Using Wordle for Science Vocabulary

Just a quick post about something fun--I created a Wordle tonight that I am going to have students use in a vocabulary assignment throughout the week. 

We have just finished up land and water biomes, and we are moving into Food Webs and Food Chains this week.  They all fall under the Ecology umbrella, so you can see that I have included vocabulary from all of our Ecology units.

Wordle is really cool--you input either lists of words or a selection of text from wherever you would like, and it creates a visual of the words.  Words that are repeated in your text selection appear larger once the Wordle is created. I just typed in my vocabulary words, and I typed the words I wanted to appear larger two or three times. Once it creates your Wordle, you can change the colors, font, placement of words, and all sorts of customization things. 

I am going to project this up on my screen, then have my students randomly select a color (or two?) and  create a short story using those colored vocabulary words.  We are working on integrating more literacy-type assignments into our science classes, and I love having students write.  I think I will have them create a story with the vocab, illustrate it, and then maybe share in small groups.  That's just what I have come up with so far.  I'm sure there are lots of things you can do with a wordle, but I have just started playing with it. 

Have any of you used it in your classrooms?  What do you do with them?  If all else fails, it will make a nice, colorful addition to my word wall board!

The URL to my wordle is here if you would like to use it!

Classroom Update (Yes, I'm still alive!)

Whew!

The first five weeks of school have flown by!  I can't believe we are almost to the 6 week mark already....and that it has been that long since I updated.  I had all of these grand plans to keep updating and show what we were working on each week, but reality set in and I was just exhausted from getting back in the swing of things.

However, I am getting used to the routine again, so here we go!

I have my organization system for my journals to show you, the solution I finally found for my beloved color copy paper, and a couple of snapshots of what my classroom really looks like once that the kids have been in it on a regular day.

First up:  interactive notebooks/journals.

I mentioned a while back that I was going to use interactive notebooks this year, and it is going pretty well!  I like them, and the students seem to like the fact that I do all of the same work that they do when I prepare my sample journal. 

I have baskets for each class to keep their journals in, sorted by color, of course, and I also have a matching basket for each class to turn in any papers. 

 

My journal buckets and the paper baskets came from Really Good Stuff.  I ordered the neon colors sets, and I love that they match each other.  I have two journal buckets for each class, because 30 journals will not fit in one container.

 

The journals stay in my classroom in their proper bucket, up at the front of my room under the whiteboard.

 

This is what it looked like before any of the journals were in it.  The buckets are inside the shelves of the unit--it is an Expedit shelf from IKEA.  Just a note on the shelving unit--it is SO HEAVY (I loaded it onto my rolling cart from my car by myself, which I do NOT recommend!) but it is also so easy to put together.  I have assembled many pieces of IKEA furniture in my days and this was by far the easiest. 

 

The "turn-in" baskets for each class sit on top of the shelf, and I have a clipboard for the roster/grade sheets for each class that matches also.  One of my co-workers taught me last year to use a specific color paper for each class period so that they are easy to identify when I need them, and I have continued this system this year in my new colors. 

 

Here they are with the student journals all put away:

 

 

You can see that I ended up having to turn the paper baskets on top sideways.  This was because when they were turned the long way, I couldn't get my projector screen to come down far enough to my liking.  Thankfully, the baskets fit this way too!

 

 

The purple baskets that you see on either side are not for anything journal-related.  The one on the right has a file folder for each day of the week, and this is where I put extra copies of papers we have used in class.  Students who are absent go here to get their makeup work.  I love this, and it is proving to be useful because the students know just to go to the folder and not ask me personally for work that they need from an absent day.  The purple basket on the left is my classroom lost and found.  

 

 

On to my favorite organizational thing in my room, also from IKEA.

 

 

I found these paper shelves just as I was about to check out at the store with my Expedit shelf.  I know you have seen my grumbles on here about wanting a way to have my copy paper accessible to me and not stacked up high in my storage cabinet.  I use colored copy paper often, not only because white paper is boring, but also as a management tool.  It is very easy for me to tell if a student is trying to be sneaky and work on something for another class if they are supposed to have a blue piece of paper for science class and the one I see is white.  This was a tip from a co-worker, too, and it is just a small thing that helps me keep my students focused.

 

I love these shelves for two reasons:  One, they are NOT cardboard!  I hate those foldable cardboard ones that you can get at teacher supply stores.  They always seem so flimsy to me, and I see them caving in under the weight of lots of paper.  These are very, very sturdy and made of metal.  Two, the shelves on them slide out!  I can pull out the shelves when I need a specific color.

 

They also hold almost a whole ream of paper, which is nice.  My storage cabinet now only holds unopened packs of paper.

 

And last but not least, here is a look at the way my room really looks during the day.  It is not perfect, but it's a nice little sanctuary.  I added curtains, which make such a big difference--although, I get the feeling I will have to take them down when we get a visit from our fire marshall.

 

 

 



My table up front is my paper graveyard during the day, as you can see.  It is the only place that I don't have an organizer for, but I make sure that every afternoon, the papers from that day get put in the purple basket and I put the ones for the next day on my table.  

 

 

 

Hope everyone is off to a great start to the school year, and hopefully, it won't be so long before I post again!

 



 

 

IKEA Classroom Find: MALA Tabletop Paper Holder

This weekend I went to the IKEA in Atlanta on a mission to purchase an Expedit shelf for my classroom.  It is going to be used for a new storage system that I will post about later, but for now I wanted to share a little something that I picked up that I think I am going to love to use this year.

I like to do lots of mini-projects in class that involve the students creating things and getting crafty.  I love being able to hang up work in the hallway outside my room, and the students love to see their work on display.  They are always proud that I have chosen to hang their work in the hall, and insist on pointing it out to their friends. 

However, usually the items in the hall are larger, poster-type things.  That means one of three things:

• I have to find/buy several packs of the large size construction paper
• I have to spend forever in the mail room ripping off 30 sheets of butcher paper (and I can NEVER get it to rip straight--is it just me??)
• I have to sacrifice my beloved giant Post-it note chart paper

I really like to use the giant Post-it chart paper--they aren't too big and the quality is better than butcher paper, but they are VERY expensive.  My students know that when I bring out the Post-it paper, they only get one sheet, so they have to be very careful.

I had seen this paper holder online before, but I had forgotten about it until I was in IKEA.  It is part of the MALA collection, which includes all types of arts and craft things for children.  This is what it looks like:

 

 
When I looked at it in the store, I thought that it was a great idea, but I figured that the paper quality would not be so great, but I was wrong.   The display holder had an open roll of paper on it, and I was pleasantly surprised to feel that the paper was nice and thick! 

I ended up with the holder and two rolls of the MALA drawing paper.  The rolls of paper have 98 feet of paper on each, and they are just over 18 inches wide.

 

The holder was very easy to assemble.  There are four screws that are tightened by an allen wrench, and that's all you have to do.  The two trays at the bottom of the holder can be used to store pens/markers/whatever, but I will leave mine empty.

 

The bar on the top is to help put pressure on the roll to make it easy to rip off a section of paper.  I left my rolls of paper in the packaging for now, so I have not tested that out yet.



 

 

I will definitely be getting a few more rolls of paper to go with this!   You can purchase the drawing paper online here, but they only sell the holder in stores.  

 

Cell Phone Buddies Partnering Tool--iPhone version!!

When it comes to group work in my class, I always either choose the members of a group myself or just have each of my six tables work as a group where they are already seated.  This works fine for me, because I make the seating arrangements based off of who works well together.

However, I let the students have a little more freedom when it comes to partners.  I usually let them choose their own if they are just working with one other student.  The problem that I usually have with this is that of course, so many students always choose the same partner, and there is usually one student left giving me the HELP! face because they can't find someone to pair up with.

I know lots of teachers use clock buddies as a solution to this--students have arranged partners for the year that they choose, and all the teacher has to do is say "Find your 12 o'clock buddy" or "Go sit next to your 6 o'clock buddy!" and they can look at their clock picture and know who this partner is going to be.

Anyway, I was digging around in some old professional development documents and found a version called "phone buddies" and I decided that I will use this at the beginning of the year to set up some partnerships.

The version I found was a little outdated looking--the picture of the cell phone was a flip phone.  I don't know about any of you, but all of the students I have taught have touchscreen smart phones--and probably none of them have ever had anything different.  So, I decided to make my own iPhone version using a screen cap that I took on my own phone.  I edited out the letters under each number and added a line where students can write each other's names down.

This is what I ended up with:

 

 

I am going to try and make a more simple version that is just in black and white, but for now, this version will do the job.  At least it looks like a phone that this generation can relate to, right?

 

After everyone in my class has filled one of these out, I am going to have them glue this page into their Interactive Notebooks for easy reference!

 

If you would like a freebie copy to print yourself, you can visit my TPT page and download it.

Custom Teacher Toolbox

I'm sure any teacher who is on Pinterest has seen the photos of teacher toolboxes floating around.  As soon as I saw them, I knew I had to make one.

 

I am an office supply junkie--I can't go in Target or Wal-Mart or anywhere without going down the office supply aisle just to see if there is anything new.  I love pens and sharpies especially..but I don't like to leave them in a pencil cup on my desk because they tend to grow legs and disappear.  This seemed like a good way for them to be still easily accessible to me, but out of sight and organized.

 

Previously, all of my office supplies went into the rainbow 10-drawer container in the picture below.

 

 

This container was great for bigger items, but the small things like pens and sharpies would just be in a jumbled mess in each drawer.

 

Enter toolbox! 

 

I went to Lowes and they had two different ones available--a 22-drawer and an 18-drawer.  I chose the 22-drawer because I didn't want a really tall toolbox, and the 18-drawer was about twice as tall. This is what it looked like before I did anything to it.

 

 

I knew I wanted to customize it, so I started by finding a template for the drawer labels. The one I used came from Fun in Room 4B and is available for free on her TPT page here: Teacher's Toolbox Editable Template. I downloaded the font that she lists so that it would look the way it was supposed to when I opened the file.

 

I edited the template to change the labels of the drawers to what I wanted them to say, and then I printed them out using some cute scrapbook paper.

 

 

 

I ended up printing some of the pages from the template twice because I didn't have enough of the pieces on the striped paper.  This is what they looked like cut out and arranged.

 

 

 

I used the Scotch permanent double sided tape to put the labels into the drawers--I just stuck it on the side of the paper with the words and then put it on the back of the drawer face.

 

 

(This tape is one of my favorite things to use in the classroom and in my hallway displays!)

 

 

 

Drawers all finished!

 

 

Then I decided to paint the shell of the toolbox because I didn't really care for the navy.  I prefer bright colors, and I also wanted it to match the scrapbook papers.  I did a little research on spray painting plastic, and I read that you should use a primer so that the paint will stick.  I chose this one from Rust-Oleum:

 

 

The primer worked really well.  It covered the toolbox evenly in just one coat and dried nice and smooth. 

 

The spray paint I purchased was this one from Krylon:

 

 

I have used Krylon before and have always liked it.  However, this time, it did not go so well.  I feel like they have changed the spray nozzle or something, but I cannot remember for sure.  I followed the directions exactly like I was supposed to (shake the can for at least a minute, don't paint in really high humidity, wait allotted time between coats, etc.) and it was a bit of a disaster. 

 

The paint was spewing out all over the place in big drops as I used it for the first coat. I have never seen spray paint go all over the place like this one did.  I didn't even have the can upside down--I was holding it upright but paint was going in all directions out of the nozzle. I thought, well, maybe I should shake it for longer than the back of the can says because it isn't mixed properly.

 

So I shook it extra well before the second coat, and the same thing happened again. 

 

Besides the paint going everywhere, I noticed that as the coats of paint dried, they were definitely not smooth.  The paint was bubbling up in a weird crackle-looking way, but not actually cracking.  It only did this in some areas, so I'm not sure what happened. You can kind of see it in the finished picture. 

 

 

 

 

Even though the surface is far from smooth, I really like the way that it looks with the light blue color.  Besides, I'm the only one that will be close enough to it to see the imperfections.

 

On Thursday this week I took it to my classroom and filled it up with all of my supplies.  When I was searching for ideas for my toolbox and looking at pictures online, I couldn't find any pictures of a box that was filled with everything--I wanted to see what all the office goodies looked like and how they really went into the drawers, because I was skeptical that some things would fit.

 

So, I took pictures of everything in mine, just in case there are other skeptics out there who want to see!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I put this on the bookshelf behind my desk, right next to my stapler and tape.   I put my little wooden nameplate on top of it instead of on my desk--I think it looks better there.

 

 

That's all for now--maybe next time I will show how my bulletin boards are coming along. I finished setting them up yesterday, but I still have plenty to do in the rest of my room. I am about 70% done with my classroom so far.  The rest I will have to finish at pre-planning next week before the students come in for registration on Friday. 

 

Cabinet and other Classroom Storage-- Part 2

 

I went back to my classroom today and finished up a few things--the inside of my cabinet was already like it is in the photos below (it got sorted out the first time I went a few weeks ago), but I ended up decorating the outside of it today because it's not exactly pretty. 

 

The inside isn't beautiful by any means, but at least I can see everything and I know what shelf my supplies are on now.  You can see all of the Pinterest ideas from the last post in here.

 

 

 

Here is a close-up of the shelves and a little description of what I keep in there.

 

The top two shelves have art supplies, lab supplies, and my card game zippy pouches.

 

The third shelf is all paper--colored copy paper and then construction.  I really want to get the copy paper out of this cabinet, but I don't know what to do with it.

 

The fourth shelf has a box of teaching supplies, some bulletin board things, and my Ladibug document camera.  I LOVE using my Ladibug camera and so do my students.  It usually stays on my table up front, but it was in here for summer storage.

 

 

This bottom shelf is just...stuff.  It looks kind of sad, but these are the things that I use the least often so that's why they live on the bottom.  Calendar stuff, a class set of makers, class set of colored pencils, some laminated posters and a set of lab materials. 

 

Now for the cute part!!  The outside!  Today I was sitting in my room staring at the ugly outside of this cabinet and I thought I'd try to cover it up.  I have lots of extra borders and the new supply of butcher paper was in our teacher mailroom today, so that is what I used to cover it.

 

 

 

It's not just cute--this is going to serve as my data wall.  Last year I would post grade sheets and class info on my door.  However, the kids would drive me crazy with it in that spot because several of them would pretend to be sharpening a pencil just so they could stand there and stare at the papers on the door.  Hopefully, this will cut down on that because there isn't a reason for them to be over at the sinks. 

 

I will say this: this was a miserable little decorating project. It took forever! Cutting the paper to the right size, wrapping it around the doors, cutting it around the handles of the cabinet...blech.  I don't think I would do it over again, even though it looks nice.  It was much worse than decorating my classroom door ever has been.

 

I am going to put a piece of laminated construction paper under each class period number, and that is what I will attach the papers to.

 

That cabinet holds my teacher things and stuff that the students don't really need access to.  All of their things are on a shelf on the other side of my room.  Here is the student supply shelf:

 

 

The two top shelves have our class set of textbooks and my newly-stocked first aid kit. 

 

 

 

The next two shelves are my tiny classroom library.  I originally thought I was going to teach Language Arts and that's why I have them, but I think it's a good addition to any classroom.  Some kids like to read during homeroom, and they were especially useful after our state testing when the students have to be silent for almost four hours.

 

The last three shelves are where I keep art supplies.  I labeled them so you can see what I have out and accessible to the students.

 

 

Yes, I have lots of staplers!  I had one for each table last year so that my nice stapler stayed on my desk and was only used by me, and it was a great system.  These are actually really useful to have multiples of because the students staple things into their composition books, and they only have to wait a minute for their turn instead of waiting for every kid in the room to staple. 

 

Again, in a perfect world, all of my containers would match, but it'll do for now. 

 

Next up is my favorite organizational Pinterest project of all--my new teacher toolbox!  It is getting it's own post because I love it that much! :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Storage Cabinet Organization Part 1- Pinterest Projects!

The 2-door cabinet in my room is usually a train wreck.  It is the place where everything goes that does not need to be accessible for students all the time.  This includes things like copy/construction paper, lab/activity supplies, bulletin board supplies, extra art materials, etc.

 

My dream cabinet (besides being much bigger) would have all matching containers and such, but for now, I'll settle for simply organized. 

 

Pinterest has been a huge help in finding solutions for all of my teacher things, and here are a few of the ideas that I have used to organize some of my things for this year. 

 

The first thing I wanted to tackle was the plastic bag disaster.  I have lots of laminated card games (mostly vocabulary) and activities with small pieces.  Until recently, I would have 15 sets of cards, either rubber-banded or in sandwich bags stuffed into a plastic grocery bag.  There were about 10-12 grocery bags full of stuff crammed into empty spaces in the cabinet, and I could never tell what was inside of them.  I don't have a "before" picture because it was just that pitiful.

 

Pinterest had lots of solutions, of course, and this is what I chose to do. 

 

I started with these zippy pencil pouches that I got in my first round of school shopping.  I had been waiting for this item in particular in the back-to-school area because I wanted them cheap and I needed lots of them.

 

I liked these because they had the see-thru side and they came in nice bright colors. I got about 18-20 of these so that I would have plenty to put my vocab games in and have extras for other stuff.

 

Then, I took these baskets that I already had from last year.  I think these came in a set from Wal-Mart.

 

I loved these baskets because you can stack them together as long as the basket isn't too full.  The handles fold in and make a little shelf for you to stack another one on top. 

 

The last thing I needed were labels for the pouches.  I didn't want to write directly on them with a sharpie, just in case I want to use them for another purpose in the future.

 

 

As you can see, I just wrote whatever the cards were on the sticky labels.  I ended up having several extras, so I even put some of my word wall vocab into them.  In some cases, all of the sets of cards would not fit into one pencil case, so I just split them in half and put them into two.  I made sure to put a little (2) on the label so that I'd know there was another case.

 

Then, I just put all of the pieces in the cases, zipped them up and put on the labels.

 

When I was finished, I stacked them sideways into the red baskets.

 

 

I ended up using two baskets for all of my stuff--I still had some pencil cases left over, and they are just stuck in the back of each basket with a blank label already on them. This way, if I create a new acticity, I have a home waiting for it once we finish using it.

 

This is how they look in my cabinet now:

 

I am happy with how these turned out!  I can just flip through the cases to find what I need without having to dig through my old grocery bags.  The one thing I might change is the position of the sticky labels.  I wish I had put them at the top side so that it was a little easier to read, but that is an easy change to make.

 

I got this idea from a blog called Penny Pumpernickel Pants.  They used these to organize puzzles at home, but I think it translated well to my class.

 

The next thing I wanted to tackle was the construction paper.  I had about 30 different packs, different sizes/colors (all open, of course).  I had them stacked on top of each other, which was not a good system.  Whenever the students or I needed a color from the bottom, it pulled out paper from the top and left a mess in the stack. 

 

So, I took a plastic file crate that I already had in my room and a big stack of hanging file folders and made this:

 

I LOVE this new system.  Now, I can just take the whole crate out and set it on my front table when we are using construction paper and the students can choose any color, no problem.  Or, if I just want one color, I can grab that folder and bring it out of the crate. 

 

The original idea came from this post at Two Things in Common.  Her paper is in a big drawer in a filing cabinet, but I like that mine is portable!

 

The last thing was some storage for my bulletin board decorations.  Specifically, I needed a way to store the borders.  I have tons of them, and I hate rolling them up and bending them. 

 

 I saw this idea using 3M Command hooks and binder clips on Finally in First.  To begin with, I didn't think this would work for me even though I loved it, because my cabinet has shelving and the borders would not be able to hang straight.

 

Then, I realized that I could hang the hooks on the back of the cabinet doors and it would work--so that is exactly what I did.

 

 

I already had two packs of the command hooks in my desk that I didn't have a use for, so this was perfect.  I don't have all of the borders hanging up there yet, but you can see how it looks.  I also used it for some longer word wall vocab that would not fit in the zippy pencil cases at the beginning of this post.

 

Part 2 of my cabinet organization will be up soon! :)