[Note: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you] I don’t know about you, but sometimes I LOATHE laminating. When I was younger,...

When I speak to customers, they’re often interested in the story of how AirSkirts got started, so I thought some of the readers here might be interested as well. I’ll try to keep it brief (but, knowing me, that won’t work out).

This is a writing resource that helps your students grow as writers AND build a sense of community in your classroom! Ever hear your students say "I don't know what to write about" when it comes time for them to independently write? I got the idea for All About Me Scrapbooks (ideas scrapbook) when I realized my kindergartners and first graders needed something to help them choose a topic to write about during our writers workshop. It is a wonderful resource for them to use because it is a visual tool that helps them generate ideas. It is also a great way to foster oral language because there is nothing kids want to do more than to talk about themselves! Even though I've only done this with primary students, this is something that can be done in the upper grades as well! I have my students create their All About Me scrapbooks at home as their first "family homework" project. Before we use them as a writing resource, we share everyone's books to get to know one another. I give the children an opportunity to present their favorite scrapbook page and then allow them to share and look at one another's books throughout the school day for the rest of the year. It is a wonderful way for the children to get to know each other and they LOOOOVE learning about each other through these books. The parents also enjoy making these books with their children knowing that it will help their children improve as writers! Even if you decide not to purchase this product, I encourage you to try something similar as you will be amazed at how it helps your students come up with ideas for their writing! Below is a description of what is included in this product. This product includes: *description of how I use this product *parent letter - color *parent letter - black and white *sample scrapbook page *14 optional labels to use in scrapbook (favorite foods, family trips, favorite sports, My family, My friends, Favorite subject, Favorite shows, Favorite books, My talents, Best Birthday, Favorite Music, Favorite Animals, Toys, and Special Memories) * optional All About Me cover for scrapbook

"This is a Brenda card," said my friend Brenda when I pulled it out at her workshop this weekend. That wasn't a coincidence! One of my favorite parts of spoiling hostesses is picking projects that I know will appeal to their personality or fit needs they have for upcoming occasions. I'm so glad Brenda liked the projects at her show, and I hope you like this one, too! It's a very versatile layout and easily comes together with the focal point highlighted by a beautiful doily. We made Easter cards at the workshop, and when I got home I made...

Many of us Super Teachers have had Word Walls in our classrooms for years and years now. I have had one since forever! However, I have never found the Word Wall to be truly interactive for my students. Have you? Of course, we practiced our […]

Last year I saw the cutest labeling lesson from sweet Julie Lee . I had already introduced the concept when I saw it, so I tucked away the ...

So, you’re intrigued by slam poetry, and you want to know how to start using it in the classroom. I get it; slam poetry is so awesome, sometimes I am intimidated by teaching it. But, the good news is that more than likely, your kids are going to love it. And when that happens, you’ve got some serious teacher power on your hands.

Are you trying out a reading workshop model this year with your Kinders or first graders? If so, you might be wondering, how on earth do I set up a reading workshop when my kids can’t even read?! That’s definitely what I was wondering when I first started implementing reading workshop a couple of years ago. I was teaching Kindergarten, and I think I only had one student who knew a few letter names. They didn’t know letter sounds, and I definitely didn’t have any beginning readers. If this is what your situation is like, you can still implement a reading workshop in your classroom! Even if your little ones can’t name a single alphabet letter, there are things you can teach them to begin setting up the reading workshop. Here are some ideas for minilesson topics that you can use when you first start reading workshop with your nonreaders:– Procedures and Routines: Begin with the basics, such as: how students should access their reading materials, where they should sit, how to treat books, how to hold the book correctly and turn the pages, how to read silently and keep their eyes on the book, etc. It will definitely take multiple days (maybe even weeks) to teach all these routines and procedures. Just teach one simple procedure per minilesson. Also, to squeeze more procedures into one day of reading workshop, you can teach a minilesson, have kids read for 5 minutes, teach another minilesson, and have them read for another 5 minutes. This gives you more time to teach important routines, while still taking into account your students’ teeny tiny attention spans!– How to Tell a Story from the Pictures: Teach students that even if they can’t read the words, they can still tell a story to themselves from the pictures! Simply telling kids that they can do this isn’t enough, though – you have to actually model it. What I did was check out a few picture books from the library in languages that I can’t read – Russian, Chinese, Polish, etc. I would show students the book and begin by saying something like, “I found this beautiful book in the library, and I really want to read it. But I have a problem. The book is written in CHINESE! I don’t know how to read Chinese!! But guess what? Even though I can’t read the words, I can still tell the story by reading the pictures. Let me show you what I mean.” Then I would begin paging through the book, telling the story aloud as students listened. I would wrap up by saying something like, “Today I showed you that even if you can’t read the words of a book, you can still use the pictures to tell yourself the story! You can try this out today during reading time.” And then I would dismiss the kids to begin reading. Some of my Kinders were able to do it after I modeled once, but I modeled this skill several more times with different books so that all of the kids eventually “got it.” One note about this – make sure that when you establish guidelines for independent reading, you don’t require students to be completely silent. When kids begin to tell a story by using the pictures, teach them to whisper the story quietly to themselves – most kids won’t be able to silently tell the story in their heads. – How to Retell a Story You Already Know: Spend lots of time in those first few weeks of school reading aloud fairy tales and repetitive books to students. Some books I love using for this are: The Three Billy Goats Gruff, The Three Little Pigs, Brown Bear, and I Went Walking. Then, get as many copies as you can of each of those books. Place them in students’ reading bags (side note: at the beginning of the year, rather than having students check books out, I prepared book baggies for them and had them switch bags amongst themselves each day so they would have new books to read). Then, teach a couple of minilessons about how to tell a story that you already know. You might start by saying something like, “Readers, today I want to teach you that when you are reading a book that you’ve already heard before, you can retell the story using the pictures and what you remember about the story.” Then, take out a story that children are familiar with and model retelling it (without using any of the words). Have students practice this during independent reading time.– How to Read Songs: I loved singing with my Kindergarteners, and I taught them quite a few songs at the beginning of the year (simple, shorter songs are best). I then gave them copies of the lyrics that they could “read” during independent reading time. To make this work, I started by typing up the lyrics to each song. On each page, I put an image that went with the lyrics (for instance, with a song about a frog, I put clipart of a frog on that page, so they would immediately know what song it was). Then, while we sang the song as a class, I projected a copy of the lyrics on my interactive white board. I modeled how to point to the words as we sang. After practicing a song many, many times, I made copies of the lyrics for the kids. I modeled how to sing the song using the lyric sheet, and then gave them the sheets to keep in their bags for independent reading time. It was soooo cute to see them whisper-singing the songs to themselves and attempting to point to the words! They just loved this option for independent reading time. If you teach in Spanish, click HERE for a free copy of the lyrics that I used with my bilingual Kinders. – Partner Reading: Since little ones can’t sustain independent reading for very long at the beginning of the year, mix things up with some

Hello! I know, I've been gone for a while. Sorry about that. You know I have been reorganizing my room. I was at school every day last week until 6 or 7 at night. I finally have my room about 95% done. However, by the time I got home, ate dinner, and graded some papers, I was just too tired to post. So, the plan was to post over this weekend. I took lots of pictures of my room and am excited to show you. That would have worked if I hadn't left my camera in my classroom on Friday! Oh well. I promise to post it all during the week since I will be back to normal hours. I also have pictures for some other posts I wanted to do this week. I was just going to post without the pictures, but it would take too much explanation. Besides, I know when I read blogs, I like pictures. In the meantime, I was thinking about how we lead such test-driven lives these days as teachers. In teaching 5th grade, I feel like I often have so much to cover that the fun stuff gets lost. We don't have time to make something, we have curriculum to learn!! But, don't we all know that some of the best learning happens in the activities and projects that are fun? So, I decided to search the web for some learning fun. Below are some art projects and just some fun stuff I've found around the web that look like something your friends and mine will enjoy. The title of each project is the link to the activity and the source for the pictures I used. Take a look. Maybe you will see something you like! Literacy Expository Writing: How To How cute is this? There is a teacher in my building that does this every year. When you see the bubble gum faces all together on a bulletin board, you can't help but smile. This idea has been around for a while. You can find it all over the web, too. That must prove it's a good one! What I like is that the writing part can be simple for younger friends, as in the picture above with just a "first, next, last" prompt. Or, for older friends, they can write the entire expository essay. The link will take you to The Teacher Wife blog. She shows the entire project in more detail. Expository Writing: DescriptionNo pictures or links for this one. However, there are some pictures on my camera at school. I'm posting this one anyway. One of the activities I do for our expository writing for description is have my friends write a description of a favorite object. We then trade papers, and based on only what was written, another friend draws the object. Without fail, my more detailed writers get the better pictures. When my friends get their pictures back, it is suddenly very clear to them what they may have left out of their description or how their writing may have confused the reader. I have them revise their writing, and they are always 100% better. Fairy Dust Pencils This is from the preschool blog Fairy Dust Teaching. She makes these pencils for her friends when she is ready to teach how to hold and use a pencil. It got me thinking. Wouldn't it be fun to have your friends make a special pencil or pen to be used ONLY for final copies or special projects? I'm not sure I would go with the glitter on the pencil. That might get awfully messy, and I would be afraid of what all that glitter would do to my pencil sharpeners. However, if you are decorating pens, I'm thinking about all the patterned duct tape they have out now. Your friends could cover pens in strips of that and have feathers poking out the top. Just thinking off the top of my head here. This might be a fun way to spark some writers. Book CoversNo pictures or links again. Well, sort of. Let me explain. This is something I have done with my friends with great success. I have them find a book they have read and take construction paper to fit it for a new dust cover. I like to do it the size of the book because we actually leave the new dust covers on the books when we put them back in our class library. For the project, they have to create an original cover illustration, and the back will have a "grabber" summary that does not give away the ending. I'm sure some of you have done this project already. Now, I actually do have a link. ReadWriteThink.org has a book jacket maker online. Your friends can just plug in all the information and it will generate the book jacket. You can select to do just he front cover, front and back, or the full dust cover. You can also select if you want it done in color or black and white depending on the printer you have available to you. Math Favorite math joke of my friends: What did the social studies book say to the math book? Dude! You've got problems! See, they are as corny as I am. We are a perfect fit! Anyway, here are some fun math artsy things for ya. The O.R.E.O. ProjectHave you seen this one? Sadly, I saw it after I had already finished teaching the concepts of mean, mode, median, maximum, and minimum. However, I'm thinking it will be fun to do during those last couple of days of school when my friends have already essentially checked out. The link above will take you to the project instructions, but if you want to see real life application, visit Rundee's Room blog. It is a great blog to follow. If you visit her site, you will see exactly how she conducted the activity. This may not be so much about art, but in the end they can make some crazy Oreo sculptures. Math About Me This is a great project for the beginning of the school year. Your friends create a poster that shows all the numbers that are important in their lives. Shows how math is all around us, and it could be a great get-to-know-you activity. I'm thinking if you wanted to do this later in the year, you could require your friends to use other number names that the class would have to figure out. For example, instead of saying I was born on May 8th, they might say they were born on four squared divided by two. The would write the equation of course, I just couldn't figure out how to type in an exponent! Math Maps I really like this, but there was no link. I found this on Pinterest. The link above will take you to the board it was posted on, but the link is "uploaded by user" so it doesn't take you to a web page. However, the comment notes that the kids are given a set of directions to follow so that the map includes parallel lines, intersecting lines, perpendicular lines, a variety of angles and geometric shapes, and more. I'm thinking you could probably write your own directions for this. Maybe not directions as much as just saying your map must include X,Y, and Z. Then, it's up to your friends to be creative. Science and Social Studies source Honest to goodness, when it comes to science, that picture above says it all for me! Science is my least favorite subject to teach. I really feel as if it is a different language sometimes. However, I find when I do hands-on projects or activities with my friends, we all understand the concepts much better. What follows may not be science experiments but more art centered activities. Teaching Landforms This is from the Crayola web site. They give you all the directions. Of course, they endorse all their projects in the process. However, I was thinking this would be a great way to include an environmental aspect to the lesson by having your friends use old magazines to do this. They could tear out pages that have the colors and textures they are looking for. They could also search at home for any stray papers that might work. Lava in a Cup This is very cool! This is an area of science I don't cover, but I would love to try this anyway. The supplies and steps are super short and simple. It's the last step, sprinkling salt on top, that makes the "lava" bubble up and down the glass. Sedimentation This is from a home schooler's blog. This one actually follows scientific method and involves just a few simple materials to conduct the activity: rocks, sand, soil, and a jar. Then, like in the picture above which is from the blog, your friends can recreate their results. I would probably do this as a small group activity rather than have each friend do their own simple to keep the mess and supplies to a minimum. YOU MUST GO TO THIS PHYSICS WEB SITE!!!Have I made myself clear?! Just kidding! But really. You must go to this web site if you teach anything to do with physics. It is all about making laptop books (interactive notebook?) for a variety of physics concepts. Honestly, all our notebooks should look like this. Guaranteed to keep your friends interested and involved. It takes what I did with my Newton's Laws of Motion flip charts to a whole new level. Here's a couple of pictures from the site for the light and sound laptop book to give you an idea. Open it up, and. . . ta da!!!! I'm thinking you could add each component as you teach it. There are many more fantastic ideas on this site. I really like the magnetism book. Native American Stories I have done this one! The link above will take you to the Canku Ota web page, a Native American online newsletter. The page will have the two pages below, as well as some other coloring pages. For this project, I've had my friends write the story of a Native American tribe we have studied. In writing the story, they use the symbols above to replace words as often as they can. I've also done it as a fiction writing where they write a personal narrative telling about their day as if they were a Native American. Instead of regular paper, I give them brown butcher block paper and a black Sharpie to write their story. Then, I have them crumple and recrumple their paper until it is wrinkled and soft as buffalo hide. They are always amazed at how the paper becomes soft as fabric. If time allows, you can always go back with paint and color some of the symbols. It's a fun project. So, there you have it. Just a few fun projects to spark some thinking. How can we bring a little fun back in to our classrooms? I'll be back on Tuesday with some pictures of my classroom and some other posts during the week. Until then, have a great Sunday!

It’s this time of the year when I am truly craving for chocolate. Not any chocolate though. Dark, artisanal chocolate is what I am opting for lately combined with pistachio, coffee, lemon, salt or caramelised almonds. And one of the best places to find this kind of chocolate is, of course, Switzerland. Since we moved in Lausanne, exactly 7 years ... Read More

My favourite radio station, (Encore Radio) would often play songs from Musicals that I didn't know, but very quickly grew to love. One o...

I think this is sooo funny, it's not usually part of my rage, but I couldn't resist!Have you got a mate who always get’s it wrong when measuring and cutting? Well this has got to be the perfect gift for them. Take a really good look at the picture, I guarantee it will make you laugh“Measure twice cut once” sign.A popular saying that I obviously didn’t listen to when I made this sign…woops, ha ha!Great for workshops, man caves, she sheds or any creative space.Can be personalised with name for an extra £2, please contact me first“Measure twice, cut once,” is one of my favourite proverbs. Obviously it is a great rule for a carpenter. Cut the wood improperly and the piece is ruined. It’s faster to double-check than to make a mistake.This item comes in (8 x10"") frame that is ready to hang or can be free standingPlease feel free to contact me if you would like any further informationText me on: 07749 388999Thanks for looking