Teacher Week {tricks and tips}

Every good thing must come to an end and today the end of Teacher Week is here! I hope that you were able to learn something new from me this week, whether is was something new about me or something new you can use in your classroom.

Today's topics is Tips and Tricks.

I was so sad to miss yesterday's topic, {taming the wild}, but I was up at school with my sister helping her organize her library. It's turned out great and looks so much better than just books thrown on a shelf. 

This also happens to be my FIRST tip. Have an organized library so that it's easier for your students to pick out books, put them back in the right spot, and it's one more thing you don't have to worry about being a mess all year long.

This is how I organize my library. They are categorized by genre and topics and put into buckets. Each bucket has a label on it with a colored sticker. All of the books that go IN that bucket have the same colored sticker. So when the child comes back to the library they just have to look for the sticker.

What if you have lots of books and only 4 colored stickers? No worries! Put a number on each sticker and you can make lots of them! So you would have a 1 buckets in all the colors, then a 2 bucket in all the colors and so on.

Now for my trick. I LOVE this trick and some of you may already do it, but I must share! It's called the mystery walker. I have a jar of popcicle sticks with my students numbers on them. I pull one before we leave to go anywhere in the school and don't show them. I watch that student as we walk to our destination. If they do a good job, they get to clip up on our clip chart. If they don't, then they don't. If they don't earn their clip up, I don't tell who the person was. Normally the class can figure it out anyways ;)

Well I hope you enjoyed teacher week and I will thinking of all of you as you get ready for back to school. I know we are all stressed about getting everything perfect, but it will all work out in the end. Enjoy your year of loving on those babies!

And to make going back to school a little less painful, TpT is throwing their Back to School SALE! It is here! So start filling up your cart and get ready! It'll be here on Sunday and Monday. Even if you're already back at school, you cannot miss this sale.

Be on the look out tomorrow! I will be listing some of my favorite units that you just can't pass up. Get excited!