Bailey's Corner

I have been so busy this school year!! I LOVE teaching science, but it sure takes a lot of time to plan quality lessons. I have started revamping some of my foldables and adding new ones and unit bundles. Here is one of my latest additions. I also uploaded a Ratios and Proportional Relationships bundle and Properties and Expressions bundle. On sale now!

I have come up with so many exciting ideas this summer, I can't wait to get school started this year! Well,,,,,I can wait to get up before the sun rises and stay at work until its dark and spend my weekends grading assignments and writing lesson plans, and...and....and....:( Despite all that I am excited to meet my new kiddos and to guide and nurture them through their first year of middle school. Last year we had several snow days and I had the foresight to send some foldables home with students and sent them links to my lensoo videos explaining how to fill them out. It was generally a great success and helped us to keep ahead during the crazy 2015 North Carolina Winter. I have been really pondering ways I can make the best use of my instructional time this year. I am going to flip my classroom! We are fortunate to be the recipients of a three year technology grant that gives every student a tablet to use in school and at home. Every student does not have Internet access at ho

I had a fabulous time this week at #ThePLC2015! Attached is my presentation from Wednesday. :)

Over the past few years I have become pretty passionate about using interactive notebooks in my classes and each year I add new and exciting components. There are so many fabulous ideas floating around the internet and I am constantly thinking of ways to make them better. I have decided this year that I will add QR codes to many of the skill and concept pages that we add. We are a one to one district in our middle schools and our kids all have an amplify tablet. Last year my kids enjoyed viewing and creating their own videos using the lensoo create app. What better way to reinforce skills then to link those videos directly back to their notebooks? With free QR code generators floating around it will be super easy. Here is the QR code I created to link to the presentation I will be sharing at our district summer personalized learning conference next week. I have also added a "clickable" link to the code.  Click to access the word documents pictured.

I am now halfway through recreating unit one for my 6th grade interactive notebook and just posted this bundle to TpT. Enjoy! :)

This is the first foldable I use in my 6th grade INB, free this week on TPT. If you download it please rate me! :)

Aaahhhh! I will be teaching 6th grade math and science next year. I haven't taught science in over ten years!  I am very nervous and will be spending all summer setting up my interactive notebook and making sure its great for my students. Today I decorated the cover, added a strip of colored duck tape to the spine (for extra reinforcement and color coding purposes), put together a table of contents, and printed the Unit One Essential Standards list. My table of contents includes 7 units: Matter, Energy Transfer, Waves, Earth's Structure, Earth's Stewardship, the Rythm of Life, and Earth's Place in the Solar System. I used a staple free foldable book template for my table of contents and glue it into the first page of my INB. Here are some pictures putting it together. 

This summer I will be working hard to create complete grade level bundles for interactive math notebooks. I will also be presenting on interactive notebooks in July at our District's personalized learning conference. I'm very excited to share a tool that my students have loved!  Today I posted a new foldable on triangle properties. It will be free until tomorrow. Check it out and don't forget to rate me! :)

Free today on my teacher pay teacher store, please don't forget to rate me!

Was very shocked to receive this letter from a student at my school who is in my National Junior Honor Society and who was in one of my virtual courses last summer. I need to hang this up and read it when I am feeling overwhelmed. One of our Encore teachers assigns students to write a letter of gratitude to a teacher around this time of the year every year. She brought me a short and sweet letter last week, then came back with this one.  This is why I teach!

I put this study guide together yesterday for my virtual students and thought I'd share. Want the foldable version? You can find it on my TPT store . 8.EE.1

About a year ago I decided to check out Teachers Pay Teachers. I started posting foldables I created for my students' interactive notebooks and they immediately started selling. It has been a great source of extra income for me. You can get started by signing up for your free account . I upgraded after about a month so that more of the profits belonged to me. :)

Do you dojo? I discovered Classdojo late last year and used it a little bit with my 8th graders. This year I started the year with it, and it has been awesome! The majority of my parents are connected and get real time access to what is going on in my classroom. I am easily able to communicate using the messenger component and parents can see points their student is receiving for positive and negative behaviors. I have also used messenger to communicate with parents about how to work out homework problems, it's great! At the end of each week the student who has earned (and kept!) the most points is declared the weekly winner. On Mondays I reset the points and allow students to cash out. They can purchase items from my prize store with their points. I keep a tally logged so that they only lose the points that they spend. They really enjoy this and look forward to Mondays. :)

My 6th graders are so much fun! They like to make up hashtags about what we're learning in class. In the early fall one of them starting writing #lalnbaileys to mean "learning a lot" in Bailey's class on the board and it stuck. Yes, I know it could also mean "learning a little" in Bailey's but I don't think they've realized it yet. :) 

My students LOVE bouncy bands! I read something about them on Facebook last summer and decided to try to get some using donor's choose. One week later, boom! Class set on its way. :) I use tennis balls to reduce noise and they doubled their use with keeping the bands on the desks. I teach 6th-8th grade and they all enjoy them. Awesome investment! They are a little less than $10 on the bouncy band website and $12.95 on amazon . You can receive funding through Donor's Choose if you use amazon. I was also thoroughly impressed with the owner Scott when he sent me replacement bands for the ones that didn't quite make it. Great person to work with! :)