For the Classroom

In an effort to practice blogging more consistently and start including shorter blog articles (instead of always thinking I need to write essays for you all), I'm going to do a classroom series wherein I share a picture of one aspect of my classroom that I like or want to work on with a short snippet describing it. Are you ready?

Desk Materials

I have long searched for a solid pencil sharpener that will work for middle school students. My experience has been that electric pencil sharpeners, while fast, tend to be loud and within about a year or two die. The school provided manual pencil sharpeners are useless about 2 months after they're installed and proceed to just eat all the pencils. That left me on a search for some kind of alternative.

As mentioned in my previous Pinspiration Posts (The Grinch Door and Reindeer Cupboard), I had my students respond to on our discussion board to the question “What would your dream classroom be?” One of the top ideas was to decorate the classroom, so I enlisted the help of my stepsister and we came up with a variety of fun Pintere

As mentioned in my previous Pinspiration Post about The Grinch Door, I had my students respond to on our discussion board to the question “What would your dream classroom be?” One of the top ideas was to decorate the classroom.

Background:
I had my students respond to to the question “What would your dream classroom be?” on our discussion board. I told them if they came up with realistic ideas, we could try implementing them in our own classroom. They accepted my challenge and came up with a variety of ideas they would like to see.

Taylor Mali is quite delightful is his poetic ways. With this installment he talks about "The The Impotence of Proofreading." Love it! This would be a great video to share at an in-service, especially among English teachers. Enjoy!

Do I have to put up bulletin boards?
I hate doing bulletin boards. Is that blasphemy? I'm in trouble, aren't I... But seriously, they're time consuming and I have to get creative. Ugh. The worst! Haha.

I searched high and low trying to find the best sources for doing a laminate bookcase makeover. I love DIY projects and couldn't resist the chance to fix up my ugly laminate bookcases in my classroom. I have five of them and they were showing signs of wear, desperately needing to be fixed up.

Inspired by Pinterest and the HGTV / DIY channels, I decided to recreate my boring old desk chair into something I'd be excited to sit in! My chair was ok before, but I wanted something that reflected my personality. I searched around the local fabric stores for the perfect fabric. In the end, I found it at Walmart of all places. 

Are you having your students make videos for a class project? Then you should definitely show them this TED-Ed on Animation Basics: Homemade Special Effects. Something as simple as how to have an object or person move across screen can go from boring to fun with a few simple tricks! Enjoy!