The other night, we had Open House.  Now, until I started blogging, I actually thought this was a normal ritual around the country.  Every spring, we open our doors to anyone and everyone to show off all the great work we have been doing throughout the year.  (we have Back to School Night in the Fall, where parents come to meet the teacher)  I have come to learn that this is NOT the norm, but nevertheless, it is a time honored tradition that we all here in CA have come to embrace (or not embrace, depending upon who you are ;) )   And in the tradition of Open House, I am going to open my classroom to you today.  So there will be no lesson plan or activity explanation.  Simply a tour of my room and all the great work that the students have done. So without further ado.....Room 6. Whole Class Views View from the front door.  I ADORE my rug.  Simply adore. Another front door view.  Now you can see all of my tables.  I have 30 students and have it set up to accommodate ONLY 30.  ...

Since I first started teaching, I have always had classroom jobs.  I really feel like the classroom needs to be "run" by the students (well, as self-sufficiently as possible) and classroom jobs are a HUGE part of this. When thinking of jobs, I decided that I wanted the students to be responsible for a majority of the tasks in class that didn't involve actual imparting of knowledge (that would, of course, be my job ;) )  I also wanted them to do things that I would forget to do (I am a notorious "tell it to me and I forget the second I turn around" person...my students have been on more than one sunglasses hunt in my teaching career ;) )  So here is the list of jobs that I have in my room. (click on it for an upclose version you can print out) How do I actually assign jobs, you ask?  Well, each month, my students fill in a job application.  At the beginning of the year, I gave them a postcard I made on  _______ (who wants to fill in the blank???  ;)  hee he...

Throughout the year, we have been focusing on summarizing and picking out the main points in our reading.  Being able to get to the heart of what a story or informational text is about is key to understanding it.  So I thought we would try something a bit different to help the students get to the point of it all.  Songs. We were watching the Schoolhouse Rock! (Special 30th Anniversary Edition) song "Fireworks" to add to our studies on the Revolutionary War.  The song basically sums up the main points of the road to revolution and the writing of the Declaration of Independence.     Watching this gave me a glimmer of an idea.  We soon found ourselves reading some informational text on the Declaration.  It was then that the idea came to fruition. The students broke into groups of 3.  Each of them were assigned a simple song melody to compose a song summarizing our reading.  I just happen to have a book with song melodies on them, sans words.  It is a Mickey Mou...

I love foldables.  They can take the most mundane of material and liven it up so that the kids are meaningfully engaged and learning.  As the year has progressed, I find myself using more and more of these little pieces of paper in my classroom.  My latest craze has been to use them in science.  I find that when I am using them to sum up all of our learning, it helps to create a "one stop shop" for the students to use.  They are able to easily access the information they need, and serves to help them remember just a bit better. We are studying about Living Systems and how the human body and plants have similar traits.  To begin, we started with the various cells and their functions.  Here was the foldable we used to really sum it all up.  ( read all about it here ) To wrap up our journey through the organs of the human body, I had the students create a foldable that included all of the different body systems we have learned about.  They had to not only draw ...

Do you ever have these bright ideas when you are shopping?  You come across something in the aisles of the store that you didn't intend to buy or use, and find it in your shopping cart?  That is what happened when I walked down the school supply section and came across these babies....Window Markers from Crayola!!! I couldn't believe they actually make markers that can write directly on the window!  Now, if you know anything about me by now, you know that I like anything that is slightly "different" when it comes to my classroom.  I like to do the old standby stuff, but throw just enough "twist" in to make it fun.  So, when I saw these, I couldn't pass them up.  I threw a few 10 packs in my cart and was off. Since we are studying about the American Revolution, I decided we needed a big timeline of major events on the window glass.  Breaking my students up into pairs, they each were assigned one major occurrence from the Revolutionary War.  We too...

If you are anything like me, you are thinking about next year already.  I go through my mind and think about all I will need to start off the next year.  I like to have what I *know* I will need run off and ready to go.  If I can get things laminated, even better.  Doing all of this ahead of time allows me to actually ENJOY my summer!  So, here is a list of things I make sure to have ready before I turn in my keys on the last day of school.  I do start doing these things really early, so that I have plenty of time to do a few things here and a few things there.  (and if you make it all the way to the end, I may have a special reward for you!) Welcome Letters Each year, I like to send home letters to the parents to introduce myself, as well as set out the expectations I have as far as Behavior and Homework goes.  This packet goes home on the first day of school, and all the little pieces are signed so that I know the parents read over the information.  I love to copy it on colored ...

Every year, as the learning draws to a close and the students are ready to head on out to the next grade level, I have the students write a letter to those incoming children.  As I suspect many of you do, I like them to write letters giving the next set of students advice on what to expect, how to get along, and generally what to do to be successful in my class.  It is great to have these for the first day of the next school year to set the tone, as well as to read them over as a sort of reflection on my own teaching practice (to see what the kids liked, what they didn't, etc...) This year, however, I just don't have the time.  The thought of taking the kids through yet another complete writing process...when we are in the middle of testing, Open House looming on the horizon, 3 Donors Choose letters that are due, graduation speeches, cleaning up the room....seriously, my brain is hurting just thinking about it all.  I don't want to just give it up entirely though, so I fo...