a bulletin board for school

One and ah half weeks of student teaching down! Woohoo! I am enjoying the kids and I very much like my co-op. I realized somewhere at zero dark thirty that I would have to start looking for jobs in short order because even though it's going to feel like I have a job, I'm not actually an employee of the district.

Which made me wonder, if I couldn't find a job in the dear old 'Burgh, where would I want to look? The world is my proverbial oyster. This is not guarantee of employment. But it doesn't mean I can't look.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. 

A few days ago we learned about contractions - you know, can't, couldn't would've

The kids had a blast making these Contraction Kids - everyone got a card with either a contraction or the two words that form a contraction. Then they circulated around the room looking for the match to their card. They decorated their kid, and then we matched the contractions together to be hung in pairs on the bulletin board outside our classroom. We did have to have a discussion about what was appropriate for school - I informed them that I was okay with Angry Birds, rock stars with face paint, FBI agents and Gangam style kids, but I'd better not see very angry faces, or we'd have to call the guidance counsellor to find out what was what. 

 

If I was doing this later in the year, we'd [ha!] have done contraction kites, with the contractions and source words written on bows on the tail, and a sentence using the contraction on the wound bit of string at the bottom. 

I used blank 3" x 5" note cards for the contractions [which I hand wrote], and the students trimmed them down later. I free-handed a ginger bready looking person - two fit on an 8 1/2" x 11" piece of paper, trimmed the copies in half on a paper cutter, and let the students trim up the edges as they pleased - some of the students wanted their person to have a dress, so we followed the lines mostly, but cut across about where the knees would be for a dress, then flipped the kid over so the lines wouldn't show. Ditto for longer hair, ponytails, etc. Draw first, mostly follow the lines when cutting that area. Hope this helps you out - I just wish I could figure out how to get a copy of my Contraction Kid print out up here...