Grouping Students

Since it is Summer and I am a teacher, I have been addicted to Pinterest lately.  I have found so many creative ideas that I cannot wait to use in my classroom come August!  While lazily searching, I found this pin about different ways to group students.

I immediately went on over to the site I Love 2 Teach to check out the different ideas.  Being a high school teacher, I feel that I have definitely been stuck in a rut when it comes to grouping my students.  I use popsicle sticks so much that my students know what is going to happen when I tell them that we are working in groups.  

After reading some of the great ideas, I fell in love with the Famous Pairs grouping idea.  Each student will receive a laminated card with a name or thing on it.  The students must figure out what goes with that particular item in order to find their partner.  I used a few of the ideas from the blog, like peanut butter & jelly, milk & cookies, and toothbrush & toothpaste to create a few of my pairs.  Then I had fun!   I decided to use famous couples on several of the cards (Romeo & Juliet, Mickey & Minnie, Buzz Lightyear & Woody, etc).  I think these cards are so much fun and I can't wait to use them in my classroom!

Click here to get the file.

VistaPrint for the Classroom

Last year I purchased several things from VistaPrint for my classroom.  I was very pleased with all of my purchases!  So when I saw that Groupon was offering $70 from VistaPrint for only $17, I jumped on the deal!  Here are the items that I purchased and how I am planning on using them in my classroom.

Bathroom Pass

I have always struggled with a way to limit my students' bathroom privileges.  I found this idea from Mrs. Hester's Classroom blog and I absolutely loved it.  Since I teach high school, it was more economical for me to create this bathroom pass as a business card instead of using the loyalty cards that most elementary teachers use.  

Homework Pass

Each year around the middle of the 1st nine weeks our school holds a Parent Night in lieu of an Open House at the beginning of the year.  Each parent goes to their child's teachers and receives a hard copy of their child's grades and specific comments about their child's behavior in that class.  It is just a short 30-second conversation with the parents that basically gives them an idea of what is going on with their child.  Each teacher is required to give the students an incentive in order to have the most participation from parents as possible.  I always give my students a Homework Pass as a reward for their parents' attendance.  I found this idea from Everybody is a Genius blog.  It is so much easier use these business cards instead of creating and printing them off my own computer.

I always have a ton of students who have missing assignments and want to know what they are.  Instead of just randomly writing it on a blank sticky note, I found this idea of printing custom missing assignment sticky notes.  I thought they were so cute!  I can't remember exactly where I found this idea in order to give credit, but you can google VistaPrint in the classroom and find tons of ideas!

Missing Assignment Sticky Notes

 As a high school teacher, I feel like I haven't done a good enough job on keeping up with student behavior and tracking this information.  I found this great idea from Teaching in Room 6 of using shipping labels to write down when students break the rules and then sticking them into the Behavior Log notebook!  It seems like such an easy job of jotting it down on the clipboard and then transferring the label later.

Who can resist a cute personalized pen?

I have been wanting to decorate my classroom door using this great idea that I found on Pinterest from Math=Love but I never got around to printing the words off and laminating them.  While I was creating my VistaPrint order, I decided to just create a poster about it!  I am so excited about this!  I think it turned out cuter than just printing it off on paper.

These are just blank rectangular stickers to use to label different supplies in my classroom.

The final items will be used in my students' Interactive Student Notebooks (ISN) this year.  This is the first year that I will be implementing ISNs with my geometry students.  I am so excited to be using them in my classroom.  As I have researched ISNs I have found many great ideas and resources.  One great idea I found was using  address labels with your email address, twitter account, and website on them to stick on the inside cover of the ISNs so that the students will always have your information readily available.  I love this!

I also created this stamp to use while checking homework and other items in the ISNs.