Mas Rusli

I have one more day left with my kiddos this school year! Man, it has been a fantastic year. Full of lots of energy, growth, firsts, and amazing activities! I wanted to finish up my School's Out series with ways that we celebrate and remember our learning form the year! Does your school do Awards Programs? We do! Each grade level invites parents and we present awards such as A Honor Roll, A/B Honor Roll, Perfect Attendance, Most Courteous Boy/Girl, Writing Award, Reading Award, and so on. It's a really nice program, every student gets recognized, and the parents get to see the kiddos walk across that stage proudly! Back in the classroom, we do our own little awards ceremony for Accelerated Reader and brag tags. I look at alllllllllllllllllll the data that AR has compiled throughout the year and assign kids awards such as Most Quizzes Passed, Highest Passing Rate, Most Certifications Achieved, and things like that.  I also make certificates for the most brag tags or the most boo...

Welcome to part 2 of my School's Out for Summer series, It All Must Go? Do you have to pack up everything and take down everything just to unpack and rehang everything come August? Yeah, me too. (If not then I applaud you and I'm jealous of you!) So after ten years of doing this year after year, I have developed some fast tips for myself that I would love to share with you! First, packing up the kiddos. You've shared your classroom and your supplies and your ideas with your students for 10 months. This has resulted in a lot of stuff. There's writing portfolios and projects, craftivities, drawings, other artwork, etc. They've also collected things in their little desks or seat sacks or book boxes. Not everything will fit in their book sacks nor should it because they're 6 and they only have 6 year old backs and muscles. So we start to gather their things together in one spot. I went to our local Trader Joe's and asked ever so nicely if they would consider don...

  Hi guys! This series has been a long time coming! I am so excited to finally begin! I don't know about you, but my school year is rapidly winding down. It is coming quickly to a close and there is still so much to do. I wanted to share my process for closing out the year with you as well as some ideas for the last day! First up, It's May/June. The kids are done. You're done. The school year is almost done. You are just trying to get everybody to dismissal and stay sane! Not to mention all the other stuff you have to do that comes from admin like data. So what do you do to maintain control while you finish up the paperwork? I have spent oodles of time throughout the beginning of the year to get the kiddos trained in navigating the classroom centers independently. So by now they have it down pat and could probably do it in their sleep. So I put out reading and math centers from all year that the students can choose to do. Some of their favorites have been time and money cen...

Happy Easter to all! I hope everyone is having a lovely spring and Easter so far. Since we don't have any family close by, we are staying home and resting up this Easter Sunday. It's also Spring Break! But of couse as a teacher's job is never done, I am spending my holidays planning and creating! We are partnered with the LSU lab school and we meet all the time to make sure that our curriculum is in line with their curriculum. It is never too early to start plannng for the next year, so we are preparing to meet again right after spring break. Must have our plan in place so we can discuss what we're doing and when!! This is a rough draft of what we do each year. Granted, sometimes things get pushed back or skipped or we have to extend units, etc. But for the most part this is what we do in ELA and Science/Social Studies. Our math is handled completly different. That's my next tackle.  If you are interested in your own editable copy of our plan, you can find it {HERE}...