Were Saturdays Ever Exciting?

I spent mine working on report cards and gradebooks.  Sounds like tons of fun, yeah?  At least I finished them, and now feel like I have a load off.  But this also means that I really need a better plan for handling grading and report carding next year.  And to be honest- this is a serious organization issue- and that is just not my thing.  I am equipped with a super lazy gene, which means that I can start strong, and then it fizzles quickly.  So I worry that I can come up with an idea, but will be unable to carry it through.  And usually, I come up with something overly complicated, and that's why it fizzles.  So what's the easiest way to handle grading?  Ideas anyone?

The grading system at my school is pretty subjective.  Satisfactory, S+, S-, consistant, needs support.  Not exactly definitive.  Perhaps the only way to be fair is to create rubrics...I smell another summer project coming on.  How many is that now? 104?

And speaking of summer projects, I was thinking about a math notebook idea.  I have an hour and ten minute commute to work, and I spend this time nefariously plotting.  With the generous assistance of the Record Memo app on my iphone, I can ramble on for half an hour, and listen to what I rambled on about for another half hour on the playback, and then pull into work properly caffeinated ten minutes later.  But anyway- back on track- chug a chug chug.

Math notebook.  I combined a couple of different ideas.  One, I was stalking around this calendar math website and saw some great ideas for calendar math pages for the kids to use during calendar math time.  And then I also came across this solution to calendar math space on pinterest.  So this picture made me think about lapbooks, and how maybe the kids could have a lapbook version of what I have on the trifold board.  At a literacy planning meeting we recently had, my grade level talked through reorganizing a guided reading notebook for the kids, and talked about creating a section where they kept pictures of the anchor charts we created in class and then wrote personal examples of how they interpreted that information.  So that made me think that in my math notebook, I could add dividers for the different core areas (Number Sense, Computation and Estimation, Measurement and Geometry, and Patterns Functions and Algebra) and the kids could keep pictures of math anchor charts in those sections along with a written interpretation as well. 

I was also thinking about how they could keep their basic math tools in this notebook, in a pencil pouch, and the rules and game boards to our Investigations series.  So, we use a three ring binder.  I'm imagining a one inch version, since they are currently being offered at the Dollar Store.  So you open it up and see the pencil pouch.  And inside it has a dry erase marker, a felt eraser, addition fact cards, and game pieces. Then the calendar math lapbook (we'll change it every month). And then basic tools in page protectors, like the hundreds chart, and number lines, and what nots.  Then the four divided sections, with page protectors with the anchor charts and games filed in the right sections.  And then they could even use the page protectors to store other foldables they create during the year.  The calendar math lapbooks I'll store during the year, and then we'll bind them together at the end of the year for the kids to take home.  And I figure since I only spent a dollar on the binder, then the kids can take home their math notebook too. Maybe it would be a decent reference for that third grade sol?

Summer project, 105.