It’s that time of year again. It’s time for Training Camp,…er, I mean back to school (Sorry, our national nightmare is over – the NFL is back). As I drove to do Home Depot to work on my honey-do list I saw a teacher pushing a thingy with tons of boxes I am assuming to set up for the upcoming school year. In June we are asked to break down our classrooms. In my case I strip the walls and pack everything up as though the school may not be there when I return. When we prepare our return in early August we have to start up from scratch. In all honesty it can be a pain in the butt, but it does allow you to change up your classroom arrangement. A chance to do things differently. Year 7 is no exception, I am still looking to change my teaching practices (make time for small group instruction dude!). On Monday I started with my classroom. I rearranged computer tables, set up my seating arrangement and found a spot to hide my mini-fridge. I am not close to being finished but Monday was a good start.

Although, I am not very active on Twitter, there are numerous teachers that are constantly sharing great ideas. For teachers Twitter is great! My teacher/class twitter handle is @rojo5th. Anyhow, @theOCBlog recommended a website by another teacher, Lorraine Vasquez, who was using VistaPrint to create cool classroom stuff. Lorraine’s ideas are great. Last night I ended up creating refrigerator magnets with my website, phone number and email. I will pass these out to my students first day back (when they least likely to lose things). The other item I created were these business cards which are not business cards at all but instead are going to be used for students to jot down their usernames/passwords to access the classroom blog and buddypress community. I ended up ordering like 250 business cards and 50 magnets for under $30. Not too shabby right?

All the teachers out there: Hopefully you have a great school year.