Camp Classroom Set Up & Poetry Reading/Analysis

 Hello, happy Memorial Day again! I have yet another post to share today, this one about a classroom transformation and poetry lesson. 

The Goals:

-Learn and poetry elements. 

-Practice the ACCESS speaking domain/speaking and reading skills.

-Explore various poetry genres.

-Appreciate the beauty of poetry!

The set up included:

-The campfire itself, made of orange pumpkin Dollar Tree lights, and a light I owned from Walmart that moves at various speeds and allows you to select colors (creating a red, rotating, ambient light effect), construction paper flames (taped to the light), and sticks that I had turned into torches for drama props a long time back using recycled bottles and tissue paper.

-My ceiling light covers (magnetic) from Amazon. 

-A blanket to sit on.

-Plants that were already in my classroom. 

-A Youtube campfire background with sound effects. 

-Marshmallows and skewers.

The last thing is a variety of poems printed out to read/analyze. 

The Lesson:

To start off the lesson, I read a famous poem (such as "Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost). Then we all read it together. Prior to sitting around the campfire, students had around 10 minutes to choose a favorite poem or choose one of many I printed to read aloud, giving them time to choose and practice reading them. We went around the campfire, each reading a selected poem. Next, students took their poems to their seats and I used a document camera to walk everyone through how to label their poetry, and the definitions of each poetry element (though many of them had the definitions from a prior assignment called "Poetry Toolboxes" I would like to share in the future). They labeled stanzas, line breaks, metaphors, similes, alliteration, repetition, onomatopoeia, hyperboles, rhythm, etc. The first times I did this lesson I made a lot of mistakes and did not have a clear order of reading/annotating, and all of my students hand wrote their poems to label them. If I could redo it, I would have more extra copies printed to directly label and maybe have everyone choose a poem in advance so they were all printed and ready. They did a beautiful job writing and labeling, though, and some students went the extra mile to beautifully illustrate their poetry as well. Another mistake I made was having everyone read the first poem together from the screen. Individual copies of the poem would probably have been much easier to follow along with, although it would be more paper. 

Despite my mistakes experimenting with this, my students did a phenomenal job and I am proud of their labeled poems, as well as of their reading performances and engagement during the lesson. 

I hope you enjoyed, thank you for stopping by!

-Lauryn

Classroom Christmas Tour, 2025

 Hello! This is a really random post to share in January, but here is a quick tour of my classroom decorated for Christmas last year. 

Maybe it can provide some future inspiration for Christmas 2026. The lights came from both thrift stores and Amazon (specifically the star LED lights came from Amazon). The brown ribbon was bought in a huge bulk roll from Amazon. It was around $10, decorated my whole bedroom, classroom, was used to embellish gifts, used for hair bows, and I still have tons left! The bells came from Dollar Tree but I painted them to look vintage. The garlands and pine cones came from thrift stores. I probably paid a total of $5 or less for them. I did run out of those and buy one strand from Walmart, which is unreasonably expensive, as it turns out. The other decorations I had on hand from thrift stores or they were given to me as gifts in years past.  

I hope you enjoyed! Thank you for visiting! 

Blessings,

Lauryn 

How I Celebrate Birthdays In My Classroom

 Good afternoon! Today I'd like to share how I celebrate birthdays in my classroom. Disclaimer: it takes a lot of prep, and admittedly cost quite a bit. That said, I feel it successfully meets my goal. My goal: I love to recognize people's birthdays and make them feel seen, valued, and bring them joy on their special day. 

In my classroom, I hand-draw (since the banners I bought would disappear due to some misunderstandings about recycling them rather than taking them home each birthday, and I could not afford to buy one for every birthday) a birthday banner that reads "Feliz Cumpleaños, [Student's Name]!" with markers on construction paper. I tape that to their desk along with a gift. The gift is a coffee-looking cup filled with confetti or grass, a desert sticker, and a special lava pen. I tie a ribbon to the top of the pen, which sticks out like a straw. I try to make the ribbon, pen, and sticker all the student's favorite color (which I know from a form they fill out on the first day of school). I buy the supplies in bulk from Amazon. After the initial work it takes to prepare the cups, it is really simple to set this up each birthday.

I also use Google Slides each day, so on the warm up slide they all see at the start of class, I feature a cat throwing confetti on the right side where I list reminders, and write "Today is [student's name] birthday!" 

Lastly, at the end of the month, I celebrate all of the birthdays from that month by putting their names on the board with their favorite colors (and maybe even characters), put up a balloon arch with their favorite colors combined, and set out treats. The Google Slides on the board might say something like "In honor of our January birthdays (name, name, name, and name) you can help yourself to a treat on the table!" We do Friday prizes each week anyway where students have the option of choosing food, so this falls on a Friday and basically is our regular prize day with an extra treat, or treats in place of non-edible prizes, along with that extra recognition. 

If you are an educator, I hope you find this inspiring or helpful in some way!

Blessings,

Lauryn 

Halloween English Lessons & Classroom Halloween Party, 2025

 Hello, here is yet another class party I would like to share from last semester. Halloween fell on a school day, so I celebrated with a class Halloween party that incorporated their class projects from the week. 

One project, which I saw on TPT, is making synonym/antonym gravestones and ghosts. I found some free gravestones to print. They had to write their choice word with five synonyms on the front, followed by five antonyms on the back. They could research synonyms and antonyms on Google. That was completed after an introduction to synonyms and antonyms on the Monday prior, so I drew grass and made a graveyard/ghost display.

The other assignment that ended up taking all week or longer was a symbolism mask assignment. Students were to draw ten images on one side of their mask designs that each symbolized something about them (what they believe, love, the hobbies they do, their personality, anything). On the other side, they were to write out ten "I am..." statements to describe themselves, applying repetition and more specifically, anaphora. On Halloween day they all got to 'dress up' and we did a class photo in each class featuring everyone in their masks. 

I planned several Halloween-inspired English games as well. One was to design a pumpkin on paper that clearly included symbolism and was themed around a particular book, character, or movie. Another used charts and involved rolling die to prompt a scary creative story. My favorite was where they worked in pairs with whiteboards. One partner had to describe a monster with as many adjectives as possible while the other partner had to draw it. They had five minutes and had to face away from each other until the drawing was done, then everyone revealed their masterpieces and partners swapped roles. Examples of some of these activities are shown below.

As far as the decorations go, I got the spiderwebs, spider dish, and balloons from Dollar Tree. I cut some paper plates into hexagons to look more web-like, too. The treats came from Aldi and a dollar store. 

Thank you for visiting, I hope you find this helpful! 

-Lauryn