Mini Assignment Checklists
One of the most overwhelming thing when I began teaching was all of the paperwork. There was data to keep track of, emails to answer, papers to grade, and professional development to complete. It was overwhelming! My solution to being overwhelmed is usually to organize. I began creating binders, labeling them to help me remember where I had filed my paperwork, they weren't even that pretty, I just needed something. This did help, but keeping track of papers that I was grading, papers that were not turned in, papers to return for them to complete, or papers to return so they could see their grades, was still overwhelming. So, I began using checklists. First, I had them check their names of a list on a clipboard. That worked pretty well, but I had to constantly remind them to check their names off. Then I decided to have it be someone's job to check off assignments from the turn in box. This was extremely helpful, as they would also organize the papers in alphabetical order for me (easier for when I entered their grades in the grade book). Finally, I came up with these little class lists, and boy have they been a lifesaver! I use them on everything!
Download a free copy of these checklists here.
Turning in forms, homework, field trip money, anything you can think of. This past year when became a three way rotation, we decided to color code our lists.
It was extremely helpful, because I could grab the list at a glance without having to stop and look at it closely to make sure I had the correct one.
You can see from the picture above that I would check off the students' names that had turned in their assignment, but would circle the names that had not. This helped me quickly see what names I needed to focus on. I also tried to make sure that I gave a good description as the assignment name because sometimes I would return all of the papers and just keep the little list and if I just wrote "p.16" many times I couldn't remember what I meant by that. If I still had student owing work I could look at these little lists quickly and let them know they needed to come see me during our Focus time (small group intervention) to make sure they completed their assignments.
