Totem Pole Project, Red Ribbon Week, and October Book Reports

My students have been working away on projects this year!  One of the projects that they completed a couple of weeks ago was their Totem Pole Project!  They came out so well!  This idea was passed down from a previous 5th grade, now 1st grade, teacher.  She did this with her class and I decided to do it with mine as well.  Man am I glad I did!  They came out great.  Each student created a totem pole and brought it into class.  We used this as a way to kick off our Native Americans unit in Social Studies.  Here are a couple of my favorites!!!

One thing that I really enjoy is that our librarian and I switch off months for book report assignments.  I had the month of October and I assigned my class a fun book report project!  I found it on FirstPalette.com and decided to assign mystery as the genre for the month.  Hmmm….I wonder why?  :)  This book report came out better than I expected!  We now have a pumpkin patch in our classroom!!!

Red Ribbon Week is a really important week.  At our school, we had themes that the kids followed.  Monday was wear a red shirt day to kick off Red Ribbon Week.  Tuesday, we turned our backs to drugs and wore our PE shirts backwards.  Wednesday, students wore red socks.  Thursday, students wore hats to put a cap on drugs.  Friday, students wore costumes to scare drugs away!  Our school campus was decorated with red ribbons on trees, poles, and tables.  I also found this idea from The Sharpened Pencil and LOVED the idea.  So I went to work with the help of my amazingly artistic assistant and got the ribbons cut.  I ran to Michael's (twice) to get the letters and printed the pledge!  I put them together on Sunday night and on Monday of Red Ribbon Week, all of the students signed their classes ribbon.  These hung all week and parents that came for parent-teacher conferences were able to see them.

On a totally different note….how cute are these????  This was a little goodies from our Principal and Vice Principal for the week of Parent-Teacher Conferences and Halloween!

 I hope you all have had an amazing October!!!

Leave a Comment Book Reports, classroom, Halloween, Native Americans, October, Red Ribbon Week, Totem Poles