It’s the start of another year, and thankfully this year I don’t have to have completely separate tables/desks spaced 6 feet apart. A year of that was PLENTY! Even though there are still spacing protocols in place, my classroom feels more like a classroom this year, and for that I am grateful. While last year was crazy and chaotic with all of the changes yet monotonous and dull being stuck at the front of a room keeping eyes glued to a Zoom screen while trying to interact with my in-person learners, it certainly pushed me to try some new things. […]
One of the bulletin boards I always set up at the beginning of the year is my Greek and Latin Prefixes, Roots, and Suffixes board. It starts out blank, but by the end of the year, it is packed with cards and we refer to it quite often as we are reading or discussing vocabulary. Some years I just add cards as we go, sometimes I post them by word part, and one year we had so many cards that I took them down halfway through the year and put them back in alphabetical order. I’ve been adding new cards
This laptop cart has been quite a project! Getting all of the parts that fit the way I wanted to hold the computers was no easy feat! I needed the cart from IKEA specifically so the middle shelf could be adjusted… and that took about a month to get here. Luckily, I found some cheap file folder holders at Ocean State and zip ties at the Dollar Store. Amazon had the colored washi tape and power strips that could hold a bunch of wide plugs. Then a few laptops had plugs on the top, others were too big for the
Instead of welcome letters, I’m keeping things short and sweet and sending welcome postcards this year. I don’t quite have all of my ducks in a row with third grade, fourth grade, in-person learners, virtual learners, individual materials, and two classrooms that look very different from what I’m used to. (Breathe!) But, here they are, the postcards to welcome a new set of students to another year. That last part is the part that makes me smile. 🙂
You know it’s a lot of cutting when you end up with blisters on your cutting hand. Hopefully, it is all worth it in the end! My fourth graders will each have their own math toolkit to start the year! Many of the manipulatives are from Brittney Hege’s Mix & Math 360 group, with a few other items thrown in from other places. Besides the items pictured, each child also has a small plastic container for dice rolling (we all know how dice end up across the room on the floor, which they won’t be able to retrieve without being
I still don’t know what our school has planned as far as in-person, virtual, or hybrid learning. But I know that at some point we will be back in the building. So, in preparation, I created a set of social distance greeting signs. Hopefully, they will help students connect with one another, even while being far apart. In past years, I’ve tried doing the individual greetings with each child, but I was never great at remembering what steps there were for each child. I’m thinking I may try it again this year, and with a visual reminder of the choices,
I love anchor charts. I hate hanging anchor charts on my walls. They either take up precious bulletin board space, or they constantly fall down (or just wave at me from one droopy corner). So, a few years ago, I created a set of mini anchor charts for my tables using IKEA’s Tolsby Frames. After much frustration to get everything just the right size, I finally had a small set of charts. Multiplication chart, synonyms for overused words, math talk stems, commonly misspelled words, and more. And I also made some cute motivational cards to keep it fun and positive!
A friend asked if I had ever used or created printable Post-Its to use in my classroom. A logical question, since I do love Post-Its! While I had never printed on them before, my curiosity was piqued and I was on it the next morning! It took a few days, but I finally had a full set of printables that I could see myself using in the classroom (whenever we head back, that is!) Positive notes of praise, notes of encouragement to keep going, sentence starters for those days when I want to be more specific, writing checklists (my stamp
A few of the current 5th graders were suspiciously hanging around outside of my classroom (which is very unusual since all of our student meet downstairs to start the day). They asked if they could borrow some tape, and said what they were doing was a secret, so not to look. They were some of the most trustworthy and sweetest kids, so I smiled and left them to their mysterious task. When my class came upstairs, each child found a note of encouragement taped to their locker! They loved them (and many of them kept the notes inside of their
One of my favorite STEM activities is our Magnet Racer challenge! After studying magnets, students get to build their own magnet-powered Lego car which they then try to navigate through a series of obstacles. Building and testing takes several days, and students experiment with different size wheels, wheel bases, magnets, and of course, their car design! I set up a variety of stations on the floor which mirror the final obstacle course. They can test as often as they’d like, and decide which type of magnet will work best for them to “drive” with. On the day of the final