ELA The Miss M Way

The next items are supplies that I, once again, use professionally and personally: colored pens.   Back in the day (when I was a student!), teachers graded everything with red pens.  For both the teacher and the students, seeing red ink repetitively is boring.   It is also a bit harsh on the eyes and on the morale.   Using bright, colorful pens livens things up by providing a pop of color and variation.  Colored pens are also useful for visual organization, such as color-coding notes or color-coding info for each class period, for example. I also find using colored pens in my personal planner to be very helpful and cheerful as well.  The colored pens can (and should) be used on the motivational messages on the sticky notes mentioned in the previous post, since the colors add a "happy" tone.   My ever-growing collection of colored pens, as well as highlighters and whiteboard markers, includes every color of the rainbow and ever...

When it comes to gathering school supplies, there are two parties to keep in mind: you (the teacher) and your students.   While some of these items may seem obvious to have in your classroom, I figure it does not hurt to mention them based on my personal experiences with these items as well as the frequency of using them and the quantity I needed.   Originally, as I drafted this blog post by hand in my trusty notebook (very old school, I know), I intended to do one blog post that was all-encompassing of every item I hold near and dear to my heart as a teacher.  As I began typing this post, I realized it would be easier for my readers to process (and would be more visually pleasing) if I dedicated one post to each item.   Warning, there might be a seemingly infinite number of follow-up posts as I inevitably think of additional items 😊   Here we go, let's start with sticky notes – aka one of the best inventions, in my opinion!   ...