This weekend my goal was to de-bog myself...I make too much work for myself and I need to make it EASIER! My weekends are spent with lesson planning, planning fun hands-on activities, and creating brand new data sheets for my students each week, finding the activities to go along with it, decide what I was going to take data on for each kid, each day...and it was just TOO MUCH. The worst part of it all was...even though it was too much work, I would continue to do it if I felt it was truly beneficial...but I am looking through these data sheets, not getting much accurate data, it wasn't really telling me anything besides..."you're doing too much work and not seeing anything from it"
So... I decided to come up with better systems for things.
Starting with lesson plans.
my super cute cover
I (used to) make a lesson plan for each day and write the same things over and over again, so I downloaded an editable lesson plan format, downloaded a cute font for free, and make a very cute lesson plan that I am going to copy and bind at school. I know you're probably saying "duh, this is so simple" but for me, I was being too much of a control freak-wanting to write down everything each day to make sure I got it all right-but it's just too much work! Then, I'd have to flip through pages to see what we're doing Thursday on Monday. It was chicken scratch, not useful for anyone-even myself...
Here is the editable lesson plan document I found online:
http://www.livinglaughingandloving.com/2012/08/cute-lesson-plan-template-free-editable-download.html
and here is the font I downloaded:
http://kevinandamanda.com/fonts/fontsforpeas/
I did pea ellie bellie, it turned out really cute
Then, for reading and math, we do a lot of repetitive activities each day of the week. So, I color coded a sheet to match the colors of the days of the week in my lesson plans so I knew what activity we were doing for reading and math that day. These don't change I just have to remember what activity we do each day.
Now that I think lesson plans are working (we shall see how it works) I needed to update my data system. What I was doing was I made data sheets for my students IEP objectives, but some of them are not realistic or they have already mastered them and the data was not even worth taking, so each week, I was making new activities to work on and take data to help me write future IEP's and see how they are doing on work tasks. Each student had a clipboard with the data sheet on it and I would highlight what we were taking data on for each day because it got to be too much doing a lot of data each day. This kind of helped, but then if students were absent, I just had a lot of blank spaces and to see how they were doing on the goal I'd have to flip through weeks of data sheets and none of them looked alike and it was time consuming and not worth it. So, I decided, I am going to make more basic data sheets that can be used for a task numerous times by just putting the date when you do it and not making it so specific.
So, I started making basic tables and created (I'm sure it probably already exists-it's just folding paper but I like to think it was my original smart idea) FOLDABLE DATA sheets! I am in love with this idea and excited to see how it pans out. For this particular student, he is working on two letter words and a few CVC words. I want him to say the word when it is shown to him, spell the word when it is said to him, and identify the word that is dictated given a field of words. So, I created one column with the words down the left side, then two rows at the top with those three skills listed and under that, a date row. I split the cells so that under each skill, there are numerous data boxes where you can just mark the date. Then, color code each skill, fold and viola! Foldable data to measure many skills at one time without a bunch of paperwork. Best part is, all the data is on one sheet-easy to track and see progress/areas of concern.
Check out the images and let me know what you think:
This is the entire sheet, as you can see there are three colors for each skill (saying word, spelling word and identifying word), the words in white along the side, and a pink row up top for the date.
This is how it looks when you fold it to see one skill at a time, and always be able to see the words
second skill
third skill
Not all the data sheets I made are foldable, a lot of them are simple (numbers 1-10, ABCs) but I did this for colors and shapes also (identify by name, match and sort).
So, I made pretty simple data sheets (some specific for certain objectives) for each kid. I put them all on one clipboard, divided by student, and I am still going to have them working and practicing their skills and I am going to come around to probably 2 kids a day and take data on a few skills-not all of them, just a few. I can quickly see which skills I need to take data on because the sheets are so simple and comprehensive. I think this will work better and be a huge weekend time saver.
Let me know what you think and if you want me to email any resources to you :-)
Happy November
