Back to School Series #PhysEd Edition: Organization
Organizing yourself for the new school year is vital in ensuring that this coming year will be the most successful in your #PhysEd career for both you & your students. Here are some ways you can get yourself organized before the students arrive to ensure the year gets off to a good start!
Organize your mind
#PEAward13 winning blogger Andy Vasily recently posted about Clearing Space for the coming school year. Creating space in your mind is the first step in being more organized. If you are not able to clear your mind then you will find it very difficult to start the year off with a clear vision and idea of how you want your year to go.
Ask yourself: What worked last year? What didn't? What do you wan't from this year?
Ask yourself: What worked last year? What didn't? What do you wan't from this year?
Organize your workspace
Once you have cleared space in your mind, move on to your desk and office. Having a clean, organized work space is an important factor in making sure that you will be productive & innovative this school year. When organizing your desk/workspace make a plan for how you are going to make it work for you.
Plan how you want to organize your important documents and resources (Folders, binders, inbox/outbox) and how you will store your stationary and make sure you stick with your system as you don't want those all important documents making their way to the bottom of an ever growing pile.
Plan how you want to organize your important documents and resources (Folders, binders, inbox/outbox) and how you will store your stationary and make sure you stick with your system as you don't want those all important documents making their way to the bottom of an ever growing pile.
Organize your equipment
Keeping all of your #PhysEd equipment organized can be tough. It's easy just to dump things into the store room at the end of the lesson as you rush to your next class and then forget about them. Very quickly things build up and soon you can't even get in the door.
This year before the students arrive I literally took everything out of the store room and started with an empty space. This made it much easier to see exactly what we had and how I could better organize it.
Instead of organizing it into sports specific sections I organized it by the way the equipment will be used; Throwing, Kicking, Hitting, Movement tools, manipulatives, Soft Balls, Hard Balls, Big Balls, Small balls.
This has helped me greatly so far this year to provide a more inquiry based approach to #PhysEd.
The challenge is now to keep it clean and put things back from where I got them. Taking 10 minutes every Friday to go in and tidy any mess from the week is something I plan to do this year to help me stay organized.
This year before the students arrive I literally took everything out of the store room and started with an empty space. This made it much easier to see exactly what we had and how I could better organize it.
Instead of organizing it into sports specific sections I organized it by the way the equipment will be used; Throwing, Kicking, Hitting, Movement tools, manipulatives, Soft Balls, Hard Balls, Big Balls, Small balls.
This has helped me greatly so far this year to provide a more inquiry based approach to #PhysEd.
The challenge is now to keep it clean and put things back from where I got them. Taking 10 minutes every Friday to go in and tidy any mess from the week is something I plan to do this year to help me stay organized.
Organize your technology
This year I have been lucky enough to get 4 iPad Mini's to use in my #PhysEd program and deciding on a way to implement them in the most meaningful way has been an organizational challenge. Which apps to use, how to purchase the apps, how the students will use the iPads, shared agreements for using iPads, how to arrange the apps, the list is endless. Another amazing educator Patty Kestell (USA National Elementary Teacher of the Year!) has also recently received some new iPads and we have teamed up to create a Google Doc to help us document our journey of organizing & implementing Multiple iPads in #PhysEd.
If you have any ideas or experience with this then feel free to add to this shared document.
If you have any ideas or experience with this then feel free to add to this shared document.
Being organized is the first step to ensuring that your #PhysEd program is successful. So take some time before the students return this year to make sure that you have the things in place that will enable you to stay on top of things and maximize your potential.
Stay tuned to the Back to School Series: #PhysEd Edition for more ways you can make this coming year the best of your career.
Stay tuned to the Back to School Series: #PhysEd Edition for more ways you can make this coming year the best of your career.
Organizing the equipment room sounds like a 10 hour job. Ha! We are all new to our school and dug out some of the stuff around Christmas time. Most of it we couldn’t even think of a reason it would be there. Our equipment is limited so I am sure there is a great way to organize it and see how our BEP money would be spent best.