Last Day of School - Hooray!

Let me tell you - I am SOOO sleeping in tomorrow morning!!  For the last week, I've been up at all hours of the night entering grades for report cards, finishing the reflection for my APPR (Annual Professional Performance Review), and creating/framing the personalized Wordle gifts for my 50 students.  But...they came out PERFECT!  So a little lost sleep was well worth the smiles on their faces.

Take a look!

 

 

It was lots of fun experimenting with different fonts, layouts, and colors to create a look unique to each student.  (If you haven't seen it before, you can check the full directions and a free guide to download on my previous post right here.

Okay - now off to do something mindless - watch an episode of True Blood and have a little Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Therapy ice cream.......  Hello Summer!

Ice Cream Party!

A couple weeks ago, our team had a Penny War Competition to see who could raise the most money for a charity.  Our girls raised a whopping $255.52 for the Make-A-Wish-Foundation!  And since I promised the winning team an ice-cream party......I opted for the hottest day of the week and scooped out 25 bowls for my gals.....

They brought in various toppings to share, and we had a "chill" afternoon just chatting.  It was really nice to relax for a bit and just enjoy each other's company without an academic agenda.

Mmmmm........now doesn't that look delicious?

Another One Bites the Dust.....

When I came across Amber's Linky Party at Adventures of a Third Grade Teacher, I just had to join in - I am constantly critiquing what I am doing, so an end-of-the-year reflection is perfect! 

 Although I still have four weeks of school left, I can already tell you what went really well, and what I'll need to work on for next year. So let's start!

The Good

1. Team Activities  This year my teammate and I vowed to incorporate more team building and group activities. We did a ton of awesome stuff this year:

• Beginning of the Year Get-To-Know-You Team Builders (Cross the River, Human Knot, etc...) 
• Making tie-dye t-shirts in our team color - Go Team Yellow!
• Liquid Nitrogen Ice-Cream Making with a guest speaker from Cryo Tech
• Hoot Pancake Breakfast with Cocoa before our Christmas Break
• Storigami Storyteller Christine Petrell Kallevig
• Mythapalooza Toga Party! - Students performed Pluto Takes a Bride & Perseus and the Sea Monster. Then we enjoyed some Greek food and watched the Percy Jackson movie.  :-)
• Wordle End of the Year Student Gifts (yet to come!)

2. Class Dojo   This revolutionized my classroom management. Students were more involved and really working toward those positive points and trying to avoid getting negative ones. But....as with any behavior management system, it works best when I'm consistent with it.

 3. Teaching Blog & Collaboration

When I starting this teaching blog, I had originally intended for it to be a place for reflection, and to share some strategies and resources through TpT. I didn't fully realize how much I would enjoy sharing and collaborating with other blogging teachers.  And I didn't realize how much I would learn and gain from others - Mother's Day printables, insights into implementing the Daily 5 and CAFE, and especially Charity Preston's advice at TBTS.  More locally, I've been lucky to have an amazing Teaching Assistant for most of this year. She is fully involved, jumps in with insights and explanations, happily helps with grading, brings humor to the class, and has become a terrific friend. I can only hope that we are scheduled together next year as well.

The Bad

1. New Spelling Program

We switched to a high-frequency focus this year with 50 words that all sixth-graders must master by the end of the year. Every two weeks students would focus on four words they personally missed on the pre-test, completing one homework assignment. That wasn't the bad part. The bad part was trying to efficiently keep track of which students were working on which words each week. Also - they had "Spelling Buddies" who would theoretically help them study and quiz them. But very often, they couldn't find their paper telling them which words they were doing, their partner could not pronounce the word accurately, and and if they got just one wrong, their grade was a 75.  And with only 4 words every two weeks, few of my students took it very seriously or ever really studied.

2. Individualized Student Interventions

With the switch this year from 80 minutes of English Language Arts to trying to fit in both ELA and Social Studies into 100 minutes, I've been scrambling to cram in the full curriculum of both subjects and have not been great at making time to meet with students individually. My students have grown this year, but not to the extent that I'm happy with. I really hope that the Daily 5 and CAFE will help with that next year.

The Ugly

3. Organization

Supplies, filing cabinet, desk arrangement, wall design, lack of coherent units....... EVERYTHING needs a tune up next year! Again, I think the Daily 5 and and CAFE will help with organizing classroom routines. I'm moving more items to binders and working on unit plans based on the Common Core. Here are a few ideas I want to try:

Tabbed Teacher Binder 

 

Writing Goals Poster

 Daily 5 and CAFE

So how did your year go? Stop on over to Amber's Blog and link up!

Origami Stories

Do these look familiar to you?  If your students are anything like mine, you're discovering these darling creations all over your classroom - in desks, on the floor, fluttering past your head....   ;-)
So...why not harness your students' natural paper-folding tendencies to create origami?

Last week our team welcomed Storigami artist and storyteller Christine Petrell Kallevig to our school. She was pretty awesome  - demonstrating to the students how to fold a series of origami figures along with a story. A hat transformed into smaller and smaller kites and then into a crane.......    A pond morphed into a turtle and - poof! A box!

My sixth graders particularly liked her modular origami - colorful figures created using multiple component papers.  Each child can create one simple shape and then join them together into a larger object.  Isn't that red, white, and blue swan fantastic?!

 A class origami project could be an awesome team-builder at the beginning of the year or maybe a fun end-of-the-year closing activity. If you have time to fill during the last days of school, you could show your students a few videos and let them have at it. (Also works as a great way to clear out those stacks of old dittos you know you'll never use!)
If you're looking for instructions, video, and other ideas, the Origami Resource Center website is terrific.

Star Wars origami anyone?

Stealth Disco Prank!

 Click here to watch these awesome teachers play a prank on their high school students!

I sooo want to do this!  We did a Flash Mob send-off last year, which was great fun, but this would be even better!

Did your school plan something fun for the teachers to do at the end of the school year?

End-of-the-Year Student Gift

I am so excited about this project! I finally found a meaningful, budget-friendly gift for my students at the end of the year that I know they'll just love.


Instructions:

 1. Give each student a copy of the class roster and a Positive Attributes sheet. (You can also use the Class List form included in the free download below – just change “Student” to the names in your class.)

2. Ask your students to write down one positive trait, adjective, or attribute for each person in the class. You can also include other staff as well, such as teaching assistants, student teachers, aides, special education staff, parent volunteers, etc.

3. Collect the papers and create a Wordle for each person at http://www.wordle.net. Type the student’s name in many times so it is the largest word, and then add the other attributes. The more times an attribute is added, the larger that word will be. Experiment with the font, layout, and colors. (I preferred the half horizontal/half vertical option, with "wild" colors. Also - the black background looks great on the computer, but will really eat up your ink, so I opted for white.)

 

4. Print a colorful Wordle for each student and frame it. (They had a ton at my local Dollar Store.)

 

Tips:

*Don’t reveal the purpose of the exercise – it makes the surprise at the end of the year better!

*Discussing the definition of a trait, quality, or attribute ahead of time helps. I encouraged my students to use their own ideas but had the Positive Attributes sheet as a reference in case they got stuck.

*This can also be done as a carousel walk, where each student puts their name at the top of their paper and then they rotate to each student’s sheet adding a word. This does make it easier to input the words. However, I was concerned that they would be influenced by what others wrote before them. It also wouldn't really be anonymous and they might not give an honest response.

FREE Download - Wordle Student Gift Guide

Do you have any traditions or send-offs for students at the end of the year, or suggestions for gifts that won't break your budget? I'd love to hear your ideas!