Back to School Tidbits

First week…complete! I have such a wonderful group this year that I actually don't feel that "end of the first week" tired. Instead, I'm feeling excited and rejuvenated. I truly believe that it will be a fabulous year! In this post, I wanted to share a few tidbits that started the year off on the right foot! 

Each year, I create a welcome poem for my students. In the past, I've stuffed the bag with sugary treats and left the bag on student desks for open house. This year, I decided to change things up and write a poem that would include supplies that I wanted each student to start with. Instead of giving it to students at open house, it was waiting on their desks on the first day. That way I knew students would all start with what they needed. It was much cheaper to put together than the candy bags, too! If you'd like to grab this poem, you can find it here: Welcome Back to School Poem for Supplies

Since I still wanted to welcome my students with a little treat, I opted for gourmet lollipops. It turns out that CVS had them on sale, two for $1…score! I also bought welcome bracelets from Really Good stuff, added green tags and some twine and voila, a perfect welcome gift was created! 

Of course, I never leave the parents out! I like to give them a little treat too, so for the second year in a row, I gave them "parent vitamins" with a really cute saying for each color in a pack of M&M's. Parents got a big kick out of them! You can pull up a copy here: Parent Vitamins You'll notice that there are two pages of the same thing. That is because I print two pages to one page to make them small enough to fit on the bags. 

Our lovely fifth grade bulletin board. Student names are on the flowers and peace signs. I drew that mystery bus freehand, so please be kind, I am normally a stick figure kinda gal! How fun is that font? It's called Shagadelic! Love it! 

Inspired by an idea I found from Jessica at The Teaching Oasis, I put together a welcome gift for a new teacher that I get to mentor. She's a baseball fan like me, so I made it a baseball themed-basket! Read more about this idea from Jessica at The Teaching Oasis here: Welcome Basket

I'm hoping that you are all off to a wonderful start of the 2015-2016 year too! May each week be an opportunity for growth for you and your students!

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A Gift for Your Favorite Character Reading Assignment

I'm constantly looking for new ways to assess my students' comprehension, especially when it comes to independent reading. I love my tic-tac-toe reading response boards, but I don't want students to grow tired of them so at least once a quarter, I like to throw in something different.

In December (oh yes, I know it's February, but I'm in catch-up mode), my teammate and I were in need of a fun in-class assignment that would keep students engaged as they counted down the days until the winter break. We were also in great need of a bulletin board. I don't know why, but the need for a bulletin board really gets my wheels turning! Since we were focusing on narrative elements, I thought it would be great to narrow in on characters. After tossing the idea around a bit, I came up with A Gift for Your Favorite Character.

For this assignment, students were asked to choose a favorite character from the book that they were reading independently and think about a gift that they would give to that character. Of course, it couldn't be just ANY gift, it had to be a gift that was specific to that character based on what they had learned from their reading. They had to choose a character and explain why they chose that character first. Then they had to share the gift that they chose and explain why they chose what they did for their character.

When I shared the assignment, my students were super excited! I was looking for engagement, and I really got it. I was really impressed with how well my students did with the assignment. Here's a peek at a few:

Now, we did this at Christmas time, but the great thing about this is that you could really do it anytime. I loved how awesome our bulletin board looked with our Christmas theme, but I would definitely do it during any season! I hung their decorated "gifts" on top, with the gift inside, and the writing paper hanging below. We had lots of compliments from other staff that stopped to read them!

You can find my creation in my TpT store by clicking the image below!

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Flashback: Turkeys in Disguise

Last year, when I posted my Turkeys in Disguise product, my students had not yet completed their work. As I prepare to use this in the classroom, I wanted to finally post the work of last year's group!

My Turkeys in Disguise  resource is for intermediate students. I loved all of the Turkeys in Disguise that were out there, but the activities weren't challenging enough to justify their use in a fifth grade classroom. Since we were working on inferring, I decided to come up with my own activity where students disguise their  turkey, but they have to give hints about the disguise so that other students can guess what they are. We did a gallery walk as students put their hints on their desks and made guesses about each one. Then we did a second walk where their "undercover identity" was revealed. My students were engaged and really recognized the connection between this activity and what we had been learning. It was awesome! Here's some of their creations, as well as the bulletin board that I put up that was a big hit in our school!

 

If you're wishing that you had known about this BEFORE Thanksgiving because you would've loved to use it in the classroom, you're in luck! I actually have one of these for Christmas too! You can find it here: 

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Halloween Bulletin Board Idea

Today is a super quick post. I actually did this last year and then totally forgot to share it. So here's my Halloween Bulletin Board from last year:

I googled "haunted house silhouettes" then I found the one that I liked, put a black piece of butcher paper on my board and put the image up on the paper with my document camera. I traced the windows and the outside with white crayon then cut the image out, as well as the windows. I put yellow tissue paper behind the windows and then cut out some ghosts and a fence. It was really quite eye-catching and by calling it Spooktacular Work, you aren't limited in what work you choose!

Just wanted to share that idea with you before October speeds past! I can't even believe that October 15th is THIS WEEK! Slow it down, fall, slow it down!

Have a wonderful Monday! I hope that today is the start of a great week!

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Lego Back to School Bulletin Board

So I'm swimming in back to school stuff, but I'm not complaining, it's kind of nice being back to busy. We had our back to school night last week and it was a great success. I really think it's going to be a great year!

I'm also celebrating having 1,500 likes and growing on Mrs. O "Knows" Facebook Page! I'm giving away my top 10, not all to one person, but over the course of 2 days with 10 totally random trivia questions. Keep an eye out for these fun giveaways all weekend!

I also realized that I had failed to share our Back to School Lego bulletin board that we put up in our hallway. My partner teacher and I really wanted to create something different and Legos are so big right now that we decided this would be a fun and original way to welcome students back! Students give it two thumbs up! Now to think about our October board...

I hope that you are having a relaxing weekend or are at least in the comfort of your sweatpants and hoodie as you work on your many teacher to-do's!

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What Peace Means to Me - My January Bulletin Board

The New Year is here, and it's been a busy start! I can't believe I'm looking at the calendar and that it's already mid-January! We're coming up on the end of our second quarter, which means that we are just about half way through the school year. The time is flying. My group is so fantastic that I wish I could just hit the pause button, though don't let me fool you in to thinking that I'm not also looking forward to summer break. For now, I'll look forward to enjoying an extra day of sleeping in this week. I love 3-day weekends. Whenever I hear that a district is considering a 4-day school week, I think of how fantastic it would be if every weekend was 3-day weekend!

Anyway, I digress. When we returned to school, my classroom had a great discussion about peace. We tied it in with a discussion about Martin Luther King, Jr. I was so impressed at the conversation that we had, that I decided to use it for my January bulletin board. Each student was asked to explain what peace means to them. They wrote down their answers and then we shared our different ideas of peace. We are in an area with a number of military bases, so there was a lot of great discussion about keeping our military safe, which of course teared me up, since my hubby is military. Beyond that, I was so impressed that they really tackled bullying in their ideas of peace. I thought it was really important for them to hear each other talk about that. I wanted to share my board and some of the ideas that my students shared. It really gives me a lot of hope that these students are so aware and concerned with having peace in our world.

You can download the PEACE IS template by clicking on the image below.

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Wanted: Turkeys in Disguise

Goodness, gracious! The time certainly does fly. I've been on a bit of a blogging hiatus and I have so much to share, that I am truly not sure where to begin. I hope that you all had a fantastic Thanksgiving with your loved ones. Are you, like me, already on the countdown to Christmas break?

We've been working hard to understand how to infer as we read. This is my sixth year with fifth grade and I always find this to be such a hard strategy for students to use. I've been focusing on it in both science and reading, but my students are still building their way to a solid understanding of this important strategy. They've been working so hard that I really wanted to give them a bit of a break for the short week. I wanted to find something fun to do that would reinforce making inferences. I have always loved all of the wonderful Turkey in Disguise ideas, but none of them were very appropriate for the fifth grade classroom, so decided to take that idea and turn it in to a fifth grade activity by making it an inference riddle. My oh my, what a fantastic time the students had with this! They are already asking if we can do a Santa one (and yes, one is in the works).

Shout out to Monster Wrangler Mike, who makes some fantastic clip art. He posted turkey in disguise clip art which made my creation 1,000 times easier! I used his clip art to decorate the bulletin board outside the classroom and let the students begin to wonder what our assignment would be.

Then it was time to introduce the assignment to the students. They were so excited to disguise the turkey that they took the riddle creation quite seriously and produced some fantastic work. I will take pictures when I return to school on Monday and share the board with all of their fantastic work on it! They loved creating the riddles, disguising their turkeys, and keeping it all top secret from friends. When all were finally displayed, they shared their riddles and guessed what they were before viewing the picture. We had a great discussion about how they had made inferences based on the clues that they read. I think we are finally getting there, and having some fun along the way! Hooray!

I have great news! This whole thing is a freebie on TpT! Get it here: Turkey in Disguise Inference Activity

I wonder if any students will disguise Santa as a turkey when I create the Santa one? Heehee!

Enjoy your last couple of days of break! Keep an eye out for a Santa inference activity soon!

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Official Classroom Reveal

Now that the PD is over and open house is complete, I'm ready for my complete classroom reveal. I worked incredibly hard to change things up so that it wasn't the same old set up and I am extremely pleased with my outcome. Here's the official classroom reveal pics:

Outside. I had to move the owls over because we got mailboxes this year. 

My name tag from Kasefazem. Love it!

What a student will see upon entry to my classroom!

A wonderful and very crafty colleague of mine created a curtain to go over this bookshelf that holds multiple copies of guided reading books. This way I can access them for groups but the students won't get in to them before hand.

This is very similar to last year. Organized bins, lots of Peanuts posters, and my board that I got a couple of weeks in to last school year.

This is my student work board. I use sheet protectors so that I can slip their work in and out each week without stapling it up and ruining the paper each time. Because of this, I didn't even have to change my bulletin board paper this year, just the border to change things up!

My main bulletin boards and classroom library and reading area. Students love the "Opening Soon" signs. It makes them very curious about when this marvelous library will open!

Side view of the reading area. 

Side view of my desk area. I am obsessed with the idea that I will keep the space behind my desk neat and organized this year! 

Front view of my desk area. Hate those cords but that's about as ruly as I can get them to be. 

View of the front from the back. 

Last year's end of year book reports became this year's open house book preview! 

One of my favorite areas. My behavior chart, daily schedule, objectives, my clock with awesome hands (bye, bye digital clock), a Snoopy poster given to me by a very sweet colleague, and a peek the place value owls that I created!

My cubbies! I bought little containers for their extras for each cubby and put a sticker on the front with their number on it. I'm going to put photos that I take throughout the year on the decorative squares on the cupboards. Again, I have my crafty colleague to thank for the awesome curtains!

We've come full circle: my mailbox and supplies area. 

When the students came in for open house they were excited about everything that they saw, which made me feel really awesome and told me that my hard work will definitely be worth it. I can't wait to get started with them on Tuesday! 

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