Christmas in July: BUSY TEACHERS

To show you how I use the Busy Teacher's Best Friends in my classroom I am going to pull up a post from last year:

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Now that I have my entire year's worth of Busy Teachers completed, I get slightly giddy when I go to print them out.  

Kinder 1st Half          Kinder 2nd Half

1st Complete Set

Second 1st Half       Second 2nd Half

I made them so life would be easier for us teachers, but OMG did it make mine harder for a little while :)  Trust- it is all worth it now!

My new way of organizing that I just love: I printed out the whole packet and put it in a 1/2 inch binder.  Then I tag the pages that I 100% know that I will be using in the month.  I usually have a mom come and make class sets of all the pages that I want at once.  This saves me tons of time standing at the copier each month.  

How I use my Busy Teacher pages:

1. Morning Work- on days that our schedule is tight, I use these!

2. Independent Practice/Spiral Review- I haven't technically "taught" time this year, but since hour and half hour is a first grade expectation, I use my time pages as periodic review.  It makes the main unit SO much easier!

3.  Math Work Stations- this one is pretty self explanatory!

4. Sub Plans-  I cannot even tell you how many times these packets have bailed me out when I had a puking child :)

5. Reading Response Notebooks- One of our daily routines is that my students respond to our whole group lesson/text through writing.  This page is an example of what my parents would glue into their notebooks to show me their understanding of Story Elements. 

6.  Guided Reading/Word Work- Once again, pretty self explanatory, but in the 2nd grade world I have found one of those mandatory speed bumps many of my readers hit is the "figuring out how to decode longer, non-cvc words" phase. This type of page is a great teaching tool to really focus on those tougher blend words!

7. Homework-  Once or twice a week I like to review an already established skill at home so I can communicate expectations with parents. I *understand* homework is a touchy subject, but based on the families/students that I have, this works for us!

8. The Occasional Writing Prompt- If you have read many of my posts, you know that I am a HUGE Writers Workshop advocate.  Like the biggest. I do understand that answering questions, responding to prompts is also important though!  This prompt will be used in my classroom next week!

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If you have never tried one of my Busy Teacher Packets, I think the Back to School packets are a great way to start!  I have units for every month....Kinder, First, and Second!