Pumpkin Decorating Contest

This week we had a contest for the teachers to bring in a pumpkin they decorated and the students voted.  Everyone did amazing pumpkins but one was worth a blog post.  This pumpkin did not win, but if the teachers were voting it would have ...and nope, it's not my pumpkin, but I love it so much I told the creator I was blogging about it.

So this pumpkins theme "Things you'll never hear a teacher say". 

I took a closer-up pic in hopes of being able to read them more easily.  A few of my favorites:

"Turn up the volume people."

"Don't you just love standardized testing."

"Just watch the movie. It is the same as the book."

"Observations are a very realistic reflection of the day-to-day reality of this class."

""I hope this day never ends."

"I tell you what, it just gets easier every year."

"Keep your cell phones on. I wouldn't want you to miss a call."

"Just keep your head on the desk. I'm sure you need the rest."

"I just love the way we define students by their performance in a narrow set of disciplines."

All of the quotes are good.  And if the teachers had judged Valena definitely would have won. 

Do you have these kids?

"Oh yeah? I had a fever of 116 one day ..." 

Morning Announcements

It has been a rough week.  DEVOLSON is strong.  If you haven't seen this video, you have been missing out.  I need a student named Mitch :)

I Need a Dead Body

Sometimes I have a slight case of absent-minded professor-itis ... and one of my most recent episodes was on the day my students were supposed to be doing a rough sketch of a simulated crime scene.  I realized 20 minutes before class was supposed to start that I didn't include a dead body.  So I went to the cafeteria, and thankfully the first student I saw (who was in forensics) didn't look at me like I was crazy when I said, "I need a dead body."  She even brought a friend to outline her!

Post it Activity - Student Interests

In a previous post I shared my Student Interest Inventory (a first day handout).  Once I give the kiddos a chance to fill out the form (or when we have extra time), I give each kid four post-its.  And I ask them to DRAW four of the things they said they liked on the form.  (I know, I am an evil-mutant-science-teacher.) They usually complain because most high school kids do not like to draw, so I tell them they can look at their page and find the four things they feel best about drawing.  

When the complaining ends, I have them turn in the post-its either by sticking the post-its to the Student Interest Inventory (especially if they need extra time after their safety test, or any other time that they finish faster than expected), or by placing their post-its on the paper for their class period.  Sometimes I prefer to place the post-its on the paper.  Sometimes the papers are color coded for each class period.  Sometimes the papers for each period are exactly the same size ... sometimes things just don't go according to plan.  I leave these up until after Meet the Teacher Night (3 weeks in).  It allows me to see interests in a quick glance and I think it looks super cool.  

Obviously, if you have nothing better to do with your time the first week of school, and you have an excess of clear tape, you should totally tape down the bottoms of all the post-its so they aren't flapping around.  I have never had enough time to even seriously consider this as an option.  

I started this many years ago after seeing a work of art created by many artists on post-its.  I tried to find a link for it, and have not found it yet.  These obviously aren't works of art, but it does show common themes, and given a visual representation of all my kiddos without any kid being singled out too much.