Fall classroom decor

My mom made this for my classroom!

The Crucible portion of my American Lit board.

This guy greets my students from the door window

One of the things I was happiest about when I moved back to San Diego was that I got my own classroom!

When I taught in Mexico, I split my time between the college and high school building. While I had my own beautifully decorated office, I ran around from classroom to classroom.

Now that I have my own classroom I definitely splurge and decorate. I'm not able to decorate by class topic, because I have different classes on different days. So I dedicate a small portion of the room to class specific information / decor (the bulletin board in the back is divided into three parts.  Nonetheless, for the most part my classroom is pretty class neutral. You'll see above I have included a small section of my American Literature board. Each book or short story that we read gets represented in some way on the board, but right now The Crucible is the most seasonally appropriate.

My podium and the jack-o-latern lights!

Close-up of my lights!

Now that it is October it means I have the opportunity to put some of my Halloween Thanksgiving and overall autumnal stuff up. I teach at a Catholic school so I was a bit worried about getting in trouble, but I figured skeletons are biological right? Can't get in trouble for biology!

Finally my lights! I don't light them up much, but when I do I sure to feel happier for some reason.

If you have fun decorations in your classroom give me a link in the comments I'd love to check them out. I got most of my stuff from The Dollar Spot at Target, or the Dollar Tree. It keeps me living within the means of my teacher budget while still decorating my class.

Fun Fall Finds- The Crucible and Ergotism

Fall always reminds me the most of school. Even though my school year seems to start earlier every year (we start at the beginning of August!) 

San Diego hasn't felt much like fall (we've had TONS of hot hot heat) but my school year is definitely in full swing.

This fall thirteen bloggers have come together to offer you the chance to win 13 different products  or a TPT Gift Card.


In October, I get to teach one of my student's FAVORITE stories to discuss: The Crucible!

Click above to find it on Amazon

Students LOVE the blame game, the sexual scandal, the girls being crazy, and of course, they all love to hate Abigail.

The play is also a GREAT chance to bring some non-fiction into my classroom. We read real tales of persecution that happen worldwide now. We look into the effects of peer pressure and authority. We investigate the real identities of the names that Miller borrowed for his characters.

At the end of the year students select where the blame for the witch trials goes using evidence from the play. While many students usually take the easier root of placing the blame on Parris, or Abigail. However, a surprising number of them choose to place the blame on ergot!

Ergot is a fungus that  some researchers have found could be the source of the accusations in Salem. Students really connect to this opinion. It is physical enough to make it easy to understand, yet the science of it makes them really work at it.

For this blog hop I am offering the chance to win this worksheet to help your students learn about this strange fungus and apply that knowledge to the Crucible. It includes a graphic organizer to help them organize their thoughts to answer the prompt, and multiple choice questions based on those seen in the 2016 SAT. This is especially a nice topic since the SAT is integrating more science based texts.

My junior students find it challenging, but it is the one that resonates the most with them. Plus, it involves crops and witches; perfect for the season of fall.

For those of you not lucky to win the contest (which runs from the 20th-25th) you can buy this on TeacherPayTeachers for just $1.50!

Enter the contest below, and then check out some of the other blog contributors to see their great stuff!

a Rafflecopter giveaway
 

An InLinkz Link-up

Creative Character Quizzes

These aren't the quizzes that your students have to study for! These quizzes make your students use their critical thinking skills, inference skills, grammar skills and technology skills...what more could you want?

If your students like taking Buzzfeed quizzes or any quiz online then they will appreciate this assignment.

My students were reading the Crucible, but it can be easily adapted to any book (or even classmates, teachers, local politicians, etc.). For classes that don't read literature I've also used quizzes to review vocabulary.

As a class we discussed what types of questions we could ask. There were two types we discussed:

1. The literal question.

• These questions asked about things we could literally see. 
• For example: Would you cheat on your significant other?
• Never! I am a good honest person.
• Yes, but I would feel awful later!
• If they were cute and I liked them.
• I am very religious so of course not!
• In this questions we can tell who the answers refer to based on actions or words stated.
• Elizabeth is a good and honest woman who never cheated.
• John cheated, but he felt bad.
• Abigail had an affair with John,so she would be OK with cheating.
• Hale is a reverend, so he is religious.

2. The symbolic question

• These questions require more interpretation.
• For example: What is your favorite color?
• Black
• White
• Red
• Grey
• In these question the answer may depend based on who is writing the quiz
• John Proctor is depressed so he is black.
• Elizabeth is very innocent so she is white
• Abigail is passionate so she is read.
• Hale is grey because he is confused by what is happening in the town and getting more and more depressed.

Once the students understand the differences I gave their requirements.They had to create a 10 question quiz involving four characters. In addition to the quiz they needed to give me a paper that explained their answers.

Once they completed their quizzes they put them online (tryinteract.com is a great site for this) and take at least two other quizzes.

It is a fun project that makes students cite evidence from the text and shows how well they understand the characters.

You can buy the directions and worksheets that go with this for The Crucible on Teachers Pay Teachers at this link

Otherwise be inspired and make your own! Here are two examples from my students

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