Teacher Organization Systems
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Why I Never Gave Early Finishers More Work
Finishing early should not earn a student another assignment. I have never understood the idea that a student who works efficiently should be rewarded with more work simply because they finished before everyone else. If they understood the concept, completed the assignment correctly, and used their class time well, why would I immediately hand them…
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How to Onboard a New Student Without Reteaching Your First Two Weeks
A new student can walk into your classroom in October, January, or March and suddenly you are expected to teach them everything your original students learned during the first weeks of school. Where do they sit? Where do they get handouts? Where is bell work? How does Google Classroom work? Where do they turn things…
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Why I Stopped Accepting Late Work Indefinitely
Late work is one of those classroom management issues that sounds simple until you are actually dealing with it every day. Do you accept it? How late is too late? Do you take points off? What happens when a student turns in six assignments during the last week of the quarter? For me, the answer…
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How to Stop One Student From Doing All the Work in Group Projects
You assign a group project. One student immediately takes charge. Another student does a little research. Someone says, “Just tell me what you want me to do.” And somehow, two days before the project is due, one student is doing almost everything. Sound familiar? For years, I tried different ways to organize group work. What…
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I Was Tired of Being the Lab Procedure
Why I Moved My Science Labs to Google Forms I did not move my science labs to Google Forms because I wanted a paperless classroom. I moved them because I realized I had become the lab procedure. “Where do we go next?” “How many drops?” “Can we start?” “Where does this go?” “Are we done?”…
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I Needed More Than an Organized Google Classroom… I Needed a System
An organized Google Classroom can still be confusing to students. A teacher may look at the page and immediately understand where everything is located. Students may see the same page and still ask: “Where is the assignment?” “When is this due?” “Which one are we doing today?” “Is this the Google Form?” I dreaded those…
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Why I Replaced My Paper Lesson Plan Book with a Digital Planning System
For years, I used a traditional paper lesson plan book. It worked well enough for recording what I planned to teach each day. I could look back and see the order of my lessons, when I gave an assessment, or how long a unit took. The problem was not writing the lesson plans. The problem…