Pinterest Rocks My Teaching World

This year my district is going from a largely whole group direct instruction reading program to a largely centers/small group instruction model.  There are centers for English Language Development, reading and math. It's a good change, but it's going to take a lot of work and organization to make all those transitions and activities run efficiently.

Instinctively I am not such a great organizer. Boo!

Thank goodness there are hundreds upon hundreds of brilliantly organized teachers sharing all their ideas on Pinterest. I could read teaching blogs all day and not get all the ideas a quick ten minute browsing of Pinterest provides.

This idea., though, knocked my socks off.

Source: newmanagement.com via Nicole on Pinterest

 The little white thing highlighted here is a plastic stand that makes any binder into a flip chart!
They only cost $2 and look like they would be a good investment. I immediately began to search for them on Amazon. No luck. It seems that they are only available here.

Here en-lies the rub. I am super cheap to begin with and have already spent a ton of money and time on my classroom this summer. We have potentially five furlough days again this year so it's really important to stay within our budget. And, the site above charges $7 dollars to ship 5 of those little plastic things.

So I made my own.



First gather up two large binder clips and a short piece of ribbon-about 5" long.



Clip the clips to the binder covers and tie the two closest metal thingies together. Done.

Dear Ms. Plastic Binder Holder Maker,
I love your holder. Really I do. I would buy 5 for my classroom. I would. But you see, I have free Amazon Prime and I have become spoiled. Paying 70% of the product cost for shipping is just too steep. If your product shows up on Amazon, I will be the first to buy it. Promise.  In the meantime, Yankee ingenuity all the way.
Love, Mrs. L