storing units when finished

There are a thousand ways to store units, and I'm showing you just one. This particular method is working well for me, but who is to say I won't find a better method down the road. I take each lesson and all of its components and place them into a labeled 1 gallon size ziploc bag. I then place all of the bags into a copy paper box (you can't beat free!!). I then place all of the extra tasks and extension lessons I made into the box. The outside of the box is labeled with the month, unit number, grade band, and a brief description of what the unit is. I place these on a shelf with the words facing out. I would love to hear of other storage methods!

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organizing lessons for teacher time

I am in love with crates. They do a great job with containing my teaching materials. Each day I have a 1:1 teaching time with each student. I set up my lessons in this crate on Friday afternoon. I look in my lesson plans for the following week and load those lessons and extension activities into what day of the week I plan on teaching them. I also have a space to hold my data sheets, adapted reader books and an emergency sub plan binder. I really have settled into organizing my lessons this way and it surely has paid off when I get sick or hit a deer with my car (no fun, that really happened to me this week). My sub is able to pull that days folder and carry on as planned.

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where to start?

It is all so overwhelming in the beginning.  There is so much information on the site and so many different ways to get started.

1st thing I did was enter my students information into the system and created student profiles.  The system configures all the data and then spits out a level that they should be instructed on (level 1, 2, 3).  These levels coorespond with the 3 different levels of lesson planning.  AWESOME!!!

After all my student data was in, I went straight to that month's lesson plans.  I am fortunate to have a principal that allows us to print off each unit of study.  You can access some of the lessons if you have a smartboard, but I prefer to print everything off.  My students are tested through paper pencil method, so I might as well teach that way as well. 

Here is a picture of 1 unit printed off.

Lots of paper huh! I have found that placing these lessons into a binder doesn't work for me.  Once you pick apart each lesson and make the lessons for your students, it just won't fit!  So, I keep all of my prepared lessons in a crate, like this one:

I keep my lessons in tabbed generic folders...lesson 1, lesson 2, lesson 3 etc...  This way, I can do this month after month.

Hopefully this at least gives you an idea of 1 way to organize your lessons!

Happy teaching!

J.D.