MySelf

I know its not Tuesday, but heres a special Technology Wednesday post!  A few people commented about that annoying white border that pops up with you "print" a PDF of your PowerPoint.  Heres how to get rid of it!

My students are just loving the interactive e-books that Ive been making lately!  The interactive elements really help to keep them engaged with the non-fiction text.  And of course, they love reading the books on the smartboard - the large pictures are so much easier to see!


Here are examples of the Smart Notebook pages... one with the informational text, and one with the associated question for that page.  When they get the question correct, it cheers for them!  They just love it!



Click any of the pictures above to check out the book on Teachers Pay Teachers.  Or... be one of the first two people to comment and Ill email it to you for free!

While some of you are winding down your school year, I still have two months to go... and I decided that a classroom redesign was in order.  Ive come across so many cute classroom themes online (jungle, wild west, pirates), but none of them quite worked with what I already had in my classroom.

Finally, it hit me... I needed to make give a classroom a Dr. Seuss theme, and since my favorite Seuss book is Cat in the Hat, I used that as my inspiration for my room!


Update 5/14/2013: For those of you who have been asking for the set, I have redesigned to abide by all copyright laws and reposted it here.  It looks different from the pictures below but its still super cute!




My first order of business was the "Word Wall" or actually, in my case, the "Word Window."  The background was already the perfect shade of blue, I just needed to add Sally and Nick!

Those blue and green blurred out papers at the bottom are the poems from the book "No More Letter of the Week" and a picture of the kid that was assigned that letter back in September/October.  If you havent seen the book yet, it totally revamped the way I teach phonics and it made a major difference for the kids!

I ended up doing this using my smart board!  I pulled up the image of Sally and Nick onto my computer, hung bulletin board paper up on the smart board, and traced the image.  Nice and easy!



Next, I needed to revamp my morning meeting resources.  I use a growing number line for how many days weve been in school, so I started with that.  I used my favorite font, and put red circles around the numbers you say when you count by fives, and "Cat in the Hat" hats on the numbers you say when you count by tens.  And yes, I re-did the numbers for the place value chart so the font matched!


After that, I redesigned my "Morning Helper" list.  Each day, one of my students teaches morning meeting.  I use a list posted on the wall as a rotating schedule to keep it fair for everyone!  My school has a poster machine that prints in color, so I was able to make this sign very large... to given you an idea of size, that scroll is a piece of legal paper!


Then, I re-did my months of the year sign!  Even though Im not in a bilingual class, the kids love learning other languages, so I teach them the months of the year in Spanish as well!  Again, this was printed on our wonderful poster machine!


Obviously, I needed to do a sign for the days of the week also.

If you didnt read my April post about the problem of the day, you can get all of the information about how I do the routine by clicking the picture below!


This is one of my favorite routines because its quick, easy, and tons of fun!

In April, I focused on subtraction, but this months set of questions includes both addition and subtraction word problems.  This will help the students work on whether they need to add or subtract when they hear a math story.  We focus on whether the story gets bigger or smaller, and on the key words in the story!

Im going to keep this post short to give you time to read up on the original post with the details about the routine!

Download the new questions for the problem of the day by clicking the picture below!


This freebie is linked up with Manic Monday! Head over there to check out some other wonderful freebies!

Its Tuesday again, and we are finally getting around to the long awaited tutorial... how to browse YouTube Safely in the Classroom!




Now... I have to tell you when I first stumbled across this website, I had a "duh" moment!  I wonder if youll have the same experience when you see the title of the website:



The website does have a disclaimer that it filters videos as much as it can, but that it might not catch 100% of them.  That being said, Ive never had any issues while browsing it!  The site is pretty self-explanatory, but I typed out a quick tutorial for you anyway!

We’ve all been there.  You finish making a document (or want to re-design an older document), then you change your mind about what font or color scheme you want to use.  Its such a pain to switch each item individually... but no worries, its super easy to switch!



This one won the poll by a landslide!


Please note, this doesnt work in all versions of PowerPoint.  Please let me know if it works/doesnt work in your PowerPoint version!





If you want to know how to change the formatting in the first place, try these tutorials:







For next weeks poll, Ill be adding an option based on the request of one of my lovely coworkers... how to make a photo mosaic!  I love making these as gifts!  I cant take credit for having created this one, but it was easier to take it from the internet than to text all of my friends to see if theyd mind me posting their photos online!

Whenever Im in the middle of a project, it drives me bonkers when it opens up to the first page.  Okay... maybe it doesnt drive me bonkers, but it does make it a little frustrated to have to scroll all the way down, particularly in a long document!

If this happens to you as well, youll love this tip for PowerPoint/Word!