Bloomz

Have you heard about Bloomz!

It's a great education app that I started using this year to stay connect with the parents in my homeroom. Are you interested in finding out more? Head over to Focused on Fifth and read about all the amazing things this app has to offer to teachers.

A Cornucopia of Teacher Tips

I am so excited for this blog hop! I am always looking for new/better ideas to make my life as a teacher easier. Check out the idea that has saved me hours.

One of the common practices of my 5th grade team as well as many others in our school is to require the students to get their graded assessments signed by a parent. This is a great idea. It insures that the student is sharing their assessments with their parents/guardians. But when you teach math to 60 - 70 students plus teach ELA to your homeroom, you are giving and returning some sort of assessment every week. I not only felt like I was always collecting signed assessments but I was constantly chasing kids down that hadn't passed back their test. I was going crazy! It felt like such a time suck. It needed to stop.

My solution - labels!

Every student is given an agenda book on the first day of school. The parents are encouraged to check them each night and some teachers require them to be signed each night or weekly.

At Open House I inform the parents that although the other 5th grade teachers require tests to be signed,  I do not. I let them know that on the day I pass back an assessment a label is put in their child's agenda stating which assessment has been passed back. I let the parents know that they should be checking their child's agenda each night or at the very least weekly.

My labels look like this.

It says: Mrs. Quinn passed back my NBT.4 assessment today. Ask me how I did.

I use these Avery labels.

This is my second year using this and it has been great. I haven't had one parent complain (hope I am not jinxing it) and it has saved me so much time! This year I even had a parent donate in a huge box of labels. Talk about a gift I can use!

Now continue the hop by heading over to Liz at the Big Kids Hall.