Classroom Signs Galore

I have been busy working on school things in preparation for returning to work on Monday. Among the things I have been doing from home, I have been working on classroom signs. Today I finally reached the point where I was able to print:

I then cut them all out. Next steps will be to put on construction paper (but I have to buy glue first....I am out!) and then laminate. Here are some pictures of what I have made:

- The 3 R's: Thanks to my teacher friend and roommate, I was introduced to the 3 R's for classroom rules. I love them! My students liked them a whole lot better than the typical classroom rules too. In fact, when we went to our Sanitary District field trip my students were asked what the 4 R's are (the recycling ones) and one of my girls raised her hand and repeated our 3 Rs!  I made the signs cuter for this next year:

- The HOW I ACT acronym is the school-wide discipline system.

- Our manners  posters.

- Other classroom management posters. I am trying out a little aspect of Whole Brain Teaching this year. We will see how much I end up incorporating. The 4S Line and the name reminder were inspired by Pinterest.

- Pixar will be entering our classroom this year as I plan to have a Pixar theme! We will have Nemo, Up, Ratatouille, The Incredibles, etc. hanging out in our classroom with little reminders for us. Nemo is on the "Drop Off" sign for the box my students will turn in any notes, forms, etc. and then other little guy from Nemo (can't remember his name....the one with germophobia) will be our reminder to wash our hands and use sanitizer.

- Board labels:

- My Books Needed in step one...Planning on mounting them to ribbon and then using clothes pins to mark which books students need to have at their desks for the day.

- My TRAVEL acronym getting ready for the reading corner:

- Our pledges, class verse, and class motto got a make-over for this next year too.

All of the boarders I used were from teachers on TpT or blogs. So, I just want to say a huge THANK YOU to all the teachers that made them available for me to use. Here are links to their websites. If I forgot one and you see your's used but not mentioned below, please let me know so I can include a link. Thanks again to all those teachers who made these cute boarders!!

- Tracee Orman (TRAVEL boarders and books needed boarders)

- Krista Walden (Zebra boarders for HOW I ACT)

- All That Glitters in First Grade (Pencil boarders for 3 R's and Board Labels)

- 3rd Grade Thoughts (Class? Yes? poster)

- Clip Art By Carrie (Pledges frames and The Drop Off frame)

- Graphics from the Pond (Clean hands frame and the circle frames for the manners posters and name reminder)

- Ms. Fultz (Books Needed main sign frame)

- Miss Law's Primer Dotted font (my decided classroom font for most everything this year!)

I do know that I can't find who made the boarder I used for the 3R's main sign and the 4S line sign (same boarder). If you know who, please leave a comment with their link.

If you see anything that could be beneficial to your classroom let me know and I can try to email you. :-)

It's Getting Closer...:-)

I report back officially to work on the 6th. I can't believe how close that is! I'm looking forward to the new school year though. At least this year I will have a better feel for what is coming and know a little more what I am doing. I'm looking forward to not having everything be completely new!

Over the past two weeks I have flown back to CA from AL, found a new apartment, and moved (which explains the huge gap in my posting). Craziness! But I am settled in my new place now and ready to seriously being thinking and planning for school. This week I went by campus to pick up all my teacher books to start doing some planning. I stopped by the office to say hello to the wonderful people there and it was so nice to be back.

Currently my new kitchen counter/table (it's a tiny apartment!) looks like this:

I went to Lakeshore yesterday to use some coupons and got my free plan book for the year! Exciting!

But in the midst of planning, I also feel pretty overwhelmed especially when I read through blogs and look at Pinterest. As much as I love those two things, there are just way too many great ideas out there! I might just have to take a break from them for now until I decide 100% on how I want to do things in my classroom this year. Does anyone else ever feel overwhelmed by the abundance of great ideas out there thanks to wonderful blogs and Pinterest??

"T" = Teach What You Read

I had posted before about my new TRAVEL acronym for reading in my classroom next year. I have typed out my thoughts so far on how to use the "T" part of the acronym practically. Let me know what your thoughts are, please!

How to Implement "T" in the classroom

The "T" in TRAVEL stands for "Teach What You Read." I am really excited about this aspect of TRAVEL because it can be incorporate across the curriculum in many ways and it gets students out of passive learning mode. And, as we all know, if you can teach a concept to someone else your level of understanding that concept is pretty high. It is also a great way to assess student learning and evaluate where each student is in the learning process of a concept.

These are the ideas I have so far on how to implement "Teach What You Read" in the classroom:

1) Reading:

- After reading the story for the week from our Open Court reading books, students can take turns teaching each other about the story. They can talk about the setting, characters, plot, etc.

- There is usually a moral of the story that we always discuss as a whole group. After discussing it one day together, the next day students could pair up and re-teach each other.

- We always have 6-7 vocabulary words in our Open Court reading story. We discuss the meaning of the words on Mondays and then students could re-teach each other the vocabulary words on the other days of the week.

2) Science:

- Last year I had my students do a big research writing project on a planet of their choice. Each student checked out a book from the library on their planet and spent several days reading through their book and taking notes on the most important things. We then moved into the writing process and at the end students had a five paragraph essay complete with a little bibliography. We invited our parents to hear the papers read aloud when we were done. This was a great activity that had students take what they learned through reading and teach others about a topic. It was one of my favorite moments of the year when several students said, "I didn't realize you could actually get information on things you wanted to know about from books!" Yes, my dears, that is a huge reason why we read. :-)

    
3) History:

- We read mini-biographies on famous Americans for our history curriculum. I would love to have my students take this information and practice teaching about the person we read about to each other.

4) Book Reports:

- We have a book report due about every two weeks in 3rd grade. Students always do a little project and turn it in to me after each book report. I would love to apply the "T" to our book reports and have the students teach us about what they just read in their book report instead of just filling out a sheet and turning it in to me.

5) Differentiated Learning:

- I had one student this past year who was so far above the rest of his classmates level wise. He would finish his work very quickly and accurately and then spend his time reading or doing origami. Reading and origami are wonderful but I wanted to challenge him as well. So, I had him choose a topic of his choice, research it, and make a magazine for our class to read. He also presented his topic to the class when he was done.

- The "T" is great for those students who always finish quickly and in need of a challenge. They can choose a book and prepare a little "lesson" for the class after they read.

I think I will also love implementing the "Teach What You Read" next year, because it can be done in many ways. Students can just talk to each and teach what they just read or they can write about it or they can use graphic organizers. So many options!

What are you thoughts? What are some way you have your students teach what they read about in the classroom?


PS I have no idea why most of this is highlighted white......I don't know how to remove that and I don't know how it even happened...hmmmm... :-/