Teachers Pay Teachers: Bishop's Blackboard

Check out my store on Teachers Pay Teachers! You will find many general education resources for math, science, and reading along with decorative art items.

Art Career Station

Another station that the students may choose to work in is an Art Career Station. In this Art Based Station, the Kindergarten and First Graders choose a Bubble Map to record various art careers on. As they take notes, they discuss the jobs with their tablemates. For second through fifth graders, they choose one specific art career and record it in the middle of their Thinking Map. They then brainstorm various tasks that job must do. They record their thoughts about that career on the Thinking Map.

Artist Quotes Stations

One of the Art Based Stations that third through fifth grade may choose to work on when they finish work early or on Fridays is an Artist Quotes Station. In this station, the students choose a quote by a historically famous artist. On a template provided, they write the artist name followed by the quote. Once they have completed their notes section, they discuss with their table group and write down what they think the quote means. This station was created to get the students talking about artists and to promote critical thinking. The cards that I use can be found here and here from Teachers Pay Teachers. I printed them two per page to minimize the size.

Artist Research Station

On most Fridays, the students work in Art Based Learning Stations. One of the stations is Artist Research Writing. In this station, the students choose an artist to read about. The artist cards that I provide are from Teachers Pay Teachers and can be found here. There are several sets of these available. After reading, the students write key facts about their artist on a Thinking Map, typically a Circle Map. They then use the Circle Map to help them write sentences to summarize the information read about the artist.

Read, Write, and Sketch The Art Room

Before teaching Visual Arts, I taught First Grade. With that background, I believe that "Word Walls" are a good reference for students when learning new content related vocabulary words. In one of our Art Based Learning Stations, students "Read, Write, and Sketch" the art room including the Visual Arts Word Wall (located on our cabinets due to lack of wall space). The word wall cards that I use came for Teachers Pay Teachers and can be located here and here. In this station, students may use clipboards or the counter to choose four words to read about. They then take notes on the definition provided on the word wall. They then sketch an example of that word.

Kindergarten Snowmen

First Grade Snowmen

Second Grade Snowmen

Noun Neighborhhood

This is a lesson I always did when I taught first grade. Now that I'm in art, I extended it to a collaborative project for Kinder through Third Grade. Each student drew their favorite restaurant, their favorite store, and their home. They created roads, grass, trees, clouds, and various vehicles. After all classes had a chance to do this, they worked over the next few weeks to create a giant collage mural out of them. Once completed, their art project covered almost half of our back hallway which is pretty long. As they worked, we talked about what nouns were and how each thing they were creating was a noun. We talked about the role of different parts of a community to tie in Social Studies.

Art and Poetry

I recently attended a training given by my Fine Arts supervisor, Mrs. Judy Nunneley. In the class we cut out various words from magazines and newspapers and then were challenged to come up with an autobiographical poem with the words. This was both challenging and engaging. I plan on using this with my fifth graders during the second semester. Here is my final poem:

Fry's Instant Words Bingo Games

I created several sets of Bingo games for Fry's Instant Words and uploaded them to my TpT store. There are four sets of Bingo boards in each pack – one for each list in the first set of 100 words and then the second set of 100 words. Each set contains six boards. The games are meant to be utilized during small group lessons such as guided reading and tutoring.

 

Fry's Instant Words Bingo First 100 Words



 

Fry's Instance Words Bingo Second 100 Words

 

I will be adding additional sets in the coming days! Check out my TpT store for other downloads!

 

Classroom Management Downloads

I recently uploaded a few files to my TpT store that I have used the last few years for classroom management.

The first is a set of classroom helper cards to use when assigning classroom jobs. I display mine in a small pocket chart with student names next to each job. I rotate the names each week.

 

The next is a set of guided reading group signs. These signs are for grouping students for guided reading. I put Velcro tabs next to each sign and each student had a Velcroed name tag. The name tags could be moved from group to group quickly as their levels changed. I also used the grouping signs on the guided reading book baskets. Using colors for the guided reading groups kept the students from knowing which groups were high, medium, or low.

The last set is a set of cards I used for early finishers. These finished assignment cards are suggested tasks for students to complete when they finish work early. They are in card format to go in a pocket chart so that the teacher can use some or all to differentiate.

I'm Blown Away!

I am truly blown away by how far this group of first graders came in their reading this year. To celebrate, we went outside on the last day of school to blow bubbles!

First Grade Spelling Bee

The students competed in against "houses" in a spelling bee. Mrs. Guzman called out a word to the first person in the line and if they spelled it correctly, they stayed in the competition. If they did not, they become a part of the audience to cheer their house on. The house that had the most members still standing at the end, won! It was awesome to see how seriously they took spelling their words.

Grand Prairie Public Library Summer Reading Challenge!

Grand Prairie Public Library's Summer Reading Challenge kicks off this Saturday, June 7th. One of the librarians visited our school a few weeks ago to share information and to encourage the students to keep reading over the summer. The library has many fun events planned throughout the summer. You can check out the details on their website.

We Give Books: Read For My Summer

We Give Books, a resource we use in class all the time, has a free reading program this summer. According to their site, they will highlight one book per week, based on your child's age group, for you and your child to read from their online book selection. They have partnered with ReadWriteThink to also provide interactive lessons to go along with the books. We Give Books is free to join. I love We Give Books because for every book that is read on their site, they give a real book to a charity that focuses on bringing literacy to those who would not have it otherwise.


 

Keep Kids Reading This Summer!

As summer approaches, so does the dreaded "summer slide!" Here is a great article from Reading is Fundamental about the "summer slide" and ways to avoid it. They also have an article about what families can do to keep their kids reading during the summer.

Readers' Theater Performance

The students have made great progress this year in reading. To show of their reading, each first grade class learned one Readers' Theater to perform for their families and peers. Then, the entire first grade performed one Readers' Theater together with their teachers and families joining in.

Guest Speaker

Friday first grade had a guest speaker to share information about her job in the promotions department of KISS FM radio. Ms. Guterriez, who has a brother in one of our first grade classes, talked to the students about the importance of reading and writing in her job, the reason radio stations do promotions (to persuade - great tie in to author's purpose), and how they use technology (great tie in to our lessons on inventions). Another great tie in was that Friday was also GenTX Day which promotes college readiness. According to their website, "This year’s GenTX Day is a call to action statewide to motivate students with a real-world college experience that inspires them to visualize a career goal and take the steps to achieve it." The guest speaker told the students that she will be graduating soon with  a degree in broadcasting and was able to stress the importance of college. Thank you to our teammate, Ms. Moncibaiz, for setting this up for our students.

Comparing David Shannon Stories

After reading A Bad Case of Stripes and Too Many Toys by David Shannon, the students created Venn Diagrams to compare the stories. After creating their diagrams in small groups, they independently created foldables to show their understanding. On the top flap, they wrote the title "Comparing Stories by David Shannon." On the second flap, they wrote one thing that was the same for both of the stories. On the third and fourth flaps, they wrote how the two stories were different. But, the things that they chose as different had to relate back to how they were both the same. For example, if they chose that they both had a setting, they had to then explain how the settings were different from one another. If they chose that both books had problems, they had to explain the problems for both books. The purpose of this lesson was to build a deeper understanding of the elements that make up fiction stories.