Day Two: Settling In

We had a stellar day one, and our day two was fun as well. This year, I am incorporating graphica into my curriculum. Inspired by Adventures in Graphica by Terry Thompson, I plan to use graphica in my reading, writing and math instruction (these are the only subjects I teach).

The kids were partnered up and given a humorous comic strip. I printed all the comic strips from gocomics.com for free and laminated them. I am creating an ongoing comics accordion file for kids to enjoy. 

Back to the activity. The assignment was to read their comic strip, then create their own version. Some of the students created the story that came right before their strip and some wrote what happened right after their strip. Some mimicked the story and some were inspired by the joke in their strip and thought of a joke they wanted to portray. Lots of creativity, and I learned who perseveres and who gets flustered with a little challenge. 

Some students had been concerned that they couldn't draw. As a debrief activity, before students shared their work, I read Ish by Peter Reynolds. I won't summarize the book here, but it is easily the most important book I have found for read aloud. This led to our first mindset discussion of the year. I will send the message constantly that hard work and practice will make their work better. No one is born able to do everything perfectly. Room to grow is a good thing! We will refer back to Ish all year long! 

I was amazed by the teamwork and creativity here!!

Below are the templates they could choose from after planning was done. Eventually, they will create their own. Found these on Pinterest after searching "comic strip templates."

Later in the day, we had our investigate the room/materials time. They were able to try out the board games, word games, math manipulatives, craft materials and classroom library. It was the last hour of the day and a getting to know each other, free time extravaganza. Kids worked well together and had realizations about the materials in the room. For instance, many asked if they could take some of the learning games to lunch with them in the future. Others asked if these materials would be available for the many indoor recess times that we have in our New England climate. Of course, the answer was, "Yes!"

Students chose where to go the entire time and learned who in the room had similar interests. I saw students appreciating each other's sense of humor and abilities.

This picture of two of my students hovering over a comic book just makes me smile.

Investigating the games and other materials:

Many were drawn to the tangrams. One student traced them to create a beautiful abstract geometric design.

I wish I has taken more pictures, but I felt that I was not being 100% present with my kids if I was taking pics the entire time! I had some great one on one time with students, as well as time with groups of them. Very valuable investment of classroom time!

In this post, I only highlighted two activities. The entire day was active and collaborative, and we are ready for a productive school year!

Pinterest App for IPhone

Pinterest App on IPhone

This is my second post about apps that make my life as a teacher easier. Of course, you can access the site from your laptop/desktop, but what makes it a winner for me is that it is an IPhone app., and I can get ideas 24/7 wherever I am.

Pinterest is a fantastic way to get ideas for the classroom. When you find an idea you like, you pin it to your board. I have so many teaching related pins on one board, I am already thinking of separating the pins into boards by category. May be more efficient this way. Great summer project!

Every few days I go on to Pinterest and either go to the education search or type in something specific into the search bar. I am never disappointed with what I find and there is a great amount of variety and styles.

Possible Board Categories:

Classroom Decor/Theme

Classroom Organization/Supplies

Math 

Writing 

Reading 

Education/Teaching quotes

* Science would be one too, but I am not teaching it next year.

Many of the resources I find are linked to Teachers Pay Teachers, a site I had never heard of before going on Pinterest. Some are free, the rest are very reasonably priced. 

Some examples of lessons and ideas I have used from Pinterest:

- Common Core checklists and student self assessment rubric

- Area/Perimeter/Volume sorting activity

- Figurative Language activities

- Format for weekly plans and set up of planning binder, so that every week the repeating information is already on the plan/ saves time

- organization of week's work into folders with days of week on them.

- a lot of new, creative ways to present information to my students in all curriculum areas

Pinterest is extremely valuable to my teaching now. It is sharing ideas with colleagues on a grand scale. 

April Vacation

I never fully take a vacation. Most teachers don't. We take a few days to relax and maybe even go somewhere. We sleep in if that is what we like, go see movies and set our own schedules. However, most of us don't turn off our teacher.

For instance, when I was recently in Newport, R.I. and saw rocks that were beautifully layered, I took multiple pics so I could have my science classes discern what kind of rock they are seeing. This is an easy, real world review of what they have learned and many teachers do this while they are vacationing. I also took pictures of the tide pools and cliff areas to review ecosystems and weathering/erosion. Showing a picture and having the students just write what they see using science vocabulary never gets old.

Because I do this, some of my students through the years have adopted the same habit. They come in after a vacation with rocks or shells they collected "for class" or with pictures they took with our science class in mind. I hope they maintain their wonder wherever they go!

This same kind of obsession, never turning off my "teacher mind," like many teachers, does not end with just science class. I am working on developing a figurative language unit and have had to pull over while driving to write down a song title or lyric that demonstrates a figure of speech. There are so many!

I am online regularly finding better ways to present difficult concepts to students. It never ends. By the way, if you are an educator and have not checked out Pinterest...get on that!!!!

Looking forward to my honeymoon in Hawaii this summer. I know I will come back relaxed, tan, and full of great experiences/photos, etc. to apply to my classroom.