2015-2016 Here We Go!!

Students came back to school on Wednesday and all I can say right now is I am excited for my second year in 5/6!

Here are some things that took place this week:

 I am not a terribly crafty person, so when I had this idea to fix my HORRIBLE hallway bulletin board I got very excited.  I don't even have a before picture of it because I hated it so much.  It goes from the ceiling to the floor and in a dark corner.  It is also directly across from the lockers and after about a day the bottom half of the board is ripped and falling off from kids kicking into it.  I absolutely love the way this came out.  The wainscot panel was exactly the right size, I didn't have to cut it at all.  Plus it brightens up the corner so much!

If you browse Pinterest you many recognize the signs.  I decorated the board with wanted signs  for positions such as Team leaders willing to build a learning community, Dreamers who dare to be successful, etc.  I also turned this into an activity for my 6th graders.  I printed out the signs again and hung them around my room, as a class we talked about want ads and how they are written and I told them they were going to write the descriptions for these wanted signs.  I had then break into groups and write adjectives that would describe the perfect candidate for the job.  Then using the adjectives create a sentence to go into the description.  Since I am a math teacher not ELA, this is all so new to me and its taking a little longer than I thought to get all 7 signs done, but we are making great progress and I hope to be completely done by next Wednesday which is Back To School night for the parents.  I will eventually have the students write their names on the chart paper under the descriptions for the jobs they are committed to (hopefully all of them!)

For 5th grade I had planned to read book Math Curse by John Scieszka and Lane Smith and then work on some of the corresponding activities that I found on various websites.  Well, I read the story, we did a crossword puzzle, and then our new math coach sent me a link to these great getting to know you Bio-Glyphs  I remembered that both of my own kids did these in 6th grade math and how much fun it was on Back to School night as a parent looking for my kids picture.  So I jumped on it and am so glad I did!  Here is a sample, I can't wait to hang them up around our room!  I asked the students to put an O on the back if they would't mind if I hang theirs in the hallway too.