Just One of 'dem Days...

... that a teacher goes through. Wake up with a head ache and realize you're out of Advil. Overhear boys in one of your favorite classes talking about how much cooler their past art teachers have been*.  Realize you forgot your lunch on the kitchen table.** Try out a new lesson you are soooo excited about, only to have it Bomb Completely*** in front of a new parent volunteer and be  interrupted by a fire drill**** and subsequent malfunctioning fire alarm*****. Foreget a major part of your homework for grad class at home.

*Suppressing tears
** Various expletives (to myself of course)
*** Snapping at kids when it's not their fault
****More expletives (under breath)
*****Really? Laughable at this point
******Suck it up and deal.

I mean, everyone has days like this. No matter how long you've been doing something or how prepared you think you are... stuff's gonna go wrong.  Stuff that is your fault (probably the most frustrating) and stuff that you can't control (the most annoying).

This post is not necessarily an advice post, but really, I just needed to vent. But you know what else? As I gain more and more life experience, I realize how quickly days like this will pass and I will be 99% likely to completely forget it. So, I have learned to try to focus on the good things that happened today.

Woke up to a clean apartment because the cleaning lady that my landlord pays for came yesterday. Listened to my favorite cheesy Christmas songs on my extra-short-today commute to work. Got compliments from teachers about a project I just put on display in the library. Realize the clay did NOT explode in the kiln like everyone was saying it would. Made my 4th graders laugh and smile. Got hugs from 1st graders. Found plenty of goodies to eat for lunch in the teachers' lounge. Got out of an afternoon obligation that gave me the much needed time to recover from my lesson that Bombed Completely. Got to vent about everything on my blog. Eat pizza leftovers for dinner. Catch up on the DVR. Get 8 hours of sleep and see if tomorrow is any better.

:)

"When You're Finished..." 3rd-6th Grades

As I mentioned in a previous post, I like to have consistent activities to engage students when they are finished early with their work. For Kindergarten though 2nd graders, I have "Options" centers. The older kids require a little more to keep them engaged, so I have them make "sketchbooks" at the beginning of the year.

I am saying "sketchbooks" in quotation marks, because I am not having the students use them in the traditional artist sketchbook way. (I know, I know, I should be calling them something else... maybe next year!)  Sketchbooks in my classroom are a simple book consisting of a 12x18 piece of white paper folded in half, my ARTIST page, a Table of Contents, and ten blank pieces of copy paper... all stapled together.

I introduce sketchbooks at the beginning of the year, and I have a different lesson for each grade level to complete as the cover. Here are some examples of actual student covers:

The first page of the sketchbook is what I call the ARTIST page. It is an acrostic of my criteria for making a succesful creative drawing. After a student completes a drawing, he or she checks it against the ARTIST page. If they meet all the criteria, I will sign off in the Table of Contents' approval column and will enter them in the contest to have that drawing shown on the morning announcements. I pick about 5-10 of those drawings every quarter, and they are featured in a slide show prior to the morning announcements.

Here is the ARTIST page (a student's half-colored-in version):

The Table of Contents contains 10 creative ideas that I have for them that relate to each grade level's "big idea".  It also has 10 blank spaces for students to write their own ideas.

And like I said, the rest of the pages in the sketchbook are just blank, and I expect kids to use the front and back of both. I use copy paper since it is easier to staple through.

BTW... this is how I store mine (big homemade class folders within each drawer):