Track Student Data and Stay Organized!

Hi teacher friends!!!

I'm just checking in to let you know that I've bundled together my conferring binders and I'm beyond excited to use them in my classroom this year.

I've used conferring binders for several years, but they've always been a mish-mash compilation of ideas from all of the conferring gurus.  My favorites are Patrick Allen, The Two Sisters of course, and Jennifer and Gravity.

I've scoured the appendices, copied pages, resized, reworked, but nothing ever seemed to be "exactly" what I needed and wanted.  And nothing ever talked about how we should confer during Math Workshop.  

So in my desperation (since conferring with my readers, writers, and mathematicians with fidelity is a goal for this upcoming school year) I decided to create my own ideal conferring binders.

And they look a little like this:  

• Cute cover pages and dividers to help keep me organized
• Monthly calendars so I can schedule ALL my strategy groups and daily conferences (isn't it funny how if it's not on the schedule, it somehow seems not to happen - please tell me I'm not the only one!)
• Pages to take notes and set goals during strategy group meetings
• Pages to keep track of daily conferring notes and whom I've conferred with, when
• Places to track the books students have read, pieces they've written and math centers they've completed
• Status of the class checklists
• Sheets to place the labels I use for note-taking during conferring
• Sheets to record data on strategy groups, individual conferences, intervention groups, progress monitoring and assessments.  (nothing drives me crazier than not being able to find that 'one piece' of data on a student during an IEP or child study meeting).  Now it will all be in ONE place.  
• Plus lots and lots more
• And BONUS, I also had to create a section for students to use to keep themselves organized during reading, writing and math workshops.  Now they will have a place to record all of their notes, goals, strategies, requirements, and assessment data as well.  

Whew!  Each binder is over 50 pages of organized bliss and did I mention that I'm REALLY loving using them this year!

Here's a sneak peek at what I've put together so far: