Teacher Talk Tuesday

I'm a Hopper, You're a Hopper 

Wouldn't you like to be a Hopper to?

I'm a Hopper is having a Teacher Week, so I thought that I would hop along!

Today is all about advice.  

Ask questions from someone you trust.

Share your ideas- if you are just starting out, you will most likely have found some brand new materials and blogs to share with your co-teachers.

At one point in time, everyone was a brand new teacher just like you.

If you believe in it, so will the students.

If you are doing D5 or Cafe, please remember to build the stamina and make the anchor charts WITH the children.  I am all about the "cute" factor, but it is more meaningful for the kids.  If the students don't make them with you, they are useless. I have seen this first hand at my school. I went into another classroom and referred to the teacher's anchor chart and the kids just gave me a blank stare and said that they didn't make the chart.  (Yes I asked them.)

Although I do print off my cutesy anchor charts, I put them in my D5 binder to remind me on what should be on the chart.  If you are still needing it to look cutesy, you could create it on your computer and use a projector and create it together.

Specimens

I created this sheet as a sample for the scientists to follow- I traced a Frisbee! 

One side was what they saw, the other side was what it was.

 Here were the slides we bought.

 This was an app on my iPhone:

 another photo from my iPhone app.

The app is called Magnifying. Unfortunately, I can't get anymore info on it either :(

Microscopes-2

A song that the other Mrs. R charted :)

Microscopes

Our after school program worked on microscopes.  I made this one.

You can't see it, but there are packing tape strips around the drawing for the k-3 to label.

 Here is our rolling cabinet of microscopes.

 I had the older scientists draw and label their own:

I think they did a fabulous job!

Friday Funny

Never let children hole-punch things lol

I recently gave my students binders to put their math booklet in. This is what I saw later! Now mind you these were 5th and 6th graders... I was a little concerned. :)  Then they didn't put the papers in order, it was quite funny after a while.  It also didn't help that their pages weren't numbered! I learned my lesson and now I punch the holes for them- saves us a lot of grief in the end :)

Rain Forest

The K's and firsties made this chart.

I have a ton more ideas and printables in my Rain Forest Unit

Word Work- Funky Letters

So part of my word work are these letters. I used a box from Target and added letter stickers to the back. Here is the problem. There are all these letters that are misplaced- see lower left corner. Yes some are from the kids, but some of the compartment walls move.  I am not sure how to fix this.  If I put tape to hold it, then the letters will get stuck. :(

For your help, I am including this Word of the Week Frame.  Each week we have "Cool Tools" from PBIS. So from that, I choose a word from that topic and that is our word of the week.  I hang it on my focus board.