Help! Organize this....

This week in The Connected Educator was all about timesaving and organizational tools found on the internet. As I have stated before in this blog, I felt like I had a good understanding of tools out there to help me in my classroom prior to this class- but this week as been eye-opening. First off, I learned about Flippity Flippity is a website that uses Google Sheets to create games for your students. This picture just shows a few of the many types of games you can choose from.

I made a Memory Game for compound words- first they have to read the words and them decide if they go together. It might be helpful to provide a list of words available, but this game would be perfect for Reading Stations and easily maintained and changed as needed. Here is the link to the game I made. It's so easy, if I can do it, anyone can.

This week we also looked at online resources for teachers. I love looking at TeachersPayTeachers for activities, but there are so many other websites out there to use. My favorite new site is Better Lesson. This site lets you find common core lessons for your grade level in Math, ELA and Science. Even better, the lessons are organized based on specific standards.  To me, this is huge! I can't wait to use Better Lesson in my class next year.

In the picture, you can see that there are 17 lessons for 1st grade's ELA standard R.F.1.2.

I will be the first to admit- I stink at organizing! What I excel at is making piles- everywhere. Every year I have the best intentions to get myself organized, and this year will be no different- seriously! This week I was introduced to the blog, Happy Teacher, Happy Kids. From one post, I have learned so many new tools that help with organization that are easy to follow and doesn't require a lot of upkeep (this is my kryptonite).  Many of these suggestions will take a bit of work to start, but that's it. Here is a great checklist to see if you are an organized teacher, and what you can do if you are like me.