Owls and Such

     I have been working on getting together supplies for decorating my new room.  I could not resist the cute owls that are everywhere.  So it will be "Look Whoo's in Our Class" this year using bright pinks, minty greens, orange with touches of yellow and canary blue along the way.  I went with a good friend to pick up enough paint chips to pick colors for my new office space I will be decorating once I have taken ALL my boxes of school stuff to my new campus with a few leftover to make a six-week calendar in a poster frame (idea #1 from pininterest completed).  Then I used my scrap booking supplies to create motivational signs and behavioral charts.  I am putting them in 12 x 12 page protectors so that I can either us dry erase markers on them or move clothespins as needed on the Champs posters. 

      I am planning on using many of the Champs expectations for behaviors.  I like that it sets up the expectations for activities so that I can easily let students know what are the guidelines before they start an activity.  I think using it with the Boys Town Expectations for behaviors and Class Dojo program will be a great combination.  I will have to see how this blends with any campus expectations of course.

    Two of my favorite things that I found on www.pininterest.com are the free program www.remind101.com that allows teachers to set up a homework reminder system.  Students and/or parent call the number that you are assigned, keeping the teacher's cell phone number private, and sent a text message to join their assigned class.  The program will send them a text asking them to give their name, keeping the student's and parent's phone numbers are kept private too.  Teachers can then send out reminders for upcoming homework or assignments.  Love it.  I plan on sending them a text for the  basic outline for the week on Sundays and using it to help student/parent remember when test are planned or projects are due.

    The second new "fave" is a combination of an idea from Heather, and her fellow teachers, at her blog Working 4 the Classroom (@blogspot.com) to have students make mini-anchor charts to review before testing.  I decided to flip the idea and found an android app that would allow me to use my phone to photograph our anchor charts that we made throughout the year converting them to pdf files immediately that I can upload using an app like www.dropbox.com .  Once I have the pdf files I can print them in an 8 x 10 format to create an on-going math anchor wall that students can use all year.  Students who are absent or move in later in the year could use them to complete make-up work in their math journals.  I will also have a record of what we used for the next year too.  This evening I made a "trial" anchor chart (see below), scanned it and had it on my laptop in less than 15 minutes. 

     Tomorrow, or later today will be about dying clothespins and labeling them for each poster.

                                                                                                        Until then,  Debby

What Me, Starting a Blog???

     Starting a Blog??  Really had no interest in starting a blog or spent much time reading other people's blogs.  I embrace technology and enjoy checking in with friends and family on facebook.  However, this summer I started noticing friends posting little "pins" from the pininterest.com website and heard from celebrities, like Bethaney Frankel, why I should follow their pins.   I didn't see why I should care what products they were endorsing, until one on my fellow educators pinned an anchor chart photo.
    Suddenly, I was intriqued and had to know more.  Two weeks later and I am still searching until the wee hours of the morning and pinning creative ideas, great websites and I have discovered tons of exceptional educators who are willing to share their hardwork and ideas.  I started by reading additional pages of blogs I found through pininterest and then started clicking on recommended blogs to follow on Facebook or Google+.
     As their ideas and the images that I have viewed over the last two weeks from pinning, I began to get even more excited about my new teaching position.  I have 21 years of teaching experience from 4th to 8th grade teaching science primarily and elementary math.  Collaboration and working with others to create new curriculum or designing new projects have always been exciting.  Mentoring other elementary teachers in science and technology has been my niche for the last ten years.  I have been focusing on ideas for Math Journals and the use of Anchor Charts primarily and want to document the evolution of my ideas for math and science this year.  So maybe a starting a blog does not sound so far fetched.
     Please excuse any error as I learn my way around this new (to me) technology.