Parent- Teacher Conferences Schedule Manager!

Hey teachers out there! How many of you have wished you had a personal assistant to do some of those little jobs like scheduling conferences? I'm thinking, "hello! personal assistant- sign me up!" Sorry to say, personal assistants are still not in your school's budget. However, the latest trend with P-T-C's is online scheduling. I searched a bunch of sites and found one that does not require membership and does not require the parents to sign up for anything either. It is designed to manage volunteer events and also includes a link for teacher use.

The site you want to use is called Volunteer Spot. It took no more than 10 minutes to set up two days of conferences with time slots and sign up limitations. After completing one day I was able to copy that format to the next day. Once I established my event (P-T-C's Spring 2012) I had the option of generating a link, which I did. I emailed the link to my classroom distribution list and was done. This site lets me track who has signed up and provides an option for a schedule print out. The one option it doesn't do (at least not that I have found yet) is stalk, erm, 'remind' parents to sign up for a conference.

Volunteer Spot is a great tool and I highly recommend it. Short of getting that personal assistant we are all longing for, this is the most stress free conference scheduling I have done.

Link: Volunteerspot.com

Here's to a well planned Spring conference season!

Another free find on the web!

Just a quick post tonight. I was searching for a resource for some math activities today and stumbled on a new website.

Check out Education.com for a load of free resources. Items are categorized by grade level and then subject matter and again broken down within each subject. This site has activities and worksheets- and lots of both.

All in all, I consider this find a great use of a prep block!

Happy searching!

Happy Birthday Dr Seuss! (Read Across America day)

At the end of the day today I walked into the classroom next to where I am long term subbing. Sitting on the table was a Seuss activity, ready for the morning. There I was, teaching in the home state of Dr Rhyme totally forgetting his birthday- opps! I came home from school with a mission- find Seuss ideas for tomorrow.

All I have to say is that after Google and Pinterest searching I remembered that Dr Seuss has an amazing website. If you don't know what i'm talking about you need to immediately follow the link at the bottom of this post. Seussville is a website for students and teachers complete with everything from games to lesson plans (there is a parent's section as well). The educators section has a month by month event guide featuring teaching guides for various books correlating to the 'holiday' of the month.

Check out Seussville! (http://www.seussville.com/)

Just remember that at the end of the day (after you've heard your name a million times over, you are convinced you're going to be saying the same name in your sleep that you said every 2 minutes and you just can't wait to get to 100 gems/jewels/compliments/marbles/whatever so you can have pj day), “Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”

Have a Seuss-tastic Friday!