organizational tips
As music educators, we all know about the necessity of keeping organized. I’m sure many of you are just like me in that you see every student in your school for music class. That’s a lot of paper work, names, materials, and information to keep track of! I’m still a newbie at this, and I’m always picking up new ideas and strategies for keeping on top of things. Here are a few of the things that I do to keep myself organized at work. I welcome any and all of your suggestions!
#1. Colour-Coding
I know I’ve just recently talked about my love for colour-coding (read it here), but it truly is one of the most effective means of keeping myself organized. My school uses the “Share the Music” texts, and I simply colour co-ordinate everything to do with a certain grade with the colour of their text (i.e. Grade 4 has a purple text book. I write all things having to do with grade four in my plan book with a purple pen, I use purple post-its to label their worksheets, I use purple baskets to collect their things in, etc).
#2. Personalized planbook
I didn’t purchase a commercial teacher plan-book because none of the ones that I could find were suitable for my schedule. I made my own just using Microsoft Word. I print off pages as I need them and I keep them in a binder. I use index dividers to mark the months of the school year. This way I can tweak my planbook exactly the way I want it, and make changes if need be.
#3. Labelled instrument baskets
I teach elementary music, so the bulk of my instrument collection is made up of shakers, rhythm sticks, jingle tappers, finger cymbals, etc. I purchased several baskets from the local dollar store and separated my instruments into the baskets. I labelled each basket according to the instrument that was in the basket. Then, I separated the baskets into families (i.e. wood, metal, tappers, shakers, etc). Now my students know exactly where each instrument belongs, so we keep things tidy. I also use this to introduce my younger students to timbre and non-pitched percussion families.
#4. Post-it note assessment
I buy post-it notes in bulk. I love them. The super-sticky ones are great, and you can get them made from recycled paper now as well! I use them for close to everything, but my favourite use for post-its is assessment. I can quickly jot down a note or two about how a student is doing without it being overly obvious. Its much less menacing then writing in a grade book all the time. I simply collect my post-its at the end of the day and transfer any necessary information into my grade book. Because of the constant shift of students (new class every 30 minutes), the post-it method for keeping info is the most quick and effective.
#5. Graded resource binders
I keep a separate binder for each grade (colour-coded, of course!) with songs, activities, and lesson plans divided into units (I go by month). Like I said before, we use the “Share the Music” text, but I do not use it religiously. I have many other books and resources that I like to use as well, so I’ve basically began creating my own collection of resources and materials that I use to teach the required curriculum by photocopying selections out of the books that I own and placing them in the appropriate section in my binder. It will take me awhile to get it right (years, I’m sure! – and even then it will change constantly!) but I like having everything I need at my fingertips rather than searching through six or seven books to find what I wanted.
So there you have it – those are just a few of the tricks and tips that I currently use to keep organized. I’d love to hear some more suggestions and ideas! Please comment and let me know some of the things that you do to keep yourself organized!
Techniques & Strategies, classroom management | Comments (6)6 Responses to “organizational tips”
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MAN, it sounds like you’ve got a terrific handle on organization in your first year! I struggle to stay organized even here in my fifth year teaching, so I really admire your system. Its a long way from Canada to Virginia, too bad you can’t come straiten me out!
Thanks! I love to keep organized, I think it’s the only way I can stay relatively sane. I know I border on being too anal, and it may be a sickness of some sort
but it definitely helps me keep everything on track! I had two wonderful student teaching experiences in university with two amazing teachers who are even more organized than I am…I borrowed a lot of their tricks!
And I would LOVE to go to Virginia – one of my closest friends lives there. And I can venture a guess that the weather is nicer there than it is here…we’ve got almost 2 feet of snow right now with more coming down!
[...] Organizational tips by Alexandra Gallant posted at The Misadventures of a First Year Music [...]
I also color code my classes but I color code by days of the week. Inside the folders I have for each class is a class roster and seating chart. There’s also room in the folder for me to take up any papers from the lessons. I usually don’t use these papers as grades but to see if the students are understanding the concept. This also makes it easy for me (and a sub!) to take note of those who’ve missed a class and what I may need to go over the next time I see that student. I find that if I don’t have a seating chart, I don’t learn the names very well. The chart changes every once in a while when students don’t get along with someone near them or maybe get too familiar with them.
I teach K-3 with 7 classes of each grade level and see each class once a week with the exception of Mondays which are used for “enrichment” sections on a rotation basis. On Monday, since it is the extra day of music for these classes, we do things we don’t normally have time for in the regular class such as folk dances, computer games, etc.
By the way, as a first year teacher, you do seem to have a good handle on the organizational skills. Good luck!
LOVE your idea about the Post-It notes! I’ve been teaching…um…a really long time now, and still haven’t found that “perfect, easy-to-use” system for tracking/recording assessment data.
We elementary music teachers are constantly assessing our students’ learning, but most of that occurs informally. We may “know” that Javier is still having problems with, say, matching pitch, but that’s not quite the same thing as having a verifiable “paper trail” come report-card-time.
(Oh, by the way – another Virginian in the house!)
Right now I’m really trying to use technology to make my life easier…so, for example, I have all the recordings I use in the classroom loaded into iTunes. I then just make a playlist for each week’s lesson, and organize those into folders by grade level. I’ve also created some “Smart Playlists” to make certain things easier to find.
I also use PowerPoint, Photoshop, and Acrobat to create visuals, which I used to do on chart paper or on the overhead projector. By using the “Layers” feature of Photoshop, for example, I can, say, move note heads up or down the staff, or put together rhythm “chunks” into 4-beat patterns or longer phrases. I keep all these files organized on my hard drive by sorting them into folders also.
I enjoy reading your blog…please keep it up!
Hello! I am enjoying your blog, great stuff here! I’ve tagged you for the “7 Things” meme, I hope you’ll consider it! http://theresawhite.edublogs.org/2009/01/13/7-things-meme7-things-meme/. Have a great day and keep up the good work!