The Destitute Teacher

I don't have a teachers desk in my class. The desk I had took up far too much space and was always a mess. So it went to another classroom. Often I regret it, but mostly I rejoice at the extra space. Now I no longer tell children to 'put it on my desk' to deal with later... things get done immediately. Less mess, less stress. I need a place to keep my stickers and stamps though. I recently cut up and cleaned a couple of recycled milk bottles. I chopped off the tops and added a gorgeous little strip of fabric tape and some labels. These are now pinned on the wall next to my IWB. You might notice that I keep my smelly stickers in ziploc bags. This keeps them smellier for longer. As I took this picture it made me think of the red spotty tin that sits at the top of the teachers workstation. I have a series of decorative tins along the top- one for felts, one for permanent markers etc. The red spotty tin is specifically for WHITEBOARD markers. That way my students are able t...

I love a good display, and this one lingered in the back of my mind before becoming an actuality. Black fabric $4.99 p/m @ Spotlight Star borders from an old display (or roughly $9.99 a pack) Clear A4 display pockets part of student stationery pack (or $3 for 10 @ KMart) Letters from an old display Laminated stars from an ex Book Fair display Paper clips Sellotape I popped a strip of sellotape along the bottom of each clear pocket and on the top corner of each back page. This stopped them from splitting and cracking when stapled to the wall. A paper clip on each pocket stops the front page from sagging. The idea is that during the year each new piece of published writing will be added to the front of the folder, creating some lovely displays. At the end of the year I will pull them down and the children will have a collection of their writing to take home. Note: absolutely in love with the crochet cushion cover I made (on the couch) to cover a cushion I purchased from the loca...

This year my school has purchased the LetterLand programme to improve our phonological knowledge and awareness. We are still at the very beginning of the programme, but I am hoping to feature a few ideas on here over the next little while, to help someone else kick start their programme if needed. This first tidbit is something that arose from our discussions before beginning the programme. We noticed that the train frieze does not have character names... and we wanted something to refer to on the walls of the classroom. I photocopied one of the BLMS from the Teachers Book, and blew it up to A3 size then laminated it. Each name tag was then cut out, and as we introduce each character the children take turns to blu-tack the name tag to the train. A simple idea that has been really effective. They love to have the privilege of tacking up the name tag, and love being introduced to new characters. Success.

I am slowly working my way through a massive backlog of posts that I have photographed and never done anything with.... Last year I made myself a vow that I would try and MAKE each of my students a little Christmas gift for them each at the end of the year. After much to-ing and fro-ing, I decided on CROCHET gifts, as there had been a wooly theme in the classroom. I found a super cute and super easy pattern for crochet monsters here . They work up quickly and it was a relatively painless process to make 21 of the little darlings. I started during the Term 3 holidays and gradually picked at the project. These little monsters were packaged up with a 3B1 notebook (which I bulk buy in the stationery sales at the start of the year... 5 cents each!), a pencil, and an eraser. The kids loved receiving them almost as much as I loved making and giving them. I also put together a simple theme for the chocolate gifts I gave to teacher aides, co-workers etc.... brown paper, twine and a little c...

I was cleaning out some files today and found some pictures I meant to post last year. I can't even remember what we were studying at the time... but I do remember that this was a spontaneous art lesson that linked in beautifully. I think we had been looking at brush techniques and a reliever had been doing pencil sketched studies of cut kiwifruit with the class. We roughly mixed a couple of shades of green to make a massive swirl on the page. The bigger, the better. The idea was to not load the brush up too much- otherwise it ends up a mess. We then did a second swirl of white in the centre. Brushes were flipped upside down and we dragged the end through the white paint and outwards to create the lines. Lastly, we dipped the ends in black paint and dotted seeds.

This term our focus for Te Reo is Greetings. So I just had to share a set of basic greetings posters that I made for my classroom. There is a huge deficit of free Maori printables out there... so hopefully this is one step in the right direction! You can access the documents from my Google Drive here .

So, so happy with the final results of our beginning of the year, class collaborative art projects! Clap along if you feel that this is a craft for you. Day one we began to create some class bunting. I already had crochet bunting hanging in the classroom, so we have a bit of a theme going on. I made a triangle template and traced out 24 triangles onto fabric. These were roughly cut out, so that I could name them on the outside of the triangle and be able to read it clearly. We put the traced side down on the table (so that I had clear cutting lines later) and we talked about not mixing colours, background/foreground and bright/interesting colours. The children painted self portraits in any old colours they choose. I limited their colour palettes to bright tones. Day One we painted basic shapes- head, shoulders, background. Day Two we added detail. Day Three we added further detail if needed. I took the triangles home to cut and assemble. Each 'flag' was cut out and re-na...