Grade Supplies and Dollar Store Finds

Today I took my son to the dentist.  On the way there, I promised him that if he did his best and let them look at his teeth that I would take him to the Dollar Tree.  Let's just say he did an awesome job because I came home with a few goodies for my classroom.  I found these great cards.

From top to bottom, we have nouns, verbs, grammar terms, adjectives, and adverbs.  When I saw these cards, I immediately saw the possibilities.  I could use these to introduce students to the parts of speech or put them on a word wall labeled by parts of speech.  I can also see using them as a sorting activity in a pocket chart.  The possibilities are endless.

On another note, I finally took pictures of how I organize my supplies for grading to make everything easy to pull out.  I had one of these expanding files that expand when it is hung on a wall.

I bought this on sale at Wal-Mart last year.  I think it was marked down to like $1.50 :).  Recently, I realized how much time I wasted looking for a pen or marker to grade with and my EZ-Grader.  I also like to put stickers on tests.  I remembered having this expanding file organizer.  I labeled each tab like so...

Well, the pictures isn't as clear as I would like it to be.  From left to right or front to back:  grading supplies, grade sheets, assessments, rubrics, needs recorded, needs returned, and needs graded.  I keep stickers, markers, and my EZ-grader in the first pocket.  It looks like this...







I keep blank grading sheets in the second pocket so I can record grades and give papers back sooner.  I then take the grade sheets and enter needed information into the computer.  I keep papers that need to be graded and papers that have been graded in the file until I return them to students.  I have found that I am no longer searching for the needed supplies when it comes time to grade papers, and I can take this home or to other places in the building.