Collaboration!

I found this quote today on Pintrest and couldn't help but love it. As a teaching student I notice how important collaboration is. Many professors disapprove of Pintrest and teachers pay teachers, but I have noticed that these ideas you find from experienced and passionate teachers are an amazing jumping off point to create your own original lessons and activities. 

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/bf/15/ab/bf15abe0cd3efb91c67557162b8b7f22.jpg

This quote sums up my inspiration to create this blog. I love being able to inspire other teaching students and maybe even teachers, and share those who inspire me. Many of my inspirations come from great teachers I have had the chance to shadow, or experience. 

The best way I have found to take inspiration from others and make it your own is to have an idea in mind before you search. For instance if you know you need a fractions lesson, begin looking on Pintrest and other sites for fraction activities the more narrowed your search the easier finding a relevant lesson will be.  No child or group of children is the same, that is the most important reason to tweak any lesson you find.
Changing lessons to suit your own students (or campers in my case often times)

• Think about your time restraints
• will this craft/activity take all the time i have, or will they be able to complete it?
• Will this activity be fun for your kids?
• do they love games or crafts? create one to go with the activity or lesson.
• This could work the other way also, If you find a great craft or game your kids would like or that you could tweak for your class, you can write your own lesson around it.
• Is there anything that doesn't fit your content?
• take out topics you don't cover or need and add content or activities that would benefit your own class room.

An example of modifying another teachers activity to fit your students would be this lesson on upper and lower case letter matching I did for a pre school center. On the left is the online image, on the right is the image of my manipulative for the lesson.

http://lh6.ggpht.com/-PMPt7u8cN9w/U_Y2tbt2CEI/
AAAAAAAASSo/dZdj9M8ORyg/tgif5_thumb%252
55B1%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800

While I loved the fine motor skills that were included in the clothes pins used in the online image, I took into account my resources, time and situation, and the children at hand. Ultimately I tweaked the lesson to fit my co-teacher's pumpkin weekly theme, and the students I was teaching.

Teacher Collection

As a student who aspires to teach, building a teacher collection is almost a necessity. You may notice your friends and family desperately avoiding passing teacher stores while they're with you to avoid looking at calendars, counting bears, and various types of paper and pencils for hours and hours.
In this post I'll describe the building of my ever growing teacher collection (seriously i think I may need to surrender my room to my teaching supply).

To me a teacher collection starts with books! What is a classroom with out a library?  you  might already have a head start if you were a slacker like me and never gave away your own children's books. Book fairs have been a great source for me, I've started collecting books for any time of the year. I'm also guilty of buying books if they're cute enough, needless to say I have a lot of books. Many posts of this topic will be to come!

When I walk into a teacher store I start with the manipulative section. I feel as though a lesson is more memorable when the students can interact with the topic at hand. I love counting bears of course, but recently I have found a product called measuring worms. They also help in sorting, and are also a perfect way to introduce and practice measurements. I'm not sure if it's the early ed major in me or not but I am a huge fan of bright colors and inspirational quotes. I've already planned a million plans for what my walls will look like.

I'm excited to share my own classroom, lesson, and teacher fashion  ideas and inspiration on this blog