TeachThought Day 8: The Contents of My Desk Drawer

Today's TeachThought reflection is an interesting one: I need to examine the contents of my desk drawer and infer what these contents mean.
 
My desk drawer is full of colorful items: post-it notes, highlighters and colored pencils and markers of every shade, stickers, even colorful paper clips. These contents make it clear to me that not only do I find color important in my life but I use it for many purposes.
 
The organization color brings to my teaching is necessary--I hand out different colored post-its to my three History sections when we complete an "exit ticket" and assign a different colored paper clip to student groups when they need to jigsaw to a new group. I require students to highlight their persuasive writing at the start of the year so that I can differentiate between their claim, evidence and reasoning (using three different colors).
 
There is one exception to my color usage, though: I never grade assignments in red ink.
 
Color, to me, simply makes life more fun and I couldn't imagine teaching without it. #reflectiveteacher #teachthought

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