It Rocks to be Drug Free!

The teachers at our school always have the most creative Red Ribbon posters. For a couple of years I did "Ms W's Class Leaves Drugs Alone" and had them write something they do instead of drugs on a leaf and then watercolor over it. Then we pasted the leaves on a big tree. Other teachers started doing this, so I went in search for other ideas. Last year we did "We fill our cup with . . . instead of drugs". The students cut out cups that looked like those popular clear tumblers and they wrote in all the things they like to do. It was cute and colorful. This year inspiration struck! I had seen something that had the word "rocks" in it and knew we had to do "It ROCKS to be Drug Free!" I brought in my Guitar Hero/Rock band guitar, mic, and drumsticks and took a photo of each student rocking out. 

Sorry I had to cover the kids faces, many of them had such awesome expressions. And, I don't want to brag or anything, but our class won out of 5th grade. We even got our poster hung in the best spot in the cafeteria, right over the door! 

Math freak out!

I know that I should be spending my short six-week summer break relaxing, but I am in school mode. Not only am I moving down from 6th to 5th grade next year, but I will be teaching math, something I haven't taught in years! I love math and I am so excited to be teaching it again, but my mind needs to have, at the least, an outline of what I will be teaching and in what order. The Common Core State Standards are a good thing, but our state and my district are in a transition period, meaning we need to still teach the old standards but start to incorporate CCSS. A friend, who also teaches 5th in my district, reassured me that I should not freak out. Plus I know my new team will be nothing but supportive. So, I still plan on getting prepared for next year, but I will re-direct my focus to things that won't cause anxiety, like the following...

I love guiding students to be responsible and accountable for their own learning. I made these Math and ELA posters to post in my classroom (available for purchase at my TpT store).

To accompany these posters I thought it would be great for students to have something to keep in their binder to track the concepts that they have mastered, so I devised the Wheel of Math Common Core Standards. 

This fun wheel of standards includes all 26 Common Core math standards for 5th grade. Display the colorful copy in your classroom and provide each student a copy of the blackline master to keep in their math notebook. When students have mastered a concept have them color in the appropriate piece of the wheel. This will help encourage kids to be accountable for their own learning and keep them motivated to master every concept! Best of all, these are FREE!