July Currently

Summer Plans

Hello fellow teachers, it's been a while since my last post. I have been on summer vacation for a month now and I have a month left. What have I been doing this last month? Relaxing!! It's been nice to relax and get some me time in, since it's so hard to come by during the school year. With only a month until school starts back up, I finally feel ready to getting things ready. I have been looking through my Pinterest boards and looking for projects that I never got around to last summer. Even though I love Pinterest, it is hard to manage all those boards. So, in order to keep myself a little more organized and to also share with you some of my summer plans, I figured I could share what I plan on making for the upcoming school year.

Classroom Theme

I have always wanted a theme in my classroom, but I have never really known what I wanted. For the longest time, I wanted a garden theme with little white fences outlining the library. This past year I received a beautiful carpet from DonorsChoose.org that has a lot of blue, green, and brown in it. I automatically thought of this classroom and knew that it would be the perfect theme. My classroom will never look as beautiful as this room, but I would really like to incorporate a few things to tie everything together.



                                                        Displaying Student Work

I have an area high up in my classroom where I display picture frames. I like to display special things in the picture frames, but taking the frames off of the wall, removing the plastic front, and putting the work in has become a hassle. I end up keeping the same things in the frames for months. I think this would be a cute way to display their work.

Classroom Decor

I love this banner and I have been wanting one forever. This banner uses the actual book jackets, but I would probably just scan in the book covers and print them out.

Organization

I am all about getting organized this year. I feel like I am a pretty organized person, but when it comes to looking for little odds-and-ends, I am scrambling all around the classroom. Everything in my classroom has a place, but the places are all over the place. My stapler is stored across the room from my staples and that's just one example. I think it's finally time to make a teacher toolbox.

I just found out about this desk apprentice from Staples and I'm really thinking of getting it. It's $45, pretty steep for an organizer. I like the fact that I can hold the rest of the supplies that my teacher tool box can't. It's also a great place for my lesson plans and any other important information I may need. Not a summer project, but definitely a summer purchase.

Last school year I dove into using anchor charts. I've always used charts in some way, but never  consistently. This year I plan on using anchor charts a lot more. I never know what to do with an anchor chart after I take it down. Creating some sort of binder or folder that I can refer back to with the students or something they can refer back to on their own would be helpful. I'm also thinking of a way for students to store important anchor charts that I may want to copy for them to leave at their seats.

Last year I bought composition notebooks for my students and I had all these great ideas on how I would use them. Did I use them... no. Well, this year my goal is to put them into action. This helpful tip will save me a lot of stress.

Finally, the last thing I want to get completed, or at least start on is my sub tub. I'm hardly ever absent, but if I am, I don't want to be worrying about making lesson plans last minute. Or worse, I wake up sick and I'm having to lesson plan from home and make my team members copy for me. No fun. This sub tub will leave me prepared for anything.

Those are a few projects I want to work on. Of course I have many more that I want to accomplish, so hopefully once these get completed I can start on a few more. Look forward to blog posts as I go through these projects. If you have any projects this summer that you are going to be working on, I would love to hear what they are.

Top 5 Projects

Mrs. Sheehan over at Learning in Wonderland is having an amazing link up. She is asking us to share our top 5 projects we have made this year in our classrooms. Here are my top 5 in no particular order. I will leave link to each blog post if you want more information on each activity.

I Chews You

Autobiographies

Pot of Gold

If I Were President

Dear Deer

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Otter-ly Amazing!!

This was our last "normal" week of the school year. After today, each week will have something fun involved. Not that every week isn't fun already, but you know how the end of the year goes. I want to make sure that my students are still learning in the middle of all the fun. So why not being fun into the learning?

1. One of my favorite animals are otters. We are in the middle of research reports, which I will be sharing in a future blog post. My example research report is about otters so as you can image, my students are now in love with otters too. We also got lucky that one of our Scholastic News talks about otters. So here is what they created...

2. With the end of the school year approaching, I wanted to reflect on the year with my students. Mrs. Sheehan's Owl-way Remember file was perfect!!

3. Today is DIBELS testing for my second graders. Most of them started the year at 0-20 words per minute and today they are expected to read at 110 words per minute. Even if they don't all make it to 110, I am still so proud of all the gains they have made this year.

4. I have been crafting a lot lately. Yesterday I made a card for a friend. Maybe I will post it once I give it to her. I know she's going to love it!!!

5. It's Friday!!! Three more weeks of school that's enough to celebrate. I am loving that summer break is almost here. Time to start getting ready for next year!!

Dinosaurs... ROAR!!

Long time no post, right? Well if you're like me, it's very hard to stretch yourself in different directions. With my masters going on right now and teaching, things have been busy. I have also been crafting, which is a breath of fresh air after masters work and teaching work is over. I still love blogging my classroom happenings, but I always seem to make it my last priority. Today I am sharing with you what we have been doing the past week.

We started our unit on dinosaurs a couple of weeks ago and we have been going strong. Here are just a few things that we have been doing.

1. Fossil Dig

The students used cookies as rocks to dig out fossils.

2. Paleontologist

Then we used Diana Jump's dinosaur file to create paleontologists. Inside they wrote directions on how to dig for fossils.

3. Tyrannosaurus Rex

We used Diana Jump's file again to write about trex and complete an activity.

4. Triceratops

This activity turned out super cute. I wanted my students to create a triceratops, but I hadn't made a template for them. I went ahead and drew a template on the board and my students created their own. They turned out super cute and they all had their own personalities.

One of my favorites!!

5. Herbivores vs. Carnivores

A fun way to compare and contrast herbivores and carnivores.

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Update

It's been a while since I've last posted so let me just recap what has been going on in pictures.

Leapin' Leprachauns

Happy Sunday! Only one more week until Spring Break!! I am so excited. This upcoming week is going to be a long one. Not only do I have morning and afternoon duty all week, it is also conference week. Which also means there are two half days. How am I going to get it all in!! I don't want the craziness to allow me to loose my fun. To add a little color and interest this week I decided to log into my Pinterest account, which you can find HERE and complete some with my students this week.

Pin #1

Source

 This activity is from A Cupcake for the Teacher. I am super excited to use this with my kids because I will be putting my own little spin on it. What is it you may ask? Well you'll just have to stop by my blog on Friday to find out what it is. :-) 

 

Pin #2

Source 

When I saw this cute little pot of gold on Pinterest I knew I had to do it myself. Unfortunately, I went to purchase the file for this activity and it did not include the template for the pot of gold. Either way, it's a cute idea and the file did include a few centers that I may use this week. I will have to make a template for this on my own though.

 

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