Teacher Hacks

It’s May and we’re out of…

–Markers that work, except yellow. We have lots of yellow.

–Pencils, but this isn’t new. We’ve been out of pencils since March.

–Pages in our science notebooks. Now we just tape pages in at the back as we go.

–Toner in our classroom printer. All the pages print with faded gray fonts and words too faint to see in some places. It’s kind of fun guessing what we think the author wrote, isn’t it?

–Construction paper, except yellow and brown.

–Staplers that work like they should. The green one is missing the bottom and only works on walls and the black one jams more often than it staples.

–And…

That’s right. We’re completely out of tissues (and it’s allergy season in Texas). This is my low-cost solution.

Luckily, we’ve still got plenty of books to read. I’m kind of a book-a-holic.

–The Pensive Sloth

Here I am, chugging along with back to school on my mind. I know we still have about 4 weeks left, but I’m sprinkling some teacher stuff into my demanding sleeping, swimming, and Netflixing schedule. There’s a LOT to do, and if I don’t start now it will just nag at me.

I am so excited to dig into task cards with my students this year. There are like a MILLION ways to use them and I’ve only scratched the surface. Back to the story. I’ve just cut out 72 cards, punched holes in the corners, and am ready to put them together…when I realize I don’t have any of these–

Photo from Staples.com–Yes. I am addicted to office supplies. Love them!

Time for a cliche. Necessity is the mother of invention, and I have a need. I need a way to bind my task cards together WITHOUT some of those ring things. Then, I remembered that I have a pile of zip ties sitting on the counter and decided to give it a try.

Classroom Hack Zip Ties for Task Cards from The Pensive Sloth

It worked! We had clear and yellow, but the yellow ones were huge and barely fit through the holes. Now, I’m off to search for zip ties on Amazon. Surely they have a rainbow colored pack???

–The Pensive Sloth