Whooo Hoooo....loving summer

Okay so lately I am the offical creater of the things to be created, so here is what I worked on today.

Okay so these were not my idea, but I have toooooooo many pins to find were I saw it originally, (must organize boards) but I will give credit to that blogger whenever I figure out were I saw something like this before I remember this person had EXTRA RECESS as the prize, and she flipped one letter daily.

A-N-Y-ways. so those of you who read my blog know that I do the whole brain teaching model in my classroom. The first year we spelled out the word prize, when they beat the class mascot Petty the Piranha (oh Miss Thompson's Think Tank that was a good theme), and last year they spelled out cheer when they beat The Evil Dr. Wormwood.

Well I thought my middle schooler may not be as amused by a classroom mascot so I tweaked my system a little. Each class will earn points for themselves when they are on task, but if someone is not on task I give there point to the other classes. Each day the class that received the most points will earn a letter towards the prize. The class that earns the most letters gets the prize. Get it!! :) I am still working out the details in my mind, but I think that this paired with my individual PBS will work out quite nicely. So here are the pictures of the prize words I made.

Because my students are bussed in from some of the neighborhoods were their families don't have a lot of money, I wanted to make up prizes that were not too expensive for me to do, and provided some type of experience for them that they may not have had. I am still making more so please let me know if you think of a idea.
Thanks you guys and blog with you soon!

Figured Out How to Really use powerpoint....

Today I made some cute stuff for my classroom to match my pre-existing border and things I have purchased. Yay!

I made some table labels for baskets inspired by http://ericabohrer.blogspot.com/
hers look like this

here are how my labels turned out. I just have to attach them to the baskets now!!

And I made some FAQ cards to make things go a bit smoother. Inspired by <a href="http://www.firstgradeglitterandgiggles.blogspot.com/"><img src="http://i1090.photobucket.com/albums/i366/dreamlikemagic/button-187.png" alt="First Grade Glitter and Giggles" width="150" height="150" border="0" /></a>

Hers look like this.....



And this is how mine turned out. Still need to cut and laminate, but I think they turned out pretty cute

 Here is my favorite. Though my fifth graders would like the picture. tee hee!

and I made them all in Powerpoint, hooray!! More when I get more things made. Happy Summer!!

PD all month long

   So I thought that I was going to get a nice little summer break, but I was wrong. It seems that my new school has a lot of training that I need to go to, in order to be fully prepared. Well it's for the kids, so I will have to suck it up.

    On a serious note though I am really enjoying it all week I have been at tech training, and I have to say I have a lot to share with you all. My new school is going one to one this year, yes I said it one to one, every single child with a lap top!!!!!!! WhAT?!?! It's pretty cool, since my new school is a STEM school and part of Metro's Innovation Cluster, it is really a must.

Here are some of the completely awesome web resource I learned about this week.


First up http://www.edmodo.com/ Edmodo. Think facebook, but secure and for education!!! You can post assignments, quizzes, polls, and have open discussion. Oh and it allows your students a safe network to discuss homework and other things. It also allows you to contact other teacher and ask them for advice and lesson plan help. Sooooooo, I'm saying it is worth checking out!! :)


Next, Next, Next is http://www.symbaloo.com/ Symbaloo is a bookmarking system that makes your bookmarks look like apps. This allows the students a great interface that looks like the phones they are so use to seeing. Also you can search for other peoples webmixes that have already compiled great list of resources and save them. They have some great ones for common core.


Moving on to http://tagul.com/ tagul is like wordle, but you can make your clouds custom you get to pick everything, and it is FREE. Yes the magic work is FREE.


Finally, http://storybird.com/ storybird now I didn't learn about story bird at this particular training, but it is amazing. You sign up for a teacher account and them make accounts for your kids. Story bird allows your students to choose pictures and create a book. When they finish they submit the books to you. Can you say GREAT work on writing activity. Also, when the stories are complete you can purchase them to print as books if you like, it is entirely up to you.

This is not all of the source we went over, but these are some of the ones I was the most excited about. Well I hope you all are having amazing summers, and I hope that I have some more fun things to post after this weeks trainings on Differ. Instruction and Project Based Learning. As, always thanks for reading.