About Ginny Hoover...
Ginny Hoover took an early retirement after 31 years of teaching in Kansas public schools. Her experience spans the 5th through 8th grades. During the last ten years she has functioned as a trainer of teachers in a variety of areas in her district, surrounding districts, professional organizations, and teacher service centers. At the state level Ginny is a state trainer for the KS State Writing Assessment (based on the Six Traits Writing Model), a member of the Kansas Social Studies Committee for writing the social studies standards, benchmarks, and indicators, and the lead trainer for the state in government and civics.
Recently, Teacher TimeSavers published a variety teaching units and tutoring hookups that Ginny wrote and designed. These include a Six Traits materials, literary unit for Taming the Star Runner, Hookups for Language Arts, Transcripts of Trials for Goldilocks, The Wolf, and Mr. Dad, and Tactile/Kinesthetic Activity Patterns.
The Gifts of Children by Hoover and Carroll Killingsworth, a book about recognizing, acknowledging, and refining the gifts of children, is scheduled to be published some time this year. Visit Teachers Helping Children--The Gifts Project for additional information.
Joyce McLeod, Jan Fisher, and Ginny will soon have a classroom management book to be published by ASCD. It will cover managing time and space, managing the classroom, and managing instructional strategies.
The Gifts of All Children
by Carroll Killingsworth and Ginny Hoover
Create a supply list for students. Then, include one extra classroom need on each list like Ziploc baggies (holds small manipulatives, can be used for science materials, holding reading activities, etc.), boxes of tissues (to be available for entire classroom use), etc.--things that the class may need throughout the year yet easily obtained by parents. This should not be extreme in cost, but such small donations really help to stretch the classroom budget. They should be suggestions---not requirements.
Arrange, decorate, and make comfortable your space. Make your area a pleasant place to be. Don't forget that you'll be spending a quite of few hours there. This will be worth the extra effort.
Organize while you have the time. Even if it means coming in a day early. Make sure you know where things are and that you have a place for everything. I used empty computer paper boxes (from the school supplies---about the same size as file boxes). I put unit materials together along with the teaching notebook I had made for each unit into the box. Throughout the year when I came across additional ideas for teaching a certain topic, I opened the lid labeled for that unit and dropped it in on top. The next time I used the unit, I filed all new materials where they belonged in the unit files.
Look for timesaving strategies that will help you. For instance, don't reinvent the wheel---look for what you need on the Internet. Below are some things that will help you in that search! Have a good year! --Ginny
Ginny's Long List of Places to Find Free Teaching Resources
ABC Teach---again such a long list and a wide variety of materials, impossible to list all.... includes reading comprehension, flash cards, teaching extras, etc. www.abcteach.com
Glencoe: (as suggested on main board---found by Shelli) Careers, classroom management, high stakes testing, instruction and planning, parental involvement, portfolios, reading skills, technology in the classroom, writing skills. www.glencoe.com/sec/teachingtoday/ downloaddepot.phtml
Have time to just look over a really long list of available free printables...just found this one... from Sipping Tea.com www.sippingtea.com/4printable.html
For a printable version of this article click here.
The Eclectic Teacher
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