First Summer Week in Classroom

So we still have almost a month of summer left but my principal is wonderful and she lets us in the building early. I love having time to get in the room and work at my pace to get things done instead of having to rush and get it done in just a few days. I worked a few hours each day. The great thing is that if I'm not feeling it that day I don't have to work.

So I have seen several people posting about how to display their classroom rules. I did this last year and I really like it. I just used PowerPoint to type the rules and added a text box behind the text to add the polka dots (to match my colors). I glued the rules to the ribbon and then glued the ribbon to the wall. Voila!


Here is the sign I ordered from Vistaprint. I was happy with it because it isn't just heavy paper. The print isn't super sharp but it works for what I need it for. Now I just need to find a place to put it in my classroom wall. It is pretty large so I'll post once I get it on the wall.


Another surprise when I returned to school, we had some babies this summer! I cleaned their habitat and found 7 babies. See the tiny one I circled? That's one of the babies. As you can see we have PLENTY of hissing cockroaches and the sad thing? You can't even see all of the adults in this picture. They love to get under things so there are a lot hiding.



Someone asked me about my Good Job Jar so I snapped a photo today and decided to share how I use it. I give tickets out to my students when they do something good, answer a question no one else knows the answer to, post a comment on the blog, etc. We also do big word every day. I post the scrambled letters for a big word and the kids try to figure out what the word is. The first 3 students to get it right get a ticket and then they come to the Smartboard and rearrange the letters to reveal the big word. I draw tickets on Friday afternoon (this also makes a great probability lesson and I don't even have to "teach" it). We count the number of tickets in the jar and determine the probability of some one's name being drawn. As the year goes, we also find the percent.

I draw 4 tickets. The first 3 are given the choice of a homework pass or lunch with a friend pass. This year I'm going to add iPad time pass that I had made on Vistaprint. Then the last name drawn is the "lucky dog" and that person gets all the passes.


I've been seeing these cute drawers on Pinterest so I decided to make some too! My room colors are red, black, and white. Plus I love Hello Kitty so this was just what I needed. I cut the paper and then used my Cricut to cut out little Hello Kitty heads for the labels. I ended up writing on them instead of printing them because it was going to be a pain to print labels and cut them. I love my husband's handwriting but I just did it myself because I wasn't sure what I was going to put in each one.


The last thing I'm going to share is the app I used to write on my photo. Skitch is a free app that lets you write on photos or add text and shapes.


I'm super excited that I'm almost up to 100 followers. I never thought that would happen! Thanks to all my readers and those who comment.