually a two-page monthly calendar (with lines) is what I like to have.  Our planners at school are great (and free…), but they are a little smaller than what I'd like.  I'm also not particularly fond of spending a huge amount of money when I can create something myself.  However….. with all of the checklists I'd like to have after reading Minds on Math this summer, as well as a host of other things, I tried to weigh the time it would take me to make my own versus purchasing one of these.  They are so darned cute I'll bet you can imagine what I did :).  Yep… I bought one.  I'm so excited and it's totally personalized.  I guess that means no pedicure before school starts...