New Blog to Look At!

There is a cute new teacher blog out there started by a college friend of mine. She just posted some wonderful pictures of her classroom!

Emily's blog is called "Polish the Stars." Isn't that a great name for a teacher's blog?!

Check it out by clicking the picture below:

TRAVEL when you read!

I wanted to share what I have been working on today. I decided I wanted to implement a new way to do reading in my classroom next year and came up with the acronym TRAVEL to express what I wanted my students to be able to do with the text we read not only in our reading curriculum, but also in science, history,  book reports, etc. TRAVEL seems to be the perfect word for reading goals, because books can certainly take you places! :-)

Today I created the posters that I will use in my reading corner as the anchors for our reading goals throughout the year. I have the general ideas of how I want to implement this next year, but I just have to get it into writing. As I think through it more and finish writing out my thoughts I will post them to my blog.

What does TRAVEL stand for? Well, I'm glad you asked!

What are you thoughts?

PS I would love to start sharing things I create for use in my classroom, but since I don't have a TpT store and I am not sure how to do this....Any advice? (For now, if you want a copy of the above posters you can leave a message below with your email address I can send it to you.) 

Lovin' Pinterest

Pinterest.

I think enough was said in that one word - especially for those of you who are like me and love pinning things. 

If my classroom looked like my Pinterest classroom, it would be amazing! This next year of teaching I want to try a lot of the ideas I have found on Pinterest. I just organized all my Pinterest boards into different classroom categories so all the things I have pinned are easy to find when I want to try them!

Are any of you on Pinterest?

 You can follow me on Pinterest here (if I linked it correctly...).

:-)

Title Change!

I thought it was about time I re-titled my blog since it will no longer be my first year teaching!

The blog URL will stay the same though.

:-)

Time to Organize!

With my students gone and my classroom empty, I had time to organize just the way I have been wanting to. So I spent a couple of days throwing things out and organizing exactly how I desired to. I left on Friday feeling satisfied with how my room was and knowing I would be ready for August when it came!

First things first: I organized my posters! How happy it is to know that I actually have posters waiting for next year now as opposed to this previous year when I would be running around town trying to find things for each new holiday or subject.

Now they are all nicely organized in bags based on subject or holiday. I also threw out posters that I had grabbed from other teachers but ended up never using.

Here's a tip I learned through doing this....Well, two tips. One, save the bags when you buy posters! They come in handy for organizing in a big box. Two, tape the bottom of the box.....I picked mine up and well....it spilled a little. Not all of it but enough to cause me to waste a few minutes putting it back together and taping the bottom. Perhaps I didn't fold it correctly to begin with, but tape definitely made it more secure!

Next, I organized all my bulletin board letters and little displays in a binder. I used page protectors to slide the papers and letters into. Then I used dividers to divide it up according to subject so it will be easy to locate next year.

Then I organized my cabinets. First up, my teacher books cabinet. I organized them into nice neat piles and placed the binder for each subject (packed full of things I used this year) on top of them. It looks ready to go for curriculum planning now!

After going through my cabinets and throwing out any old things from previous teachers I have a lot of nice storage space now! I bought plastic bins (Wal-Mart has the best prices around for bins, fyi) to organize by subject and/or unit. This is the result!

I ended up with quite the pile of trash....But I don't want to hold on to things just for the sake of it so out it goes if it wasn't a use or won't be a use.

And now a nice clean, organized classroom is waiting for me in August! :-)

Last Day of School Things

Here are a few things I did with/for my students on the last couple days of school:

At the beginning of the year we did anonymous Barnabas notes to each other. I thought it would be a great way to end the year as well. So, on our last full day of school, my students wrote each other Barnabas notes. They turned them in to me and I placed them in an envelope for each student. I then was all dramatic about it by sealing the envelope tightly and stamping it like they do at the post office. Then the letters were delivered and my students loved opening them and reading what their classmates wrote to them. :-)

I put together little folders of my students' work from over the year. I had held on to many different projects they had done during the year and wanted to give them all back in a nice way. So I made these folders out of construction paper (laminated) and yarn:

I gave them their "Terrific 3rd Grade Work" folders on the last day of school.

And that was the end of our year. :-)

Catching Up...

Well the school year is over (*sniff sniff*) and I can finally post again!

Here is a quick update on some of the things we did in our classroom this past month:

1. We finished Little Pilgrim's Progress!! My students loved the book. It was a great one. Since we finished the book that also means that I finished writing all 93 worksheets, answer keys, and power points to go with the chapters! That felt like a huge accomplishment and I am so excited to have it for next year. To end our book, I had my students draw a picture of their favorite part of the book. I put their pictures on a wall display showing the map of Little Christian's journey.

2. We also did our last science unit on the nervous system. To compliment our unit, I put up a "think about the brain" wall with each of the parts of the brain labeled. During one lesson, we filled out the blank sheets of paper on the wall display with what we knew each part of the brain controlled. Students also drew their own picture of the brain. It was a fun unit!

3. Grammar! My students came to LOVE grammar and actually asked if we could do a grammar lesson every day. What was the secret? Grammar School House Rock! I absolutely love the songs on Grammar Rock and my students came to love them too. We loved singing "Mr. Morton is the subject of the sentence" and "I find it quite interesting...a noun's a person, place, or thing!" To end our Grammar after a great year of learning parts of speech I put up a "We Love Grammar" display complete with pictures and lyrics to the songs:

4. We also went on a final field trip. One of the local schools does an annual Science Expo for only third graders. Science booths are set up all around their campus. The school even had its own little creek that they had trained 4th and 5th graders to give tours of to the 3rd graders. It was a wonderfully fun field trip! Here are a few pictures:

Here is one of my students looking through a microscope:

The fire department was there and students were able to try on the fire fighting uniform. After watching my students try it on, they roped me and some parents into trying it on too. Here is me ready to fight fires! ;-)

The had a show for us with wild animals that had been rescued. Students LOVED this part.

Here are a few more of my students at a book about vegetables and weight.

What a fun end of the year we had! I can't believe it is over.....I'm still a little sad about it. It has been a wonderful year and I will miss my little students greatly.