Showing posts with label classroom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label classroom. Show all posts

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Thoughtful Thursday - Using our Words to Make Others Smile



I can't quite determine where the inspiration for Thoughtful Thursday came from.... 
Perhaps it's the month of November and I'm feeling more grateful than before. 
Maybe it's the amount of negative information I browse anytime I hop online. 
It's possible I just wanted to help others feel good because Kid President says its the way to a happy life!

Whatever the reason, I can tell you that Thoughtful Thursday is a huge hit in our classroom and my kids were so excited to participate again. I had students delivering cards at 8:05 this morning (approximately 10 minutes after they arrived in class!)

What is Thoughtful Thursday? It's simple. Grab a blank card from the box and write a letter expressing gratitude, thankfulness, and kindness to a friend, teacher, family member, or anyone who may benefit from kind words. 

Looking for a little pick me up today? I encourage you to extend a note of kindness to someone else. I imagine it will not only brighten your day but theirs as well. Do it... I dare ya!



P.S. If you haven't seen the latest Kid President video. I highly recommend! He reminds us that we are PEOPLE, people and we should treat each other accordingly. 

Thursday, May 12, 2016

Bringing our Writing to Life!

The end of the year in room 52 has looked different for the past five years. May rolls around and I think, "Yep! Trying something new again..." This May was no different. 

This year, my students are filled to the brim with creative juices and I wanted to give them an opportunity to showcase their creative skills to wrap up the year. As you can see from this post about science movies, we are really good at being in front of the camera. 

This year, I challenged students to write an original fictional story and then turn it into an iMovie. The catch? They wouldn't be starring in it... They were to make all props and characters using materials around the school.  I must include that my classroom has been a disaster for three weeks and I'm totally-okay-with-it-sometimes

To get our wheels  spinning, students swiped through iMovie Trailers to get an idea for the theme and mood of their story. After they decided on a tone for their story, they had to complete a graphic organizer mapping out the beginning, middle, and end. This part was vital to the project being successful. We tend to have REALLY long "middle" parts of the story and then we, "fall off a cliff" (as a good friend calls it) and don't wrap up our story.  I even encouraged them to include a theme at the end of the story. 

I've kind of been flying by the seat of pants from day one, but I think it's working out! Here's the rundown of how the project went AFTER they completed a graphic organizer:
  • Students had to write and edit an original story in their writer's notebooks with partners. 
  • Students had to create all props. Students had to make (no more) than two backdrops and characters on popsicle sticks. This is where the project took a mind of its own... We have horses, Lego characters, Pizza Steve, and balloon men floating around the room!
  • Partners worked to create an iMovie trailer to show on YouTube to get the public ready for their movie!
  • The final piece... create an iMovie sharing your original story. 
Behind the Scenes  -- Creating Props

Behind the Scenes  -- Filming 

Right now, students are tying up lose ends and getting ready to submit movies tomorrow. In the mean time, you can check out our trailers on YouTube! 

Reflecting back on the last few weeks.... I have to admit, I've been on a bit of a roller coaster of decision making. At times, I've panicked and thought, "HOLY COW! We won't ever finish!" Then I'm flying high and thinking, "These kids are amazing."  I realized it was important to set daily goals with my students so they had a focus for each class period. It was also important, for me, to give up a bit of control and let the kids be creative! It was loud, noisy, messy, and kids were all over the place.... but they were creating incredible products! 

You can check out all of the trailers for the movies (coming to a theater NEAR YOU!) right here.




Friday, April 29, 2016

To Seesaw or Not to Seesaw?


This year, we are 1:1 in 5th grade with iPads. One of the apps my students have come to know is Seesaw. We were using Kidblog until it was no longer a free service. This bummed me out for a solid two days. However, I'm moved on and living life just fine without it. 

Read more about all that Seesaw offers here

One of the features I really like on the website are the Activity Ideas in the Teacher Resource bank. These gave me an idea of how to get started using Seesaw.  

Here are some Pros and Cons of using Seesaw:
(Please note these are all my opinions based on my experience as a classroom teacher)

The positives:
  • All posts require approval. These gave me an opportunity to review all posts before they were viewed by my students. 
  • Parents can login and view posts, comment on posts, and see what their kids are blogging about. I had several parents leave comments, like posts, and view content each day.
  • Seesaw sends a "This Week in Review". You can see the traffic on your site, parent visits, student logins, etc. 
  • Students can upload pictures, record video, draw something, add links from the internet, etc. The feature we used the most was "Note". 
  • Students can upload a picture and annotate on top of the picture. This is great for labeling diagrams or working through math problems.
A few Cons:
  • In the "Note" section (where we blogged) there are no formatting tools.  They couldn't change the size, make proper headings, officially indent, etc. 
  • If they don't finish an activity and they log off.. Poof! It's gone. (This has been our experience..)
My Wishes for Seesaw (is anybody reading this?):
  • Give students an opportunity to upload a photo and type text with it. Similar to Kidblog or another blogging platform.
  • Add formatting features in the Note section so we can take our publishing up a notch. 
  • Save drafts! Please let us save. Sometimes we have to take breaks with projects on our iPads and don't always finish in one setting. 
  • Let us save! Sometimes we want to keep the work we publish on Seesaw. It would be GREAT to be able to save those things to our camera roll for future portfolios. 
To wrap it up, I'm a big fan of everything that Seesaw offers. I think you should jump on board and give it a whirl.


P.S. Some of "My Wishes" may actually be a reality on the app... and I may have not figured them out yet. :)





#AprilBlogaDay

Whew - It's been a while sweet blog. I'm in a bit of a bloggy funk and can't quite find the direction I want to go with my sharing.  I'm a bit of an over-sharer in my personal life, so it's a bit surprising that I can't figure out my why for sharing here. At home, my husband is reading the book, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress Free Productivity. While he's been reading, we've chatted about different things in the book and one of the topics is mind-mapping. 

Humph. 
I use mind-mapping all of the time in my classroom, but it never occurred to me to apply this logic to my own life outside of school (What? Life outside of school!? Just kidding...) 

The other night, I began to mind-map my summer plans and my blog ideas. Before long, I had a laundry list of things I wanted to share in all aspects of my life. 

So - I'm back! 

Our morning procedure is a bit rushed due to specials beginning at 8:15 and kids arriving at 7:50ish. We have a small window of time to unpack, write down daily assignments, and get prepared for the day. As the year is winding down, I noticed the kids are quite savvy with their morning procedure and had quite a bit of free time in the morning. While, of course, I encouraged morning reading.... that was not always the popular activity in the morning. I get it... they wanted to chat, catch up with friends in the 15 hours or so that they hadn't been together.

Enter... #AprilBlogaDay!


Using the online journal, Seesaw my students wrote one blog entry per day in the month of April. I asked for student suggestions on topics (or hashtags) and I created an anchor chart to display. It was one brilliant student idea to make Fridays a "catch up" day. 



As a class, we created a few ground rules. These ground rules really set the pace for our blogging experience. Since Fridays were "Catch up & Comment" days, we even had great discussions on leaving positive, specific feedback to our peers. It was amazing to see how students were helping one another edit and proofread their post. Plus... they are really good at finding the perfect emoji for every.single.occasion. 

While I gave my students the opportunity to submit ideas for the blog, I, of course, had to add in a few of my own. After a morning of blogging about #chicken (I heard about all kinds of chicken.. baked, fried, grandma's, KFC, using it for fish food....) I asked the students to blog about reading. A student piped up, "this was your idea wasn't it, Mrs. Robertson?" :)

Something I really enjoyed about my student's blog posts was what they chose to share. I learned so much more about my students through their blog posts. Some blogged about school, family, siblings, weekend activities. While they were blogging, I was able to "talk" to each one of my students because I could comment and ask them questions after they published. 


Today, I created a Padlet for kids to submit ideas for our "#EndofSchoolBlogaDay". I'm excited to see what they come up with!

Check out my blog post on the pros and cons of using Seesaw in the classroom. 



Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Hear Us Out! Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!

Do you ever have grand ideas for a project and then step back from your incredibly elaborate ideas and think to yourself, "how in the heck am I going to pull this off?" 

OR! 

Have you ever continued with the incredibly elaborate project idea.... and then when you're in the thick of it you think, "Oh crud. How are we are going to pull this off?"

Luckily, this was one of those times were I took the advice of my co-collaboraters and we took the project down just a smidgen and it's been in-cred-ible. 

Instead of attempting to manage a full fledged newsroom, we decided to have our classes create original "Opinion Talk Shows".  Our writing focus for this quarter is opinion writing, so what better way to share our opinions than to write it AND share it on YouTube?

To kick off the project, we decided as a class to name our show, "Robertson Rivals". Each week, one small group gets the opportunity to take one of their published opinion pieces and transform it into a script for a talk show. 

Behind the Scenes

Small groups collaborate through Google Slides to write their script and decide on specific "parts" for the talk show. 

Our inspiration for opinion topics come from Scholastic News Magazines. Our more popular debates have been...

Should participation count as a grade?
Does everyone deserve a trophy?
Should students have homework over breaks?
Should schools make up snow days on Saturdays?

We invite YOU and your students to subscribe to our YouTube channel and weigh in on these topics. My students love watching the "views" number spike and hearing feedback from other kids (some even in our building) about their talk show!


Sunday, February 7, 2016

A Little Cheesy

The past few years I've enjoyed standing in the treats aisle at the grocery store trying to think of puns for my student's valentines. My husband is the king of punny thoughts so I highly enjoy naming off candies and treats and asking him to come up with something.  A yearly activity I plan to continue for-ev-er. 

Gosh... Married life is the best. 


 Last year I thanked my students for making me "Snicker" everyday...

In the past, I've made things "O-Fish-AL" about my appreciation for my students. 

This year, I'm just plain cheesy. :)




Happy Valentine's Day (week) to my fellow teacher friends! 

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

KAHOOT!

Looking to try something new in the month of February? My suggestion: Kahoot!

We just can't get enough of Kahoot around these parts! 

Before Christmas, I took the plunge and created a study guide for our solar system assessment on Kahoot's game-based response system.  Since then, my students have been begging and begging to play again! I knew the end of our animal classification unit was around the corner, so I created another study session for this week. 

Engagement was through the roof! My students love the instant feedback and competition. I love the excitement over the content, how easy it is to create, and the feedback I receive from the teacher's perspective. 




So far, I've only utilized the "Quiz" portion of Kahoot.  I haven't used the "Discussion" or "Survey" features yet. 

Do you have any great quizzes to share? I love to share! Share with me and I'll share with you!

Monday, January 4, 2016

Happy New Year!

I'm welcoming the second half of the year with open arms! 

We have an opportunity to start fresh and reset things in our classrooms. Along with reviewing our classroom expectations and chatting about our holiday breaks.... we'll be setting a few goals for 2016!


Download the PDF version of our 2016 goals page here

Download the Word (editable) version of the 2016 goals page here

How are you kicking off the new year with your students? 

Monday, November 30, 2015

Figurative Language in Literature

Our figurative language study is in full swing! This week, we are focusing our efforts on finding examples of figurative language in literature, music, and in our daily lives. Inspired by a colleague, I am challenging my students to listen and think about figurative language all hours of the day. As they find examples of figurative language, they are invited to add those examples to our class collaborative Google Slides. 

Did I mention we are 1:1 now? Life changing, folks! We just recently started utlitizing Google Classroom now that we are 1:1 with iPads. 

To begin, I created a bare-bones Slides project with the different types of figurative language we study in 5th grade. After assigning the collaborative Google Slides in Google Classroom (how many times can I say Google in this post?), we defined each of the types of figurative language as a class. This isn't the first time we've discussed figurative language, so the definitions were more of a refresher after the long holiday weekend. 

Then, I partnered the students and gave each duo an opportunity to pick a book from my special pile of "figurative language friendly" books. Students read the book together and were adding to the Slides in a matter of minutes! We had so much editing happening at once it caused a bit of panic. We'll refer to that as GAFE Growing Pains. :) We did some troubleshooting and solved the problem with "disappearing" text. 

"Owl Moon" by Jane Yolen 
"Pigsty" by Mark Teague

Here's a snapshot of the titles we used. There were several more I found online, but I didn't have access to those books in my personal library or our school library. 


If you are looking for good books to add to your mentor text stash or your classroom library, I highly recommend the following titles! I apologize to your bank account in advance. 

Pigsty by Mark Teague
Fireflies by Judy Brinkloe
My Mama Had a Dancing Heart by Libba Moore Gray
Roller Coaster by Marla Frazee 
Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
Yesterday, I Had the Blues by Jeron Ashford Frame
Parts by Tedd Arnold
Grandfather Twilight by Barbara Berger

What books do you use to teach figurative language? Share with me!

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Let's Celebrate!

My list of favorite things about teaching grows each and everyday. Here's one of the things I love about being a teacher (put quite nicely by Todd Whitaker):

One of my goals for this brand-spankin' new year is to celebrate more. One way to celebrate more is with birthdays. We've all got them! Each one of my students deserves a day where they can be truly celebrated. 

Therefore, I present to you our birthday treats of room 52:



I made my schnazzy birthday tags with KG fonts, ribbon, and tasty kid-approved snacks. 

You can download your own copy of these birthday tags through Google Drive here.  

How do you celebrate in your classroom? 
Share with me! Help me reach my goals!

Sunday, March 22, 2015

Mentor Text: Voices in the Park

Buy it on Amazon
The book "Voices in the Park" by Anthony Browne has been sitting on my shelf for several years. Until this week, I haven't found a real reason to use it for instruction. I was pacing around my room thinking about perspective and point of view and had that AH-HA moment. I'm almost positive I said, "I'VE GOT IT!" out loud and completely startled my students. By now... they've become used to my outbursts. I knew I had the perfect book to illustrate the difference between point of view and perspective (something we are stuck on in 5th grade). 

I closed my mini lesson on the difference between point of view and perspective by reading aloud and dissecting Voices in the Park. It was a great discussion! However, it wasn't until later that day when the magic happened...

An avid writer in my classroom (such an avid writer that she had to get a NEW writer's notebook this year because her other one was full!) approached me and asked if she could write a "Voices in the Park" story. We brainstormed what her location could be in the story and we settled on the school cafeteria. Then, she was off! Writing a fictional story about the cafeteria from four very unique perspectives.

Last night as I was thinking about my plans for reading time - it hit me! Why aren't we ALL doing what my little writer is doing? What a great lesson!

From there... the lesson was born. We discussed how to brainstorm a location, time of day, or time period in our life. Then, we picked logical "voices" to play the roles in our short stories. 


The lesson lent itself to great extra mini lessons on voice, dialogue, and character development. We pulled Wonder off the shelf as an additional mentor text. One student piped up, "my character is like Justin from Wonder, he NEVER writes capital letters." 

Our finished products will be published on our blogs next week. I'm equally excited for my kids to publish their stories and be able to read and comment on one another's. 

Have a great week!

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Scientific Method iMovies

I'm sure you're all familiar with the book, "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie..." by Laura Numeroff, right?
Source

Well... if you give a kid an iMovie project to create...
You're going to need some patience.
If you give a kid an iMovie project, you're probably going to need some props and costumes to go along with the project.
Then, when other students see one group with a wig and a microphone.. you're PROBABLY going to need to find six more wigs, 6 more microphones, and 8 more feet in your classroom to make space for the creativity happening.

Catch my drift? :)

 In previous years, I have had students create scientific method comic strips demonstrating their understanding of the scientific method. This year, I decided to utilize iMovie and have students create a movie to illustrate their knowledge of the scientific method process.

Let's just say... it was pure chaos in my room for a few days. I started to sweat wondering if this project was even making an impact? Were they learning anything? Were they truly showing me what they knew about the scientific method?

I held my breath. Counted to ten. Crossed my fingers and toes and hoped for genuine learning to happen. I even had time to snap a few pictures and send a tweet or two:

Then... it was presentation day. I had watched the chaos, costumes, accents, and shenanigans unfold for several days and I held my breath as I pressed play on my computer.

It was like the scene from Sleeping Beauty where Aurora begins singing with the animals in perfect harmony...




Everything came together. The projects came together. They were clearly demonstrating their knowledge of the scientific method!

Despite my hestitation and worry about the project, they were a smashing success. Since then we have been on an iMovie roller coaster creating projects left and right. We just wrapped up individual goal videos, erosion and weathering videos in science, and are starting book trailers! #weloveiMovie

Share with me teachers, how do you use iMovie in your classroom?

Thursday, August 28, 2014

Breaking in our Reading Spirals - Genre Overview

Once school started, my mailbox seemed to fill up with Book Orders rather quickly. Now, I'll be the first to admit I love browsing the new selections from Scholastic, but do I need 2 bundles of the same book order... twice in one week? No... No I do not. 

Bouncing off an idea from colleagues and Pinterest, I decided to use those Book Orders to chat about genres. To start the school year, I felt it was important to have an overview of some "big" genres they will encounter as readers. 

We discussed the general characteristics of about six genres and created a chart in our spirals. Then, students searched through the Book Orders to find examples of each genre. 



While students were working, questions and conversations were centered around the books they were previewing in the Book Order. We even started talking about OTHER genres I hadn't intended on bringing up - talk about a teachable moment! For example, I was able to introduce the Dystopian genre for my class. Pretty awesome!

How do you teach genres to your students? Share with me!

Saturday, August 23, 2014

Seeking Input for our Morning Procedure

There are two procedures that have caused me the most grief over the past five years (see! I have so much to learn) and those are: morning and afternoon procedures.  This year, I decided to shake things up a bit and make a change - for the better! Instead of creating a procedure for the kids to memorize and follow... we established a procedure as a class. Which, I must add, coincidentally was exactly what I wanted them to do anyway! 

Using another idea, and quality tool, presented in our district-wide kick off meetings, I asked students the following questions:
What is YOUR job in the mornings? Specifically from 7:50-8:12 AM...
What is MY (the teacher) job in the morning?
What is our job as a classroom in the morning?

Each student was given the opportunity to answer the questions on their own and stick their post-it note on the front board. 


As a class, we read through and grouped similar responses under the "Your Job, My Job, Our Job" categories. Some of the "Your Job" responses were: filling out planners, sharpening pencils, unpacking backpacks, using the restroom, etc. As for "My Job", students wanted to be greeted, wanted me to prepare for the school day, drink my coffee (hah!), give hugs, and talk to them. For "Our Job" students felt it was important to get prepared for the school day. 

Umm.. NAILED IT. 


We drafted our morning procedure and hung it proudly on the whiteboard for all to see. It would have been easier to iron out this procedure for me to write this on my own, but seeking input from my students was far more powerful. When students came in Friday morning, the morning ran like clockwork. It was ah-maze-ing. 

Now... let's hope they remember over the weekend! If not, we can always practice the procedure they created. :)



What tips do you have for establishing classroom procedures?

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Creating a Classroom Mission Statement

Like most teachers, our first order of business in the classroom is to establish a solid foundation for the rest of the school year. This includes establishing a classroom community, getting to know one another, ironing out the procedures and routines of our room, figuring out our daily schedule... and learning on the fly. Let's just say, we had several "teachable moments" today on the second day of 5th grade. 

My district kicked off back to school meetings by introducing six different quality tools we could implement in our classrooms in the following days. Of course, I left our meetings and started rewriting my lesson plans to start adding in some of the tools introduced. If you're interested in quality tools (i.e. plus/deltas, consensograms, affinity diagrams, etc.) click on the link here.  

In previous years (four to be exact), I've used the story "The Kingdom With No Rules or Laws" to begin our conversation on classroom norms. After reading the story, students would suggest classroom norms and we would compile all of the results into a positive list, sign the document, and post it for all to see. 

This year, in place of "The Kingdom..." story, we created a classroom mission statement. I began the conversation by showing students our SOTO Mission Statement - which was a conversation in itself. I'm certain none of my students were aware this "phrase" existed. 

Disclaimer: This is how I chose to do this activity in my classroom, by no means am I saying this is the absolute way it has to happen. :)

Yes! We can!
 Next, I explained to the class how we could create a classroom mission statement to simply state who we are and our purpose for the year.  After handing out post-its to five different tables, I posed the following questions:
Who are we?
What will you need to do in order to be successful this year?
What can I, the teacher, do to help you be successful this year?
What should the students do in order for things to run smoothly?
How are we going to accomplish these tasks?

After about five minutes, groups shared out their responses from the post-it notes. As students were talking, I help form their thoughts into a cohesive paragraph. After a few minutes of collaborating, our classroom mission statement had been created!

Perhaps I'm biased, but my favorite part of the statement is where they asked for me to entertain them. Oh, my students! Ask and you shall receive. 



To polish things off, each student took turns signing our mission statement and vowed to hold one another accountable to our classroom expectations. 

It's going to be a great year!

Monday, August 11, 2014

SPOTLIGHT Bulletin Board Idea

During my first year of teaching, and Fellows year, I conducted an action research project on using nonfiction text during read alouds and how it affected students reading nonfiction on their own. During that year, with guidance from my mentor, we created a hanging bulletin board where I would "Spotlight" the nonfiction text we were reading for the week. It was a great resource and reminder for students of the books we had read and were available to them as readers. 


Fast forward to my current 5th grade classroom. I am fortunate to have a HUUUGE wall in the back of my room. The past few years, I've bounced back and forth between what to put on that wall and this year I decided to create another spotlight!



Because I teach three sections of science, the bulk of my material posted on the wall revolves around our science content. If you're like me, I am constantly swapping out posters and materials depending on what we are studying. One of our first "spotlights" will be on the scientific method, once we move onto weather, I will change out the posters and objectives for our next unit. 

What bulletin boards do you have around your room spotlight content areas? Share your ideas with me!

Thursday, August 7, 2014

Since You've Been Gone

This year, I'm switching up my system for absent students. In previous years, I've had a file folder waiting for students when they return with worksheets and notes from the school day. This process really didn't work for my class, students, or organization system. In an attempt to help students become more self-motivated and responsible, I introduce to you....
Kelly Clarkson


First, I can't help but grin like a goober when I look at this hanging file. Who wouldn't want to look at Kelly Clarkson rocking out when searching for their absent work?

Want a copy? Click here to download the file from Google Drive!

Here's my game plan: 
  • Hanging files will be labeled with the five days of the week. My Postal Clerk will add an extra copy in the absent file for students who are absent (even if we have perfect attendance, I will have an one extra copy just in case!) Say two or three students are absent? Then, my Postal Clerk will add that many copies to the basket. 
  • When the child returns to school from being out, they will ask me what they missed and I will hop on my desk and start singing, "SINCE YOU'VE BEEN GOONNNEEEEE" Just kidding. 
  • When the child returns to school from being out, I will remind them to check with Kelly (hehe) and get their work from the day they missed. 


What tricks do you have to manage absent work with multiple classes? Share with me!

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Updated Post - The Job Market is Officially Open!

To date, the most popular post on my blog is from July 2012 where I shared with you fine folks about my classroom job system. You can read about it right ---> here. Over the past few years, I've received so many emails from teachers all over the world (seriously!!) asking to share my job application document. Nothing is more exciting than swapping emails with a teacher around the globe at 7:00 AM!



This year, I've updated my job application and you can access it through Google Docs ---> here. (click the blue link!) You'll only notice a few changes, but I've tweaked a few of the jobs to fit the needs of my classroom and I've added a "You're Hired" portion at the bottom. I needed something for my students to reference if they forgot/needed reminders on their job responsibilities. Once we have our "job training", I'll have my students stick their responsibilities slip in their binders for safe keeping. 
---------------------------
In Room 52, the following jobs have been posted for hire:

Accountant: The accountant’s daily responsibility is to adjust the attendance cards to a horizontal setting at the end of the day.

Librarian: The Librarian checks the room for stray books, straightens the fiction and nonfiction shelves, and checks to make sure all books are in ABC order.

Computer Technician: The computer tech is responsible for turning on the laptops and logging them into the eMINTS network. At the conclusion of the day, the tech turns off the laptops. In addition, the Computer Tech is responsible for helping their peers with tech issues. The Computer Tech will help their peers troubleshoot and solve tech problems before consulting the teacher.

Assignment Sorter: Puts all collected assignments in student number order, paper clips together, and places them on Ms. Furnell’s desk. The assignment sorter marks off who brought their homework from a list and hands it into the teacher.

Postal Clerk: Delivers graded work and other items to student mailboxes daily.

Custodian: The Custodian is responsible for checking the floors and tabletops (desks and shared work areas) at the conclusion of the day for trash. The custodian uses the lint roller on the floor to get all scraps.

Recycling Chief: The Recycling Chief takes the blue recycling bin to the larger bins daily.

Board Cleaner: The Board Cleaner is in charge of wiping down the white board at the end of the day. Remember to check with Ms. Furnell on what to erase and what to keep!

Scheduler: The scheduler changes the calendar at the end of each day to reflect tomorrow’s events and date.

Caboose: The Caboose stands in the back of our short, straight, and silent line. Once leaving the room, the Caboose turns off the light and changes the sign to reflect where the class is located in the Upper Elementary.

Pencil Sharpener:  The Sharpener makes sure there are enough sharpened pencil in the “sharp” bucket. Reminds peers to return any borrowed pencils and replaces dull pencils.
---------------------------
The first page of the document is a simple overview of the jobs available, the second page is the actual application, and the final pages are the detailed responsibilities of each job. Again, these are based on what works in my classroom but it may be helpful for you with planning!

Happy Wednesday!

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Magnets for Families - Meet the Teacher Night Takeaway

As a little takeaway for parents at Meet the Teacher night last year, I gave each family a magnet with my contact information listed on it. I used a template (which you can download here) and I added in my room number, extension, email, and website.
 I'm having trouble locating the original blog it came from - but once I do, I'll update the link! 

This year, I reached out to an oh-so-extremely talented friend and asked her to recreate a new image for me. My request was to have an image (similar to the magnet from last year) with all of my contact information be made into a GIF file for my weebly site. 

She responded with, "umm sure best friend!" It went something like this:

Then I replied with great excitement...
Source
Because it has ALL of my contact information listed on it, you'll just have to use your imagination! :) 

Then, I asked for yet another favor of my oh-so-extremely talented friend and asked her to create a JPEG of that same image so I could create a magnet for my families this year. 

Of course, she responded with great enthusiasm. It went something like this, "JPEG for YOU, YOU, and YOUUU!"

Source
I printed the images on card stock, laminated each one, stuck a magnet on the back, and...

viola! 


Now families can stick my contact information next to their favorite Michael Scott magnet on their fridge, too. :)

Share with me teachers, what do you have planned for Meet the Teacher night? 

Sunday, August 3, 2014

A Welcoming 'Treat' For My Students

In 17 days, I'll begin my 5th year of teaching! 
Here's to year 5!

The past few years, I've made it a habit to send a welcome postcard to my incoming fifth graders. I've received great feedback from parents and students in the past, so I see no reason not to continue this great tradition! 

Thanks to the greeting card site, Treat, my welcome postcards received a much deserved facelift! Using a template for a teacher appreciation card, I used Treat's customizing options and tailored it to my needs. Now, my students have a pretty schnazzy card headed their way through the U.S. Postal Service! 


Treat allows you to customize personalized greeting cards for any occasion. I kind of went a little wild on the site and made one for every wedding and birthday for the rest of the year. Expect posts about those... later. :)

On the inside, I typed a little note welcoming my new crew and important dates for families to jot down on their calendars. Most importantly, I invited families to our Meet the Teacher night before school begins. 




There ya have it, folks! One of many back to school preparations I can check off the list. 

17 more days!!

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