You Say It's Your Birthday...

I was thinking about birthday charts today. I have always had one in my room and it has always been something I have premade during the summer. I decided that next year I wanted to incorporate the creation of the chart into a lesson and concluded that a line plot would be perfect. Line plots were tested heavily this year and are part of our math curriculum. I absolutely LOVE this idea:



In case you can't see the pictures clearly, each child is holding a paper with their birthdate on it. My plan is to photograph each of my students holding the number that represents the day they were born on and use those images to create a line plot of our classroom birthdays.

Here a Mug, There a Mug, Everywhere a Mug Mug!

As a frequenter of message boards I have been witness to many annual threads about what to get a teacher as a gift. There is ALWAYS a response mixed in reading, "I think a nice mug would make a great gift. You can never have too many mugs." Ahhh, but you can!

It's not that I am not grateful, but I am of the mindset that a teacher is doing his/her job and does not need to be further compensated in the form of mugs, magnets, plants, ornaments, etc. I am also of the opinion that it is possible to have far too many mugs. To me the teacher mug is symbolic of the fact that teachers tend to be packrats. You know you've been guilty of collecting styrofoam meat trays, Pringles cans and egg cartons "just in case." It's time to stop.

Teachers have plenty of stuff. What they are truly lacking is time. I am confident that if you spend some time getting organized and decluttering your space you will find that you are more productive, more creative and most importantly, you will be given the gift of time.