Optical Illusions - a Digital Art Project

I ran across this fabulous art project on Runde's Room early this morning:

I was so inspired by it that I immediately sat down and created a digital tutorial for my Graphic Design kids!  We're doing the Elements of Design next week, and learning the Pen Tool in Photoshop; this was a PERFECT project for both!

Here's my digital version of Jen's project:

And here's the complete Tutorial:

LINE – Creating an Optical Illusion

Lesson Planning

I have lots of lesson plan forms I've tried over the years.  I'm still tweaking!  I have two favorites, one that shows the whole week - all classes in a 2-page spread (great for my binder!), and the other is a 1-page/1-class/1-day detailed plan.

Here's a peek at the 2-page plan.  It has a colorful shaded heading for each day of the week, and a column on the right for notes/reminders.   There is also a narrow column on the left to add class periods/class names.  I teach on a 4x4 block schedule, but for my TPT store, I modified my template to include 6-period and 7-period days.  All three are included in one free download HERE.

This second --very detailed-- template is perfect for new lessons or activities (or just new classes!) when you are afraid you'll forget little details.  It has sections for pretty much EVERYTHING, including vocab, chapter/page numbers, warmups, materials, Kagan/Cooperative learning activities, homework, assessment, technology...  Everything!  I uploaded a no-color and a colorful version of this detailed template today and you can download it HERE.   (Free of course!)

Hopefully one or both of these might be helpful to you!

My Classroom...

A little background...  we were lucky enough to move into a brand new school this year, so my room is wonderful and shiny new!  It's huge too...it's taking me a while to get used to making my voice carry ALL the way to the back!

(Btw, I took these photos with my iPhone in the late afternoon, so they're not the BEST photos, haha!)  This is at the front of my room, my SMART board and white board, and bookshelves where I'll keep my class sets of textbooks:

The XL weekly planners are attached to the whiteboard with magnetic strips.  I made those...I'll upload the freebie to my TPT store soon and link them here on the blog!  Right now they're individual files, so I need to add them to one long document first.  Also...I'd like for them to be a wee bit bigger; I might just resize too before I share them.  They're working out really well for the kids to see what we're doing/the week at a glance.

Next, the left side of my classroom...

I made the bunting/banner by sewing triangles of scrap fabrics in fun colors to a length of grosgrain ribbon.  It was actually a fast and easy project!  Cutting the triangles was the longest part, but I used a rotary cutter & mat with a clear ruler.  The B&W posters are from Hobby Lobby.  You can see a corner of my cute bulletin board peeking in from the far right.  I'll show it next.

The background paper on the bulletin board is 12 x 12 scrapbook paper.  It was from a matched set but I don't have the package here to tell you who the designer is!  It's feedsack and vintage farmhouse prints.  Very cute!  This bulletin board is now my Word Wall.  I added a cute hanging sign from one of the hooks a week ago, so I'll have to snap a new pic!

The art cart rolls around the room as we need it.  It's full of large format paper in the bottom storage area, my paper cutters and hole punch in the middle storage shelf, and the end shelving holds my scissor, glue, crayon, and marker boxes.  This is an awesome cart!

Looking to the back of the classroom, you can see my tables & chairs for classroom seating, and the back wall.  This room is HUGE!  The tall shelving unit at the back right hand corner, isn't permanent, it was just in my room while we waited for a closet to be cleaned out.  The posters on the back wall were from Hobby Lobby; so were the hanging lanterns.

The right side of my classroom has windows (yay!) and more bunting.  Posters are from Hobby Lobby, except the large yellow one in the back.  That was a free printable from Joy's Hope (sorry, I've lost my link!)  It says... "What you write might just change the world..."  The kids love that poster! 

On the far back table, I have two cubes from Hobby Lobby or Target, that I decoupaged with polkadot gift tissue in red/white.  They're so cute!  I painted the back of the paper storage cube with rainbow stripes to match the bunting. 

The drawer unit is used for rulers, punches, decorative scissors, and other miscellaneous things we used in class for portfolios and projects.  We're hands on project people here!

That'll do for pictures now.  I have made a few changes in the first few weeks while we settled in.  Not to anything above; just things I've added.  I'll try to snap some pictures of the new stuff next week and upload those too! 

Welcome...and our first freebie!

Welcome to my teacher blog!  I'm excited to start sharing ideas for the classroom in this space!

I'm a Business & Marketing teacher in Arkansas, and teach grades 9-12.  This year my schedule includes Interior Design, Advertising, Fashion Merchandising, Computer Business Applications, and my favorite classes, Digital Layout & Design and Digital Graphics.  In my room, it's a fun day, EVERY day!

My goals for the blog include sharing all the awesome, fun, teachery things I find on the net, as well as downloads and things I make for my shop over on Teacher's Notebook and Teachers Pay Teachers.

To start off the fun, here is a set of colorful damask blank tags that I use in my classroom for name tags, seating charts, and computer numbers.  They're a PDF file and were handmade by me in Photoshop.  You can download them in my TPT store HERE.

I created the damask background tile.  The adorable dotty swirl frame is a freebie Photoshop brush from Pixels and Ice Cream.  I love her brushes!  She's very generous to provide a free commercial/personal license for freebies too.  Go visit if you love PS brushes!

I hope you'll favorite my teacher blog and join the sharing fun!  I make a LOT of printables for myself, and most of these are applicable to ANY grade level, not just highs school!  I finally decided...why not SHARE!  Besides...I get some of my best ideas from my favorite elementary teacher blogs! So I hope you'll join me here, even if you teach at a different level.

Next up... I'll be sharing photos of my classroom!