The Teacher Toolbox

Miss Emily usually arises between 5am and 5:30 and it is my job to entertain her so the rest of the house can sleep. This morning we had a nice father/daughter moment when we composed a ‘fill in the gaps’ poem.

It needs to be noted that there was a lot of soft chuckles as we remembered some recent ‘terms of endearment’

My Dad Calls Me

My dad calls me Emily ThumTHucka

My dad calls me Missy

My dad calls me Hungry

My dad calls me Toad

My dad calls me Noisy Girl

My dad calls me Tonka Jim Jo

My dad calls me Sleepy Head

My dad calls me a pain in the bum.

My dad calls me Mischief

My dad calls me Miss Chatterbox

My dad calls me Thirsty

My dad calls me His Little Girl

My dad calls me Evil Incarnate

My dad calls me, ‘My Precious’

My dad calls me his Happy Shelia

My dad calls me his Baby.

I think my dad forgets my name sometimes.

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When it comes to Farmville sheep wandering across my Facebook news feeds I’m starting to believe catharsis is so much more fun than rationality

Feel free to send this to anyone who you think needs to see it. hehehehe

Another of the things I love about machinima is the irreverent humour. Feel free to make humourous suggestions for the dialogue of this comic

Plus, I think I mentioned it before, I love leaving these sorts of things on display in classes for a week and having the students think about what should be added to the language bubbles. Mulling it over for a while tends to produce great results.

In the coming weeks I’m flying off to Mackay to run a whole day Gifted & Talented workshop on machinima.

I’ve been working on ideas for this workshop for the last few months and am just about to launch an online image bank that will not be blocked by school filters.  (If you know what I mean hehehe).

I’ve already completed a collection of Dawn of War, Second Life and, thanks to JoKay, World of Warcraft images. I anticipate that these collections will go live in the next few days.

Call for Help - If you can help out with PG rated images from your favourite video game feel free to email them to me so anyone can have a go at this type of story telling.

Over the last few months these guys have been great discussion starters. I love having them sit on the desk, not only for inspiration, but also to get students asking questions about the lads and their work.

Recently my three year old daughter has taken to playing with the characters in her doll house. I’m finding it strangely good fun to see Freud and Dora the Explorer sharing a kitchen or bathroom

There are heaps of these guys to choose from. I think I’ll get  The Artist Collection for a art teacher friend of mine as it has Dali, Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Warhol & Van Gogh in it. A history teacher friend of mine is getting the Revolutionaries Pack for his desk as he feels that, ‘History teachers just can’t have enough revolutionaries in their lives’. I also have an English teacher friend who is getting the  Writers Collection for her desk.

Now it needs to be noted that I had a few dramas in getting these guys shipped to Australia. Firstly I tried the official Jailbreak Toys Website where the prices were very reasonable and there was an excellent variety of figures, but due to a shipping anomaly it was going to cost $57 US (almost $100 Oz) to ship my order. Needless to say I didn’t go with this option.

I then tried Amazon but they don’t ship these figures to Australia but would be a good option for my American readers.

After that I turned to Ebay and Salvador today arrived just in time for my birthday tomorrow.

cheers

Adrian

NB This is not a paid blog post, I just find these guys a wonderful addition to my desk

Here is a spelling strategy I use a lot in my classrooms. It will fix alot. hehehehe

Here is my poster for the homophone in which ‘too’ means ‘also’.

I’ve just fixed an animation and added some new teaching notes on how to encourage children to rise above the mundane in their writing.

Hmmmmmm, Wordpress really doesn’t want to embed the flash animation. You’ll have to head off to the website to see it.

Better Words Than Said – animation and teaching notes

I’m having a really productive day today so here is my second homophones poster.

Here is my first homophone poster. I’m rather pleased with the way the little alien dudes came out. Feel free to print out the A4 version for your classroom walls.