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!

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!

Orange Polka Dot Love

Many, many apologies, Blogging world! My absence has no excuse...except, wait...I redesigned my whole classroom.

I think I have mentioned before that we turn in our keys in June and don't get them back until the end of August. This means that all of the 150 hours I did over the summer for my class work was in no way actually about putting my room together.

It probably isn't an exaggeration to say that I spent like 120 hours in my room when I got my keys...

But it worked out! I did this:

I marked everything that was from Pinterest....There will be a whole tour of the room coming soon, but above is only pieces.

Over at Clutter-Free Classroom there is a wonderful post from the summertime that inspired classroom jealousy in my heart. Because of that post, I spent an entire eight hours stapling sheets to my walls! And man, oh, man...am I happy with my sheets! As you can see from the photo above, the sheets go precisely from ceiling to floor. Anyone who has their classroom in a portable understands how difficult (and annoying, and time-consuming, and patience testing...I could go on) it can be to "define" your bulletin board space. If anyone is as OCD as I am, then they likely have a leveling app on their phone or perhaps an actual level in their classroom handy to do boards....the sheets took all of that away!
Following her directions though, I did let the sheets go through the dryer first to get the wrinkles out. My sheets were so successful that they seem to have inspired sheet-usage in friends' classrooms :) To additional great successes!

At the moment, the front of my classroom is my favorite thing to look at! I borrowed the idea for a homework hotline (under the whiteboard) for this year. In the new world of Thirdgradia that I have entered, we collect homework most days. This is different from Second Grade Land where it was only on Fridays, so checking things in was not a difficult task. In order to keep up with the homework papers, I have the kids clip their work to their number on the ribbon (another OCD moment where a ruler and a level were involved), which allows me to immediately check and see who did their homework and who did not.

Note: If one of my lovelies did not turn in their homework, they take a little field trip to the back of my room and write to me why it isn't at school in my "No Homework Folder." I foresee this being a valuable asset at conferences next month.

I also am proud of my magnet board that I made by putting bulletin board paper over the ugly tealish-blue of my storage cabinet. This made a perfect wall for my job chart, since I made all of the pieces magnetic.

Finally, I am really proud of the common core C's up above the board. My wonderful coworker came up with the idea of listing out the over-arching concepts now (before we fully turn over to common core) to really ensure that we are leading our students to be communicators, critical thinkers, collaborators, and creators. Plus (even though you can't see from this picture), I found orange polka-dotted ribbons to use as boarders around the 4 C's! How could that ribbon not be purchased?

I will do detail pictures and a whole classroom tour next week, now that kiddos are coming in and getting settled.

After three days of school, I am so proud of my class that I am gushing about them all the time! This should be a wonderful year!

Oh, and a quick P.S.

If you're looking for a great blog to follow, check out my lovely friend over at Musings from the Foreign Teacher! An American teacher in England who is quite possibly the reason for my love of polka dots <3