Today was an eventful and all around fantastic first day of school. I started the morning with 22 students and ended up at 24. When you consider that I've had as many as 33 in past years, 24 is a great number. They were well behaved, listened, and seemed genuinely excited to learn about factor trees and pre-Columbian history. Of course my well laid plans for the first day fell short, but like many of us, I believe it's better to over plan and have stuff spill over to another day than to under plan and be stuck with nothing to do (especially at the beginning, you don't want your new students to see this happen).
It's funny, for someone who is definitely into technology, I didn't even get to turn on a computer or projector today, but that's ok. It was a great day, and I'm definitely excited to be back. I hope everyone out there has a great beginning to the school year, whenever that day may come.
Showing posts with label school days. Show all posts
Showing posts with label school days. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
A Final Day of Classroom Setup
Tomorrow I have a meeting, and on Friday, registration. It's always exciting to look at the room, set up and more clean and organized than it will ever look again this school year. The desks are ready, work for the first few days already run off, and now it's just a matter of time before the first day of school. My classroom set up was pretty straight forward this year. I didn't change anything really, other than getting a few computers out of the way (it was feeling a little cluttered).
My school district is using a new attendance and gradebook software called Synergy. I'm still not trained on it, but I got a good first impression. If you're out there looking for some gradebook software, there are a few options that I like.
First of all, there is the best in my opinion, TeacherEase. This great site offers full grade book software for something like $8 a month, but many schools will purchase a school license because it's great. If you want to make your life A LOT easier, I suggest this great teacher tool.
If you want grade book software, but you need something free, look at Engrade. It's not as intuitive or user friendly as TeacherEase, but it's a good free grade book.
Learnboost is another free grade book option. I like it, again, not as much as TeacherEase, but it works if you want to move to online grading.
If you haven't yet made the move to online grading, you should. It's great because you have complete control. In TeacherEase for example, you can set different categories within your subjects (e.g. tests, daily work, group work), and give each a weight as to how much of the final grade it is worth. The gradebook updates itself, you don't have to average grades. And, the best part is, parents get anytime access through a web browser. Many of these sites are putting out smartphone apps as well. TeacherEase doesn't have an app (although I hope they do), but their website still works great in my Android browser.
Real quickly, I wanted to add in some pictures of my classroom just to show off the hard work.
First is the back corner / sink area of the classroom. I have a science shelf there (my school is old and there isn't a lot of closet space, so we have to make do), along with the famous Aggie wall. GO AGGIES!
My school district is using a new attendance and gradebook software called Synergy. I'm still not trained on it, but I got a good first impression. If you're out there looking for some gradebook software, there are a few options that I like.
First of all, there is the best in my opinion, TeacherEase. This great site offers full grade book software for something like $8 a month, but many schools will purchase a school license because it's great. If you want to make your life A LOT easier, I suggest this great teacher tool.
If you want grade book software, but you need something free, look at Engrade. It's not as intuitive or user friendly as TeacherEase, but it's a good free grade book.
Learnboost is another free grade book option. I like it, again, not as much as TeacherEase, but it works if you want to move to online grading.
If you haven't yet made the move to online grading, you should. It's great because you have complete control. In TeacherEase for example, you can set different categories within your subjects (e.g. tests, daily work, group work), and give each a weight as to how much of the final grade it is worth. The gradebook updates itself, you don't have to average grades. And, the best part is, parents get anytime access through a web browser. Many of these sites are putting out smartphone apps as well. TeacherEase doesn't have an app (although I hope they do), but their website still works great in my Android browser.
Real quickly, I wanted to add in some pictures of my classroom just to show off the hard work.
First is the back corner / sink area of the classroom. I have a science shelf there (my school is old and there isn't a lot of closet space, so we have to make do), along with the famous Aggie wall. GO AGGIES!
This photo is looking at my desk (behind the book cases), and what I refer to as "my office."
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