Tried it Tuesday...Nailed it!...

Today I'm linkin' up with my buddy Holly from Fourth Grade Flipper for Tried It Tuesday.  I've been thinkin' it was Monday all day, so I seriously thought I had another day to get ready for this one.  I guess I'm just happy we are one step closer to Friday because I have an awesome weekend planned!

So, you know how you always see those pins on Pinterest about "nailed it" or "failed it"?  Well, I'm so excited because I totally NAILED a pin.  Well, not me, but my nail girls did.

I present to you...my football toesies!  Nailed it...pun intended!  Football season is upon us and these football toesies just make me HAPPY!

My next inspiration comes from Jivey at Ideas by Jivey.  She blogged about this here.  Check out her #4 idea.  I went on the hunt for over-sized sunglasses at Dollar Tree, but could not find any.  I settled for the guitars since it goes with our Rockstar theme.  The day of Orientation, I had my parents fill out a Google form that stated the top three goals they had for their child this year.  I decided to have the kiddos write their top three goals on their sunglasses.  It will be interestin' to see if the parents and students had the same goals.

My next inspiration comes from Joanne at Head over Heels for Teaching.  She blogged about this here.  These are her Interactive Character Analysis Posters that she has in her TpT store.  Joanne has them hangin' up in her classroom.  I decided to try mine in a binder for when I am meetin' in small readin' groups.  I can always switch to posters if this way doesn't work out for me.  I'm SO excited about usin' these with my kiddos!  The best part, I get to use POST-IT notes!

My next inspiration comes from Kristina at Mrs. Z and Company.  She blogged about this here.  Her All About Me Banners actually include a survey for the students to fill out.  It is three pages long and I LOVE it!  At the end there is a section that the students fill out to ask the teacher questions.  Yesterday I had a great time answerin' those questions by writin' back to the students on their surveys.

My next inspiration comes for me.  Every year I have the students draw a self-portrait and then do an All About Me writin' to go along with their drawin'.  This year I had the students use the above mentioned survey to help organize their writin'.  I think they turned out GREAT!  One of my tech savvy students is in the process of callin' over each student to create a QR code with a little blurb about each student and a picture that we took at the beginnin' of the year.  I have not glued on the QR codes yet.  We were havin' a little bit of technical difficulty because the site was cuttin' off half of their pictures.

This is a sample of the pictures that are goin' in the QR codes.

I got this frame on sale this summer at Michael's and painted it black.  

The next inspiration comes from an item I scooped up this summer durin' The Hot off the Press blog hop from The Teaching Tribune.  This activity is called Tee-rific News All About Me by Teresa Williams.  The students used newspaper pictures to help describe them and glued them on the t-shirt design.  The students then wrote why they chose the pictures they did to go on their t-shirt.

Last year I purchased these Instant Personal posters from Scholastic with my bonus points.  I sent this home for a home-task last week.

They turned out pretty nifty!  One of the boxes asks the students to write a news article about an important event in their life.  So far, they have been pretty creative!

I'm lovin' the way my hallway has turned out for Open House next week.  I think the parents will like it.  It's definitely very bright and cheery!

I hope everyone had a great first day back to school today...whether it was your very First day or just your first day back from the long weekend.  Be sure to head over to Holly's blog to check out everyone else's Tried it Tuesdays.