Making memories

I cannot believe that there are less than 30 days left of school! Crazy, crazy... where has the time gone? While I am excited for summer I am really going to miss my students. They will be big middle schoolers next year! It is really amazing to see how far they have come and how much they have learned. I must say I have learned a lot as a first year teacher. There are so many things that they never tell you in college. Trial by fire has been my theory of the year. *Knock on wood* it has been a wonderful, wonderful year!

Here are a few additions to my last post of things to remember for the future:

 It took me all year of saying "I wish we had mailboxes" to finally find something that worked for me! One of my favorite things about teacher work days is getting the chance to stop by other teachers classrooms and go to other schools for meetings (scoping out other teachers ideas while visiting is the best part, duh). While in another school I noticed a teacher using shoe organizers as mailboxes and poof, I now have mailboxes! The downside is that our Walmart only carried one that had 24 slots, my homeroom has 26 students so we just doubled up on some. Because I have 50+ students I wanted to make sure that whatever I chose did not take up precious surface space so this was a great solution. I plan to hang these a little better next year but for now they work just fine. The best thing about this is that I no longer spend ANY class time handing out papers. Students are to collect their work in the morning, between classes, or in the afternoon. No one may get their work during class so that cuts down on the unnecessary up and down trips that 10 year olds like to make. It is also wonderful to be able to see who has collected their papers and who has not. I have found that papers actually go home now instead of ending up on my floor. You may be asking why I numbered each one. That is because we use a code system for grading. Each student gets a code, it goes in alphabetical order, at the beginning of the year. This makes it super easy to see who is missing work and to put them in order to be graded. Numbering the spot also makes it super reusable for next year! Next to each section I have students name and code number so that filing is easy when someone forgets to put their code number on a paper. I wish I had come across these earlier in the year but I am super happy to be using them now.

 Area and perimeter project:
Last week we worked on area and perimeter so the other 5th grade teacher and I decided it would be fun to create a math lab for hands on learning. We used painters tape to create shapes that were to be measured by the students. I was on the naughty list with the janitors for the day because they were sure that it wouldn't come up cleanly but it was worth it. In the end everything came up just fine and my students had so much fun learning more about area and perimeter. Also, here's a tip that kept them straight between the two terms. To find the perimeter: You have to take the dog outside of the house to potty. Perimeter-potty-plus (addition) our 3 P's of perimeter. Haha. Perhaps it's crude but it worked. Area is like an area rug in a living room, it's on the inside.

 My room is a wreck but one of my favorite quotes is "Please excuse the mess, the children are learning." I would rather have a messy room and happy students who are having fun learning than a neat room with boring bumps on a log.I do believe that's enough for now. Time to prepare for the week ahead! We have a field trip Thursday and a teacher work day Friday so this will be a quick teaching week.