My Pinterest Addiction

I may just have a serious addiction....to Pinterest.

However, since I'm highly addicted to searching for teaching ideas, it's not a bad thing. Really! I promise! (Not that I don't also look for recipes and other random things on there--but I really do use it for work!)

In fact, my classroom may just be getting to the point where it is an advertisement on why Pinterest should be considered Professional Development. In fact, I think that a certain number of pins implemented in your classroom should be considered a CEU (Continuing Education Unit for those of you non-teaching people)...

So, here, ladies and gentlemen are my favorite Pinterest finds for my classroom (or "Why I Justify Spending So Much Time on Pinterest"):

My new favorite Anchor Chart: Paragraph Stoplight

I think almost every CISP elementary teacher has THINK in their classroom. I actually have Ephesian 4:29 posted right next to it. It's hard to see from this picture, but THINK asks kids if what they are saying is: True, Helpful, Inspiring (Encouraging), Necessary (Do they need to say it or is saying it Miss Miller's job?) or Kind.

I found this one last year and thought it was cute, so I made my own. All the reasons why a writers would write. We made the list as a class, and then I compiled the list on a chart..then I kept it because it was to cute to get rid of. :D

Another favorite find: A way to keep track of all my writing mini-lessons (I've taught more than that this year--these are just the main ones we've covered). Each cone represent one of the 6 traits of writing: Ideas, Voice, Word Choice, Conventions, Sentence Fluency, and Organization. Then, whenever one of my mini-lessons covers a trait, I add it to the cones. As you can see, I need to work on sentence fluency. :S

I got roped into teaching art for the first half of this year. I am not an artistic person, so Pinterest really saved my life when it came to finding art projects, just as this circular weaving project I found on there.

Another Pinterest art find. I colored the orginial picture that you can see in the top left. Then, I cut it apart in squares and numbered the back. The kids would draw a square and try to match the colors on a bigger square of paper. When they finished, they wrote the corresponding number on the back of their piece. At the end, I put both pictures together, so the kids could see the finished product. It's definitely an abstract piece. :D

 So, as you can see, me Pinterest addiction is complete justifiable...some of the time. Maybe if I cut back on some of those other pins....

Seriously, though, I hope you have enjoyed the small peek into my classroom and can see that my kids are learning. And enjoying fourth grade as well!