The Pinterest Pledge

Hello All Things Upper Elementary Readers,

It is Kristy from the 2 Peas and a Dog Blog. I am here to share some quick tips for keeping your Pinterest addiction manageable. If you are anything like me you have access to Pinterest on your phone, tablet and computer, and it can be tempting to pin all day long.

Pinterest is a great tool for teachers because it is full of so many great ideas that we would not normally be exposed to. I feel like Pinterest should be considered a form of professional development because most of the pins I follow are to reputable bloggers who have excellent ideas.

But how do you organize your pins? Lately, I have been seeing a lot of people pinning my pins to general Pinterest boards called "Education". If you pin all of your teaching pins to one board called "Education" how long will it take you to search for the one specific pin you pinned months ago?

I am challenging all of you to take the Pinterest Pledge to clean up your digital PD system.

Create new topic specific boards that are relevant to you: classroom organization, classroom management, math, language, etc. All my of boards are organized by subjects that I teach or teaching concepts like back to school or classroom management.

Reorganize your old Pinterest boards by re-pinning old pins onto their new specific boards. This also gives you a chance to delete pins you did not find useful or are no longer relevant to your teaching assignment. 

Rearrange your Pinterest boards to be alphabetized or by theme: teaching, home life, cottage life etc. This will help you sort through your boards quickly and narrow in on the idea you want. I organize my teaching stuff at the top and then at the bottom of my page are my home and food boards. Left click, hold and move your Pinterest board around to where you want it to be positioned on your Pinterest site. 

Set a daily Pinterest time limit. This can accomplished by setting a timer on your phone, iPad or computer. There will always be cool and interesting pins to look at on Pinterest, but it is important for you to take time for yourself and your family as well. 

Check your pins before you pin them. I open my potential pins in a new tab before I pin them to a board. Recently I saw this awesome pin about teacher fonts. When I clicked through to the pin, I did not find a site with a link to "Awesome Teacher Fonts", I got a blog about Mood Disorders. 

Happy Pinning! 

Click here to see the 2 Peas and a Dog Pinterest Boards.

Kristy @ 2 Peas and a Dog

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Weekly Goal Setting

Hello ATUE Readers,

It's Kristy from the 2 Peas and a Dog blog. It has been a while since I last posted due to report card writing and moving. I do not recommend combining these two major events together as they are both stressful and time consuming.

While I am writing the learning skills part of my report card - I report on the student's ability to set, monitor and follow through on their goals. This can be difficult to monitor without a formal goal setting tracking program. Where does the time come from? How can this be managed? These are all questions I asked myself when I started teaching.

I have tried different systems: goal setting duotangs, writing in their agendas, handing in loose papers. IT WAS ALL TOO MUCH TO MANAGE on top of our required teaching duties. Then I saw a Grade 5 teacher at my school use cue cards on student desks as a visual reminder to each student of their goals. This was a brilliant idea so I asked her if I could borrow it and make it rotary applicable.

How Does This Work?

1. Hand out a cue card to each student once a week, once a month, once a term - what suits your schedule.
2. Have them write one academic goal and one life goal. Depending the length of time the goals will need to be adjusted. "Getting an A in French won't happen until the end of the term." but "Reading 20 pages a night" can happen on a weekly basis.
3. Use packing tape to tape the cue card to the desk as a constant visual reminder for your students of what they need to be working on. 
4. Walk around once a week to have an informal chat with each student on how they are doing with their goals and offer them ideas on how they can keep up their goals. Use a class list and create columns that say: Goals Met, Still Working, Starting Over or something similar that meets your classes needs. 

Got Rotary?

Clearly this taping system will not work if you have more than one class visiting the classroom on a daily or weekly basis. 

Some other ideas include: 

• having students store them in their agendas, binders or notebooks and put them out on their desks when they arrive in your class
• creating a goal setting bulletin board and use smaller cue cards so all your classes can fit on it
• buy one of those 3 panel stand up display boards and adhere the goal cue cards to the board - this can be easily folded up and taken out as needed. Plus it uses less space than a traditional bulletin board
• collect them for the students and hand them out on an as needed bases

I hope this goal setting tip helps reduce your stress level come report card time as you will have great anecdotal notes to work from.

Thanks for reading,

Kristy @ 2 Peas and a Dog

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New Years Cooperative Games Activities

Hello ATUE Readers,

It's Kristy from the 2 Peas and a Dog blog. I cannot believe that Christmas is over and I am writing this blog post hours away from 2014. I still remember the Y2K scares and I remember ringing in the 1990's. Where does time go?

The days back to school after the holiday break are key to re-establishing and reminding students of the tone of your classroom community. This is a great time to reinforce the classroom norms, rules and expectations you have for your students. They will need time to adjust back to the routines of school after being on holidays.

The first few days back are a great time to use cooperative games in your classroom.

Earlier this year I organized a cooperative games morning for the Grade 8 students that I teach. They rotated through three stations: spaghetti tower construction, mural paper graffiti wall and quick team building activities.

1. Spaghetti Tower Construction 

Provide students with an equal amount of spaghetti (10-20 pieces per group), some masking tape and an equal amount of marshmallows (approx 4) and tell them they need to create the tallest freestanding structure as a group. Set a timer and let their imagination thrive. The key is to explain freestanding - because you will have students that try to tape all the pieces together and hold it up. Have a meter/yard stick handy to measure each groups' creation.

2. Mural Paper Graffiti Wall

Have students watch an inspiration video from You Tube or another source to get them thinking before they graffiti. A great video from You Tube is 212 Degrees: Turn Up the Heat it visually represents for students what can happen if they put one extra degree into their work. After the video have students use markers to free write their ideas onto chart or mural paper about the theme of the video. Have them use creative fonts and doodles to get their messages across. Hang up these papers around the classroom or the school. 

3. Quick Team Building Activities

Have students participate in a few of these activities to help build a community of learners. 

Bench Switch: Have a group (depending on the size of the bench and class) of students line up on a large gym bench. Then call out instructions for the students to line up by birthday, height, favourite foods etc. They must change places without falling off the bench. If anyone puts a foot on the ground the activity starts over again.

Noun Finder: Prepare ahead of time sets of noun cards (celebrities, famous places, foods, etc). When students arrive tape a card to their back and have them mingle around the room asking questions about their noun. They cannot ask others to read their card to them, but can ask many questions to try and guess what the card says on their back. 

For more team building activities check out this blog post on my site with detailed instructions and how to videos. 

Happy New Years Eve and 2014!

Kristy @ 2 Peas and a Dog 

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Conquering the Paper/Notebook Monster

Hello Again,

It's Kristy from 2 Peas and a Dog, writing to you from balmy Ontario, Canada. The weather is not normally this nice during the fall season. Well I have survived a month of school and am excited to share a new to me strategy for taming the paper monster in my classroom.

I have serious interactive notebook envy. I am slowly trying to update my teaching style to incorporate more purposeful and interactive use of notebooks.

I cannot believe it has taken me seven years to finally discover how to effectively and neatly store worksheets and photocopied papers in notebooks. The best part of this new discovery is that it came from an eighth grade student in my homeroom class. I had previously asked students to fold the paper in half and glue half of it a whole page in their notebook. Eek! I always felt guilty because the glue made their notebooks messy and it used up a whole page.

This year I suggested students keep a binder for math and use loose lined paper instead of a notebook. The majority of my class has switched to this system and are enjoying feeling more like high school students.

I have a few students who love their notebooks and won't make the switch. This past unit I handed out a few practice sheets or lessons on photocopied paper. These notebook students had the papers in a few different states:

• in their lockers
• shoved into their notebook in no order
• hole punched and put into a binder with no connection to the lesson or unit
• stapled neatly into the notebook

The last student had stapled the sheet into their notebook only at the top of the page with two staples at either corner. This meant that the paper could easily be lifted up and the work could be completed underneath - loosing no paper space.

The student completed their work in their notebook and when they were finished they stapled the paper into their notebooks only at the top. This meant that the student did not have to keep flipping the paper back and forth during practice time AND their notebook stayed neat. I am so excited for this idea. When I checked everyone's binders and notebooks before our first unit test, I used this notebook and staple strategy as model for the rest of the class. 

What tips do you have for making students keep neat notebooks? How do you tame the paper monster? Please leave your ideas in the comments below. I can't wait to read them.

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Back to School Reflections on Day 1

This is the view from my door looking into my classroom. I teach 8th grade in a suburban city in Ontario, Canada. Yesterday was my first day of school. In most of Canada we do not start back until after Labour Day, but we go until the end of June.

My first day was exciting. No first day is ever the same. Normally all of our school starts with homeroom for Periods 1 and 2. This year my planning time fell during Period 1 and the French teacher really wanted to get started and meet her students.

I met my students and their parents out on the black top, took attendance and then I got to go photocopy. It was such an odd feeling not starting the first day with my homeroom. The bonus for my students is that they did not have the same teacher six periods straight and they got to experience more of a "high school" setting.  They won't have a homeroom teacher in high school just a different teacher for periods 1-4.

Some of the "special" things we did today:

• every student in my homeroom got a first day package from me with a bookmark, pencil, homework pass, a letter from me and a letter about me from a previous student. Students love reading what my previous students have to say about me. I don't edit or censor the letters. Students write them in June and I put them in envelopes in September. 

• after students read the letters they "brainstormed" our class rules - but they already had the inside scoop from my previous students

• community building activities with all 3 classes together or 2 classes together

• played people BINGO -  click below for the FREEBIE! This game can be played anytime through out the year to get your class up, moving and talking to each other. 

I hope your first day back went as well as mine.

Thanks for reading,

Kristy @ 2 Peas and a Dog

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Hello from ATUE newest blogger!

Hello All Things Upper Elementary Readers, whew that's a mouthful to proof read out loud.

My name is Kristy from the 2 Peas and a Dog blog. 

I am so excited ( I waltzed with my puppy when I got asked to join) to be blogging with this AMAZING group of bloggers. When I am not teaching Grade 8, I like to spend time with super cute pets and super cute husband.  

This is my super cute, but mischievous cat Minnie. She likes to help with marking of papers. She personally sits in the marking bin to keep a safe watch over the assignments. 

This is my Shih Tsu dog Riley. She is the mascot for my blog. She is also a super helper when it comes to teaching. Whenever there is a word problem in Math - Riley is the star. She had quite the shopping problem last year, and built some triangular fences when were studying Pythagorean Theorem. 

I am starting my 7th year of teaching Grades 7 and 8. During this time I have taught a self contained class for students with learning disabilities, math, social studies, drama, dance, art and health on rotary in addition to teaching my homeroom math and English. I was also lucky enough to be the school librarian for 2 years. This is when I learned what is good and what is bad teen fiction.

Are you wondering what fun activity to do with your students the first week back? Why not try a Back to School Bingo. It is free in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. Click on the photo below to access the file. 

The most popular product in my TPT store is my 12 Different Genre Book Reports Assignment. In this assignment, teachers choose which genre of fiction or non-fiction they want their students to read. There are four types of assignments that rotate through the year 4 R's, Creative Choice Board, Sell this Book and Create a Lesson. This takes the BORING out of traditional book reports. 

Everything in my TPT shop will be 10% off today only (August 22) to celebrate all of your wonderful readers of All Things Upper Elementary!

I am slightly addicted to Pinterest, Facebook, Teachers Pay Teachers and blogging. 

Do any of you share this addiction? 

If so please stop by and saying hello on any of the sites listed below. 

Happy Rhyming Thursday

Kristy from 2 Peas and a Dog

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