Birthday Wreath-view

Wow vacation! The whole last month has been a whirlwind! I look up and it's August. Good grief, there is too much to do!

If you are like me, throughout this summer much of my to-do list has consisted of projects I discovered on Pinterest...trying them out, seeing if they work, wondering if they will fit the different aspects of my classroom. So far, all of those projects have been very successful (can't ask for more!), but I finally found one that I'm not so sure about.

Don't get me wrong, it is cute, it is exactly what I was trying to go for, but it took about 9 hours to complete....

The Birthday Wreath.

If you've seen the picture on Pinterest, it looks pretty easy to accomplish: foam circle wreath, curling ribbon, scissors...go team! Maybe I'm just slow, but curling that much ribbon was incredibly tedious.

Below is a tutorial of everything I did to make the adorable project. Let's just say, I am super glad that it turned out well, because otherwise I would be pretty upset with the amount of time spent sitting on the couch curling ribbon.


Start with your favorite colors of curling ribbon. I wanted to toss in a turquoise, but it wasn't available where I was shopping and I was really impatient. I also got a 6" styrofoam ring from Michaels for the foundation.

I chose to gather a length of each color, fold the cluster in half and tie it together with a shorter length of ribbon, then curl. This allowed me to tie the clusters of ribbon to the styrofoam ring. The tutorial that I read recommended using staples to attach the pieces of ribbon...again, impatient and I didn't have staples at home.

I think the tying worked better than staples would. Plus, the added benefit of not needing to hide anything. Just curl the length you used to tie, and it hides itself!

After a while, it starts to look like this:

Remember my mentioned impatience?
At this point, it was hard to see progress and that bored feeling started to kick in. In an effort to feel like more progress was made, I pulled some of the fluffy, curly ribbon further down the ring and tied it in.

While that made the wreath slightly less puffy, the effect wasn't lessened, so it was a process that continued throughout.

Flash forward, to completing the ribbon (as I have said the words "ribbon" and "curling" too much up until now)....I filled the final part with a cloth ribbon to create a hanger.
I plan on hanging this wreath on the front of the birthday-students' desks, so a hanger is perhaps important.

(This was the point where I accidentally broke the wreath and had to pin it together. Should you decide to be bold enough to create this time-consuming project, I recommend keeping some pins on hand. They also would help to pin down those annoying pieces that fall slightly out of line.)


The wreath was cute, but I wanted a little something more to complete it...I headed for the scrapbook paper and made a template for a birthday hat.

I rolled it up and used scrapbook adhesive to keep it together.

For the final touch, I added a little bobble at the top of the hat.
I tied together a little bunch of green ribbon and secured it with a long length of orange.

Just thread the ribbon through the top of the hat until that little bit of green sticks out the top.

Finally....finally, (this, I swear, was 9 hours later) use that length of ribbon to tie the hat onto the wreath.

The hat is not incredibly secure and may fall off at some point...I will be waiting with pins to attempt to reattach!
OR, I might just tie a big, big bow onto it for that "something more" and call it a day.

Like I said, cute project! Turned out nicely, fits the purpose....took far longer than I anticipated.
Make sure that you have tons of time on hand, and tons of patience.


Alright, I now have a date with my new pink/white polka dotted glue gun and some clothespins!

Happy summer projecting!

Pinterest Addict

Alright, I'll admit it:

I'm addicted to teaching blogs and pinterest.

Big time.

I think it has something to do with the fact that I have a lot of rearranging that I would love to be doing in my classroom, but my keys are turned in and locked away. Sigh.

As I've mentioned a million times before, I love, love, love Ladybug's Teacher Files; however, she is on vacation right about now. Her trip is perfectly timed with my mental obsession about my classroom reorganization...and now I am pouring over the Clutter Free Classroom !

The post that is linked is what has inspired a whole lot of online shopping: using sheets as bulletin board backgrounds.

Genius.

Ages ago, a former teacher of mine recommended using fabric to cover boards. While I also agreed that this was a fantastic idea, my OCD kicked in and I could see crooked edges...which would drive me nuts. So, I just finished a date with AnnasLinens.com that resulted in three brown sheets (to match my dots on chocolate colors) for $20! I shall report the results once I have returned to the land of the classroom.

Otherwise, I just finished today's Pinterest project of the day, and it worked out perfectly! With that Pinterest obsession I mentioned, I've seen a whole lot of pins where cheap frames are used to display lesson objectives. Seemed easy enough!

Math Teacher Friend and I took a trip to the Dollar Tree and Michael's today to buy scrapbook paper and frames.

Michael's was having a 50% off sale on their scrapbook paper (plus the teacher discount), so I got very adorable paper to frame! (Sadly no polka dots, but awesome orange patterns.)

After dismantling the frame, I traced the cardboard insert so the size would be marked properly.

In order to have sharp lines, and create enough layers so things wouldn't slip around, I opted to fold along my pencil lines rather than cut. It worked out really well, since the $1 frames needed a little extra help to make everything fit nicely.

And look! Cute little dry erase board! Perfect for writing eye-catching lesson objectives on and sticking on the white board! I do anticipate using black markers when they're actually displayed; however, blue is all I had on me.

Now all that is left is to figure out a nice configuration and to get them onto the white board! I'm also tossing some pink and blue in with my orange this year (again, to match the dots and chocolate), so I made sure to make the "objectives" sign in a different color.

And again, I leave you with the tease of my interactive notebooking research. I've been in the trenches looking, but I have not yet convinced myself that I want to implement it into my math program. We shall see!

Anchor Chart Academy

Oh summer....you are far too wonderful!

I have been enjoying my days playing with markers, colored pencils, and posters. Posters, posters, posters...

This 150 hours of classroom work thing has been rather successful so far (80 hours down) as I prepare charts, decorations, and documents for myself and my coworkers. My circle cutter and I did some bonding way back in June, and I finally got those circles adhered to their respective posters.

As promised: CHAMPS Posters!

I've mentioned it before, but we use CHAMPS for our classroom management program. Throughout the activities of the day, we make sure to explain our expectations for (C)onversation, (H)elp, (A)ctivity, (M)ovement, (P)articipation, and (S)uccess. These expectations are displayed on the board for students to reference when they need a reminder.

This summer's CHAMPS party consisted of creating these charts for our whole third-grade team. (dibs on orange!) One of my teammates came up with this great format last year, and we really wanted to keep our expectations the same across the grade level while we also use the Walk to Learn model this year. Her format is particularly wonderful because it prominently displays all of the expectations, and each one can be mixed and matched by moving clothespins around in their respective areas.

Additionally, I've been avoiding the focus wall chore and drawing up some posters that I found on Pinterest. All that art training I have under my belt has helped me to make some very accurate recreations!

We do a huge focus on writing in third, so I really wanted to have a cute chart up!

Way back during the school year, I posted here about our whole school learning about metacognition. One of those strategies involves using paint chips to help students classify how they are feeling about certain assignments. By marking the darker color on the chip, students show that they are not feeling 100% (in the "dark"); marking the lighter color, students show that they are confident in themselves ("it's all clear!").

Yes, these can be flipped around and used in whatever color gradation you wish...but the point is, I want to implement this strategy with the previous poster so that the kiddos can explain how they are feeling throughout the many different concepts of the day.

There are several more academic ones sitting on my desk, but I risk being too picture-heavy this time around....plus, I just wanted to toss in the birthday sign for my friend's baby...because that was fun to play with :)

Soon to come: Exploration of the interactive notebook...and more posters...possibly another focus wall...!

5 Things You Need to Know About Me....

Holy cow! Two days in a row with a blog post?!

Actually, I wanted to post about this yesterday, but got all caught up in the bindery-goodness. And now, this is the perfect time for a teeny-tiny blog as I hydrate for a quick run :)

At the very end of the school year, in the midst of struggling to keep the attention of my class as well as keep quiet the fact that we were all moving up to third grade...I decided to adapt an assignment that many teachers do during the last week of school. The norm is that each student writes a letter to the up-and-coming kids for next year's _____Grade class...However, since next year will not be the same grade in my room, I had my class write down 5 things that next year's class needed to know about me.

The results were amazing!

Here is a smattering of some of them:

*Try to whisper when the door is open. (We are in a very cemented hallway that kinda echoes when the door is open)

*Have fun with art projects.

*Be a fantastic, excellent Stallion. (I now plan on telling everyone to "stay excellent" next year)

*Don't yell so loud that everyone can hear you. (yell quietly, please)

*She is super smart.

*She can see everything. (Remember that!)

*She pays attention to you.

*Be nice to each other.

*Don't be silly...but sometimes.

*Do not punch. (clearly kicking is okay)

*Never tell on other people, only if dead or dying in class. (HA!)

*Do not do things wrong on purpose. (only on accident is acceptable)

*Don't act like a first grader.


And my favorite.....

When you go to a play in the MPR, don't talk to your neighbor or else she will give you the eye.


I am indeed well known for "the eye."

Perhaps that is why this strange illustration appeared at the end of one note:

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!

Thinking About My Thinking Cap

So many things to share!

In my immediate procrastination upon sitting down to blog, I had to share that I love this blog! Hope King is fantastic; but even beyond that, the post that is linked is such a great elaboration on what I attempted last week...I will have to do that next year.

We completed our own contraction surgery in class during Week 2 of reviewing for our summative test....which was fun and engaging and such, but we didn't have surgeon masks and supplies. Next time. Next time.

I teased before that we have been discussing metacognition in regards to reading comprehension. School-wide, teachers have taught lessons to show that "Real Reading" is a combination of both thinking and reading. This leads to discussions that cause the students to really consider how they are thinking about what they read, and how they are responding to the literature. All of these ideas are listed and discussed in this book.



Most things are scripted, but you kind of run with what you've got when your kiddos are listening. Mine enjoyed it so much when we got started that they ask to do "reading salad" nearly every day during our read aloud.

Before I get into the posters, let me first explain that I didn't feel like I had an ideal place to hang the posters that go with this concept. Then, let me also explain that the only tape with any lasting quality that I have in my room is neon orange duct tape.

Proceeding.



Having completed the introductory lesson to metacognition, together you create a venn diagram that shows students they must think about what they are reading to really get something out of it. The salad activity illustrates that by using different colored papers to represent "text" and "thinking," and you put one or the other into a big bowl if you do it while you're reading to them...another demonstration of the same concept: You have to think to really read.

All of this connects into several Thinking Stems that we use to encourage metacognition. I positioned these posters on my back window, which just happens to be behind me when we are on the carpet.....hint hint. "Hey kids! Look at me! I am the way you are supposed to start your sentences!" The thinking stems are fantastic! We have been integrating them into nearly everything that we read....this also includes using them in sentence frames during science and social studies lessons. As a whole, it is incredible to see some of the thinking that comes out of their shiny brains sometimes!



We have been using white boards to take notes using these thinking stems/sentence frames while we read our Scholastic News these days. I put a frame on the board (ex: I'm thinking __________________, because I'm noticing _________________. or I'm noticing _________________, because I'm seeing ________________) and have them fill it in using their own words. Some, like my ELLs, write shorter sentences, while others fill up the board with their notes.

Finally, for today, back to my poster-hanging implements: Binder Clips and Duct Tape!
Oh, how I make my father proud! All the daily uses of duct tape in my classroom are amazing :) This was my particular favorite.

As I said, I have limited space for posters where they will be easily accessible for regular reference. Also, I wanted to be able to move and change the posters as we add to them. For instance, we have been using a lot of opinion phrases these days,



but I may want to add our inferencing poster on top when we do that activity. This also helps with some of the storage issues that I have in my portable classroom.

I have read about using binder clips with command hooks to store sentence strips or bulletin board borders, but I didn't have any command hooks handy (where are they when you need them) and I needed a place right away. To the duct tape! Who cares if it is neon orange!?




That's that! My excitement of weeks and weeks consists of metacognition and duct tape. Oh, and Pi Day....but that would be too much for one post. Perhaps I will Pi Blog this week....that would be impressive of me! In my blogger defense, it was report card time, so I sort of lost track of life outside of a correcting pen and my classroom for a while.