Objective Wall

Today was my first day of the 2013-2014 school year. It was wonderful, as usual. My voice is very tired and my feet are very sore and I keep looking at the clock to see if it's acceptable to go to bed yet. But, I wouldn't trade these inconveniences for the world! I love my job wholeheartedly!

Over the summer I decided to create an objective wall to keep me accountable in creating meaningful lessons for my students and to keep track of how my students are progressing through the material. You can get a copy of it here in my TpT store.

I laminated them and hung them on my wall in the front of my classroom. The funny thing is, the 4th grade sister of one of my students suggested to me on Orientation Night that these were crooked. They are...slightly. But remember, I'm a lazy perfectionist...and this definitely falls into that category. :) My plan is to have the objectives up the night before...we'll see how it goes. So far I'm two for two!

I introduced this wall to my class today as we went through each subject. They did an excellent job with them. It was a great way for me to assess what they learned as we went along. The students seemed genuinely interested in what the plan was for the day. I have some students who struggle with motivation, so I'm hoping this helps them see the purpose in what I'm teaching them. We shall see.

Five For Friday with a Freebie

 

I'm linking up with Doodle Bug's Five for Friday today. 

What a week! I don't really have many pictures to go with this, so bear with me. :)

 1.) I spent four out of the five days this work week working at school on school stuff even though in-service technically doesn't start till next week. Phew. I'm definitely out of shape for working everyday. It's going to be an adjustment!

2.) Last night I stayed up waaaaay too late helping my hubby stay awake to get a good chunk of his 25-30 page paper done before Monday. I'm getting a little too old to be staying up that late. I'm not a night owl! That's for sure!

3.) We went to a friend's for dinner on Tuesday, and she sent me home with leftovers, garden fresh cherry tomatoes, zucchini, and a fresh basil cutting! I love friends who share...especially friends with gardens. Tomorrow is going to be zucchini bread day. My husband hates all forms of zucchini, so I'm going to have to get creative to use it up without his knowledge. :)

4.) Tonight I had a fall craft night with some of my friends. It was so fun to be with only females and to prepare for our favorite season and to just talk about girly things. I'm not very social, but I always come away refreshed after hanging out with these girls.

5.) I started a Teachers Pay Teachers store this week. It's pretty empty right now, but I'm hoping to keep working on adding useful products. I have to get over my copyright infringement phobia first. Here's a glimpse of my latest product, which I'm planning to install in my classroom next week as soon as it's laminated:

Click here to find the product in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

Here's a freebie poster set for teaching flat vs. round characters in cased you missed my earlier post.

Teaching Character Change

I've been working on developing a reading binder to help enhance my reading curriculum. It's a pretty bare-bones curriculum, so I've been really trying to supplement, supplement, supplement.

One key concept I want to work on this year is that of character change. I found some great resources via teaching blogs and Laura Candler's teaching files. I wanted to go a little further with it, so I created a couple of my own resources that I couldn't really find elsewhere (at least without buying something or searching for hours upon hours).

First, I wanted a couple of mini posters that would help my students distinguish between flat and round characters. I created them using PowerPoint. You can download them for free from my brand-spankin'-new Teachers Pay Teachers store. I plan to pull these posters out and display them every time I teach flat vs. round characters.

Then, I wanted some sort of blank timeline that I could pass out to my students to help them map the changes that the characters go through in a story. This may be difficult to get students to use at first, but I think it will be a great exercise in using evidence. You can purchase this resource as well at my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

If you have any suggestions or a product of your own that you use to teach character change, I'd love to hear about it!