Monday, July 15, 2013

Common Core Organization Monday Made It Style

This post has been in the works for a week or two now and I figured I would combine it with 4th Grade Frolic's Monday Made It while I was at it and post it today. This summer my goal has been to really get myself organized and reflect on what the Common Core means for me as a Special Education Teacher and my students. I knew that I needed to get myself organized and luckily during the school year I had come a across a wonderful pin on Pinterest for Common Core File Labels from Ashley over at That's So Second Grade! She is my organizational hero, especially when it comes to Common Core. If you haven't gotten a chance to check out her blog or her TPT store, you should do it ASAP! She has some amazing products (I love her bin labels that are linked to Common Core). She has a wonderful post you can check out here about her organizational system and freebie labels. I loved them and downloaded them immediately and knew that I wanted to use her labels and system as inspiration for my organizational system. I teach K-4 and was going to need labels for K, 1st, 3rd, and 4th, so I got working. Let me tell you it was a real labor of love. I knew when I started that it would take me a good chunk of time, but I didn't realize how long. Once I had them completed I contacted Ashley to get her blessing for sharing my labels inspired by her with all of you (Why should anyone else have to recreate the wheel if it is already done right?). My labels are not as cute as hers and when I printed them they took up a little more of the label than hers, but I think they do the job and turned out pretty well :)

Ashley's Labels


My Labels


I am currently now working on my organizational system. My hope was to color code folders to relate to standards/categories. I like the idea of being able to organize by the progression of the standards/skills/knowledge instead of organizing just in grade levels. It works for math, but I am really struggling with the ELA standards for K-4. There are almost 400 standards/sub-standards, which means 400 file folders in at least 6 different colors. I am pretty sure I can make it happen it just won't be cheap. Really I am probably just making it harder than it needs to be, but I have a vision.

Once I have them organized into a system I plan on keeping a variety of items in them. The first thing I will be storing in my folders are my wonderful Common Core Standards Posters (I Can..) from Jason's Online Classroom. After working on the labels I knew there was no way I was going to be able to make all of the things I was wanting for my classroom this summer and get everything else I needed to complete done. I picked Jason's posters because I loved the visuals on each one of them. I wanted my students to be able to have a visual to connect with.

Vocabulary is an area I see my students struggling with and there is such a large focus on it. Again I went searching and fell in love with Ginger Snap's Common Core Vocabulary cards for both ELA and Math (I also bought the science, I love them!). All I can say is thank goodness for sales! I am also wanting to add essential question posters, Ashleigh has some that I love, but I have been pacing myself and am hoping for a sale to make my purchases for these. From there I will be keeping lesson plans, assignments, worksheets, and graphic organizers I have that meet the standards in each file. I have found so many that I love on TPT and Pinterest.

If you are interested in my Common Core Labels you can click here to download them. There are separate files for the labels and the tabs. My link has Kindergarten, 1st, 3rd and 4th. You can find Ashley's 2nd grade labels on her blog or TPT store. My only word of advice is to check the alignment when printing. Printers have different settings for labels and it can make a difference in how they print out. The labels are 3 1/3 in x 4in shipping labels (I used Office Depot brand- they are the same as Avery 5164) and the file tabs are 1/3 Cut File Folder Labels.

Now head on over to 4th Grade Frolic to link up and check out all the amazing things people have made this week. I am super inspired and need to make a trip to the craft store :)

2 comments:

  1. WOW! I cannot thank you enough for sharing. You saved me so much time with your 3rd grade labels. I really really appreciate your work! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

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  2. OMG!!!! You have no idea how excited I am to find your post! I had tons of trouble formatting the standards and had almost giving up organizing my files this way. Your file saved me tons of time and now I can get organizing! Thanks so much!!!!!!

    Rissa
    Keep Calm and Hoot On

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