YOU are the molders of their dreams

For those who have no taken Health 4100, we watched a movie on Guy Doud. He was a teacher of the year from Brainard, MN. He was able to meet Ronald Reagon while he was in office after winning his teacher of the year award. Reagon read this poem to Doud.
This poem was read to Guy Doud by Ronald Reagan (Author Unknown).

Teachers

You are the molders of their dreams
The gods who build or crush
Their young beliefs of right or wrong.
You are the spark that sets aflame
The poet's hand or lights the flame
Of some great singer's song.
You are the god of the young, the very young
You are the guardian of a million dreams
Your every smile or frown
Can heal or pierce the heart
You are a hundred lives, a thousand lives.
Yours the pride of loving them
And the sorrow too.
Your patient work, your touch
Make you the gods of hope
Who fill their souls with dreams
To make those dreams come true.

TIME for kids...

TIME for Kids
The news is an ugly thing in the world...Mostly, there are reports on all the bad things and people in the world. Although the news is so ugly sometimes, it's important for our students to stay current on what's happening in the world. While researching for a class I came across TIME for Kids. This is a safe place for students to find news that is in there understanding and screened from most of the ugly. If you get a chance, explore it a little.

Useful Things From Home

As many of you have probably already figured out... PINTEREST is AMAZING!
There are so many ideas floating around in the cyber world, and this website allows people to try and push great ideas together to share! I've posted a couple pictures of things I will someday use in my future classroom and they are created from things we have in our homes. "Trash" to some... but to me I say, "Make this trash into treasures baby!"

First up, the bottom of any soda bottle. 16 oz, 2 liter, whatever! It could be used to create cherry blossoms but it really cute be used for any type of paint art! :) Let those kids be creative.

This I thought was great as well. Clothes pins with thumb tacks hot glued to the back. Stick those babies in the cork board and this should make changing up posters, art work, papers or any kind EASIER.

How cute are these monsters....:) Aww.. Made out of finished tissue boxes!! 

We have those at home right?

Finally, the cute little race cars made from finished tissue rolls. (Now I KNOW you have those.) Kids could get really creative coming up with the looks and designs of there car.

As teachers we aren't going to have money thrown at us to buy things for our classroom. We are going to have to learn how to be creative with what we have sometimes. These are things we and our students should have in there homes.

I would suggest that at the beginning of the school year create a list of things that are used at home that normally go to the trash. Ask students and parents to donate those certain items to the classroom. Things should trickle in throughout the year and be valuable things you can use in your classroom.

Lesson Plan Orgnaization!

Lesson Plans... our life will be FULL of them once we get teaching!! We are maybe even staring to feel the heat now. This semester in Human Relations we are getting the opportunity to view our classmates lesson plans! Like our professor said, what a great opportunity to "steal" good lesson plans!! Plus, you put all that hard work into creating the lesson plan and it's kind of  nice you can share it like a "gift" to your classmates? Right?? I started a big pile of lessons over the last year and today I decided to get ORGANIZED about it!  I bought these tab dividers on sale for 75% off! 

($1.25 total) 

Seriously consider looking at stores for all the clearance back to school stuff! Not just for now but for your future classrooms. I've started a "classroom box" of things I find that I want in my future classroom! Most of the decorations and personalization of your classroom is going to come out of your pocket anyways!!! Spread out the spending. ;-)  Just saying... 

Anyways, back to the lesson plan binder! I put these tabs into a binder and as I come across lesson plans I want to keep I just print them out, hole punch, and stick them behind the tab that represents the grade the lesson is created for. Easy as that! Now I haven't gone near organizing per-subject within each grade, but eventually! 

 

I highly recommend this and think you might appreciate it down the road too! :)

After I look at this post I think... Do you like GREEN much??? :)

Keep Calm and Carry On

Verna has inspired me to start up my blog again. I started this blog during a Math Methods class as an assignment. But I need to be better about keeping it up for more than just math things! :) Thanks Verna.

I made this video for my Human Relations class... Sometimes it's important to just "keep calm" and we all do that differently...

Miles

I have made the big move from Boston to Florida in this last week. As I thought about my math blog and how I could put real world math problems into my classroom I thought of miles. We drove about 1300 miles on our trip. We stopped in two different places. An activity my students could do would be to pick a starting place on the US map and an ending place. From there they would have to choose two pit stops to take. Students would estimate the miles using the scale between each stop. Once they have each stop measured out to the the mile they would add up all of the miles to see how many total miles it would take to get from point A to point B. You could even tie this into a writing assignment to have students explain WHY they would want to go from point A to B and why they would stop where they would along the way.

I like the idea of making math about real things that students can relate to. You think about when we use math in our every day life. Telling time, getting grocereries, mailing packages, driving and travel. There are so many things that our students can relate to. Hopefully by using topics students enjoy they will be more engaged in the activity. You could always say... "Find the miles between Minnesota to Boston with a stop in Wisconsin and a stop in New York." That's fine and dandy BUT don't you think the students would be so much more engaged if they could plan their OWN trip to where THEY would want to go???

Coming up with new and fun ways to teach math to students can be tough, but with the help of other teachers and sharing each others great ideas we can benefit our students so much more!



Where do your students want to go???? 

The Greedy Triangle

I found this book on YouTube. After listening to the book I thought it would be a great book to share with a classroom of k-3 kids. There are two things being covered in this book. A triangle who over times keeps adding one side and one angle to become a new shape. Students would be learning about the different shapes through out the book. Also there is a lesson her on being greedy and always wanting more and something different. Being greedy for the Triangle got him into a mess and he wanted to be back to his original triangle form. I think students would enjoy this book and it could lead into some fun lessons.

Lesson Idea:

Find my shape!
Each student would get a worksheet that had a list of pictured shapes. Students would have to go around the classroom and find objects in the classroom that have the shape on there list. Students will draw the things they find in the classroom that matches the shape they were looking for.