Interesting Idioms

I was looking for an idiom activity to do with students that would be fun and engaging. I have been using interactive notebooks in my classroom and came up with the idea to have students make an idiom page to add to their notebooks. I created 25 different pages because I have 25 children in each class that I teach. Once they glue these into their notebooks they can share them with each other. It's much more fun to learn idioms when everyone has an opportunity to represent them through pictures and share them.

I knew it would take a long time to set up my clasroom but it's taking even longer than I thought! One of the things I knew I wanted was a shoe organizer to store all of my supplies. Unfortunatly, there is no place to hang a shoe organizer anywhere in my room so I had to go with option #2.

This is a 22 drawer screw organizer from Lowe's. It cost 16.50 before tax. I didn't have time to make my own labels so I searched on the internet and found some already made! If you want to make one of these for yourself search for Kristen Doyle on Teacher's Pay Teacher's or follow the link below. Her file is completely free. Happy Organizing!

Labels for 22 drawer organizer

DIY classroom project #1

I wanted a place to sit at the front of my classroom and I happened to have an extra stool hanging around my home. I could have just brought it to school but it looked very grungy and old. I also wanted to put my initial on it because my school is rented. This means that my classroom is used for religious education on the weekends. I don't expect my stuff to disappear but as there will be many people walking around during the weekend I wanted to be able to easily identify my things in case it got moved to another room. I think it came out super cute!

Steps:

1. First I had my husband sand the stool.
2. Then I got him to spray paint it black.
3. Next I made a stencil out of card stock and cut out the printed part. I then laid the stencil on the stool where I wanted it.
4. After that I traced the stencil lightly with a pencil and took the stencil off.
5. Using the pencil lines as my guide I painted in my letter.

It took two days to do this because I wanted to make sure the spray paint dried completely.

Teachers Pay Teachers

My second goal for the upcoming school year was to create a Teachers Pay Teachers account. I made one today and uploaded my first file! I got the idea for the actual activity from something I saw another teacher do in their classroom.

This particular activity is a bulletin board idea. Students can sign the posters they feel apply to them. When they are finished you can put them on your bulletin board for a quick easy decorating job on the first day of school. It also helps you to learn more about your students.

You can find the whole file at http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Janine-Bartsch

New Classroom

This is a picture of my new classroom. I have a lot of work of work to do! I am very lucky that the previous teacher left it in great shape for me. My only sadness is that the person I share this room with gets half the bulletin board. In other words, I can't remove all the old newspapers off the board in the back... Other than that I think it will be really nice to have a second person in the room to help me out. He won't be there all day but every little bit counts!

Welcome

Greetings! I am a first year fifth grade teacher and I thought blogging about my year may help me stay organized for future years to come and help me improve on my teaching.