New Favourite for Organization

Anyone who knows me as a teacher knows that I love to organize absolutely everything in my classroom. I enjoy finding new ways to store materials, resources, and other classroom goodies in a way that keeps everything neat and tidy but still easily accessible. Enter one of my new favourite finds for this year:

I found these plastic binder envelopes at Costco this fall and I love them. They can hold up to 100 pieces of paper and are strong and durable. I have to admit I don't actually use them in binders as I find they tend to stick out too far when the binders are closed (just a hint of OCD when it comes to my classroom) but if I cut off the 3-holes with scissors they fit perfectly in the white magazine holders from IKEA.









The best part about these babies is the price. It cost $10.00 for 25 plastic sleeves and I can think of so many uses for them. At this point I am using them to hold all the little bits and pieces I use for each of my Math units. Some of the envelopes hold the pieces for our interactive notebooks while others hold the cards needed for Math games. I was actually surprised at how much they held. The nice thing I can easily label them with a Sharpie and since the plastic is nice and smooth I can take the Sharpie off using a whiteboard marker later. (If you haven't tried this yet by the way you need to. You can remove Sharpie by colouring over it with a dry erase marker and then wiping it off.

I had hoped to use them as a write on/wipe off cover for worksheets but I think they are actually a little too thick (as in hold too many papers) to keep one piece of paper in one place for students to work on. What would you use these for? I would love some more ideas.

Social Studies Journals

I am so excited for Social Studies this year. Usually Social Studies is way down on my list of subjects but this year I am going at it a different way and I can't wait to see how it turns out. In our curriculum we learn about countries around the world: Peru, India, Tunisia, and Ukraine. The students really enjoy learning about new cultures and trying to picture how people in different countries live. I think I get an added bonus at our school because we live in an incredibly diverse community (my last class had 23 students from 11 different countries) so students already get to hear about different places and cultures.

Last year I used the classic textbook, discussion, worksheet/posters approach that seems to fit with Social Studies. However I noticed that my students, especially the boys, lost interest in what we were learning after about 15 minutes or so. This year I want to avoid that. It means a little more work on my part but I am excited to try my take on a Social Studies learning journal.

The students all have a journal which they will use to record what we learn. Rather than give them pages of information we will focus on 1-2 key ideas per lesson. I hope to use a bunch of pictures, videos, and stories to bring these different cultures to life. Basically the idea is more experience, less research. We will use different foldables, diagrams, and reflection questions to record what we have learned throughout the year. As well I have at least one big project planned for each unit. Our first country is India so we will be making paper lanterns for the Diwali festival of lights! Anyway we haven't actually started this part of our curriculum yet since we just finished up our Mapping unit to help us understand a little more about the world and its geography. I will keep you posted on how it goes though!

So why am I writing about these journals when I haven't even tried them yet? Because we decorated the covers today last week (it just took me this long to take pictures of them) and I love how they turned out! I gave the students clip art relating to the different countries and the overall themes of our curriculum so they could colour and decorate their journals. Students then got a chance to organize the pieces in whatever way they wanted so their journals could still reflect who they are as individuals. They are so colourful and the kids did such a great job that I just had to share them with you.

Here they are:

Stay tuned to see what happens on the inside!