10 Great Gifts for Educators

Instructional Coaching, Organization

‘Tis the season! We’re in the midst of Secret Santa and while still hard at work coaching, my thoughts have been doing some drifting to cool gift ideas for teachers/coaches/principals/ assistants…you know, all members of the great group of folks who work in different ways to support kids.

Here are a few ideas I put together…

Gifts-for-Teachers_2

 

1. Timbuk2 Tartine Tote Bag

Every educator needs a good bag…and I’ve been drooling over this one. It has an interior laptop pocket, interior and exterior organization pockets, and an interior water bottle pocket. Love that. You can even customize the colors and material. Maybe it could be an end of the year, you’ve been good, present to yourself? {wink, wink}

2. The Write Stuff Note Cards

There’s nothing like a good old, handwritten, I appreciate you note card to give as a gift. These Write Stuff cards seem like they were designed especially for educators and…they’re free! All you have to do is download, print, and fold. Boom!

3. Dot Grid Journal

Planning and reflecting is a big part of what we do, and this journal is a great place to make that happen. This journal is an absolute fave of mine…perfect size, geometric dot matrix, and paper as smooth as butter.

4. Bottle of Wine

Just sayin’…my Secret Santa gave me a bottle of wine one year and I was psyched! A simple, yet thoughtful gift, sure to be put to good use.

5. YAY! Teacher Magnets

What’s your YAY!? Whatever it is, YAY! has got your back. These magnets are super fun to give as gifts.

6. Thermos Vacuum Insulated Travel Tumbler

Did you know that us educators are among the top 15 heaviest coffee drinkers? {and the most likely to add flavor to our coffee} Well then, we certainly need a good travel mug…one that’s well designed, doesn’t leak, and keeps our coffee pipin’ hot throughout the morning. I searched many, long years for a travel mug that meets all three of these qualifications until I finally found this beauty. Pass it along.

7. Uno Insulated Lunch Tote for One

I think cool lunch boxes are really neat. They make you feel happier when you pack your lunch at night and add some extra excitement to your lunch break. I haven’t tried this one out personally, but if I were to ask Santa for a new lunch box, I think this is the one I would ask for. It has a built in silverware holder! It doesn’t really get better than that.

8. Fun Pens 

Writing with fun pens is much more interesting than using a standard #2 or the boring pens school provides. The Flair Pens by Paper Mate are definitely fun and if you pair a set of these with a pad of colorful sticky notes, you’ve got yourself a great gift!

9. Heavy Duty Three Hole Punch

Huh? A three hole punch? Yes! A three hole punch! My dad got this for me one year for Christmas, and while at first I kind of thought it was an odd gift, after taking it to school I thought it was pretty much the best gift ever.

10. Klean Kanteen Water Bottle

Hydration is important. But it can be annoying when you have to deal with unscrewing and rescrewing the lid to some water bottles every time you want to get a drink. None of that with this water bottle! Hydration to go in a stainless steel, toxin free water bottle that comes in all kinds of fun colors.

Well there you have it. My gift giving {or getting} guide for educators. Am I missing any really good ideas?

If so, please share!

Thanks for reading,

ms-houser

Close Reading Anchor Chart

Instructional Coaching, Teaching Tips

For the past few months, I’ve been working with our third grade team on implementing one of the curriculum modules produced by Expeditionary Learning. By the way, if you’re looking for high quality, common core aligned curriculum for grades 3-8, these modules are awesome! We just finished up The Power of Reading and had a ton of success with it.

Given that this curriculum is Common Core aligned, close reading played a big role in our work. Throughout the module, we created and used anchor charts for learning and thinking that we wanted to refer back to frequently…and close reading is definitely anchor chart worthy! Because so many of us coaches or teachers are working with close reading in one way or another, I thought it might be helpful to create a downloadable anchor chart to support your work. These are strategies identified in the module that I’ve added visuals to.

Close-Reading-Anchor-Chart

 

All of these strategies are tried and true and for sure will support close reading. I made a standard 8 x 10 size if you’d like to print it out and add it to your planning binder as a reference tool. I also made an 11 x 14 and 16 x 20 version to print off as a poster. I think you can print a 16 x 20 for around six bucks. Not bad!

Thanks for reading,

ms-houser

My Coaching Office

Instructional Coaching, Organization

I don’t know about you guys, but I just love love {yes two loves, not a typo} peeking inside the work spaces of other coaches and teachers. Educators have some seriously creative super powers when it comes to organizing and decorating and there’s so many good ideas we can steal from each other! Since it’s nearly November, I thought it was high time for me to give you a peek inside my own coaching work space. Take a look around and if there are any ideas that catch your eye, feel free to steal away!

To start, you’ll likely notice I’m no longer in my PD Pad. Our school recently received a remodel, so I now have an office to work in, which makes me feel pretty official. There’s a retractable wall just to the right of the round table which we slide back every Thursday for PD to create a large gathering space for teachers.

I use the larger table when I’m meeting with teams of teachers and the round table for smaller gatherings.

front-office-view

I set up the desk on the left as a space for our school designer to work when she visits on Mondays and Thursdays.

up-close-at-desksA few years ago I made the decision to do away with my big, bulky file cabinet. After some ruthless purging, I was able to downscale to a tidy little file box that I tuck away behind my bag. I’m pretty discriminating when deciding what paper documents to keep. The large majority of my files I now store electronically.

file-box-with-textMy desk is fairly small so there isn’t space to stack a bunch of unnecessary stuff. I try to keep it as clutter free as I can.

my-desk

close-up-my-desk

I just made this fun desktop wallpaper. If you like it too, download it here.

HustleAnything that needs to be processed goes into my inbox. At the end of each day I process away.

inbox

To the right of my desk I set up a teacher resource book area.

window-bookshelves

Rafe Esquith is one of my favorite educators and I love his motto, “Be nice, Work hard.”

be-nice-work-hard

Feel free to steal this download!

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Here’s a view from the back of my office.

at-back-office-view

These are our five staff habits. They’re nice to have displayed in a location that I can easily reference.

habits

Rather than going with the offer of standard Staples bookshelves, I chose to hunt down a more stylish option. I went with the Ikea Expedit shelving unit in grey and worked in a mix of open and closed storage.

bookshelves

I added labels to the baskets so I can quickly find what I’m looking for.

labels

And of course my space wouldn’t be complete without a coffee station. I splurged this year and bought a Nespresso machine and I love it! Everyday I look forward to my 3:00 espresso break. Mmmm…coffee…

coffee-stand

Well there you have it! What do you think?!

Thanks for reading,

ms-houser