A new year, new organization strategies!

The new school year is off and running! This year my number one goal is to increase my organization skills and eliminate the clutter! In the past one of the biggest challenges I've faced is keeping organized, neat, and managing my stacks of papers. My plan is to try to eliminate as much of the paper/pencil tasks and worksheets as possible. I know I am pretty lucky because my students have computers and we use a program called blackboard which makes it easy for me to put a lot of things online. But if you can I highly recommend doing as much on the computer as possible. This year I have started with several strategies and so far (its only been a week) they seem to be working effectively and I feel a little less of the "clutter stress". Plus an added bonus is that I feel like the grading is a lot more manageable and I can actually keep up! I had to put in a little up front work for some of these, but again I feel like I'm already seeing the pay off. So here's what I've been doing: 1. Online Warm Ups: I post my warm up questions (very simple, not meant to be hard,just a quick review or something to get students thinking) on blackboard. I have it set so that they don't show up until class starts. Then they go away 8 minutes after class starts. The students have the 8 minutes to complete the warm up then sit in their seats and wait for directions. I post a slide where it tells them what they need to have out for the day. So far this has done wonders for my tardy issues. If the student is late too bad, they don't get the daily 5 points. But at the same time when I have three kids walk in 5 minutes late it doesn't disrupt everything I've just said. It might seem like 8 minutes of wasted class time...but when you think about it it takes 8 minutes to start know matter how you do it. 8 minutes is not that long so the students do have to focus and jump on the warm up right when they come in. It seems to get their focus in the right place and gets the class period off to a good start! 2. I do as many assignments as I can where the students can post to blackboard electronically. Since I don't have my classroom during my plan time, I'm moving around a lot. Being able to access student work online instead of dragging a bag of papers around is so much easier. Added benefits: No sloppy handwriting to try to decipher and the students seem to prefer to type. 3. The only work I have students do by hand are participation type assignments. Except for their science journals. This is still a work in progress but here's what I'm doing so far. I have yet to find an online program to create a science journal that I really like. And I think its important for students to keep a journal in science. I'm doing any notes, lab data, observations, power writing activities, etc. I keep track of the assignments I give and then about once every week to two weeks my goal is to check for completion. I want the students to feel safe to write and observe in their journals. But I also want to ensure that they are doing the tasks I assign. So I'll see how this goes...I've tried the science journal every year and hope this is the year for success! That's all I have for organization. Wish me luck on an organized semester! Happy long weekend! Yay for Labor day!