Wk 3 Visual Lesson Plans

I notice the new thing on Pinterest and teacher blogland seems to be Visual Lesson plans. I've always done my lesson plans this way. Now, they are sort of a hybrid. I haven't yet learned to link to all my documents/ lesson files. How do you do your lesson plans? I also included a snapshot of our weekly homework.

 

Rainy Day = Work Day

What's a teacher to do when it's almost the end of the summer and Mother Nature decides it's going to rain all week? Well, you know the answer! Work, work, work!

Good news! There was a new roll of lamination loaded and no waiting in line! So here's a bit of what my teammates and I have been up to lately.

Boggle, anyone?

 To feed my addiction to Ruzzle, I'm hoping my students will enjoy learning to Boggle! Sorry for the blurry photo. I can't seem to operate my iPhone's camera correctly.

Expanding Vocabulary

 I'm using the Cafe method and plan to really step up vocabulary instruction. I thought this would make I good weekly focus and check off a few more of those common core standards. I plan to do a synonym, antonym, prefix/suffix, homophone, and an idiom of the week.
 

A Door Close Up

We're Wild about Reading!

Bottom left beside door

Here's my door decor. The lion's thought bubble says: Reading takes us places when we have to stay where we are. Our grade level is doing a Wild About Third Grade Theme this year. This is about as wild as I get. :)

STEAM Focus Board

My teammates and I created this bulletin board to kick off our school's new theme: Full STEAM Ahead! We're so excited about it. We're starting the year with a newly installed Aquaponics lab. We've partnered with some grad students (one of which is my son) to create a sustainability education program incorporating H.O.T.S. (higher order thinking skills).

Tree of Knowledge :)

Inspired by those whimsical tree paintings from a Drink/Paint event that everyone was posting on FaceBook, I had to have a tree! After a few trial and error sessions, Mrs. H. and I were happy with the way it turned out! The posters are my CCGPS for Reading.

AR Display

We were looking for a way to incorporate our "wild" theme and motivate students to read. Hopefully this will work. 

End of Our Hall - We love 3rd Grade

Born to be WILD Birthday Display

One more tree! Couldn't help it!

Lazy Days of Summer...

A place for everything and everything in it's place!  

Today, I worked in my classroom for four hours trying to organize and PURGE things I no longer use. For the most part, I am usually very well organized. I think it must be the OCD gene passed down to me from my mother! The quote at the top is my mother's mantra! I must admit that like everyone else, I get busy and don't always have time to file everything. So for the past two years, I've been piling everything in those nifty and ever available copy paper boxes. Therefore, they are known as my "boxes of shame".  When I arrived at school today, there were three such boxes. It took the better part of two solid hours to sort, file, and purge the materials in those boxes. It was, however, a success! No more piles to file or boxes of shame! :)  In the effort to be "green", I donated the one-sided papers to my next door neighbor who teaches Math and LOVES scratch paper.

Once the paper clutter was dealt with, I moved on to tidying the room. I decided that my CCGPS standards posters were looking a tad bit rough. I needed to redo them. After lunch with my oldest son, I came home and did just that! Here's the result.

If you'd like to download them, you can click here to get the file! :) I'd appreciate if you'd rate the product if you download. Thanks so much!

A new venture...

Yikes! You know how your tummy feels as you try something new for the first time? Well, that's me today! I have a major case of the butterflies (it's like their having a Zumba party in there...LOL)! I'm in the process of posting my very first Teachers Pay Teachers freebie! I've created lots of things for my classroom, so I thought I would share them with you.

The product is a set of posters to encourage good listening habits. Here's a little peek.

Head on over to TeachersPayTeachers and pick it up! You can click here to go right to the download. Hopefully, you'll be able to use it in your classroom too!

Nervously branching out,
Dianne

Math Binder for a Friend

Here are the tabs and cover for the third grade Math frameworks that I made for a friend. She loves polka dots!

An AR Display

Our school will again be using the Accelerated Reader Program. I made this hall display to go along with our "Wild about 3rd Grade" theme. We like to recognize student accomplishments and this will give us a chance to recognize and track the AR points students earn. It will function as a line plot graph. I'm not sure what we will use as a "marker" for each student. I saw some very cute and bright lizards at the School Box, maybe those would work. How do you recognize AR points and/or achievements?

July Already?

Dear Summer Break,

I simply do not understand why you are in such a rush. Your days are flying by. It's already July! Please slow down! I still have so many things on my Summer Bucket List to do!

Love, Mrs. R

Is anyone else feeling this way? On a much happier note, my teammates and I had an outing today.  I am so blessed to work with two wonderful ladies who have become my very good friends! We met at Chili's for a fun lunch and took the little ones to Pump It Up in Chattanooga. Both my boys are grown. So I arranged to "borrow" my niece for the day. The kids had a great time climbing and bouncing and we enjoyed our hang out time!

I wanted to share a few things I've been working on to go with the theme we've chose this year. I'm excited to have the time during the summer to create some things that I never have time to do during the school year.

First up, or should I say just finished, library passes. I print these on card stock, laminate, and place them in clear plastic badge holders.

Wizard of Oz for myself

Superheroes & Polka Dots for Mrs. S

Zebra Print for Mrs. H