Hot Tip for Managing Task Cards

I LOVE using task cards in my classroom! And to be perfectly honest, I've been holding off on storing them the way I most want to.  I've been secretly coveting brag book style picture albums for my task cards, but I've been reluctant to spend $2 a piece for them in the quantity I need.  So I just have been using binder clips and O-rings to hold my task cards.

Today I got out of the bitter cold here on Long Island and spent an hour wandering around AC Moore.  I picked up some Valentine's Day stuff at 60% off.  Then on the way towards the checkout, I spied them -   The Big Max Albums.  They're marked down to $1 this week, and with the teacher discount they're only 85 cents!  And if you look inside, its the equivalent of
THREE of those brag book albums - three sections of
16 pages.

Perfect!  I can make TASK CARDS BOOKS for around 30 cents each!




Now I'm not gonna lie.  It wasnt as easy as I thought it would be to get the sections out of there intact.  I was careful with the first one and it came out perfectly.  Then I got careless and I trashed the next two.  But now I've got the hang of it.  And before you give up on me and say its too much trouble - just LOOK at how beautifully you can provide task cards to your students!  And for SO cheap!

So let me show you how I managed to get them out without tearing them up.  Separate the inside of the book from the cover.  Maybe you can find a way to reuse the covers.  I just threw them away.  Then I bent back the binding and got as close to the pack of pages as I could with my fingers. Bend the binding back on both sides and you'll feel the section come apart from the binding.  Pull on it - gently!  A little from this end, a little from that end, and before you know it, it's out!

And here's another REALLY good part.  I printed out the task cards on paper. Not card stock.  Not laminated.  Just PAPER.  I cut them up, not even being so careful on the edges as I would be if I were laminating them (what a time saver!) Then I filled them into the book sections.  You might want to make a cover and a back cover out of card stock.  I thought I would do it that way, but after seeing how great this turned out, I'm just going to leave it as is.  This weekend I'm going to make a class set of each of my task card sets,  I can't wait to show them to my students!  Look at them again!  I'm so happy with the way they came out.

 

I hope you're feeling inspired to display task cards for your students in this really beautiful way!


You can check out some of my LIFE SCIENCE Task Cards for Middle and High School Students by clicking on their covers below.