My First Teacher Binder...

I have been seeing a lot of people's examples of teacher binders.  I wasn't sure that it would be something that I wanted.  I just always thought I needed the perfect lesson plan book.  Well, the other day, I found it.  The lesson plan book that was so perfect, it made me giddy, and then I saw the price.  It had a $59 base price.  Here is a link to it ( Lesson plan book).  What I liked about it was that it used different colors for the days of the week and the record book.  It also had everything that I could think of in one spiral bound book.  I know the school year just ended, but I thought I would try to see if I could create my own teacher binder similar to the beautiful lesson plan book that I can't afford.

So first thing I did was to get binder from Target.  I think red will be a nice pop of color on my desk.  Then, I came home and made a lovely cover using my Microsoft Word.  I trimmed it up and put it onto a piece of tag board and slid it into the front cover.  It is looking good already.

I had also purchased some tabbed dividers at Target as well for less than $2.  I found a calendar on TPT that was free for the 2013-2014 school year and it went under the first tab.  I then made a template for meeting notes.  It is pretty simple.  After the meeting notes section, I put a section for my seating charts.  Then added some graph paper that I simply three hole punched.

Meeting Notes Template

What took the longest was designing a template for my lesson plans.  I prefer to look at my lessons one day at a time verses seeing the entire week.  So I designed a daily plan sheet and color coded it.  I really like how it turned out and I am excited to see how they work.  This could be the expensive part, though.  I am not sure how much ink will cost me to print out pages.  In the long run, paying for the lesson plan book might be cheaper, but we'll see.  Here is the template I created:

Lesson Plan Template

Finally, I had to figure out a way to recreate the multicolored record book.  After a little looking, I found a record book that was only $1.  I took the book apart and I three holed punched each sheet.  By my calculation there was enough to get me through the year using only one side.  I them took out my highlighters and made my own multicolored record book.

Multicolored Record Book

I still want to add some of the things I'll be working on over the summer.  Things like my long range planning and the alignment of the lessons in my math textbook to our state standards.  In the end, I think I will have what I wanted without spending the money.