Are you ready for the Spelling Bee?

Here is what I did this afternoon at work...

It's a bulletin board to get our students excited about the Spelling Bee that's coming up on June 16th and 17th. I was told last minute to put something together really quick for the bulletin board...and to be honest, I didn't have enough of the same shade/type material available to do just one color (this bulletin board is HUGE) which is why I picked out so many different colors. I know it's not the sexiest bulletin board that I'll upload to Pinterest but it's not half-bad either. I'm actually pretty content with the way that it turned out.

It is designed to be interactive and catch the students' attention. After I vertically stapled the royal blue, sky blue, lime green, canary yellow, and tangarine orange butcher paper, and put up a thin border with black posterboard...I took hot pink butcher paper and pasted real photographs of different things that the elementary school kids are used to seeing on a daily basis. Underneath each one is a surprise....note the "LOOK!"

The students can lift up the photographs and see if they guessed the spelling correctly. Afterward, my hope is that they'll try to guess all six spelling words and get their fellow classmates involved too. (We'll find out on Monday!) Some are more difficult than others. I put up six different words representing the six different elementary school grades at our school.

Here is one my students are definitely familiar with...

I also put an encouraging phrase up above each one, since that's how I roll.

My 5th graders actually took these pictures for a countable nouns vs. non-countable nouns project we did earlier this year. So you could say that this bulletin board is partially....reused? (Remember the three R's!)

I'll probably go over the words again with a thicker permanent marker. But here's how it looks for now.

These are photographs of actual spelling words that they'll have to learn for the Spelling Bee too. So it's basically a mini-practice session for them.

And finally....I am aware that wrist and watch should be together. I will fix that pronto! You have my promise! 

That's about all for now. I'll post more pictures next week of how everything went and let y'all know if the bulletin board actually worked in sparking an interest in spelling like I hope it does. Comments/suggestions welcome! Goodnight!

Ejotes y "Bendiciones" (Green Beans and "Blessings")

Today I ran into what some people would call....a bit of luck, and what some others, such as my coworkers Rebecca and Faby, like to call "benediciones (blessings)." 

At 6:36am this morning, I got off the 45 minute bus ride and started walking the several kilometers it takes to get to work, as usual. However, this time, a vegetable delivery truck made an insanely fast U-turn and a whole sack of green beans fell out of the back onto the cold black asphalt close by where I was walking.

I yelled and waved and jumped, but the driver just waved his hand out the window as if to say that he knew but didn't give a, "you know what." He then apparently pressed his foot full force on the gas pedal, and sped off no less than 20 miles over the speed limit. People kept walking by going about their business. Taxies and busses avoided colliding with the bulky road hazard by nearly jumping the curb. I decided to act. I walked right into the middle of the street....and grabbed the thing.

I felt weird for a split second, wondering if I was doing the "ethical" thing. And then I started deducing the current wave of information that suddenly presented itself...

1. The driver clearly saw me and the fallen goods. 

2. He refused to stop and in fact, sped off. 

3. I dragged the 50 kilo sack from the middle of the road to the sidewalk.

4. It's mine!!

I rejoiced at my newly acquired bounty. I even started chanting "finders keepers, loosers weepers," like one of my 5th graders. A passer-by who saw the whole event laughed and quoted "su pérdida es tu ganancia," which translates to a "their loss is your gain" sort of thing. 

I started slowly, painstakingly dragging the awkwardly heavy load in the general direction of the school. It had to have been 50 kilos. (Google: 50 kilos = ? pounds.) I spotted Zacatecas taxi cab number 79 and motioned politely (and perhaps a little frantically) for him to help me and my rather large amount of green stringy vegetables. He helped me lift them into the trunk. And eventually lifted them out again at the front gates of the school. I dragged the bag to my office and thus began a vegetable sharing spree.  A dozen teachers, janitors, students, and parents went home with a gallon sized zip-lock bag loaded with green beans. I was so giddy. And to my surprise, so were others. As my sister, Victoria, said, "It's like [I] got to be the Santa of green beans!"

4 o'clock came and went. I eventually clocked out and left work. There are still kilos upon kilos left in my office for more bean gifting happiness tomorrow. I'm writing this blog entry on my way home now, with about 5 kilos of green beans in my purse to share amongst family. Looks like it's green bean casserole, green beans with pearl onions and bacon, and vegetable stew with green beans the rest of the week!

Random fact: Right now, fresh green beans in Zacatecas, Mexico are at $13 MXN/kilo and $3.50 USD/pound in Texas, USA. (It's so cheap here because they're grown locally.) That's about $650 pesos in green beans. And if this had happened back home in the states....it would have come up to the equivalent of $350.00 dollars...in one of my favorite vegetables.

I've had a rough month, y'all. I really feel like it's about time some "bendiciones" or whatever you want to call it, get sent in my direction. I'll take it, in whatever form I can get it...even if it's in the form of green beans.

Opinion Wall

This year, I want to focus on encouraging my EFL students to develop their own personal opinions and learn how express them well, so I decided to make this display on the back of the classroom door.

The opinion wall idea is that the question (an interesting thought-provoking question, that is in relation to what we are studying in the curriculum at the time) must be proposed by the student council, posted, answered by every student, and it must be changed every week to every other week accordingly. We are studying parts of plants and photosynthesis this month, and so the first question that a student came up with was, "Is it possible to get everything we need from plants? Could you live 100% on only plants? Yes? No?" As you can see, there are a variety of answers, and it really got the students to stop and really think. And after all, that is the point of school.

Interactive Labor Day Bulletin Board Crossword Puzzle

Hey y'all. I've got news. And what a hit! I had no idea how popular this would be with the students, but they seriously love it. The idea for a crossword puzzle bulletin board was taken from here, on Pinerest, but then I changed it to my liking to fit the Labor Day theme this week. The students have until this Friday to solve it completely for the grand prize. Believe it or not, my 5th graders are actually arriving to class early, and trying to finish their work early, just so they can have extra time to try to solve the crossword puzzle. One thing is for sure: there will definitely be more of these in the coming months...

 

It's not too complicated to make either. Just measure the size squares you want to use. I used 3in x 3in (5cm x 5xm). Figure out what your crossword puzzle will look like on a separate piece of scratch paper, first. Then cut out as many squares as you need and trace their edges with permanent marker. When you're done with that, paste the squares on the bulletin board with masking tape or hot glue, add the small numbers in the corners of the across/down squares, and voilà. All that's left to do is sit back and watch the kids have fun using their intuition, perception, and reasoning skills.

My Geography Themed Classroom

It's been way too long. Sorry.

For those of you who don't know me, I'm a 5th grade English teacher at a bilingual school in Zacatecas, Mexico. This is our 2nd week in the 2012-2013 school year. So far, I've been applying lots of super neat ideas that I've seen on Pinterest in my lessons and work routines. The best part is; they're actually working! My life is a thousand times easier. My job is less of a job now. The students are learning more, quicker. I'm excited. I'm motivated. I'm a new woman. Seriously. So, to whoever invented Pinterest. Thank you. And to my sister Victoria who told me about the website in the first place. I'm sorry I didn't listen to you sooner! Thank you!

I thought I would begin blogging again and try "pinning" what I blog. This post will be my first contribution to the Pinterest community. I chose a Geography/Travel/United Nations topic for my classroom this go-round. In 5th grade, in the English curriculum that our school uses, it talks a lot about culture, so I thought I'd try to keep things relevant. So, here's what I did...

1. Each desk is a different flag. My 5th graders love the flag-desk idea. It's super helpful too. Each student is assigned to a country, and they know exactly where to go to every morning. I don't have to put name tags on the desks or anything. It's also easy to switch students if I need to. For example: "______, you're going to sit at the China desk today. _______, you're going to sit in at the Canada desk instead." All in all, it's really simple to do too; a lot like wrapping presents. If you have a lot of practice wrapping gifts you should be an expert covering desks in colored butcher paper. Just remember to cover it all in laminate (to keep it looking nice all year long). And don't rush it. Similar to wrapping presents, half-ass work shows through and looks sloppy. Slow and steady wins the race. Here are some of my favorites. They're so pretty! My daughter Esperanza helped me make Brazil.

India

Brazil

Seychelles

Australia

Germany

South Korea

2. Before you speak: THINK. I saw this on Pinterest and had to make one. If you take a second look at this picture, you can see the borders that I used for the bulletin boards and chalkboard. It's just green ribbon with flags from around the world cut out and hot glued to it. Simple yet sophisticated.

3. Here is the layout of my room. I like to have the desks in groups because I enjoy having the students work in teams. They do too. Although, I do switch it up from time to time. As you can see in the background, my bookshelf is organized with labels. I'm all about labels.

  

4. The Texas desk. Yes, I made one. Because I'm from Texas. And Texas is awesome. That's why.

 5. My Welcome to the World of 5th Grade bulletin board. Not the greatest bulletin board in the world, but not too bad for something I came up with in a half-an-hour.

6. Decorations: I wanted to take it that extra mile by adding all sorts of decorations; this includes post cards, maps, visas, passports, plane tickets, pictures of famous landmarks, plants, and inspirational quotes. It really makes the classroom pop.

7. Classroom rules. The students came up with these on the first day of school. Super cute, so I thought I'd share it as well. I believe the only rule that’s missing is no electronics (iPods/cell phones). If you click on the photo (any of the photos actually), it'll enlarge enough to where you can actually read it.

8. Anchor Charts. Thanks to Pinterest, I'm an Anchor Chart fanatic now. Here's where I got the idea for this one.

 9. Here's my desk area. My office. It's nothing too complicated. It'll get more elaborate as time passes, but for now...what you see is what you get.

I hope this gives you some ideas on what you can do to decorate your classroom or work station, if you're leaning toward a Geography theme this year. Feel free to leave comments or questions about whatever. Have a great school year!