Archive for April, 2011

Arts and Crafts for the End of the Year

Image by bookgrl via Flickr

Are arts and crafts on your list of things to do with your students?  One of my favorite arts and crafts project that incorporates literacy skills is making a memory book.  Each year I purchase a blank book for every student.  I encourage kids to write about their favorite classroom memories over the past school year.  This is a wonderful activity for all ages and ability levels.  Students can just draw pictures or write complete pages about their favorite highlights from the year.  Students as well as their parents and their families will cherish a memory book from school for years to come.  There is also something special about authentic student work.  There are many different ways students can make a memory book, but when students can use arts and crafts supplies and their imagination, they can make an amazing book.

Here are some examples of sentence starters that I used for my first grade memory book:

My favorite color is ____________.

My favorite math activity is ___________.

My favorite book that I can read is ______________.

I like to _________________________________.

Theses are just several examples of sentence starters.

You can also choose many other themes and create a variety of books.  In years past, I have helped students create books to summarize science and social studies units.

Here are some of the other supplies that you may need for creating a beautiful book.

• crayons
• markers
• colored pencils
• stickers
• stencils

Let the creativity begin and help students make a memorable book that will help create a keepsake book that will be read for years to come.

Stop by www.k12schoolsupplies.net to get these arts and crafts supplies and stock up on many more.  We strive to provide you a wide selection of teaching supplies that meet your needs.

Classroom Management Tips and Tricks

If you are considering starting a career as a teacher there are several important things that you should know before you take any job offers. The hardest part about teaching is handling the students. In other words, it is much more difficult to keep the students from misbehaving than it is to actually teach the class. So, if you want to succeed as a teacher you will need to know how to manage a classroom. We will discuss some popular classroom management methods within the contents of this post. The first thing you should know is that it is more difficult to regain control of the classroom once you lost it. So make sure you keep control for as long as possible. You should base your punishment system on a warning system as well before you make any harsh decisions. For example you could say that you are only going to give a person two verbal warnings before they have to go the principal’s office. Make sure that you make it clear that you will send them to the principal’s office when you run out warnings. So the main thing about teaching is handling a classroom and it can take a considerable amount of skill to handle a classroom properly.