Veterans Day Writing Project

This year for Veterans Day I saw the cutest little writing project on Pinterest. To my delight, after following the links I found it could be purchased on Teachers Pay Teachers for just $3! I immediately bought it and this is what we ended up with!

Even though the project was intended for younger grades, my fifth graders had fun putting it together. While we were working on the project, we took turns talking about the veterans we know in our lives!

Oh, and if you like the "Thank You, Veterans!" sign...I'll post a video later how to do that using Microsoft Publisher! It's SOOOO easy, you won't believe it!

If you teach the younger grades you might just want to check out Miss Kindergarten's website, too! She's the creative mind behind this fun project!

Shoal Watercolor Paintings

WOW! It's been over a month since I last blogged. I guess that just goes to show teachers ARE super busy!

So...here we are in November and we are up to our ears in learning! We're finishing up DARE, our unit on nouns, physical science, etc.

In social studies we've been studying different European explorers. One of our most recent explorers was John Cabot. Since I'm also required to teach art, I combined the two (thanks to the idea in Evan-Moor's Explorers of North America Pocket Books) and got this lovely display shoals!

One of the things I was most proud about is we talked about how the deeper in the ocean you get, the darker the water gets...you can see several of them really took that into consideration in their painting!

Here's a picture of the sign, close up.

Classroom Photos

I'm going to take you on a tour of my classroom...so sit back and enjoy!

Messy room before cleaning....

Sorting Bulletin Board Borders

Student closet (BEFORE)

Student Closet (AFTER)

"Seaweed" Door

Math Manipulatives and Shelves which hold science, social studies, math, and spelling materials (BEFORE)

Math Manipulatives and Shelves which hold science, social studies, math, and spelling materials (AFTER)

Overhead Station, Boggle, White Boards, Clipboards, Recycle Bin, and Homework Trays

Computers

Daily Schedule/Assignment Board (Had to use last year's theme for this, as the ones I thought I could use were too ratty and old looking. Will be making new ones soon!)

Accelerated Reader Bulletin Board - my students earn a jewel for every 5 AR points. In addition I offer special jewels for special challenges. They get a gold coin when they read specific books I suggest (when we read something about Ruby Bridges, I gave the challenge of reading one of our biographies on her; on Patriot Day I issued the challenge of reading a couple of different books that fit the theme, etc.) They get a set of pearls when they recommend a book to a friend, and that friend reads the book and passes the AR test....and as we go along the year I'll issue more challenges!

View of AR Bulletin Board and Classroom Library

View of magazine rack I got for $10 when Hollywood Video went out of business...I painted the yellow sides (which had their logo on it, too) with black chalkboard paint and left the purple alone.

Supplies Bookshelves Front and Back

Morning Meeting Message Cart - This is where I write my morning messages, often times they are interactive. I love this cart! At the top are our lunch stones that children move after they've read the message (and responded when appropriate) to indicate whether they brought lunch from home or are eating school lunch.

Outside Bulletin Board - I really wanted to put up a title and the original idea was to put up the subjects we'd be studying with subtopics as well, but that just never happened! Then I thought maybe I'd do something with kids' faces in fishes, or I don't know what else...but alas it still looks exactly the same as it did on day one. I'm not one for decorative bulletin boards, I really prefer functional, so it look like it might be time to take this bulletin board down and replace it with something worthwhile!

Looking inside from the outside hallway.

3 Weeks Down!

Phew! What a great start to school I've had! I'm wearing a lot of hats this year - I teach fifth grade, I'm the school's ESL Director, I'm also the UIL Director, and when needed I consult as the Reading Specialist! Thank goodness I have a small and WONDERFUL group this year, which allows me to spread myself a little bit too thin!

Some of the wonderful things going on this year:
*I only have 13 students.
*5/13 students are GT (Gifted and Talented) students, so on Fridays my class only consists of 8 children for one and a half hours...they are in music for half of that time, but I get them for the other 45 minutes! I LOVE this time with them! Today we played a variation of war with place value! I also gave them a reading assessment so I could plan some future activities (a/k/a GAMES!) to meet their individual needs! Have I mentioned how much I enjoy this time with them?!
*I'm loving Morning Meeting - this class has GOT it going on! If you don't know what Morning Meeting is - head on over to the Responsive Classroom website! You'll be amazed!
*I got BOGGLE up and running this year and my kids are loving it! There's one child in particular who is just putting her all into it each and every day! It's amazing to watch her work so hard!
*I love my beginning of the year science notebook - I'm using a lot of different resources CSCOPE, SuperTeacherWorksheets, ScienceA-Z, and little ole me! We spent a little bit of time discussing safety (even squeezed in some writing - wrote a paragraph on classroom safety and was SUPER picky about topic sentence, details, concluding sentence. We'll be typing them up next week!) We've now moved on to tools and we're having a good time learning about the tools - next up, centers so we can do some HANDS ON experimenting with them!! One of the things I created for them was a measurement graphic organizer! It came out so great I decided to put it up on TeachersPayTeachers!
*Our travel bags for Social Studies are looking GREAT! I'll be putting something up my my TeachersPayTeachers store eventually with this, but until then it's a little suitcase made out of a paper bag. One side is dedicated to continents/oceans and the other side is dedicated to states. We have travel "stickers" to glue on our bag, maps, inserts that go inside, songs and stories to help us remember the information...it's just so stinking cute!

I know there's a lot more going on in my room right now, but these are the things that seem to be fresh in my mind!

More Morning Meeting Greetings

One of the things I am horrible about when I do Morning Meeting is mixing up the greetings I use! Back in June I wrote about a set of morning greetings I put up on TeachersPayTeachers. Well, I'm happy to report that they've been selling so well, I decided to go ahead and do another set of them. Once again, these greetings are not my original ideas, and I have modified several of them.

I print my greetings 4 to a page, mat them on cardstock, laminate them, and then punch holes in the corner of each card and keep them all on a ring. It makes it so easy to select a greeting to use every day!

Here's the cover page for the cards.

If you want to purchase these go to TeachersPayTeachers.

Just a Little Teacher Appreciation: Birthdays

As the Teacher Appreciation chair for my daughter's school's PTA it is my privilege to honor the teachers as often as possible! This is what we are doing this year for their birthdays. Each teacher will get a decorated bottle of water with a lemondade and peach iced tea pouch in each one as well as a box of 4 wrapped Hershey Nugget chocolates. Then each month we'll do something else to show our appreciation, as well as a luncheon! I can't wait to show them how much we care!

If you are interested in learning more about Candy Bar Wrappers see my blogpost on them!

PTA Displays

Although I can't be at my daughter's school as often as some of the other moms, one way I like to stay involved is to be an active part of the PTA. For the last 2 years I have served as the Programs Chair with another wonderful mom (who also happens to be a teacher) and this year I am thrilled that I will be the chair for Teacher Appreciation. We started out the year with a spectacular luncheon during inservice week and today I put up a display (with two other board members) of all the teachers and staff members, with their names and positions. We also put up a display to showcase all of the students whose parents have joined PTA...and I'm very happy with the number of members so far considering we've only had Meet the Teacher Night!!

Membership Display:

Teacher Display (Whole Board):

Teacher Display (Close Up of Board):