Above the Line in Elementary

I like to send my students home for the summer with a special gift to help them remember the school year. In the past, I gave each student a DVD with copies of all the video and photos I had collected throughout the year. This year, I wanted to do something different. A fellow teacher friend posted a word cloud project on Facebook, and I instantly knew what I wanted to do! Summer Writing Journals! I created a Google Form in which there were 33 questions. Each question was just the name of one student in the class, and a short answer response option. I instructed the students to think about one good word to describe each student in the class. We discussed examples and did some brainstorming, then I had the students access the form in our Google Classroom. Once the students completed the form, I had a list of 33 words for each student that were unique and special. I used those lists of words to create a star shaped word cloud that was unique for each student. I used the site:  http

Yesterday was the last day of school!  While I am looking forward to a change of pace over the summer months, I will miss the students that I have spent the past nine months with.  Since my first year of teaching, I have always been a tad emotional on the last day of school. When I began my teaching career, I wanted to create something that I could carry with my throughout my years in education to remember all of my students.  I found the perfect inspiration on Pinterest!  A thumbprint teaching tree. after 6 years of teaching I painted this canvas at the end of my first year, and each year I have my students add their thumbprint to the tree painting.  Each color represents a different class.  On the back of the canvas, I created a guide so I can remember which color goes with each year. I look forward to seeing this tree grow the more years I spend in the classroom. after 4 years of teaching! after 2 years of teaching keeping track of all the classes