One Teacher's Adventures

I live in Victoria, on the southern tip of Vancouver Island in BC.  We have had hot, dry weather for weeks, which has caused many wild fires to blaze around the province.  Here is a map with active fires in BC. With so many fires blazing for so long, the smoke has gathered in the atmosphere and has settled over Vancouver Island.  Residents of the southern island woke up this morning to an orange haze filling the sky.  It was so bad that NASA took this picture from space showing the smoke. Here are some photos that I took today as the smoke got heavier and heavier. This is the sky when I first woke up The sun had a ring around it. There were crows circling around the park, which gave off a scary movie feel to the day. The smoke became so thick that the sun could barely shine. My sister and I took my nephew to the park and it was really creepy with the orange haze. I'm wondering if anyone in Washington State, Alaska, or in other parts of...

Today was the last day of classes in my district.  While I am very ready for the summer break, I will definitely miss my group of Grade 4s.   As a year-end gift, I decided to create a Wordle for my partner teacher with all of our students' names.  Wordles are word clouds that you can make for free ( click here ).  You simply type text into the wordle box, and the program generates a word cloud that you can edit for font, colour, and configuration.  The program uses an algorithm that increases the size of words that are repeated more often. My Wordle looked like this: I loved this so much that I decided to something similar, but more special, for the kids.  First, I gave every student a page with all their classmates names on it.  I asked them to write down three words to describe everyone else in the class.  (We brainstormed a list of about 50 or 60 positive adjectives before they began and I wrote them all on the chalkboard). Then I...

This week, my Grade 4 class was learning about Internet Safety.  We talked about common lures predators will use online, why it is important to never give your passwords to friends, not to believe what people say online, and that it is very important to think about what is being posted.  We talked about the fact that once a photo is posted online, anyone can copy it and do with it what they will.  I wanted to show my class how fast and how far photos can spread on social media sites like Facebook.  To illustrate the point, I wrote a message on our whiteboard.  It looked like this: I took a photo of the message and posted it on my Facebook page on June 2 at 3:30pm PST.  I was shocked with the results!  By 7:00am the next day, it had already reached over 6700 people.  The class began to map where the comments and likes were coming from (and I was able to sneak in a geography lesson!).  We created this map after the first day: As m...

Happy Mother's Day to all the mums out there :)  I can't take credit for this idea at all, but it is so cute that I wanted to share it with you!  I share a Grade 1 class (I'm there on Fridays).  My partner teacher, Shannon, created this project with our kids for Mother's Day and I quickly snapped some pictures before we wrapped them up today. She gave each student a frame to paint, then asked them to draw a picture to put inside.  On the outside, they wrote out a special message to their moms and it was glued onto the frame to complete the gift.  When the kids came in this morning, they were so excited to show me what they made for their moms. I think they turned out adorably!  I'm sure there will be some very happy moms on Sunday morning :)

I've done this project now with two different classes, and I absolutely love how it turns out!   We began this art project during Earth Week this year.  We looked at images of Banyan trees and researched where they grow.  After the students had some background information, we set on creating our own.   I encouraged the students to pull their branches off the edge of the page, and fill in the background with bright colours to highlight the silhouette of the tree.  We talked about negative space and how we could bring the tree to life by colouring the backgrounds. My students used chalk and oil pastels for the colours, and tempera paint for the tree itself.  I suggest drawing out the shape of the tree first in pencil, filling in the background, and then painting as the last step.  This will prevent any smudging of the black paint. They are colourful and bright and add so much to our classroom d...

As a wrap-up project to a lesson on stereotypes with a Grade 7 class, I decided to have the students create travel brochures for our great country, but they were only allowed to use typical Canadian stereotypes to bring in tourists. Each student had to include information on food, accommodations, sights, and activities to try.  It was hilarious to read what they came up with!  I was very impressed with their final projects!  Some students included typical Canadian advertisements, as well! So, what do you think? Would this work in your classroom? Have you done something similar? Let me know in the comments below. Looking for more great tips and ideas for middle school? Subscribe to my email list and receive an exclusive FREE sub plans resource. It includes plans for math, ELA, science, social studies, and Core French. Click  here  to subscribe.

  I know I haven't written in awhile.  It has been a busy February for me!    1. I had some sort of cold/flu hybrid that knocked me down for the first two weeks!  We've had gorgeous weather, I had to miss two weekends stuck inside in bed with no voice and no energy :(  Happily, I am feeling much better now and got to enjoy some excellent west coast Canadian winter weather!        Can you believe these were taken on February 24th?  In Canada?      2. I reached 350 Likes on Facebook and 400 followers on Teachers Pay Teachers .  To celebrate, I had a sale and giveaway that was a lot of fun!   3. I've been slogging through report cards for both my classes.  I created a new format this term and it required a lot of set up.  I'm used to writing middle school reports - very few comments accompanied by a letter grade.  Elementary reports are SO much work!  Thankfully,...