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

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Around the Room

I've been working hard all week on bulletin boards, cleaning, organizing and just generally getting ready to welcome parents into my classroom! 

Here's how some of it turned out:  
Parents were greeted with this cute info packet and a tasty apple! 

The rhyme on the tag says:
"An apple for the teacher is really nothing new except when you rememebr that parents are teachers too! I'm looking forward to working with you and your child this year!" 

This is a new activity this year! The kids have loved it and it can be as short or as long as you like! I call it my Buzz Book (got that from another teacher somewhere... can't remember who!?!) but this is generally a morning message. So far we have focused on finding nouns and verbs as sentence parts. 


Our Word of the week each week is from our current social studies or science unit! I even teach the kids a hand motion to go with it! This has increased their comprehension of certain concepts quite a bit! Plus our number of the week too! 
The lettering turned out great! Love it! 

 This borad may change a bit through out the year, but for now, it has a great anchor chart that lists strategies for solving math problems! 
 I love how the lettering turned out on this board! 
 Our reading board! 
 Another great anchor chart that we did this year! 
And here's my board for outstanding work! The lettering and turned out great and so did the hippos! 

This is my Character trait themed door! You can even see one of my GLAD posters! Love this strategy to teach character traits! 

And here's an old favorite! Along with another one below! These have held up so well that htey didn't need changing! (BTW I have had the fade proof paper up for about 2-3 years. Love that stuff! It has held up quite well!)

A special thanks to my awesome aides and my hubby who all helped me cut out letters, words, and clean through out the week! 

So that's me strutin my stuff... go check out what everyone else made over @ Six Sisters StuffPhotobucket

Monday, February 20, 2012

A Teacher's Organizational Friend!

Happy President's Day! 

I haven't shared much teacher stuff lately... so here's something my aides and i use on a minute to minute basis! 

We use a file box as a holding place for all the work that is prepped and ready to be used! Here's what it looks like: 

(Just a note that all those clips do have student's names on them. I whited them out for privacy!) 

So basically there are 2 hanging files (at least) per subject and the subjects go in the order of our daily schedule from front to back. So what you are looking at in the picture is Warm Up packets (you can see the tab hiding in the bottom right corner of the photo) and then Math with all their math work photocopied and ready to pull out the next unit, then test, and so on. After that there is handwriting which is in my spelling folder because we do handwriting while spelling tests are given. Then on to reading where you can see some manila folders (one saying "The Trains"  and one for "The Ships" for some of the groups I have themed this year - I will post about this another time!) Anyway, you get the idea. 

You may also notice how there is work standing up vertically and other stuff that is filed properly. The stuff standing up vertically is work that the kids will work on next. The other key to this box is that all work that comes next is on top. For example when we pull out a clip of work for math, the next item that is taken out is the packet on top. Not all of the work is organized by child. Some of it is just in a huge stack, but yet organized that same way. Here's another shot to show an up close look:

This way of organization may seem a bit hard to understand but once you get the hang of it, it can truly become a teacher and a teacher aide's helper. It makes it easy to just pull work out of the file box and it really makes it easy to plan and store work ahead of time. The trick is to always make sure work gets put back into the box when done working on that subject for the day. I am not a fan of one page worksheets and then having to make new work for each student each day. As a special educator that would mean i would never know where my students are at in the curriculum and i would be a basket case trying to figure out a classroom of 12 kiddos. This is how i organize all my student's work and store up coming lessons!

How do you do it in your classroom?

Photobucket

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Top 5 Picks for Teachers

Good morning! I guess i really should say good afternoon!!! My hubby and  are having a late morning! This is one side effect of going to church on Saturday night! We end up getting out of bed late and then debating over where to go get food. (The debating part drives me bonkers!) (Looks like we decided on Chipotle!)

A few things I don't have to debate about are my Top 5 Pinterest Finds for Teachers this week! These are items that i hope to incorporate into my classroom and really think they are just plain great! It is also terribly awesome that we can share all these resources through sites like Pinterest, teachers pay teachers, teachers notebook, and through the multitude of blogs that we all seem to enjoy! 

1. This FREE Valentine's Tot Kit seems to be something i can easily put to use for my lower functioning kiddos in my special ed classroom. You can find where i pinned this here

2. As a part of our program at my school, we offer transportation. Our aides drive them and this provides consistency through their ride home. The van ride home can be tough for some of our little guys, so this next pin is something that can be used for any kid on a road trip or even a short trip. I plan to laminate and have on hand if a certain kiddo needs something to keep them occupied on the van! Find my pin here.

3. My next pin is from The Teacher Wife! I love this math bulletin board. I have pinned several ideas to use to make my own but i especially like the "Math Wall" Banner she made! Awesome job Lindsey! Find my pin here

4. The next is something I cannot wait to download at school! Friendship Cards! And they are free!!! Even better! Find my pin here.
5. This last one is something i would like to alter and have a number of the week and use this as a warm up page for my little ones. I would also make a few versions to help assist my multitude of levels in my classroom. Gonna have to revamp my warm up packets any way! See my pin here.

That it for today! Hope you all are having a blessed Sunday! Enjoy the day off! 

PS. To those of you who have tomorrow off! Lucky you! Enjoy! I have Friday and next Monday off! Oh boy!