There is something to be said for art that originated when the mere act of surviving and thriving in the environment was a big challenge. Imagine how
Busy girls are constantly on the move and can't afford the time and money for monthly manicures so low maintenance nails are a life saver.
I thought I would share the first part of the chapter on crewing from The Guerilla Film Makers Movie Blueprint. It’s a template for a low budget feature film crew and exactly who you will need at…
5 "Must See" Websites for the Art Room % %
Spotted (and admired) in the showroom of Chairloom in Philadelphia: rough-hewn factory floors embellished with dramatic stencils. Read on to discover how t
20 cognitive biases in a chart that could keep you from making a bad decision.
We're not knocking Paris or London, but Europe is so much more than its most famous cities. Explore these 15 under-the-radar destinations on the continent.
DIY Project! Learn how to make a silhouette of your child! Love this idea for all my kids!!
I met Hester at Blogtacular this year, but before we had the chance to meet in person I was an avid follower of her Youtube channel Handmade Home. I love any woman who’s not afraid to pick up a power tool and Hester definitely knows her way around a drill driver! So I just knew that […]
Cómo enseñarse a sí mismo artes marciales. Aprender un arte marcial es bueno para el cuerpo y la mente. Dependiendo del lugar donde vives, puede ser difícil encontrar una escuela y mucho menos costearte las clases. Nada puede reemplazar la...
No nonprofit can afford to be an island. As tempting as it may be to stay in your comfort zone, wearing blinders that enable you to forge straight ahead without noticing what’s going on around you, this is a dangerous practice. Because sometimes the landscape changes dramatically. And when it does,…
These are the top 10 watercolour techniques that you should know as an artist or beginner watercolour enthusiast! Discover them here.
Who doesn't like getting flowers? They are so colourful, really brighten up the home and make you smile.Unfortunately, some of us don't get given flowers very o…
5 "Must See" Websites for the Art Room % %
After recess or lunch can be one of the toughest times to transition back into instruction.
After recess or lunch can be one of the toughest times to transition back into instruction.
Kung Fu, also known as Gong Fu, is an ancient Chinese martial art. Should you be inspired to learn this art, yet there isn't a school nearby, you can't afford classes, or your schedule simply doesn't allow it, you can learn it yourself. As...
Have you spent endless time comparing Canva fonts and searching for the best Canva fonts or font combinations?
Style doesn't need to be expensive.
Don’t have the money for dyslexia tutoring? Do not fret, you can teach your dyslexic child yourself. The PRIDE Reading Program is heavily scripted out. Parents can follow the script step-by-step. The Teaching Guide is digital and easy to follow. The child has a workbook that they write in, and is also given a sound chart, phoneme cards, letter tiles, and more. There are also training videos that parents can use each step of the way. It is super easy to use.
So Ms. K and I were talking at Starbucks today about all things art education.. when I told her about my classroom management system this year. She was intrigued by what I had to say and suggested creating a blog post exclusively about it to share with all of you -- so here we are! :) **Side note before we get started: MGAE Conference stands for (Ms. Gram Art Education).. didn't want to confuse anyone. ;) Upon reviewing my first post.. I realized I really didn't have much more to say... so I'm just going to straight copy and paste this.. then add some commentary to the end. This year I also decided I wanted to change up my classroom management system. For the past two years I'd been doing the 'ART' letters on my board. When a class was disruptive or talking too loudly, they lost their 'A'. If the behavior continued, they lost their 'R' and their right to talk. Then if they lost their 'T', they lost the rest of their art lesson that day and had to clean up early. Last year I even took it a step further and tracked what letter classes ended up on at the end of class. Then at the end of the year as an added incentive.. the class with the most greens won an art party (which ended up being an ice cream party - yeaaa needless to say I gained some weight). Unfortunately although it started out as an effective classroom management system, it lost steam as the year went on. Whole classes ended up losing letters because of a few students.. and classes who left many times on yellow and/or red figured they weren't going to win the art party anyway and gave up caring. Well not this year! I'm over the 'whole class' model of classroom management as well as end of the year incentives! So this year I'm doing a table group point system on class dojo! I've set up my class dojo account with 6 classes (one for each grade level). Then inside each class I've added 6 "students" (my table colors). When students are doing well (come into the room quietly, participate, use good manners, work hard, share well, clean-up ON TIME, etc...) they can earn dojo points! When they do the opposite, they can lose dojo points! *I also love class dojo because you can download it as an app on your phone.. so you can give and take away points from kids even when you aren't at your computer!! So whhhhhyyy do the kids care if they win points or not? Great question!! Because now when we do art centers (if they finish their projects early or I decide to have a centers day), they can only pick from centers that they can "afford" with their dojo points! Hehehehee! Ingenious! Naturally all of my super awesome centers (window drawing, jewelry, modeling clay, origami, etc) require a larger number of points.. while some of my less exciting ones require less (weaving, pattern blocks, etc). Table points reset at the end of the week so the next time my group see's me, they have a fresh opportunity to win points! Now there is no more class vs class competitions, waiting until the end of the year to be rewarded, and no more buying prizes! Instead the kids are rewarded weekly with new art opportunities and experiences! Point values are listed on each center. The only thing I want to add is HOW AWESOME this classroom management system has been for me thus far. When I walk into my classroom these days, 70% of the time every student has their head down on their table and are waiting quietly to get started (they know this is a way to get points). IT IS AMAZING. The main thing with this system is that you have to stay absolutely committed to giving/taking away points! You cannot let anything slide and when students are being awesome you have to recognize that immediately -- this is why I use the app from my phone. Ways students earn points: Going to their tables quietly and putting their head down at the beginning of class, volunteering to answer questions, having manners (this is so important to me), sharing really well, being helpful to other students, cleaning up WHEN I ask them to (not 2 minutes later), being the first table to clean up (correctly), working relatively quietly, staying on task, and at line-up the whole class can earn a point if line up is very quick and quiet. Ways students lose points: Coming into my classroom loudly, fighting (usually over not sharing), getting off task, being way too loud when working, not cleaning up when asked, talking after I've asked for their attention (I say "class", they say "yes".. then if anyone speaks it's a point off), taking too long to clean up, excessive talking during lineup, etc. Now to answer the big question: Q: Do you project the class dojo screen on your LCD projector throughout the whole class? A: No. I definitely have it up at the beginning of class when students walk in (this reminds them.. 'Oh yea.. I wanna earn points').. but as far as the rest of the class time it just depends. If I'm showing a PowerPoint or using my projector for anything else.. then no I can't.. but that doesn't mean I stop giving/taking away points. In fact it's almost even better this way! My phone still makes the noise when I give or take away points, so my kids hear that.. then ask me "What table lost a point?!" I like responding with - "It doesn't matter.. if you're table is following directions.. then it wasn't you." This gets EVERY table back on task and working at a reasonable noise level REALLLL fast. :) If you have any other questions.. please feel free to comment below!
This homemade iDad Father's Day card is too funny.
"Can you tell me how to fix this streaky marker look?" Ugh. If I had a nickle for every time I hear this question... we'll, frankly, I'm not really sure what I'd do with a pile of nickles larger than my house... who thought of that stupid saying anyway?
Create your own art gallery with any of these 33 free modern art printables. Click, print and pop them in a frame to add some personality and interest!
I always feel like there are so many different organizational ideas for elementary school teachers floating around the Internet, but rarely ever do I find
Do you have only one day to spend in Seattle? Then this itinerary is perfect for you! See which sights you can't afford to miss!
Before I get to book talks, let me say how much I appreciate all your comments regarding teacher observations.. It was really eye-opening to see the wide variety of practices in place. I also wasn't aware that tenure had been completely abolished in some states. It makes for interesting thought to see that we all have the same job with the same important goal of educating our youth, however what we do is open to such a variety of rigor in its evaluation. Gave me a lot of food for thought. Moving on. . . My friends conducted book talks this week. Overall, they did a really good job. They were to sell their book as if they were giving a cheesy infomercial. Kind of silly, but lots of fun. They had to summarize their book and "sell" it to their classmates without giving away the ending. As part of the project, they also had to create a t-shirt that reflects the book. One of the main things I noticed at this book talk was how much better their public speaking skills were from the book talks we did last month. I don't know if it was the cheesy infomercial effect, but most had memorized their talks rather than reading them from note cards. They also had a lot more eye contact and variety in volume and inflection when they spoke. I thought I would share some of what they did. Since I can't show faces, I took two pictures. One for our school blog and then another without their head for this blog. Yikes! That sounds so mean, to have cut their heads off in the pictures. I just didn't want to take the time to blurr out the faces! Let's just say this will allow you to focus without being charmed by a bunch of cute smiles! :-) I categorized some of the pictures. Here are few of my nonfiction readers. This friend read Favorite Greek Myths by Mary Pope Osborne I love that he created a glossary of the gods on the back of his shirt. This friend read a biography on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She found it really interesting because she said kids always learn the same thing about Dr. King every year and through reading this book, she was able to learn new information. Out of the mouths of babes! This book was a huge hit. If you can think of any mythical monster, it is in this book. It really was varied. We read about creatures like Cerberus to the Jersey Devil. His t-shirt was made of some of his favorite creatures. It was good, but I would rather he drew them or made them in some way. The next crop of pictures are from a group I call my Girly Girls. If there is a book about a boy, shopping, and nail polish this group is all over it! I often have to remind them to stretch themselves as readers. However, notice the book choices when left on their own. I think you get the picture! This next group would be some of my advanced readers. They are a tough group. They have very high reading levels, but finding books can be tough because the content is not always appropriate. These books were chosen from at-home reading with parent approval. In the classroom, I'm not sure I would have given a green light to all these books. I find with advanced readers, they get caught up in being able to read advanced books, but don't really have the skills yet to deeply comprehend what they are reading. Hands down my favorite shirt! Look at the face of the boater. If you are going to read Jaws by Peter Benchley, this is the perfect t-shirt! Not a lot of information on it, but her book talk was great. I should note that they all had more information about the book on the back of their t-shirts, but I figured we are already on picture overload without my posting two pictures of each. Here's the funny thing about this particular book talk. One of the rules was that you could not give away the ending of your book. My friend who read the Hunger Games gave a great recap without telling the ending. Of course, did I think about that when this friend got up to talk about the sequel, Catching Fire? Oh my! You should have hear the groans when in the course of talking about this book she totally told the ending to the first book. This last group of pictures is just a mish-mosh of different books my fifth graders are enjoying. UPDATE (6/2013) I have to thank you all as this is one of my most popular posts. Over a year later I still get emails asking me for the rubric I used with this project. I'm sad to report that I have looked high and low and just can't find it. I have looked on my computer and even went through my files hoping I had a hard copy on file. Nope. :-( But, any rubric you would use for an oral book report would work. Okay, one more UPDATE (6/2014) Believe it or not, I still get emails asking me for a rubric for this project. I still don't have one for ya! BUT, I found a great one that will work beautifully. It's a Teachers Pay Teachers product by Runde's Room, a great blogger with an amazing blog! She has created a book talk pack that includes an information sheet, student guideline sheet, information organizer, and a rubric for assessment. You can click HERE to go directly to the product. I purchased it a while back, and can tell you it will work well with this project. It wouldn't include the t-shirt for scoring, but you could just add that in and I think that would be easy to do if you follow what she did on the rubric. Anyway, hope this helps those of you still looking for a book talk rubric. So, that is what my friends have been up to this week. Well, that and today was PI DAY!!! We had a lot of fun. The four other fifth grade teachers I work with and I rotated among the five classes doing different pi related activities. Part of my activity was a reading of the book Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi by Cindy Neuschwander. It's actually part of a series of books that does a fantastic job in explaining some geometry concepts in a very entertaining way. We finished the day with pie, of course! In all, my parents sent in eleven pies for twenty five children. Yeah, I have a serious pie belly right now! But, oh it was good! How was your pi day?
July 27th 209/366 Chatsworth House, Derbyshire on a beautiful day. Taken during my visit with Ruby and her colleagues from PALA 2008
Friends, I have neither the skill nor the familiarity with the subject to write a valid critique of Savage Beauty, the Alexander McQueen sh...
This homemade iDad Father's Day card is too funny.
Pecans can support your heart, serve as anti-aging, and help with weight-loss. Who knew?! Discover the potent benefits of eating raw pecans.
