This Week At School

This week at school I was at 3 different schools.

I wore this lovely shirt to each and every one of those 3 schools 

Ugly Christmas Sweater for Teachers

and not a single person (adult or child) commented on it!

Anyways, this week at school I attended a Christmas concert!  The funny thing about this is that on my way to work this morning while listening to the radio they were doing an "unpopular Christmas opinion" segment and one lady called in saying she hated going to her kids Christmas concerts (sounded like she had kids from elementary age to high school age).  Her reasons, you have to sit there and watch as no one actually sings the song and your kid slowly pulls his shirt over his head.  Then when you get to high school you have to sit there and listen to what sounds like a mouse dying for a band performance.  I mean, what she is saying isn't untrue... but aren't all those things just the icing on the cake of what is a school Christmas concert?

For anyone wondering, I love them!

Do you like attending your kids Christmas concerts?

I was at another school where the younger grades were having their afternoon performance while I was there (my class didn't go and watch).  It was also formal day for spirit week (my guess is so that the younger kids would dress up for their concert).  Anyways, one of the teachers was new to the grade 2 scene and one of his students may have played with chalk and gotten it all over her fancy sweater.  This teacher said "oh don't worry, it will be fine just rub it out"... then she went to visit another teacher and she said "oh no, your lovely sweater has chalk all over it!?!" and the child broke down crying.  Luckily, they have a washer and dryer at the school so they threw the sweater in there and it came out good as new!

Otherwise, it was a lot of keeping kids busy with things to do before they all go completely crazy on Friday afternoon (which is when I won't be there... so good luck to that teacher!)

We are officially on a 2 week break from school, huzzah!  Which means I'll also take this opportunity to go on a 2 week break from the blog (although I MAY post on Saturday's still... we'll see what my week fills up with first before I make any promises though).  So to all teachers and students:  Enjoy your time off!  You earned it!

Winter Bulletin Board Ideas

If Christmas isn't something that is talked about or celebrated in your school then you may be interested in a Winter Bulletin Board instead of a Christmas Bulletin Board.  Now that you have your winter themed art done (or at least the first project or so may be done... or at least on the way to being done you might be ready to decorate a bulletin board!

I couldn't find the original sources for a lot of these ideas (Pinterest)but here are some winter themed bulletin boards that I thought were nice:

For this one it looks like each students picture is on a snowflake and they each made their own snowman

I wish I could find the original source for this one as I'm curious what they wrote about.  Either way, Frozen was (is) a popular movie so I think this bulletin board would be a big hit!

This one is from Fresh Sharpened Pencils and she talks about how she got each student to write a poem to go with their snowflakes.

This one I found here although I'm unsure if this is the original source.  I just thought it looked super cute!

Do you make seasonal bulletin boards? 

What does your winter bulletin board look like?

Winter Art Ideas

Winter is right around the corner (or if you live here you'll think it's already been here for a while) so what better time than to start planning for what you are going to do in your art class during the winter season?

Here are a BUNCH of ideas

First up, Snowmen!

Clay Snowman

Snowmen at Night

This is one of my all time favourite winter art activities I did it when I was teaching grade 5/6 and I did it again when I was subbing in a grade 4/5 class.

Doily Snowmen

Hot Chocolate

If you are looking for some activities to go with this art check out my blog post on what I all did with a grade 4/5 class I was subbing in!

Trees

Evergreen Trees

I found this one to be similar to the water colour and tissue paper trees I did with my grade 4 students.

Birch Trees

Self Portrait Ideas

Snow Angels

Snowy Self Portait

Winter Landscape

Bids

Penguins

Water Colour Penguins

Warm and Cool Penguins

Paper Mache Penguins

If you are looking for more penguin art here and here some that I found in a classroom once

Polar Bears

Chalk Polar Bear

If you are looking for more polar bear activities to do with your class check out the post I did on a grade 1 polar bear unit.

Snowflakes

Tie Dye Snowflake

I love these ones so much that I've done them in a grade 4/5 class I was subbing in before.  You can see what we all did here.

Layered Snowflake

Pop Art Snowflakes

I did this one when I was teaching grade 4

You may have noticed that all my links are to just 2 other blogs... I'm sure there are many more excellent winter art themed activities but these are 2 blogs that I trust and use frequently when looking for good art activities.

What can I say, I found something I like and I've stuck with it!

Do you do any winter art activities in your classroom?

What are they, we'd love to hear about them!

This Week At School

Now that December is here it seems that my weeks have been much busier than November!

This week at school...

I had a student teacher for 2 days!

I was a French Immersion teacher (with the help of a student teacher).

I went to a new to me (this year) classroom (twice).

I helped a brand new student from India (he was new the day before I was there to sub) figure out what a school day in Canada is like!

I had a day (nearly) full of preps.  I started off the day with 3 preps and then was told to take a break for the last period of the day when the vice principal stopped by to do an observation of the student teacher.  Luckily I had a book to read this day which occupied a lot of my time!

I had my first indoor recess experience of the year as the temperatures dropped below -30 with the wind!

Two days in a row this week I did "leg day" - I follow the BBG program but I just do it an evening or afternoon here and there (so sometimes I might do 4 workouts and others 2)... it just so happened that I was finishing week 6 and starting week 7 on Tuesday and Wednesday (which coincidentally were the only days I did it this week).  Needless to say on Thursday my legs were killing me.  So while the students were doing some math I was doing some leg stretches - the ones where you pull your leg behind you and your heel touches your butt.  The kids asked me what I was doing (honestly, I was just standing on one leg essentially) and when I told them I was stretching my legs because they were sore wouldn't you know it... multiple other kids legs also happened to be sore at that exact moment and they all needed to do some stretches too!

Anywho, just 5 more possible working days until the break (I know I'm working 3 of those days so far).  Luckily, I'm already done (and have already received) all the presents I'm giving out this Christmas so I can just stay home and enjoy my days off in warmth!

What It's Like to Teach in December

Here is the link to the Board Teachers article I'm referencing for this post.

What tweets do I find most applicable to my current teaching situation?

#1 - The best way to spread holiday cheer IS to follow the instructions the first time... and failing that at the very least please follow them the 2nd time.  If I have to repeat myself a 3rd time I'm just really not going to be happy.

#3 - Although I haven't personally experienced a lot with Elf on the Shelf I can definitely see that being the talk of a classroom (especially a very early years classroom). 

#5 - It need not be Taylor Swift... any influential song writer/musician can do it but yes, let's make a song about how taking care of your responsibilities is a good thing and will get you far in life!

#7 - When I had a classroom of my own I would often bring work home with me... very rarely did I actually do any of it.

#10 - I mean this is just a similar story to #1.. let's pay attention folks!

What about you, any amusing things your telling your students (or they are doing) that you're tweeting about?

Grade 1 Polar Bear Unit

I was in a grade 1 classroom (a year ago now) and I found all these interesting things they had done with polar bears

First thing I noticed was some polar art with northern lights.

Then I saw some more art... polar bear faces

and then a polar bears den/igloo (I got mixed messages about what exactly it was)... it likely wasn't finished yet.

I'm assuming/hoping this teacher was also reading her students lots of stories about polar bears (both fiction and non fiction) and hopefully at some point they did some writing about what they learned about polar bears.  

It would have been cool if they could have teamed up with an older grade to have the older kids help the younger kids with some polar bear research but I understand that's hard to arrange.

Anyways, I needed to get this up now before the Christmas break in case anyone wanted to plan for it in the new year (I feel like if someone is going to do a polar bear unit it needs to be in the winter time).

Have you done a polar bear unit in your classroom?

What did you all do with it?

This Week At School

This week was another busy week at school!

-  I was a dance teacher!... Which means the grade 6 and 7 classes watched movies and the more responsible group of grade 8 girls led their own dance class.  This isn't the first time I've been a dance teacher either.

-  I taught in a new to me classroom!  We watched an interesting documentary on Canada for a large chunk of the afternoon in this classroom.

-  I had a student teacher not once but twice this week!

-  I walked with a group of grade 8 students to the high school nearby so we could watch their musical "Little Shop of Horrors"... having no idea what the musical even was going into it I'll say that it was... interesting (but a fun way to spend the morning)!

-  I taught in a French immersion classroom.

The countdown is on folks... only 10 more potential working days until Christmas break (so far I'm working 3 of those days).

Grey Cup Champions!

You may have heard that The Bombers are Grey Cup champions this year (and for my readers outside of Canada the Grey Cup is Canada's Super Bowl).

So last week I put this writing prompt up on the board 

Grey Cup Writing Prompt

Some of their ideas:

-  Fill it with Gatorade

-  Draw a picture of it to duplicate it and turn it into a pool to swim in

-  Break it

-  Make a fake duplicate of it so that I could keep the real one

-  Pee in it (there's one in every room isn't there?)

Tricked into Reading

Normally I would be very happy when a class excitedly requests to be read a story... but in this case it was a particular book that was being requested.  This particular book was written by BJ Novak (whom, if you don't know, played a character on The Office) so I kind of wondered what kind of book this was.  Then the class was very insistent that I could not under any circumstance read the back of the book before reading them the story.  And believe me, I tried to read the back to see what was going on, but they were always very quick to catch me no matter how sneaky I thought I was being.

Anyways, if you haven't read "The Book With No Pictures" I highly recommend you do so... and if you haven't read it to your class and have no intention of finding this book to read it to your class I've found it on Youtube for you to enjoy.

The kids loved it!

Spoiler:

If you aren't going to watch the video or read the book but still want to know why those kids were so insistent that I needed to read THAT book... it's because it's a book with a bunch of silly words and the reader talks about how wonderful the kids are that are listening to it... which is what the warning on the back was all about (which I did end up reading after I finished reading the story to them).

Have you read any books to your students lately that they absolutely loved? 

I would love to head about them!