Start of School Classroom Tour

Posted on September 12, 2012 by Squarehead Teachers

When I was a brand new teacher, I was a bit overwhelmed with everything I had to cover in the first few days of school. There were tons of procedures, campus features (office, library, etc.) and expectations to go over. Here were a few notes (not an inclusive list by any means) I made to myself to help me remember some of what to cover:

Teacher’s space– 5 places off limits to students: teacher’s desk, any drawers (plastic or filing cabinets), behind the back table, front desk/podium storage on the back wall near the window. These are for storage and teacher use. Nothing interesting there anyway!

Line up– the line starts at the door, and ends by the computer desk. The line will only leave the room when the Line Monitor determines the class is ready to leave.

Turn in table– under the red sign labeled “when you’re finished”. Each turn in slot is labeled according to the type of thing that should go there. Make sure your papers have the correct heading before you turn them in or you will lose points.

Paper– lined paper, plain paper and scratch paper are in trays in 2 places in the room: 1) on the turn in table under the red sign labeled “when you’re finished”. 2) on the back shelf near the reading books

Computers and Library– Computers are only for use when directed by the teacher. Classroom library books may not leave this room unless you talk to Miss W. first. The librarian will ask for names of people wanting to check out books at the end of the day. Please be respectful with Miss W’s books. She purchased them with her own money.

Desks: Each desk has the same materials. Math book, 2 spirals (1 for math and one for writing), a clipboard and a set of classroom folders. Each student has 5 folders: 1 for each subject and 1 to take home and bring back each day. Only the Orange folder labeled “Take Home” should ever leave school.

Writing Submission Sheet

Posted on September 12, 2012 by Squarehead Teachers

My students were notorious for turning in incomplete writing assignments. They would forget to include the rough draft or outline or something. So I created this easy page to run of on a colored sheet of paper and cut into fourths. My students were required to attach this submission sheet to the front of any writing assignment and fill it out. This helped in numerous ways:

They were less likely to forget parts of the assignment
It was easily identifiable in a stack of papers as a writing assignment
I could easily write comments, scores, etc. on the submission sheet
Everything in the assignment would be stapled together!!! Less loose pages flying around = victory!

Click here to download:

Story submission sheet

Writing submission sheet

*These are Word documents, so you can easily modify them to fit your classroom. I used a cute font that you might not have installed on your computer, so make sure the format works on your computer before you print it.

Letter To Your Teacher

Posted on September 12, 2012 by Squarehead Teachers

Teachers are responsible for so many aspects of a student’s life- not just the academics. It’s helpful to give students an opportunity periodically to tell you whatever is on their mind. However, some students will tell you they don’t have anything to say. So here’s my solution:

To get this poster, right click on it and select “save image as.” Then you can save it to your computer and
resize it before you print it. I printed mine on a regular 8.5″ x 11″ sheet of card stalk.

I print this page up at the beginning of the year (to save time writing up the prompt multiple times), and put it on the board about 4 times a year as an in-class writing assignment. One year, I had a particularly social group of 6th grade girls and there always seemed to be some dramatic catastrophe going on between them {sigh}. I chose to do this writing assignment during one particularly dramatic episode and it turned out to be very helpful for me as their teacher to hear about what’s going on without “prying into their lives.”

Halloween Persuasive Writing Prompts

Posted on September 12, 2012 by Squarehead Teachers

Halloween Persuasive Writing

Should students be allowed to celebrate Halloween at school? Why or Why not?
Should parents get to eat candy their kids bring home from Trick-or-Treating? Why or Why not?
At what age should kids stop Trick-or-Treating? Why?
What’s the best part (or parts) or Halloween? Why?
What’s the coolest Halloween costume anyone could ever be? Why?

Requirements:

hand written, skip lines
5 paragraphs: introduction, 3 body paragraphs with at least 5 sentences each, conclusion
3 reasons (each paragraph will be a different reason)

Turn In:

Graphic organizer
Rough draft
Final draft in pen
Submission sheet
Picture (optional)

Compare/Contrast Essay Organizer

Posted on September 12, 2012 by Squarehead Teachers

Compare and contrast essays are one of the most common writing assignments on standardized tests. I found it helpful to have an organizer for my students. Having specific questions that prompt students about what to write in each part was especially helpful for my ESL kids. Here’s the one I used for our social studies unit on world religions (research and compare/contrast 2 world religions):

Click here for the organizer.

General vs Specific

Posted on September 12, 2012 by Squarehead Teachers

Some of my students struggled with the concept of general vs. specific. After a mini-lesson on the difference (including common vs. proper nouns), we used this worksheet to practice. NOTE: The example is not done for you. This is for you to use in your mini-lesson and transition to independent/partner practice. Enjoy!

To get this worksheet, right click on it and select “save image as”. After you’ve saved it to

your computer, you can resize it before you print it. It’s not a big worksheet, so you could

print it 2 on a page.

Finding Parts of Speech in Reading Books

Posted on September 12, 2012 by Squarehead Teachers

Here’s a really simple (and quick) worksheet for kids to use during their independent reading time or as a homework assignment to help reinforce parts of speech. Although it may seem repetitive (identifying 15 of the same part of speech), this is what some students need to catch on to the idea. For the students who already understand parts of speech, it’s PAINLESS and can be accomplished in a matter of minutes.

Click here to download the worksheets:

Verbs in My Reading Book worksheet
Nouns in My Reading Book worksheet
Adjectives in My Reading Book worksheet
Prepositions in My Reading Book worksheet

*You can modify these worksheets on Microsoft Word so they focus on other grammar concepts your class may struggle with.

End of the Year Writing: Yearbook

Posted on September 11, 2012 by Squarehead Teachers

So many of the important assessments students face nowadays require competent writing. I used the end of the year as a chance to reinforce basic paragraph construction with this yearbook. I created pages on Microsoft Word (feel free to change the pages or add your own) that focused on specific aspects of our school year. For example, we had a grade-level Olympics in conjunction with our study of ancient civilizations, so I included a page that focused on this fun event. This was a great way to help students review the things they’d learned during the year. This would be very easy to modify for younger grades.

As a class, we made a checklist of the tasks required to complete the yearbook (each student copied down the list). Each student was required to write a rough draft on regular notebook paper, and have a peer edit it before they could go on to the final draft. Once the checklists were made, the students were free to work on whatever page they wanted. Each student completed the entire list, but could choose which page to work on each time we started working. This entire project took my 6th graders about 2.5 – 3 weeks to complete (45 min- 1 hour a day). One parent had taken pictures of school events (like track & field day and our Shakespeare play) and generously printed some of them for us. Each student ended up with 2-3 pictures from the year to glue into their book. I suppose you could encourage students to bring in a picture or two to glue in if they wanted. The students especially enjoyed signing each others’ yearbooks once they were all completed (we added a few blank pages at the end for autographs and messages).

Here are the Word files if you want to download them:
Yearbook Cover
Shakespeare Play page
Mathematics page
Medieval Day page
Guided reading page
Olympics page
Favorite Things page
Project Requirements
Writing page
Science page
Teachers page
Lunch & Recess page
Friends page

*When I uploaded these files, my cute fonts, didn’t get uploaded, so you might want to change them on your own computer to make them more interesting.

2022 Note: I’ve had some people message me that some of the pages aren’t downloading from Google Drive where they’re uploaded. I’m sorry, and I’ll do my best to figure out the issue.

What are some of your favorite end of the year projects/activities?