Teacher Hack! - Turn an old chalkboard into a bulletin board!

When they remodeled my classroom this summer, they actually expanded my room into a less used room next door.  That room had an old, and quite disgusting, chalkboard in it.  Well, half of that board ended up in my room. (Why they didn't take it down I have no idea.)  Besides the fact that I cannot stand blackboards, this one wasn't even useable.  It had something rough that looked a bit like rust all over it.  Nasty.

Look! A message from ghosts of days gone by!

Anyway, I decided to cover it, but I really did not want to spend too much.  Well, my mom and I came across an idea in the Dollar Tree that worked fantastic!

I had wanted to cover the board with cork, but the rolls are super thin and crack, and the tiles would have cost a fortune.  I had seen a video a few years ago where the teacher covered the board with construction foam board (around here we call it styrofoam insulation board), and it worked well, but again, I would have to find a way to get the huge sheets in my Honda CRV with my daughter in the backseat.  Not gonna happen.  At dollar tree we found poster board that is a foam board about 1/4 inch thick in small sheets (I think they were about 18" x 30").  I bought 12 of them, but only needed 7, so $7.

I put the pieces up with double stick tabs I had from Lakeshore.  I have no idea how long I've had them, but I love them, and I am sure they still sell them.  I put one in each corner, a few down each edge, and a couple in the center.  I started at the top, and worked my way across and down.

When I finished with the larger space, I had to cut a few pieces to fill the rest of the board.  I wouldn't have been hard, except that I had forgotten my carpet knife/box cutter, and had use a razor blade that is a scraper.  Yeah.  Always a plan B.

Look at me, measuring and everything...

No eye-balling and praying here today, friends.

After I got the rest of the areas pieced together, I covered the whole thing by stapling a plastic table cloth and some boarder around the sides.  I.  Love.  This.

Now, I am fully aware that the table cloth is a little wrinkled.  Although this project only took about 2 hours, I had been working in my room nonstop for two days.  I think my brain told me it looked fine because it wanted me to take it and the rest of my exhausted body home.  It will be a quick fix to tighten it up when I go in on Monday, so I'm not worried.

I liked this project so much, that I covered another small, and less disgusting, blackboard area, as well.  I had a few pieces of foam board left, and let's be real here - there was no way I was driving all the way to the dollar tree to wait in line for half an hour to return 5 extra pieces of board.  I WILL always force myself to find a use for something to avoid heading back to that store.

Back to school for me tomorrow!  Have a good one, everyone!

~L

Purposeful Talk Sentence Starters - Back to School FREEBIE!

After working in my classroom for too many hours to count this week, I decided I needed to make new purposeful talk sentence starters at 10:30 on Friday night.  Why?  I have no idea other than I wanted a new color scheme, and I was over tired, and it sounded like a 5 minute task.  Two and a half hours later, I was finished and realized that I really did not need to start that project at that time of night.  Anyway, I decided to share them as a freebie - since I spent so much time on them, I might as well share them!

I've used the same basic starters for many years, with all grades.  These are just starters, and students often learn to develop their own ways to phrase these types of discussions.  Regardless, I've found that it doesn't matter what the grade, they need to practice these communication and critical thinking skills.

Since I created these in the middle of the night, I still need to print, laminate and cut.  No pics today, folks.  This set includes 14 different discussion prompts.  What I like about these as that they can be used in any space.  I have traveled between three schools with these babies, and always have found a spot for them that is easily visible during discussions.

I hope they brighten your classroom and stimulate deep discussions with your students!

~L

Purposeful Talk Sentence Starters

Mini Notebook Writing Tasks

Every summer I see things that other teachers do, and I think, "that's super cool," but then I never do anything about it.  Well, this year I did something about it!  Somewhere along the line, I had seen a post where a teacher had cut composition books in half to use for different subjects.  I wasn't sure how I could use them, but I kept them in the back of my mind for future years.

Before I go into details, I will tell you how I came to decide this year was the year to try this.  During the year I teach four sections of sixth grade literature.  These classes only meet four days a week, and the fifth day is a study period.  Well, last year I only taught one period of study, and I found that for sixth graders who have never had a period to manage their work on their own, this can be a struggle.  As it turns out, this year I am the study teacher for all four of my classes.  I decide to have an "I-don't-have-anything-to-do" assignments that will be part of their literature grade.  I decided to do collaborative journals that would reinforce concepts from lit class.  I chose theme, characters, and quotes (citing text).  AND, because I am completing my master's project on mindset, I made sure that two of the journals include mindset analysis.  Mini notebooks seem like the perfect size for this type of activity.

OK, so here's what I did.... well, my dad did it, I'm just claiming it as my own...

First he cut the notebooks on his table saw.  I handed them to him.  That's all I know...

Then I made cover plates that are the actual writing prompts.

Ok, yes, I chose themes from each house of Harry Potter, and yes, I put them on notebooks that match the house colors, but this does not mean that I have a problem....

By the way, these are all themes that we will be exploring in our class novels, so totally relevant and helping to activate background knowledge.  And supporting HP.

Then I added bookmarks to the notebooks by taping a ribbon to the back.

This is the back of one and the inside of another

I also made one for our study hall lists (similar to other school's detentions), as well as a hall pass.  The hall pass sign out is my favorite.

I wish it wasn't blurry, but it was the best I could do tonight between making dinner and dropping over from back-to-school exhaustion.  If anyone wants these cover plates, I will post them as a freebie on TPT; however, probably not tonight.  Must sleep.....

In other news, I posted a new note-taking, graphic organizer on TPT earlier this week.  I designed it for my classes, so it may be too specific for others to use, but I posted it anyway.  The front side is focused on the basic information from the book, and the back side is all critical thinking with mindset as the guiding topic.  I know, I know, more growth mindset, but it really is such an important skill, and our students need to learn young how to make positive changes.

Here it is:

Here is a preview pick of the back side.  Sorry that is says "preview" across it.  Can you believe someone took one of my blog posts and posted it as their own on TPT?  It makes me sad, but I will still share.  Right now it says preview until I feel good about it again!

Hope everyone is having a good "back to school" season!

~L

Note Taking Graphic Organizer for Literature

Back to School!

Back to School!

That exclamatory sentence can be taken a couple different ways - depending on your inclination.  Well, regardless of whether you are anxiously anticipating the start or trying to hold on to the last few weeks of summer and sanity, school is in the back of all of our minds; specifically, the amount of work that awaits us between opening week and the first day with students.

I turned in my master's capstone a week ago, and then had to immediately attend a department meeting with our administrators.  I had to creatively answer questions, since I seriously had not even thought about literature curriculum.  Everyone else had their curriculum maps there and I ... well, I'm a great talker so...

I went home and started going through first week activities, and decided to reuse a few.  I also found that I wanted to jazz several up to be a bit more engaging.  This year, I want all of my ice breakers and first week activities to be focused on the content areas - no generic "find someone who..." activities this year.  I plan to use the activities to assess basic skills that first week.  Note the word "basic."  I'm not trying to challenge to the point of tears before they even make it to the first Friday.

What I came up with is some pretty fun stuff that I think both my 6th and 8th graders will like.  This is what I created:

There are 18 different activities: 3 "getting to know you" pages, 3 book pages, 1 story elements page, 1 figurative language activity, 1 parts of speech activity, and 9 writing activities.  The writing activities include paragraph writing, summarizing, narrative writing, letters, personification, and a newspaper article assignment.  I'm so excited to have my kids complete these this year.  I will have the 6th grade lit classes complete a few, 6th grade English a few more, and the 8th graders will do a mix of everything.  Week one: ✓, ✓,  & ✓

Here are a few examples that I'm going to use to get the 6th graders started:

Fully aware they are Harry Potter themed.  If you haven't figured out that I have an obsession yet, then I don't know what to tell you.  Actually, I think HP is why I decided to teach literature.  More on that another day, as I am going to need another whole post to show you what I've been up to in terms of HP.  True love.  Always.  (You see what I did there?)

Anyway, I hope other teachers can find these useful.  This set is already up and ready for download in my TPT store.  Have a good night, everyone!

~L

Back to School ELA Activities