Twitter in the Classroom

There are about 5,000,000 things I should be doing right now...namely, actually getting my act together to leave the house...not happening anytime soon...because one of the things on the "should be doing" list is "blog." It just doesn't feature prominently at the top of the list!

At this point in the summer, a lot of people in the bloggy world seem to have access to their classrooms. If you remember from last summer, I have to turn in my keys before finally going on holiday...and we can't pick them up for another month. So while so many of you wonderful teachers out there are busily working on your rooms steadily, here I sit thinking about my room...

Thought is a powerful thing; however, it doesn't seem to get the job done. I mentioned before that we had a couple of days after the official end of the school year in which we had to go in and do some work. During that time, I moved my classroom and did very little more. Which means that I have not yet gotten to set up any of the features that I loved about my room last year. Namely, I've been thinking about my Twitter Wall.

This wall was something that featured fairly prominently in my language arts program this year. Each child was given a space and a "username" to go with it. I had printed out those pieces, laminated them, and then used my leveling app to make sure that they were straight...no OCD here.

My mistake at that time was that I had run out of card stock and just printed on regular paper. Because of that, I wound up sending each kiddo home with their final tweet of the year and plan to re-print on card stock this go around. 

At the beginning of each story, I would ask the students to embody one of the characters and give them a specific topic to tweet about. For example, in the story "Raising Dragons," I told the class that they had just walked into a cave and found a dragon egg (just like the main character)...tweet your reaction. 

They would head to the back of the room with a dry-erase marker, and write out their tweets underneath their own username. My students loved it! Especially when they could write messages to their parents for Back-To-School-Night and Open House. 

I also linked up an actual Twitter account for my classroom that I used to tweet out homework reminders, compliments for the day, spirit day ideas, etc...This was something that I had sort of idealized in my head this year. I love the idea still, but I let it fall flat when other things were more important. Also, I didn't encourage parents to follow as much as I should have.

It is my intent this coming year to make a point of asking families to set up an account, even if they are only following me. This will be a quick, easy way to keep the families appraised of what's going on. 

Things to note:

-Tweeting will never take the place of a phone call or email to parents if there is something important going on. Even though we live in a very tech-available world, not every student or family has access to the internet and tweets shouldn't be used to pass along super-important information.

-Much like on my blog, I avoid using student names or faces. Twitter is still the wide-open-interwebz, and what you put there is around forever. Even if your students' family signed off on the photo-release for your school, it is probably wise to keep their faces and names private.

And finally, I did make an update this year and created a new account. Last year's account was my school/room number....but as I've mentioned several times...I moved rooms! So now I have a slightly more generic one....

Okie doke. Here's to text-heavy blogging with coffee in hand. Off to work on some of the things on my list!

Blogging on the Go

Ok, so I got all kinds of motivated a week ago to post a blog (and for tradition's sake, apologize for being such an intermittent blogger), buy the site was down. Here's to iPhone apps that allow me to post on the run!

Bear with me as I try to figure out the ins and outs of the app....

I wanted to do a short little post about conferences. We finished those babies up a few weeks ago, but I know some schools in our area are waiting to do conferences until the time of first report cards.
In general, conferences are not a particularly enjoyable experience for me. Not that I dislike talking to the families, but I have a harder time talking to adults comfortably in my professional capacity. Fortunately, for nearly every difficult conference, I had two or more really positive conferences to balance them out. Nothing beats the feeling of singing the praises of a student who has been working particularly hard.
Last year, I kept a pile of student files on my desk in order of conference time. Call it inexperience or whatever else you like, but I didn't get deeply into the file as the conference progressed. I decided to blame the folders and switch my brainwaves for this year. Instead, I organized a binder by student number and filed each piece of conference paperwork behind that number. By having only one binder to deal with instead of 24 folders, I was able to keep my table far neater and to keep track of all additional paperwork that came up through the course of the meetings.

Add in a vase of tulips (orange, of course) and there you have it! Thankfully, conferences went off without a hitch, and now we are on to a lovely Thanksgiving break!

Here's hoping that another post pops up now that I have no excuses!

Ewok-About

In my quest to become organized this year, to get to know my kids, to assess their needs, and to still be super-teacher....I have merely thought many times about blogging...rather than sitting in front of the computer and actually blogging. But! Here it is, as promised! A quick walk-about of my classroom (as it looks now, even with kids involved!) and all of its orange, polka-dotty goodness!

My wonderful friend picked me up an Ewok from Disneyland this summer, and it has a place of honor in my classroom...so he also got a place of honor in all of my pictures. We talk on the first day of school about ourselves and our procedures and all sorts of things, so I like to have a couple of pieces that represent "me" on my walls/desk/etc. Last year I printed a small photo-collage and put that with a picture of my family. This year I added a little Harry Potter and Firefly reference. I found frames at the dollar store and printed "posters" from my computer. I dug out my t-pins and used them to hang the frames on my wall. Worked well with bulletin board walls - questionable with hard walls, I'm sure.

Starting next week, we will finally begin classroom Boggle. The kiddos are super excited about it, which must mean that I am a great salesperson! It will be nice, as I have many high-achievers who are naturally very quick at certain activities. Boggle will not only give them something extra to think about when they're done, but it will also be a nice, "Hey, thanks for bearing with me while we slowly learn procedures" reward.

I had to laugh at Back to School Night this week! A few parents asked if I got my ideas on Pinterest :) Must be that obvious! But these little dollar store objective frames have already been a wonderful piece in my classroom design. I change the objectives each day, and write the vocabulary up next to the frames for reference.

Covering my storage cabinet with paper was one of the best decisions this summer. It not only covers the off-colored cabinet (since everything has to match), but it also provided a nice place to do a magnetic job chart. I found my chart pictures at Teaching in Flip Flops.

Ahhh, the 9-hour birthday wreath! It currently hangs in a place of non-honor as it waits for Tuesday and the first student birthday of the year!

Last year, when I got my job, my parents brought bunches of things that were taking up space in the garage to my classroom. (not everything's out yet, sorry Dad.) This year, I spruced up some of those things. To make my drawers look a little more cohesive, I put scrapbook paper on the inside of them facing out. This way, you can't see what's in the drawers, and they look much more "together." Pardon the post-its...since I can't see into the drawers, I label them....but I haven't changed my summer post-its to the nice labels yet.

My Twitter wall! The kiddos are LOVING tweeting so far! As we get into more stories, I have ideas floating around in my head...but for now, it has been pretty subdued. They had a blast leaving tweets for their parents to read at Back to School Night though.

It has been nice having the kids highlight their name as they turn in papers. While it hasn't cut back on unfinished work, it has cut down on nameless work. Since we did a lot of text highlighting in second grade, I didn't anticipate having any trouble with name highlighting in third grade...which means that I have now had to backtrack a smidge and teach the class that "highlight your name" does not mean "trace every letter with a highlighter."

Over at Clutter Free Classroom I found the idea of putting up student work with a scrapbook paper backing. Last year, I had to measure and level everything I put up. This year, I already have a place of honor for each student's writing, and will never have to level anything! Plus, it leaves a nice space for a name label and a picture.

Right now, we have first day of school pictures up :)

As I mentioned before, I have the 4 C's of common core posted in my room. Collaborators, Communicators, Creators, and Critical Thinkers. These are the four things that we should be teaching our students to be by the time they are out of school. On top of that, I am in love with my orange polka-dot ribbon that I used to make the frames! So much fun! The only ribbon I bought this summer that was not from the dollar bin...and totally was worth it!

Finally, my wonderful and amazing new backpack racks! I am in love with these things! They have made my life easier on so many levels and I get a smile on my face every time I look at them! Last year, we kept backpacks on a bookshelf at the back of the room, and later on the backs of chairs. In the shelf, they were more often on the floor than put away; and on the chairs, I was more often tripping over them than anything. This year, I was given these beautiful racks and the organization factor is huge!

So that seems to be it for the classroom walk-about. Probably there is more...I know that I am always adding more...but for now, it still looks like it did before school started (a feat which I am proud of now that kiddos are in the picture). With luck, things will stay nice and organized all year...cross your fingers!

How to Start Your Summer Vacation

Ok, let's see if we can get through this post without my computer getting all screwy!
(*UPDATE: By the end of this post, I had to hook up my laptop to my television so that I could use it as a monitor.)

Yes, I am terribly consistent at blogging (ha), but between the project I am about to share and Apple telling me that I need a new display for my laptop, it feels legitimate that I haven't blogged in two weeks.

Oh, and summer.
Let's not forget the pull to do nothing...that's a big factor too.

In any case, I have been in the midst of a massively gigantic project: organizing all of the master copies for second grade.



Two file boxes of papers have now been condensed down to two 3" binders. Hooray! I anticipated this job to be simple, as I already had my papers organized by month and subject. While typing the information for the labels and printing them took about an hour, the remainder of the project took somewhere in the neighborhood of 18-20 hours to complete.

Mind you, this is because (as we know) I am ridiculous and wanted to create all of the dividers myself.



Start by creating a circle design in powerpoint, and type the divider labels into the template.



Next, place post-it notes over the circles in whatever pattern you want. I color coded my binder so that each color reflected a subject.



Now for the fun part! Stick the post-it-noted paper back into your printer! Best idea ever! Thank you Ladybug's Teacher Files! Now all of my tabs matched in size and in handwriting.



At this point, the ridiculousness sort of began. I now had labels for months, as well as labels for every subject that we covered for the whole year. They were all printed nicely on post-its and looked beautiful....but all of these had to be cut out. Yay. The trusty circle cutter came out for this big job. Circle labels are my favorite. They turn out so consistently. Sometimes I have issues with my straight edge slide cutter because things don't line up properly and lines aren't entirely parallel.



From where I sit, I am about 20 minutes away from the nearest laminating machine. Cost of gas and cost of lamination taken into consideration, I had some HD Clear packing tape handy and opted for that cheap form of fake-laminating. It actually wound up working better than if I had laminated them because I was able to leave a strip of the sticky post-it exposed. This allowed me to store them neatly together until I was done, as well as to carefully position them onto the card stock divider sheets in perfect alignment.



Toss in a handy cover sheet, and now we are all ready to load it up!
That's right! Up until this point, the hours of organization were spent creating the framework to organize! Hooray!

From this point on, it was just a matter of sliding my masters into sheet protectors and placing them into their respective binder category. Which took a good amount of time sitting in front of the TV...practicing my multi-tasking...

In the end, one binder was not enough, and I had to make another trip to Staples to pick up a second....and if we're being realistic, I probably over-squeezed into both...because having a third binder that didn't match in size was not an option.

And, for all of you who are thinking, "Why not scan all of this?"

I thought of that.
About 3/4 of the way through making the dividers.

Plus...I would have to print out a master copy anyway when we got to needing that activity in the future. Ultimately, I am not teaching second grade next year, and my classroom doesn't have much storage. So now, instead of storing two file crates full of junk, I only need to find space for two binders stuffed with junk!



Now on to the next 125 hours of my 150 hour independent study! Bring on the grade level CHAMPS posters!...and some more circle cutter bonding.

Now For Some More Work!

What does one do with the first hours of summer.....hmm...go to lunch with friends? (check) Sit on the couch? (check) Watch kind of dumb television? (check) Get blog guilt when you realize you haven't blogged since March? (check) Start thinking about fonts for my focus wall?

Wait? What?

Having titled a blog something to the effect of "Why I Need to Teach Second Grade Next Year," I clearly jinxed my workload and am now moving up to teach third grade next year.

This will be a really good thing! Minus the fact that I will be spending some good quality time with my focus wall again - since now there is a whole new grade level to prepare for...and about ten seconds ago I realized I forgot my amazing magnet things in my classroom drawers. Sigh.

In any case, I brought all of my second grade files home...




which led me to consider what supplies I needed for creating a severely comprehensive and OCD binder detailing all of the aspects of this year in second grade in chronological order....which of course led me to This lovely blog that I have spoken about before.

I linked the page about a comprehensive binder because I love the idea, plus, it has exactly what I was looking for: circular tabs!

In addition to spending time with my focus wall this summer, I shall be spending time with my circle cutter!

Looking at the tabs set my brain on a ridiculous and untimely journey that has inhibited my laziness slightly. (only slightly, however, as I continue to sit on my butt....I have however moved from my couch to my deck - progress!) I noticed fonts that I wanted. Very seriously wanted.

I mean, when you're considering a focus wall that you have to look at all year long, the font better be fun, right?

The previous link mentioned this website as where the cute fonts for the tabs came from. It was amazing! I may have gone a bit overboard and had to walk away....but! If you're looking for cute new fonts for things this summer or for next school year, I highly recommend it!

I also recommend perusing Ladybug's Teacher Files too. Her ideas are marvelous.

And now, I leave you with a few pictures from when my classroom looked together and pretty: Open House. In an effort to walk away from my room as quickly as possible today, I did not take a picture of how blank and sad everything looks now (or the corpse of a freakish spider that is currently stuck to my big bulletin board thanks to my kids). Photos courtesy of my mom, as she and my dad came to visit my classroom that day!




Looking across the room. Desks stuffed full of portfolios, etc.



Painted Lady Butterfly Pictograph: When Did My Butterfly Emerge? (Oh, during STAR Testing Day 3...no big)




Finally, the completed Angry Verbs wall!

The Great Desk Dump of 2012

Last week, I hid my frustrations about my class by having them tip their desks over, dump everything out, and clean/organize EVERYTHING.

Today, the desk fairy visited all of the desks that were still nice and shiny....since it's only been a week. Oh man, it was tough....some of those landfills fill up quickly. Who would have thought that was possible when I have passed out only 2 small packets since then...and they both live in the fix and finish folder.

It amazes me what finds its way into the desk, drawn by the magnetic quality of their personalities, I suppose. In the Great Desk Dump of 2012, I found beanies, all of the pencils I had been missing, menus from months ago, toys, food, basically anything that I had ever told them to take home or throw away. (Further proving that we need to continue to work on listening skills).

Regardless, most of the desks weren't awful today, but about six were exceptionally amazing and still organized exactly the way they had been organized a week ago...go team OCD!



In other news, this trimester our writing focus is on the friendly letter. We are told that this standard will go away at some point, but for now we are focusing a little bit more on our Star Student letters each week and trying to figure out good ways to make the topic more interesting...We had been tossing the idea around for a couple of weeks, but today Co-worker and I sat down and paired our classes up for pen pals!
Oh man, I am probably more excited about this than the kids are! We tried to put friends together, and I am exploding with curiosity about what they'll say!
Co-worker is ahead of me and already had her kids writing their letters today - which is great, because it will inspire my kids with questions to answer as well as questions to ask (just in case they didn't know their pal) so that they will not sit and stare at me like I'm a crazy person for assigning this project. While C7's letters were being written, I was compiling cards to deliver the names of their pen pals:




A note card, clip art, tape, and procrastinating on prepping next week's copying during silent reading....not bad! I set them to work on their persuasive posters/presentations while I put on the finishing touches, and then I got to deliver the mail. Like I said, we tried to put friends together to the best of our not-out-at-recess-with-them abilities, so the joy that happened when the kids received their pen pals was hilariously awesome. Everyone left in a good mood! Now I just need to make a cute mail box that our classes can pass back and forth.

Finally, our whole district has been learning about and using the CHAMPS program to fine-tune our classroom management strategies in a positive way. Yesterday, our staff meeting was all about analyzing what sorts of chronic behavior issues crop up in our rooms and why (attention seeking, lack of awareness, etc.)...Most importantly, we talked about how we should be reacting to these issues. What did I walk away with? Don't react emotionally to issues in the classroom.. Oh man....is that something I need to work on, or what?!
How often do I find myself with a mental face-palm about the fact that we are HALFWAY THROUGH SECOND GRADE! Why are you still acting like that?!....Usually manifests in some sort of side discussion that nobody walks away from happily.
Today I opted to not react with my emotions (I swear, my kids probably think I'm bipolar), and it was wonderful! The morning was so productive that I pulled a small group to read! I never get to do that without crazy chatter around the room. Plus, I got to have a great conversation with one of my very silly squirrels (who usually produces very little work) about how he kills all sorts of zombies on his video game. Like highly detailed. I love zombies and all, but I love him talking about them even more. He is protected from the zombie "invasion" apparently. Said something about machine gun, missiles, and body armor? Cool. I'm going to your house in the event of Zombieland, dude!
Granted, by the end of the day I was more drained than usual....it was rather difficult to keep everything bottled up 100%. We shall see how it goes tomorrow! Hopefully they will become as calm as I appear to be. Just as long as they are not as wound up as I am in my head, we should be good!


Pull-up workout from Monday was ok, but bench press workout from yesterday was exhausting. My upper body is about to give up on movement. I say that's time for bed!