My Teacher's Toolbox

After seeing these all over on Pinterest and various blogs, I decided to make my own teacher's toolbox. I found the Stack-On at Home Depot for $16.99 and quickly made a pattern for both sizes of drawers and simply cut them out of scrapbook paper. I made the labels in just a few minutes in Word. Saved a lot of ink, too. :-) I think the whole thing took me about an hour and a half...most of that time was taping the cards to the inside of the drawers.



I'm not sure if I like it or not, but I added wall stickers from The Dollar Tree because the tops and sides looked boring. I chose the flowers because of our Universiity of Hawaii connection. The stickers are removable so they may not last long.

Book Clubs and a Story Wheel

I tried Laura Candler's Book Clubs on a small basis this year. When groups of students (a book club) finished their reading selection, I gave them free choice to do a group project as a culminating activity. Here is a story wheel they did for the book "A Dog's Life" by Ann M. Martin. Five fourth grade students completed this project. I was really proud of their work--and the way they worked together as readers and writers.

The students chose the book they wanted to read and when they finished they pulled out 8 major events in the book then wrote about them and illustrated a scene.

No Excuses: "University of Hawaii" College Theme

Our entire school follows the "No Excuses" program and each class has a college that we promote through out the year. My class is the University of Hawaii. Each class at our school has a flag that flies outside their classroom and dedicates a bulletin board to the college through out the whole year. In addition, students wear collegiate shirts (I'm going to tie-dye mine with the kids this year) and we kick off the school year with a huge college pep rally every September. I think it's a great idea. We encourage the students to embrace the idea that school does NOT end in Twelfth Grade.


This is my University of Hawaii bulletin board. I made the "H" logo and other letters on my Cricut.





Our poster for the college pep rally.


This is the year the kidlets will graduate--college. It hangs in our room all year long as a reminder.

Open House: Spring 2012

Here are some of the photos of my classroom I took right before Open House. On the student desks are book report dioramas, animal reports, various art and language arts projects and/or journals. For Open House, I love pulling out stuff from all year and loading it up on the desk and then I let the students arrange it the way they want. That way, each student has something they feel special about on display.


A display attached to the back of the chair to show how many AR reading points each student earned that year.




From the back corner of the room where the my teacher's desk is located (that I never sit at.) You can see my "University of Hawaii" bulletin board that hangs all year long in the class on the far wall with the green background.

"My Future Looks Bright" Sunglasses

Here's something I saw on Pinterest and tweaked for my classroom's needs. These are sunglasses we completed for Open House. They were tied into goals my kidlets set at the beginning of the year. Our whole school is part of the "No Excuses University" program in which we instill in the students all year long in every grade that school automatically includes college, no excuses. So many of the students wrote on their sunglasses from a perspective of being a senior citizen and looking back on their life and all they accomplished (where they went to college, what their major was, what their career was, and other successes.)





I made the master for the sunglasses by tracing around a pair of those big plastic sunglasses that they sell at The Dollar Tree. Then I just added lines for text. I photocopied them onto large construction paper. They were a big hit at Open House!

Back-to-School and Back-to-Blogging

It's been a couple of years since I worked a blog on Blogger, and I have been trying to decide if I even need a blog. I see lots of great --and wonderfully creative-- teacher blogs out there and wonder if I have anything to offer the blog-o-sphere. I have been following links all over the place from Facebook, Pinterest, E-mails, Teacher's Notebook, and Teachers Pay Teachers...and I decided, if anything, I can blog/archive my own activities, lessons, successes, and failures in the classroom for myself and just maybe, someone might stumble upon something they can use along the way. So here I am...back at the keyboard trying to organize my thoughts and entertaining myself once again ;-) I made a header--and away I go.