What a nerdy life I live...

So as I sit here on the oh so exciting Monday night I have actually made some pretty interesting things! I spent my Christmas money today at Staples getting random supplies the best and my absolute favorite.... SCENTED MARKERS!!

Now that I have admitted to being the biggest nerd ever on to the other nerdy things I did tonight, poster making. While at the store I purchased a flip chart (which happened to be the ONLY thing I went into Staples for but obviously that didn't go as planned). I have been seeing several ideas online for classroom posters that I have wanted for some time and so I present to you my super awesome and amazing new classroom posters.  

Ok get ready to stretch your neck out while checking out these first two (sorry some day I may become super computer savy and figure out how to turn these darn things once there are on the page)

This lovely poster I hope will help me to get my students back on track with their interactive notebooks. After staring at this on a picking it apart with my OCD brain I made a digital one that I have added to my TpT sight and you can find the link to that here What goes where?. 

This one I saw on another bloggers page and added a few things to each definition to better suit what I use with my students to remember these. 

This classroom management strategy is one I found on Pinterest and is very similar to one I am already using but I did not have a super cool poster so as you can guess I had to have a poster duh! 

This poster came to be through the ideas presented on several different posters on Pinterest. Most came from younger grade levels so this modification I hope will help my high school students understand how they can use the left side of their notebooks to showcase their notes in a visual way.

So now that it's nearly midnight I must put away these wonderful markers, wash my stained hands and go to bed. How do you see these being useful in your classroom? What could I have added/changed to make them even more awesome? Have an amazing New Year and thanks for reading!  

Table Tubs

As all teachers do I struggle daily to ensure that my students have the supplies they need to be successful in my class. While at the National Agriscience Teacher Ambassador Academy one of the greatest things I brought home was the idea to create "table tubs". Now I will not sugar coat this because there is no way around it; these things were not cheap to get started! I purchased all the contents when on sale and still search to find coupons and sales to re-stock them but it has proven to be well worth it. 

Here are two pictures of my tubs! 

So as you can see I keep a variety of items in these tubs and almost half way through the year the majority of what I started with is still there. Here is what they contain: Post-its, markers, colored pencils, scissors, highlighters, glue sticks, small pencil sharpener, large eraser, crayons, ruler, and sometime a calculator. At the beginning of the year these also contained a small stapler but when I discovered the students were stapling their arms (go figure) I took all of them out. I have to clean these out probably once every two weeks or often have TA's available that I assign to rework the markers and such to make sure all tubs are even and neat. Other ideas to house these are small clear storage tubs with lids, shoe boxes, or any other small box you may have to hold all these things. My classroom runs much much better with these and I highly recommend the investment.Other ideas I have mainly because I am desperate for supplies is to offer bonus points for things like scissors, post-its, and glue sticks. I know some of you are using things similar that probably work much better what suggestions do you have on improving my tubs? Or share with us how and what you use in your tubs! 

P.S. You have until December 16th to apply for the NATAA experience!! It is one I promise you will not regret. Click the link above to go straight to the application page.