A Pin-teresting Open House

We’ve been in school now for 7 days and the eighth ninth tenth was cancelled due to excessive rain.  Bummer!  Not like I could use the time to get myself together or anything!  Anyways, to be on the productive side, I decided I’d finally post my back-to-school, meet-the-teacher, open-house pics.

My teammate and I used several Pinterest and TPT free finds this year.  I’ll link them throughout this post.  Be sure to leave these fabulous ladies some love!

I must say, this year’s open house went very smoothly and I felt so stress-free.  I know it is because of this neat open house station system that I found on Pinterest.  I greeted parents and students at the door and directed them through the stations.  While parents were filling out forms and grabbing wish-list items, contact info, and goodies, I had time to chat with the students and answer other questions parents may have had.  I didn’t have parents backed up waiting to talk to me because everyone had something to do.  I’ll definitely be using this station system again!  Thanks to Reagan at Tunstall’s TeachingTidbits for the idea and for the free chevron backgrounds at TPT.  

The first station was a sign-in.  This is a Title I requirement to document parent involvement.  

From there, students found their desk with their nametag on it.  Here they picked up their goodie bag and back-to-school forms.  Thanks to Stephanie at 3rd GradeThoughts for the idea and the free label.  The kids loved them and a few even brought them back to school on the first day for their recess snack. Thanks to Andrea for the cute polka dot nameplates I found on TPT.

Next stop, parent questionnaire...This was a quick questionnaire that a colleague shared with our school.  It asked the parents to describe their child and this year's goals for their child.  

After that, parents visited our wish list.  Parents were able to choose from these extra supplies to help stock our classroom.  I asked for things like tissues, plastic storage baggies in various sizes, hand sanitizer, sanitizing wipes, pencils, erasers, dry erase markers, plastic bandages, etc.  Parents could just pull the treasure chest off the board and bring that item in on the first day of school.  Unfortunately we're still very under-stocked.  I liked that this gave parents a concise idea of the things we need.  It also helps lessen the chances of having 87 boxes of gallon size baggies and no hand sanitizer!  Thanks for the idea, Sara!

At the 4th stop parents were able to download our contact information.  The QR code loaded our names, emails, and school phone number and website directly into the parent's phone.  For those without a smartphone, we provided business cards with the same info (from VistaPrint).  This idea came from Pinterest also, but the link provided says the blog no longer exists so I can't give credit where credit is due.

5^th and finally, the parents and kiddos were able to grab another goodie.  The water bottle idea came from a pin that linked only to the image, so once again no credit can be given.  But the label was a free download that I tweaked in Paint.  Thanks, Erin!

A close up of the water bottle label...

All in all, I’d say Open House was a success.  How was your Back To School night?

QR Code Frenzy

This blog is proving to be witness to a lot of firsts.  This post is no exception.  This week, I attempted (for the first time), to create a QR code activity for my third graders.

I’ve seen lots of great QR code activities out there, but most of the ones I found were for math.  Since I don’t teach math, I decided to create one of my own.  And I couldn’t be more proud of myself! (Humility is a virtue!)

I started on Pinterest (imagine that!).  A long time ago, I found a pin for QR Stuff where you can not only create QR codes, but you can also fancy them up!  And it couldn’t be easier.  Just 4 simple steps left me with cute QR codes that linked the students to images of comic strips.

The students scanned the QR code, read the comic, then rewrote it using quotation marks correctly.  In order to challenge the students to be creative with their “said” words, I told them that “Said is Dead.”  We discussed other words that could be used instead, and I provided them with this poster to encourage them to use these more descriptive “said” words.  Grab your own “Said is Dead” poster [here].

As you can see, the kids really enjoyed this QR activity.  They worked hard and did a great job!  I’m so glad that my first QR code adventure was a success!  What do you do with QR codes in your classroom?