How often do you loan students a pencil and never see it again? Every time I give the students a test I loan them a pencil from the "Pencil Tree" Pencil tree and sign out sheet the student signs out the pencil and crosses their name off when it is returned. By storing the pencils in the "Tree." missing pencils all pencils returned! By the way...my students love that they have Mirado Black Warrior pencils to use...they just love the name and it's easy to see if it is my pencil or theirs. You can buy Mirado Black Warriors by clicking on the image here:  I can quickly look and see if all were returned. It saves class time and I never lose a pencil!  This post originally featured on ballinwithballing.blogspot.com

   Show that you are a certified professional by posting your college degrees in your classroom. above SmartBoard front board I scanned and printed new copies of my actual degrees and hung them on the front wall in the room.  You can buy diploma frames here: (My originals are in my office at home). Every professional I know whether they are a dentist, doctor, accountant, etc. hangs their degrees on the wall...why don't teachers? my Master of Science Education degree I do now. This post originally featured on ballinwithballing.blogspot.com 

   Now a days everybody puts a lot of information about themselves out there on the web. Do you ever wish you could tell people more about yourself without pulling the "hey, let's talk about me some more."We all have interesting information that nobody knows about us. Here's mine whether you want to know or not... about.me/Amyballing  This post originally featured on ballinwithballing.blogspot.com 

9/21 9/21    There are few things that my students love more than going outside. The weather was nice, we had some iPods so we went outside to our school's Memorial Grove. Each tree has been planted in memory of a student or employee who has passed away.  The iPods were on loan from our local Boces but some of my students downloaded the app onto their own iPods at home and brought them in the next day. This worked for us because they did not need the internet to do this lab. (our school does not allow personal devices on the district's wifi)          You can buy an iPod Touch here   or you could use an iPhone or an iPad Here are some screen shots from the app on the iPod: The Tree ID App Identify a Tree Search by different characteristics Images to assist you Choose the correct one add more Your results locations in US pictures fruits   T...

     To save time in class and to get my students started right away I created a mailbox for each of my students. This is a quick way to hand back papers and a nice easy place for my students to store the headphones that they need in class everyday.     Each student has been assigned an "Alpha Number" which is a number that helps me put their papers in alphabetical order by class. So my first student in my first class has the number 1, second student alphabetically in the same class is #2, etc. So every time a student puts their name on their paper, they also write their Alpha Number. This saves a LOT of time when you need to alphabetize over 100 papers. These are pictures of the students' mailboxes where they will get papers that I want to hand back. This is where they turn in assignments to me Each "basket" is for a different class A bit of advice: If you are going to make your own mailboxes, staple them together or else...

 Yes, a movie trailer. To get students and parents excited about my course and to get more students to sign up for it I have created a movie trailer to drum up interest. All teachers eventually realize that we are in advertising. I believe that my obsession with infomercials and the way they can make me want to buy a product that I really don't need makes me a better teacher. If you think about it we are trying to sell a product that students usually wouldn't want. We need to see them as customers with a choice, not inmates serving time. (paraphrasing David Warlick; his blog is at davidwarlick.com ) I don't think that teachers usually do a very good job of tooting their own horn. You work hard as a professional, show it off! Here is the trailer to promote my course: (made with iMovie for the Mac)  This post originally featured on ballinwithballing.blogspot.com

http://www.classdojo.com ClassDojo makes it easy to keep my students alert and on-task. You can use it to: Improve Behavior...Improve specific student behaviors and engagement by awarding and recording real-time feedback. Share Data...Print or email beautiful behavior reports to easily engage parents and staff. Save Time...by recording behaviors and accomplishments right in class, with one click. parents can also get reports of progress.  In class, the teacher awards points to students or ... records a negative behavior. these positive and negative buttons can be customized by the teacher based on what it needed for each class. The points are recorded on the chart for each student in the class. The teacher can also choose to put the class list on the interactive white board so students can see live when they earn points.  Or it can be kept private and the student can log in to see their own private information.  One of my favorite tools is to us...

https://workflowy.com I don't know about you, but I am a list-maker. I have so many lists and posit notes that I have lists of my lists. A tool I've started using recently is Workflowy.com. It allows you to make lists with sub-lists and cross them off but it stores them in case you ever need to refer back to that list in the future. I have made workflow.com my home page so anytime I turn on my computer my to do list is right there in front of me. This is a screen shot of Workflowy in action: This post originally featured on ballinwithballing.blogspot.com 

One tool I like to use to communicate with students and parents is Remind101.com. With Remind101 you can easily send a text message or email message to a class of students or to all of your students and parents. I especially like that I can set the time that the message will get set. Often I will set it to send the message out at 2:10pm because our last period ends at 2:15pm and my students will get the reminder just before they reach their lockers to go home. My advice.. make up a separate class for each class period that you meet with.  This way you can send a text and/or email message to every student in one class or every student in all classes.

Many of you may know that I am a Biology teacher and in today's society it is a very stressful and demanding job. Constantly (even during vacations and weekends) I am working to improve the entire school experience for my students and to streamline the entire grading, learning, and evaluation part of my job. Very soon I will be evaluated as a teacher with the use of Charlotte Danielson's Framework for Teaching (2007).  The framework places an emphasis on four different domains of teaching... http://www.roe13.k12.il.us/Services/KeriKorn/HND12/Trover/FrameworkTeaching.pdf Even if you are a great teacher, most of the stuff you do isn't always visible in a 40 minute observation especially if you are teaching online or using technology in the classroom. In these blog postings I hope to document all of the different techniques and tricks that I use as a teacher and to help give others ideas that can be implemented in their own classrooms.  We are much better te...