Summer, Oh Summer

Now that you are enjoying your much deserved "time off,"  what do you do?  If you are like me, you need the month of June to decompress from the exhausting year that you have just completed.  Beginning in July, I can start to think about my upcoming school year.  First things first, what do I need for my classroom, and where is the best place to buy it.  Here is my summer shoppers list for school/classroom items:

1. Classroom Books - Goodwill (my local Goodwill has been offering buy 1 get 1 free for over a month), Salvation Army (children's books here are about $0.50 each), Local Library Summer Sale (Most libraries clear out their shelves for the fall during this time.  My library has a "name your own price" policy.), and garage sales (tell the seller that you are a teachers and they give you a great rate!

2. Hall Passes and Bathroom Passes - At my school, the students are required to have a pass when they leave the classroom.  I buy the $1 passes from the Target dollar bins.  I usually get two boys, two girls and one hall pass.  Target Dollar bins begin selling teacher items in July, although I have already noticed that they have had them for a few weeks now.

3. Plan Book - The "must have" plan book for me is the Lakeshore Learning plan book!  You can get this item free when you spend $20 in their store.  That is a $6.99 value!  For those of you who don't need to spend the $20, just purchase the book using your teacher club rewards card and it is less than $5.  This is the best plan book I have seen.  It includes a monthly calendar as well as weekly lesson planning sheets.  It has important dates to remember, a student birthday chart, reproducible notes, awards, bookmarks, and reading charts.  It has a place for all of your student contact information, so that no matter where you are, you have everything that you need. www.lakeshorelearning.com

4. Classroom Decorations - The Dollar Tree: Yep, that's right!  The Dollar Tree offers a wide array of classroom decorations for $1 each.  That is completely in all teacher's budgets.  They also have non-fiction classroom books, writing prompts (with visuals), and classroom incentives. 

5. Gradebook - My new favorite, after using it for a year, is engrade.  It is a free, online gradebook.  You can set up your different classes, grading scale, and customize it to meet your classroom's needs.  It provides instant grade reports, so it takes out the work of averaging grades at the end of each grading period.  It can be found at www.engrade.com

I hope that this list gets you started on your back to school shopping!  If you have any great shopping tips or advice, let me know so that I can share it with others!
Happy Teaching,
Nancy