Back to School Organization Tip, FREEBIE and Periscope Party Hop

Hey Everyone!

I am so excited that Lindsay over at Primary Polka Dots allowed me in on the Periscope Hop tonight! I loved hearing about everyone else's tips and tricks and hope you did too. In case you missed it, here is what I talked about...Organizing your data before the year even begins.

I don't know about y'all but as soon as I walk into school the first day with kids, I do not have time to be worrying about setting up my data binders! Ain't nobody got time for that right?

So, before school starts, I have everything ready to go. I have created these little forms to track their reading throughout the year so that anytime anyone walks in to my room, I can whip this out and show them everything! So because I teach first grade, I wat to know where the students were at the end of Kinder. I want it all out on one form so that I can see who might be able to be grouped together for guided reading. Our district uses istation (ISIP), DRA2 and PAPI. I then mark whether or not they were below level. If they were below level, I then go to my AP and ask if they went through the RtI committee. 

So after I have all of that filled in, (I type the students' names before printing and fill the rest in by hand) I store that in the front of my ELAR data binder. I think it's easier to use these binders and stay on top of data when the cover is so cute. Does that help you too?

When I set my binder up, I make sure and grab the numbered dividers from Target, Office Max, Staples or wherever I can find them cheapest! They look like this but I get the set of 25 since I won't have more than 25 kiddos in my class. 

Each student is assigned a number (alphabetically by last name) and all their data for the ENTIRE year goes behind it! Every time I do a running record, DRA, take any anecdotal notes, this is where it goes! Remember the End of Year Kinder form from up there^? I have the same thing printed out but ones for beginning of year, middle of year, and end of year of 1st grade. 

As the year goes on, we also do a monthly online reading assessment and I track their progress on one page also. This joins the End of Kinder, BOY, MOY, and EOY Assessment pages at the front of my binder.

 Now, when I go to an RtI meeting, or have a PLC about kiddos and comparing our data, I take ONE binder and it has ALL of my Reading info in it!

I do the EXACT same thing for my Math Data binder. The only thing that is different is my data sheet. In my district, we have 4 Math CBAs per year. So, I keep ALL of their testing data on ONE PAGE!!!! I do keep all of the CBAs in a different binder just in case anything is ever questioned but not in this binder. 

How easy is that?! Now. I have a few other binders that I keep as well just to stay organized. 

I must have an IEP and 504 folder. This SAVED my life last year. I had 20 kiddos last year and SEVEN of them when through a SPED eval. SEVEN!!!! That is a lot! So, this is where I kept all of that paperwork and evaluations, accommodations, schedules, etc. 

SST is my districts RtI committee. Since I had 7 go through a SPED eval, you can bet I used this binder as well to track all the interventions before we went through the evaluation. 

LLI is the Fountas and Pinnell Literacy Intervention that my district uses. I taught LLI and had 4 kids from other classes I was keeping data on for their teacher. 

So that is how I keep myself organized during the school year. It is crucial for me to prep it BEFORE the year even begins because there is no way that I have time to do it after. If you'd like to get started on prepping binders for your class, head on over to my TPT store for editable versions of all these forms and binder covers for FREE!!!

 How do you organize your data? I'd love to hear about it in the commets below!