The beginning of school and all of that.

The first 6 weeks of school for any teacher is pretty insane.  In my case I'm starting at a new school and a new to me grade.  So there was the moving, both my stuff from my old school to my new and from the old grade 4 room to the new one that I currently occupy.  I'm getting to know a whole new set of kids.  I spend a lot of time in the first 6 weeks reading student files, benchmarking and assessing where they are at and how they learn best.  I also spend time teaching routines for the kids to follow and playing with seating arrangements to find one that will work best for the students I have.

My classroom was pretty empty when I first moved in - the boxes are mine

My classroom after a lot of work

Ready for students

I really do love the classroom I have been given.  It is the largest one in the upstairs wing.  This means that I can create difrerent areas for learning to take place.  I chose to place the students in desks in order to give them their own space.  Rather than traditional rows, the desks are on a semicircle of rows facing towards the Smartboard.  We have two areas of black and white tiled mats.  One is in front of the Smartboard for comfortable seating.  The other is at our Meeting Place in our book corner by a window. I love that there are 2 tabled areas for students to work at.  One of the tables is kidney shaped.  The students face towards the literacy wall and is a great place for teacher time.  The other is 2 trapezoids pushed together for group work.
I've had a great start to the year and am happy with the way things are going.  I'm happy to say that I've finished all of the "where to start" assessments of my students and have a good idea of my students' needs.  Looking forward to a great year!

My Class, the first day of school

 

Classroom Art - Falling From Space - Self Portraits

This was a super fun, but time consuming art project. The kids first traced their shoes, then their hands. Once the feet and hands were in place, they drew a head and filled in the body. The effect makes it look as though they are falling. The added a background - most drew theirs as if they were in space. They outlined all of their marks in marker and filled in the rest with pencil crayon. This was all done on a rather large sheet of drawing paper to fit everything in.

one student drew his feet on fire as he re-enters the 

Atmosphere and lands on a sheep!

One of my students falling and drifting in space

Classroom Art - Fall Owls

Yes, I'm right into the Owl craze too. And why not? They are super cute and made for fantastic October Art. I began with the background. The students chose to paint with either blue or purple and then shaded in a little bit of black paint to capture that fall evening sky.
The trees were cut out of black construction paper. I threw up a picture of these button trees up on the Smartboard to give them a little bit of inspiration and let them go at their own tree designs.  Button trees were found here.

 For the owls I brought in a selection of scrapbook paper.  We used this sewing template as the basis for our owls. 
Once the children had all their pieces they glued them into place, creating a nice layered effect.  I think it's one of the cutest art projects I've done with kids!

Classroom Art - Poppies

Our grade 3 Remembrance Day Art this year was a lesson in painting. The backround we painted all black. We then took a piece of plastic wrap, placed in on top and scrunched it up and used our nails to scratch on top a bit. The kids thought the textured results were very cool. While this was drying we sponge painted the 3 stems. The Poppy heads we painted on three different types of paper: regular white paper, newspaper and construction paper. Once everything was dry we glued it all together. The centers are just black construction paper cut out in circles. I really liked the effect.

Classroom Art - Hidden Names

This was my first art project this year with my students (grade 3). They took the letters of their name and printed them as tall as the page. They oulined it in marker and then created random patterns in and around their letters with pencil crayon until the page was covered. Most kids chose to use black marker for their name, but the best creations used a less-obvious colour like orange and then coloured quite hard with their pencil crayons. Those names were truly hidden!

1st Day of School, Class Picture

Tilt your head sideways to take a proper look. I don't know why blogger won't pick up the right view of this one. I took this picture on the first day of school and it is my work laptop background - the kids love seeing it every time I turn the smartboard on.
 

I've been away from blogging because I've been busy teaching

The last few months I've been so impressed with myself. I've been a regular blogger - like I was when I first started blogging during my mat leave, and then my other subsequent mat leaves. And I thought, Wow - look at that, regular posts and everything. Not only that, I've been getting projects done in the house too!
Then the last week of August hit - oh right, that work thing! Totally interferes with my projects and blog life. I really do love my job. This year marks the first year since my 8 year old was in the womb that I have my own classroom. I've been spending the bulk of my teaching time since then teaching k-8 music at multiple schools - a very busy life indeed, but one that afforded me a little more time at home. The need for a class of my own was rising up last year and it has worked out that (for this year at least) I'm on loan from the fine arts department of our school district and teaching grade 3. I have the sweetest little class (my own son is one of my students). I'm still keeping my hand in music teaching as I cover the school's music and teach a course of science 8 too. My teaching partner is very sweet and we get along great - it helps that we are both pretty easy going. Here's a few shots of my room set up before the kids arrived.

 

My Life as an Art Teacher

This past year I have been having a blast teaching Art 8.  It is a change from Music which has been my usual subject for the past 7 years.  I am still teaching music, but have this one block of Art each week.  It has been such a joy to be creative with these kids.  Here are a few of our recent projects that I'm so proud of.  They are a result of the art of faces. 
The first is a face made entirely of pipe cleaners.  I gave them a few ideas and off they went.

 The second self-portrait, pencil drawn.  They then cut off the top, and opened it up, adding in drawings of things they think about.

 This last was Warhol style pop art.  I took a picture of each of them, then photocopied it 4 times.  We used highlighters to colour in.  The rule was that each had to look slightly different from each other.

 

Till Death Do Us Part?

This week I was discussing The Barber of Seville with a class of grade 5 students. Most of them did not know what a dowry was. After explaining it to them one of the boys asked, "What would happen if they got divorced, would he still get all her money and stuff?". I told him that back then that divorce didn't happen very often. "Why?" I told them that marriage is supposed to be for life. "What?!" The class was totally shocked by this idea.   "Why would you get married if you couldn't get divorced, that just doesn't make sense!"  said one.  "Well, I'm not ever getting married if you are supposed to marry for life" said another.
Wow.  I know I sound old when I say this, but I've always viewed marriage as for life.  When I was a kid very few of my classmates had parents who were divorced.  In fact I'm pretty sure in my circle of friends that there was only one.  But now, most of my students have parents who are divorced, or, who were never married at all.  They have no memory of their parents ever being together.  That's pretty amazing really.  It really makes me wonder about where we are going.  What kind of relationships will this generation have as we forge ahead?
 

Charlotte Diamond!

Charlotte Diamond called me at my house this week! I'm seriously excited by this. For those of you who are not relating to kids music on a regular basis you may be going Charlotte who? She is a fantastic children's singer from BC. I've known her music for years now. Her songs are by far the most requested for re-visits from my littlest students. So how did it happen that she called me this week? Well, I'm getting my choirs ready for Music Festival. There was a song I really wanted my junior choir to perform but I could not find it in sheet music format. You have to have 3 legal copies of the song for use in festival (one for the adjudicator, one for the accompanist and one for yourself). So I had given up and selected a different song. That song simply was not working with the choir and this other song kept popping in my head. So I headed back on over to Charlotte Diamond's website and sent a message explaining my situation and asked it there was any way I could purchase single copies of the song I wished to use. At lunch there was an email from my husband, "Charlotte Diamond called, you can photocopy her song from the book, she will write you a letter of permission". What? She called my house herself! How fantastic is that!!!
He knew I would be excited to hear the whole story. He did clue in during the conversation that it was Charlotte Diamond, the children's singer. He didn't realize until I got home that she is the one who sings "I am a Pizza" - that thrilled him - it's his favorite to sing with our kids. Anyways she and I emailed a couple of times over the next day as I found out that the festival will in fact accept a photocopy of the music as long as I attach an original letter from her. She very kindly and graciously wrote the letter of permission for me and I'm just so happy about the whole darn thing!

 http://www.charlottediamond.com/