My planning notebook

The notebook itself is a good 3inch binder. For the dividers I am using the plastic dividers. They are the only ones that seem to last all year. 

These are the sections of my planning notebook: 

• Pencil Pouch: In the front of the notebook I have a 3-ring pencil pouch with scissors, sticky notes, pens and pencils. This is here so that I do not have to look for them when I need to write something in my planning notebook. 

• Schedule and Calendar: This is where I place a copy of my class schedule, district schedule, school schedule (duty schedule, committee list, resource schedule, CIA Lab schedule, recess schedule, and lunch schedule), and state testing schedule.  I also printed out a monthly calendar to write down all of the dates in one location. 

• Pacing Guides: At the beginning of the year, I look at the district pacing guides for ELA and math. I then plan out the year according to the guides. Then I figure out science and social studies. I put all of the information in an excel sheet so that I can see a year-at-a-glace view of the school year. In this section I have each subject's pacing guide behind my year-at-a-glance sheet.

The pacing guide is still a work in progress.

• Weekly Lesson Plans: This is the section that I keep my weekly lesson plans. I found a really good electronic website that I use to write my lesson plans. It allows you to track the standards that you taught and it is very easy to use.  (http://planbookedu.com) I wish that I found this YEARS ago!! Most features are free but to use the features with the standards you have to pay ($25 a year). 

Lesson plans are still very slim right now. 

• ELA Common Core Standards: I put the common core standards in an excel document. In the first column I have the standard number, second column I have the standard as written and third column I have the Kid friendly standard. I did it in excel so that if I wanted to print standards on labels or sheets of paper I could use the mail merge feature in Word. I have also copied the table of contents from the textbook. This is so that I know what is in the book without having to bring the book home. (I do not teach "the book"cover to cover. I use the parts of the book that fit my needs and leave the rest.)

• Math Common Core Standards:  (same as the ELA standards)
• SC Science Standards: (same as ELA standards)
• SC Social Studies Standards: (same as ELA standards)
• Anchor Charts: I am so bad about trying to remember everything that I need to have an anchor chart for while I teach. I googled and searched for anchor charts on Pintrest. I saved the photos of the anchor charts to my computer. Then I printed the pictures out (6 to a page) and cut them out. I got 4x6 picture protectors at Office Depot and put the anchor chart pictures in the protectors. This way I can arrange them as I need and can add/subtract as necessary. An added benefit of the page protectors is that they protect the pictures so that you don't have to print them more than once. 

• Center Planning: My goal this year is to have centers for math and ELA. In this section I have partner rotations and workstations schedule. Here is where I will keep of who is at which station. I might have to re-think this at the year progresses... only time will tell. 

• ELA Centers: I found a list of ideas to use for vocabulary and reading lessons. I also have student grouping sheets here so that I can use my data (MAP and class data) to group students according to their needs. I also have center planing sheets that will help me to plan what I will have at each of the centers. (I got the forms from: http://www.theorganizedclassroomblog.com I absolutely love the website!)

• Math Centers: (same as ELA Centers)