Summer Planning and Pinterest

Pinterest. Love, love, love this site! And who doesn't? Especially those of us who began teaching with toilet paper rolls and baby food jars or those teachers who need to supplement their current curriculum without spending a fortune doing so. But just like with any great resource, being able to benefit from using it is the key to success.

I promised myself several years ago that I wasn't going to succumb to the curse of Pinterest. I held off for a very long time too, but finally decided to 'try it once' and now, just like all the other users, I'm in over my head. Since I am such a visual person and like to see what I’ve accomplished instead of becoming overwhelmed with ideas, I figured out quickly that I needed a way to organize all of my pins where I would actually utilize them.

I don't want to waste time pinning then forget where everything is, or get my school pins mixed up with my personal pins, so I created boards that broke my pins down by quarter and subject. I also created a 'completed' board where I move all of my finished project ideas. This helps me to not get so overwhelmed with boards that have a ton of pins. The idea is to either empty my boards by the end of the school year or re-pin unused ideas for next year. I also mark down the pin locations in my lesson plan book, along with which objective is being covered.

Summer is a great time to start organizing these pins so that I can go directly to my quarter and subject boards as I write out my lesson plans. Since I teach elementary school and many of my students ‘loop’ with me, I don’t like repeating projects. I organize my boards according to very specific subjects. My subjects include leveled reading, writing, science themes, social studies themes, Spanish, art, grammar concepts, geography/map skills, first grade math, second grade math, third grade math, fourth grade math, sixth grade math and literature. I also have boards for classroom management, classroom décor, classroom organization and teacher tips.

I also created a board of 'my own ideas'. This is the board where I post pics of pins I have tweaked or ideas that I've developed on my own. I love being able to file these away in a place that's readily available when colleagues ask for them instead of digging through my file cabinets forgetting where I filed items or what I labeled everything.

Another thing I like to do is take screenshots of ideas that I come across on my Facebook newsfeed. If I can’t find the project when I do a search on Pinterest I take the screenshots that I’ve downloaded and post them on the appropriate boards, this way I always have the idea even if I don’t have the specific directions.

So here’s to a summer of fruitful, purposeful pinning, complete with a year of amazing projects for your classroom learners, organized at your fingertips! How do you utilize amazing resources without getting overwhelmed?

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