Teacher Time Savers ( Classroom Hacks )

In any special education classroom, we are all about trying to save valuable school time. This doesn't mean we are taking the "easy way out," it just means we are finding simple hacks to do our job quicker and more efficient.

Here are a few teacher tips for making your teacher life easier on the daily:

In my classroom, Friday is our super fun day. Not only do we do Fun Food Friday and Coffee Cart, but we also do Fine Motor Friday. It's a great way to motivate kids during the week, not to mention how beneficial actually having Fine Motor centers all day long every Friday is!

If your students utilize a slant board in the classroom, then this hack is perfect for you.

I despise making bulletin boards... honestly, I will put up one bulletin board for the school year and that's it. I would rather spend my time on something else. :)

So I started printing clip art in poster size! To do this I simply make the clip art image the size of one PowerPoint page, save it as a PDF and then print it in poster size. Once it prints, you'll need to cut it out and put it together (kind of like a puzzle). But once you have it put together, it's together forever! Laminate it to reuse it year after year!

My last hack is perfect for the classroom that includes a student who likes to turn the classroom lights off and on. Simply cut a paper cup in half and tape it over the light switch. One great suggestion shared on my Instagram was to Velcro a plastic tub over it (for those of you who have double or triple switches).

Follow me on Instagram for more teacher timesavers and classroom hacks.

What I Wish I Had My First Year Teaching ( with Mrs. D's Corner )

Reminiscing about my first year of teaching always brings back great memories. Like when I thought that "bad" kid was the legitist of "bad kids" and if I could just survive that, I could survive anything. HA. That was fun memory lane... we should do that more often.

But in all sincerity, my first year was amazing. I worked with a great group of people, my school was newly remodeled, I was co-teaching 7th grade math... but thinking back on it today, there are still some things that I wish I had had back then.

Like my own personal laminator. Because you know first year teachers laminate all the things. And to think that when I first started teaching I thought they cost at least $1,000.

This was me: "There is no way I can laminate from the comfort of my house for less than $1,000!" The euphoria when I picked this Scotch Thermal laminator up at the store for a mere $25 a couple years later. #gamechanger

And then there was Velcro. Ahhh... be still my special educator heart. Velcro. That word should literally have a heart shape around it in the dictionary... or be imprinted on a block of gold.

You can literally use it for anything, and that's why it is absolutely worth its weight in gold.

The last thing I wish I had when I first started teaching was TeachersPayTeachers... or at least I wish I had known about it. Not even the seller part of it... just the actual you can literally find lesson plans on anything part of it.

Even though 6 years ago TPT was around, it wasn't nearly what it is today. Hundreds of thousands of resources available at your fingertips?! It's such a huge blessing, and I'm glad that it's here now for all of us!

*Some links contained in this blog post are affiliate links.

What do you wish you had your first year teaching?

Sensational Science: Inclusion (with Mrs. D's Corner)

Let me be honest... I teach a self-contained class of students with special needs... and we don't always have time to get to science lessons (outside of ELA or Math instruction). I know, I know!

Thankfully all of my students are slated to go out of our class for at least 45 minutes a day to attend a science inclusion class. It's great! The kids get to interact with their same-aged peers and they're getting to do experiments and learn all of that science-y stuff.

But sometimes there's a downfall... and it's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just a miscommunication.

Have you ever had that happen to you? Or have you ever sent something home above your student's ability level that they worked on 1:1 in inclusion and wondered if the parents knew how accommodated and modified the assignment was for their child to complete the work?!

There's no more guessing, from you or the parents. Now you are all on the same page, which is such a wonderful thing!

See that sticker? It's small and un-intrusive to the integrity of the student's work... but it clearly labels the work that was completed in inclusion.

There are other stickers too!

You can let the parents know exactly what they need to know, without writing a note, sending an email, or calling home.

There are 35 different stickers included in both color and black and white. All you need is Avery Label 8160*. Print, cut on the line included to double the amount of stickers you get per sheet (so instead of 30, you get 60 stickers per sheet!), and now you're ready to communicate with parents!

These are all of the stickers you get... and now science inclusion - or any inclusion setting your student travels to - is set and ready to go!

I'm pretty excited to have these all printed up and ready to use the remainder of this year, and then really get communicating next year. I just know it's going to be super effective and the parents will appreciate knowing more about their child's school day.

{ Grab the Communication Stickers here. }

*affiliate link*

Spring into ... End of the Year Memories {with Mrs. D's Corner}

End of the year. Wow. I can't believe those words are coming out of my mouth. End of the year... 7 more weeks. Single digits people!

It's crazy to think that in just 7 short weeks this school year will be over. It's so sad! We've had so many wonderful memories created this year. Like that time we went to the rodeo and a goat tried to eat my student's wheelchair... or the same time at the rodeo another student tried to ride that goat like a horse.

Either way, I want my students to always remember this school year. Sure, I'll get to see a handful of them again this year... but some of them are moving to middle school. So I want to create something with them and for them that they can always look at to remember their year.

The cover includes specific grade level pieces for each grade K-6.

Same with the inside... I just know my students are going to have so much fun filling all of this out. I can't wait to leave each of them a special note inside!

My students get to reflect on the year and their future goals, give advice to next year's group of students, share their top 3 favorite moments, share their current favorites, collect autographs from their classmates, and so much more!

{ You can grab this resource here! }

Or enter to win it below.

The K-2 Bundle includes 20 amazing resources from EE bloggers, including my Top 100 - Best Selling End of the Year Memory Lapbook resource.

The 3-5 bundle includes 11 amazing resources from EE bloggers, including my Top 100 - Best Selling End of the Year Memory Lapbook resource.

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Read Alouds We Love (with Mrs. D's Corner)

I love books. I love buying books for my classroom. I love Amazon Prime... it's an addiction and a real problem (just ask my husband). So when I found out that the topic this month was books, I was very excited.

This is a fraction of the books in my classroom for February... and this is actually the *before* photo, meaning before I added a few 100th Day of School books to the collection.

Every month I switch out the books... sometimes even halfway through the month I will rotate books into this display for students to read. February has some amazing topics and holidays to read about too.

But let me be honest. My absolute favorite books to read to my class are these...

...anyone? Anyone else absolutely LOVE this old lady?!

She is my absolute favorite. With the clever wording and repetition, my kids love these books too. I love letting them predict what the old lady is going to spit out at the end too. They have come up with some pretty clever hypotheses!

You can grab a freebie here to teach There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Books.

Have you heard about Tieks yet? Or do you own a pair? Or maybe you want to try a pair out? This month EE is having a fantastic giveaway.

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An InLinkz Link-up

New Year... New Classroom Procedures { with Mrs. D's Corner }

I just love when the new year rolls around. Between all of us being on winter break for 2 weeks and the change of year, it's a great time to start a new procedure or try something new with my students. This year was no different.

Ya'll already know that I'm a special education teacher. Since October, I have gotten 2 new students in my classroom... for a total of 7 students now. And behavior seems to be a biggie this year. That's when Simply Special Ed came to the rescue, as she usually does.

(PS. Alyssa is just the sweetest, most awesome person... if you teach SPED, you WANT to follow her).

So this was one of my "why recreate the wheel" moments. Alyssa already had created exactly what I needed, I'd seen photos of her using it on her IG, and she sold me on it.

Before winter break, one of my paras (who came to me from an ABA clinic... talk about lucky!) helped me set them up.

Since our classroom is color coded to the max, we didn't want to change it up with their token boards. Each student has their own token board in the color that matches all of their other stuff (bins, labels, binders... you know, anything I could color code to ease transitions, organization, and work load).

We started back last week, and probably should have started using them last week... but we will start using them in our classroom today. I'm really excited to see how it goes, and I'm hoping that it will help my friends become more intrinsically motivated.

What is something you've started new this school year?

An InLinkz Link-up

Positive Parent Communication {with Mrs. D's Corner}

I am fortunate enough to have an amazing set of classroom parents... truly amazing. If I ever need anything, I can send an email, make a phone call, or even text (yes, from my personal phone) to a parent and ask. Now I don't take advantage of this very often because I'm not one to ask for anything... but just knowing that I have their support means more than the world to me.

So how do I do it?

Easy! I send home a parent know each day for each student. It might seem like a lot (especially when you have 20+ students), but I currently only have 7 students. It's a half sheet of paper and, in all honesty, the simplest way for me to keep track of behavior data and for parents to stay in the know about how their child is doing in school each day.

{ Grab the free Daily Behavior Tracker here. }

An InLinkz Link-up

Why I Love TpT and Blogging { with Mrs. D's Corner }

Teachers Pay Teachers. Where do I begin with how you've changed my life? Not only as a teacher, but as an individual with a love of learning, a friend, a collaborator... the list can really go on and on.

My journey started back in December 2011. At the time, I was a newlywed who quit her job in Virginia to move to Maryland with my husband. I hadn't found a job to replace the one I left and I had just discovered teaching blogs. WOAH! Mind blown. Somehow I came across the TpT website, not knowing anything about it besides it saying "PAY TEACHERS." Hello, I was an unemployed teacher!

So I signed up. I made some calendar something in Word, uploaded it and made a few pennies off of it. After that, I had found a job, so I put less time into it. Fast forward to the BTS sale of 2012. I kept getting emails that I sold a product, little did I know it was because of the sale. That August I made $34 and you seriously would have thought I won a million on a scratcher. That was it.

This was back when we got quarterly checks... my very first check and actually the last time paper checks were issued. January 2013.

Since then, I have met SO MANY AMAZING PEOPLE! I had to caps that because, seriously, amazing people. Let me share some pictures with you!

 The very first TpT conference in July 2014. Notice anyone?

Just a few short months after the conference, I drove to Dallas with Jeffrey (who was an absolute trooper and sat with all of us girls for 2+ hours at lunch) to meet up with some amazing bloggers.

This was also the first time I met all of these people, including Destiny (Terrific Teaching and Learning; lower left picture) who is now my blogging BFF. It was meant to be ya'll.

 We had dinner together before Christmas in Houston last year.

We painted together in Houston! (Noticing a trend... Houston blogger meetups are where it's at!)

...and we got painted together!

In all honesty, whenever someone asks me my best piece of advice for new sellers to TpT, my advice is ALWAYS collaborate with other teachers and bloggers. The friendships I've made through TpT are amazing... and some of them live right down the street from me (like Katie from Mrs. Decatur's Little Gators).

It truly is amazing and I feel so blessed to have met so many inspirational and creative people! They all make me want to be a better person and teacher :) Meeting them would never have happened if it weren't for TpT!

For our 1 year blogiversary we are giving away a blog design by Alexis at Laugh Eat Learn Designs. If you haven't seen her amazingness yet, prepare yourself to be blown away. She is super talented ya'll!

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An InLinkz Link-up