Beowulf is a challenging text: it's long, dense, and old. With these strategies, you can make this text relevant for all students!

If I had only known that as we sailed into Pučišća on the island of Brač in Croatia, that we would be seeing the single most beautiful village I had ever seen, I would have taken time to savor it. IF ONLY I HAD KNOWN! Pučišca was an all-too-brief stop on our trip between Omiš […]

Have you ever had one of those parenting moments where you realize you thought you had taught your kids something, but realized you actually never had? I realized recently that my daughter doesn't know what being flexible means. I say it to her all the time and I always thought she understood w

One of the most time-consuming things teachers deal with is student absences! I no longer worry about this because my students completely take care of it!

Feline Legacy Challenge Graphics Hello! I have finally had the time to make graphics for my legacy challenge! Here is a link to the original post. Some of the cats do not match the specific breeds m…

Is the task of grading student writing draining your time and energy? Check out these quick-score rubrics (for free!) to grade student writing faster!

Beowulf is a challenging text: it's long, dense, and old. With these strategies, you can make this text relevant for all students!

Here's a great idea I spotted on Pinterest.... I tried this lesson with my middle school students and they had so much fun with it! I originally used a copy machine to enlarge students' fingerprints. It was cumbersome and time-consuming. But then I figured out a faster, easier, and better way! For detailed instructions with photos, tips, writing prompts, a student gallery, and fascinating fingerprint facts, check out my fun resource on TPT! My pdf also comes with 3 ready-to-use fingerprint enlargements in case you don't have time to take students' actual fingerprints. This can also be helpful for students who arrive late or miss the first day when you work on these. Optional... use colored pencils to lightly add some designs in the background before tracing over your writing with Sharpie. This will personalize your self-portrait even more!

Our Natural Disasters Packet has notebook pages and worksheets as well as some hands-on activity ideas covering the following events: Flooding Mudslides Tsunami Tornado Hurricane, cyclone, typhoon Blizzard Heat Wave Drought Wildfire Sinkholes In this packet you’ll find one page on each of these events. Often, natural disasters occur because of geologic changes or extreme weather conditions. Students explore the cause of each of these events. They also find out what ...

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After many request through email and on social networks, I have finally been able to find time to create the Adobe Lightroom Keyboard Shortcuts infographic,

Circle time is my baby. When I started my current job in 2002 and had one class of highly-impacted and self-contained students, I knew I wanted to lead the class in some way. Circle became my "thing". I now serve three self-contained classes and do circle in each of them. Each classroom's circle looks somewhat

These food processor recipes for satisfying meals, savory snacks, and sweet treats will help you cut down on prep time.

I have done this lesson many times, but this year the results are better than ever before. This year, we had more time to do this project...

I often get a question from my readers - how to sew straight? In this guide, I will show you how to easily keep stitching lines straight. I will talk about topstitching mostly because keeping seam allowances equal is a different topic. Have you ever had problems with crooked stitching lines? I bet you had. Even intermediate sewists are struggling sometimes to do it and had to rip and redo stitching. But sewing in a straight line is much simpler than you think. And I want to help you to sew straight every time.

Open When letter ideas perfect for your loved one who lives far away. What to put inside your open when letters. Open now, Open when you need to laugh.

I'm back!!! did you miss me?!?!?! I hope that there haven't been any disasters while I've been gone?!?! I had my last tutorial of the year at Uni today - and my last assignment went in on the weekend. yayay - I'm finally done for the year. (and I'm just a little relieved about that I must say!!) lots to catch up on - lots to tell - but let's get back to the art lesson I talked about in my last post - on Op Art! here's my attempt at some Op Art -(I made this this evening to go through the steps!)..... the actual lesson went really really well. the kids were very focused, and loved all the examples I showed them of Bridget Riley's work. (in my researching - I found out that our own National Gallery here in Canberra holds 14 of Bridget's works. I'll have to pop in over the holidays to have a wee look me thinks!) I took along a tape measure in class and explained that my little A4 copies were tiny in comparison to most of the works in real life. They ooo-ed and aaaah-ed about that - especially when the little versions played with their eyes and heads on the small scale!! anyhoo - here's how I led them through the practical side of the intro to Op Art lesson. (the 2 lessons - for 2 separate classes - were for 1 hour each including a talk about Bridget's work and the movement of Op Art / the classes were both combined Year 5/6) I roughly modelled the following on the white board - step 1. take your A5 card - write your name on one side - on the other rule a rough 1cm border in lead pencil all the way around the edge of the card. (this helped so that they wouldn't draw on the tables when the textas/markers were used later)..... step 2. with the lead pencil - draw concentric circles out from the middle to the border lines. (I explained that they did not have to start exactly in the middle - they could start to one side - and they didn't have to be perfect)..... step 3. with a ruler and a lead pencil - draw a vertical line through the centre circle..... step 4. add more vertical lines across the whole image - varying the thickness. ie make some closer together and some wider apart..... step 5. grab a black felt tip pen and start colouring in - carefully. start in the middle....then work your way up and down - then outwards. (white out/liquid paper works well to fix up any mistakes). biggest tip - take your time!! (from here on in the actual lesson - I let the students run with it - and I circulated to help out here and there - lots and lots of circulating!!!)..... and here's my final pic before I used an eraser to gently rub out the pencil marks..... if you squint your eyes and look at the pic - you should be able to see movement - ie - waves!! (Bridget Riley is far more clever than I - you don't need to squint at her pics!!! - she's very clever - her lines are meticulous - go back to this post to see again). some more pics tonight of mine..... and finally - here's some of the student's work from when I was on prac..... this was a super fun lesson - I had fun - and the kids loved it. sad I couldn't expand on the lesson and get them to reflect more on what they had achieved and then look at making more Op Art - exploring it all a little more. sadly there was no time to fit such a lesson in while I was on prac. (just wait till I get my own classroom!!!!) the entire prac was absolutely brilliant. my mentor teacher already talked to the principal about me!!! they want me back when I have my degree! (even if it's just relief work to start with) nice. one more year........one more year......one more year....... so - after having such a long break from house business and crafting - I'm raring to get back into it!!! the in-laws arrive on Thursday for a wee 5 day visit - but other than that I'll be busy as a mad woman around this place! (are mad women busy????? maybe should have stuck with 'bumble bee' !!) hope I still have some followers?!?! for those that are still visiting - thank you. I promise to be a little betterer with posting - at least until Christmas!! (insert huge cheeky smiley face right here!) hugz from here. cheryl xox.

One of the most asked questions I get is around employee accountability. In fact, if I had a penny for the amount of times I get asked about accountability... well I would have a lot of pennies! In any case it’s clearly a pain point and that’s why I wanted to introduce you to the framework that I teach my New Manager Accelerator students. So here’s the deal, I want you to think of accountability like this: you need four puzzle pieces in order to be able to hold team members accountable and to establish an accountability culture within the team. The puzzle pieces are as follows: CLARITY, EXPECTATIONS, IMPLICATIONS AND COMMITMENT

A 7" tall amigurumi of a raven. The pattern is available as a PDF on Ravelry or you can find it written below. If you have any questions feel free to email me at [email protected]. Haven't had the time to make a new pattern recently, so here is an older one. Because he is so dark I have included outlines of the feathers to make them easier to see. Materials: ▪ Worsted weight yarn in black, dark grey ▪ F hook (3.75 mm) ▪ Stuffing ▪ 12 mm safety eyes ▪ Scissors ▪ Tapestry needle Difficulty: Easy You should know how to work in the round, increase, and decrease. Pattern: This is an icrochetthings original pattern © 2014-2016. Do not claim as your own. Do not copy, sell, or distribute this pattern. Do not sell any products made from this pattern. Key Head Starting with black 1. ch 2, 6 sc in 1st ch (6) 2. [inc] around (12) 3. [sc, inc] around (18) 4. [2 sc, inc] around (24) 5. [3 sc, inc] around (30) 6. [4 sc, inc] around (36) 7. [5 sc, inc] around (42) 8 – 14. [sc] around (42) 15. [5 sc, dec] around (36) 16. [4 sc, dec] around (30) 17. [3 sc, dec] around (24) 18. [2 sc, dec] around (18) Stuff and attach safety eyes (I placed mine between rounds 10 and 11 at about 8 sts apart) F/O Beak Starting with dark grey 1. ch 2, 6 sc in 1st ch (6) 2. [sc] around (6) 3. [sc, inc] around (9) 4. inc, 3 sc, dec, 3 sc (9) 5. sc, inc, 3 sc, dec, 2 sc (9) 6. 2 sc, inc, 3 sc, dec, sc (9) 7. 3 sc, inc, 3 sc, dec (9) 8. [2 sc, inc] around (12) F/O, leave long tail for sewing Body Starting with black 1. ch 2, 6 sc in 1st ch (6) 2. [inc] around (12) 3. [sc, inc] around (18) 4. [2 sc, inc] around (24) 5. [3 sc, inc] around (30) 6. [4 sc, inc] around (36) 7 – 10. [sc] around (36) 11. [4 sc, dec] around (30) 12 – 14. [sc] around (30) 15. [3 sc, dec] around (24) 16. [2 sc, dec] around (18) 17. [sc] around (18) Stuff F/O, leave long tail for sewing Left Wing Starting with black 1. ch 15, [sc] across (14) 2 – 3. Turn, [sc] across (14) 4. Turn, 11 sc (11) 5. Turn, [sc] across (11) 6. Turn, 8 sc (8) 7. Turn, [sc] across (8) F/O, leave long tail for sewing Right Wing Starting with black 1. ch 9, [sc] across (8) 2. Turn, [sc] across, ch 4 (12) 3. Turn, [sc] across (11) 4. Turn, [sc] across, ch 4 (15) 5 – 7. Turn, [sc] across (14) F/O, leave long tail for sewing 2 Haunches Starting with black 1. ch 2, 6 sc in 1st ch (6) 2. [inc] around (12) 3. [sc, inc] around (18) 4. [sc] around (18) F/O, leave long tail for sewing 2 Legs Starting with dark grey 1. ch 5, ss to 1st ch to form a ring (5) 2 – 5. [sc] around (5) F/O, leave long tail for sewing 2 Feet Starting with dark grey First Toe 1. ch 2, 4 sc in 1st ch (4) 2 – 5. [sc] around (4) F/O, leave long tail for sewing Second Toe Work the same as the first toe, DO NOT F/O 6. Attach to first toe with a sc, [sc] around the first toe, attach to second leg with a sc, [sc] around the second toe (8) 7. [2 sc, dec] around (6) Use the tail from the first toe to sew the hole between the toes shut 8. [sc, dec] around (4) 9 – 11. [sc] around (4) F/O, leave long tail for sewing 2 Small Feathers Starting with black 1. ch 5, [sc] across (4) 2 – 4. Turn, [sc] across (4) 5. Turn, 2 dec (2) 6. Turn, [sc] across (2) F/O, leave long tail for sewing Large Feather Starting with black 1. Turn, ch 7, [sc] across (6) 2 – 4. Turn, [sc] across (6) 5. Turn, dec, 2 sc, dec (4) 6. Turn, [sc] across (4) 7. Turn, 2 dec (2) 8. Turn, [sc] across (2) F/O, leave long tail for sewing Assembly See pictures above if you need help with placement Two diagrams have been included below if you are having trouble making out the placement of the feathers ▪ Sew the beak onto the head ▪ Sew the body onto the bottom of the head ▪ Sew the haunches onto either side of the body ▪ Sew the wings on either side of the body above the haunches ▪ Sew the feet onto the end of the legs ▪ Sew the legs onto the body in front of the haunches ▪ Sew the two small feathers next to each other onto the back of the body ▪ Sew the large feather just above the two small feathers

Updated: Apr 28 T-shirts have become my go to. I love that you can dress them up or down and wear them for practically any occasion. My favorite t-shirt is on…

Last week we sent a bunch of Scout Books to SXSW in Texas with @rohdesign and @austinkleon for their Visual Notetaking 101 Panel. These guys take awesome notes, and they designed this pocket notebook to offer you a chance to create beautifully illustrated notes, too. The cover features illustration exercises for better notetaking. Count yourself lucky if you were at the panel and received one of these! They ran out right away! Collectors item.

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I wrote this article to share this low sugar, no pectin, simple cherry jam recipe. It's so easy, and it’s great to have delicious jam with less sugar! This is hard for me to admit, but I do not like making jams. I do not like canning, either. As a homesteader, aren't you supposed to know how to ma

I created this coloring page for my introductory lesson on Yayoi Kusama. My classes are only 30 minutes, so I needed a page that my kids could work on to go with our lesson when we had a short amount of time left. This can also be used for early finishers! ...

Time flies when you are trying to transform a room in 6 weeks! I can only guess that the other 300+ bloggers that are participating in the One Room Challenge are feeling the heat and excitement of the big reveals coming up this next week. I have had a few minor setbacks in this past […]

Have you ever seen those mix-n-match books, where you have the head, mid-section, and legs of one character, but you can flip on piece of it to make an entirely new combination of characters and story? My daughter has one and it inspired me to get a little creative in my class! We have been studying similes and metaphors in class. To help the kids along, I read them "Quick as a Cricket" by Audrey Wood. It is a very simple book, in which she uses simple similes to compare the main character to various animals. After reading the book, the students created a divided circle map in which they listed all the adjectives they could think of that described themselves, then all of the animate and inanimate objects that would also be fitting for a self-description. The next step was a tree map. I had the students break their body up into 3 parts -- head, mid-section, and legs/feet. They then used their circle map to create comparisons between themselves and the objects, all relating to that portion of their body. For example, they could write "dark cave of thoughts" under head, or "fast cheetah" under legs. The idea was to get them thinking about how different parts of their body could be compared to objects that were definitely not alike. Once the Tree Maps were complete, I asked the students to choose their four favorite comparisons from each section. They needed to write as many simple similes and metaphors from those comparisons. Again, we used a divided Circle Map (can anyone tell I love using Thinking Maps???) Finally, they chose the two favorites from each category and, on a separate piece of paper, they made those simple similes and metaphors complex. For example, using the dark cave from above, a student may have written, "I am a dark cave of emotions after watching a scary movie." or "I am an active volcano ready to spurt out my knowledge during the trivia game." This is the finished product (minus cover), when it is all closed up. Once these were done, the fun began. The students were given a four pieces of paper with a person figure on each. I had pre-drawn a line separating their head, from the midsection, and then the legs. On each section, they put either a simile or metaphor. They then drew a that part of the body to resemble the metaphor. The students then cut the slips, so that you could mix and match the different parts...all of which came together to make the author (mimicking the last line of Quick as a Cricket). When you open up the flaps, the "story" changes. You can make any mixture you want! Another view with different flaps open (sorry it is so blurry! iPhone does that sometimes)

Planning a trip to France? Here are the 11 best things to do in Antibes South of France, including beautiful beaches and local gems.

A simple, but often overlooked solution- with one simple switch, our toddler immediately started sleeping through the night!

This sewing basic tutorial will teach you how to sew a gathering stitch for perfect ruffles every time.

Do you ever just wake up with an idea that you have to run with right away? Unfortunately for my hubby, it happens around here all the time.One weekend, I knew…

I had done a few different centers in the past, mostly with my upper grades, and not very well thought out. This year though, one of my personal goals was to incorporate centers in a way that was well-planned, gave students lots of ways to practice a concept, and gave me more than one way to assess students. I'll have another blog post coming soon about the centers I did, or you can see a video of them on my Facebook page. Today though I want to talk about how to prepare your students for centers in the music room. Before really diving in to centers this year, I talked to some classroom teachers to learn more about how centers worked in their rooms. Each person I talked to said, take the time to go over each center with the whole group before ever dividing the class for centers. Since I don't have as much time as a classroom teacher (my classes are 30 minutes and are back to back), I decided that instead of trying to cram it into the beginning of a class period and then starting centers that day, I would take a class period to discuss all my centers. So I'm going to share with you how that day went. Since this was my first time doing centers at my new school with these students, I had no idea how long it would take to explain all of the centers and how everything would work. I figured if I have lots of extra time, we will play some singing games that I pulled patterns from for these centers, but this actually took about 25 minutes with both of my classes. I brought my classes in and had them go to their assigned seats in front of the board. I said that we would be doing something kind of new in music the next few times we have class so I wanted to share with them about it today so that we could spend all of our time in centers the next two times. Instead of having all of the centers spread out around the perimeter of the room, which is where I put them when we were actually doing centers, I lined up all my centers at the front of the room under the board. On my computer, I had the zip file that contained all of the PDFs for each file pulled up so that as I was going through them with the whole group, if I wanted them to be able to see something better, I could show them the PDF version instead of the tiny cards I was holding for some of the centers. We walked through all of the centers in order. I read through the directions and we "played" each center one or two turns. For some centers I would have a small group of students come up and be the demonstration group as the class watched. I asked if there were any questions about each center before moving on to the next one. My students knew that they needed to ask any questions they had on this day so that they wouldn't come up asking me questions on the actual center days. The students were really interested and engaged the whole time. I think there was a little bit of mystery to it, like "OOO, I wonder what is going to be at the next center" or "I wonder what those manipulatives are going to be for" and that kept them really focused on what we were doing. Students asked good clarifying questions about the individual centers. They also asked about their groups. I have about 28 kids in each class and set up 8 centers. Most of my groups had 4 students in a group, some had 3. I assigned all groups by typing up a list. I emailed the list to their teacher and asked their teacher to line them up in that order (so the four students in group 1 are first, followed by group 2 and so on....) the next time they came to music. I also had her double check my groups to see if there would be any issues that I maybe hadn't foreseen. This was a really good idea because the next time they came to music, I met them in the hallway and they were all in the right order. I had the centers so that center 1 was closest to the door and then they went in a circle around the perimeter of the music room, so as the students followed me in, I basically dropped off four at a time in the order they were in at each center as we went around the room and I was with the last 3 or 4 students at the "teacher center", center 8. I didn't have to waist any time putting kids in order or reviewing directions for any of the centers. I had directions for each center posted at each center in case they forgot or were absent when we went over the centers, but there seemed to be no issues with students knowing what to do at each center. I only had one student come up to me the entire two days of doing centers and it was because of an issue with a group member, so I think that is pretty darn good for our first time! I hope this gives you maybe a new idea about how to prepare your students for centers so that they feel set up to succeed at each one without needing to ask questions during centers. I feel like taking that day to go over them at a relaxed pace, sending the centers groups to the teacher, and having students come to music on centers day already in order really helped everything to go smoothly. Do you have other ideas that I haven't thought of? Share below! Wanting to take the guesswork out of creating centers? Here are centers sets I've created and used with my classes: