Create-abilities Blog — classroom organization

Flexible seating has been becoming more and more popular over the years. You almost can't log on to Pinterest without seeing beanbag chairs, tire seats, and couches in classrooms around the world. However, setting up flexible seating can be expensive and time consuming to set up. So is it really worth it? Let's take a closer look.  WHAT THE RESEARCH SAYS Flexible seating has been studied over and over again. It shows that "Children who participate in short bouts of physical activity within the classroom have more on-task behavior, with the best improvement seen in students who are least on-task...

Do you ever get tired of answering the same questions over and over again? I'm talking about things like: "Can I used colored pencils?" "Can we work with a partner?" "Where can we sit?" "Where do I put this when I'm done?" If you're like me, then you probably woke up in the middle of the night answering those questions. Well, I have a simple solution that can help save your time and your sanity: visual direction cards.  WHAT ARE VISUAL DIRECTION CARDS? Visual direction cards are physical, visual displays that help reinforce the instructions you just gave students about...

We often find ourselves as teachers doing activities where our students need to work in groups or pairs. This could be a quick Think-Pair-Share or Turn and Talk activity or a larger group project. It can be difficult to have to create effective groups for our students to complete their work each time. It can also be challenging (and time consuming) to create random groups. I've come up with 6 ways to quickly and easily group your students for different activities. I'll also share some great apps at the end that can help you group students as well.  1. Food...

Mornings in our classrooms can be a little crazy: Students are coming in and getting started on their morning work. Attendance needs to be taken and recorded.   Homework needs to be checked or turned in.  That one parent reeeeaaaallllyyyy needs to talk to us even though we have 1,000 kids surrounding us.  Sound familiar?  I found a simple and easy tool that can help cut down on the chaos. Enter the Dropbox. All it is is a container with a label. Simple, right? Its purpose is to help cut you out of some of the morning and daytime craziness....

No name papers can be really frustrating to deal with. It affects our grading, how we handle missing assignments, and more. Sometimes we can identify the handwriting of our students and pass them back their paper or sometimes there is only one no name paper and we know exactly who it belongs to. However, for those moments (cough **beginning of the year** cough) where you have multiple papers without names, or you can't recognize (or read) the handwriting, I want to show you about the No Name Board. WHAT IT IS: The No Name Board is a place to keep...