I woke up super early this morning
to let my dog out, and I tried to go back to sleep, but my brain wouldn't shut off. I just kept thinking about
all of the things that I need to do to get my classroom ready.
Since I'm in a new room this fall,
I've been spending the summer organizing. I've mostly been working on my
library, because it's HUGE. I takes up about half of one of my walls and the
shelves are taller than I am. (I promise pictures of the finished product soon...it's almost done!)
I've also
spent a lot of time this summer checking out pins on Pintrest. (I seriously
wish we got credits towards recertification for this!) We have an AWESOME
teacher lab in my county where teachers can use tons of materials to make
things for our classrooms for very little money. It's open all summer, and it's
even cheaper (sometimes even free!) if you bring your own materials. Here are
some things I've been working on.
Today I made a voice-o-meter. I got
the idea from http://createartwithme.com/category/art-classroom-management/
where an art teacher posts her management ideas. I used the font Downlink
to create letters similar to the original. The main change that I made
was to LOUD CROWD. I never want my students shouting across the room, so
I put "talking with the whole class" instead.
 |
| Yacker Tracker |
Usually I use a 3 strike rule to
manage classroom noise. Sometimes I also use a Yacker Tracker to enforce this.
(You can set the Yacker Tracker to a certain number of decibels. If the Yacker
Tracker goes off 3 times, there is 5 minutes of silence.) The only down side to
the Yacker Tracker is it picks up ANY noise, including chairs scraping, and
sometimes even books being put on shelves! What tips and tricks do you find
useful to manage noise in the classroom?
Earlier
this month I made surfboards for my super cute job chart (I'll post pics of
this when I start setting up my classroom).
One of my favorite finds on Teacher Pay Teacher is a book that you can make about yourself to share with your students. I bought this, printed it on card stock, and laminated it. It turned out so cute! I can't wait to share mine with my students!
I also used the huge variety of die
cuts to cut out pieces for my diver craft. I got the idea from I plan to have my students make
these during the first week of school. I want to use them for window
decorations, but I'm not sure quite how to do this. I'm still brainstorming,
but I may have the students glue these to leftover lamination film. What do you
think? Any better ideas? Hmm...maybe I could just have them assemble them on a
piece of wax paper, and after they're dried, remove the wax paper and put them
up in the windows? Let me know what you think!
