Elf Surveillance in the Classroom

Christmas time is right around the corner and with it, Elf on the Shelf dolls are showing up in schools around the world, bringing the magic of the holiday season to classroom. Check out these fun elf surveillance reports. They are a fun way to spread positivity this Christmas season! You can find them right here.



It's time to dust off some of the old holiday games as well, check out my math resources to help make your holiday bright and bring some fun to math time. 

Thanksgiving Turkeys in the Courtroom: Classroom Simulation

So today our turkeys, disguised as superheroes, princesses, and other fun characters were brought to court....in our classroom. They were pleading their cases in front of the judge and sharing why they should be kept off the Thanksgiving table.

I am happy to report that after all our Thanksgiving turkeys were brought to court to plead their cases, all of them were pardoned and kept off the Thanksgiving tables this year! The judge was feeling rather sorry for these birds this year...although some were hoping not all were going to be pardoned. What a fun courtroom simulation on the last day before thanksgiving break! 

We had so much fun with this simulation. You can find it over here in my TPT store as a part of my fall language arts pack. Have a great break, everyone!

Teacher Evaluation

Anyone else with me that those two words, "teacher evaluation" just get you feeling all the nervous feelings humanly possible? I don't know why it always gets me feeling so nervous, but it does. I've been counting down the days until my first evaluation at my new school. And today it was my day! It went well and usually does and I try to keep in mind that my supervisor is there to help me grow. That she will find things I am doing well and things that I could improve upon. Here are my best tips for staying calm and sane under the evaluation pressure.

1. Prepare: If you are not prepared, you will look scattered and disorganized. Have a plan. Go over your curriculum and have the materials ready, including your lesson plans, copies, and supplies. Lay them out so that you can find them easily and not have to spend time shuffling through piles to get to what you need.

2. Don't wait until the last minute: If you wait until the morning of your evaluation to make copies and get things ready, chances are something will not go wrong....at the least, you will be stressed. You never know when that copier will run out of toner or paper. 

3. Get some rest: Don't burn the midnight oil trying to pull out your most amazing lessons. Plan a strong lesson that showcases your normal classroom routine and get to bed on time. Supervisors seem to know which teachers are merely trying to impress them and pulling out something out of the ordinary in order to do so.

4. Arrive at school early: There's just something about being early that sets me at ease. I do not feel ready when I am walking in just in time or late. I want to go over everything one last time. I want to feel rested and relaxed, not rushed and stressed to start the day.

5. Shine: Stay upbeat and positive. Get into your groove and try to overlook the fact that someone is watching you. The more natural you are, the better. Focus on the kids. It is another school day for them, much like any other. Don't let them sense your discomfort. Bring it for them!

So there you have it, five tips for feeling better when your evaluation day comes up.

Camp Share-a-Story

Imagine walking into your classroom. The windows have been covered and it is dark. There's a campfire in the middle of the room and tree trunk seat spots circling it. There is a camp chair and lights and a lantern. Woodland animals are watching from nearby. This is the spot where you will share your first story of the year in an author's celebration. On Friday, my class experienced just this. We called it, Camp Share-a-Story and it was amazing. From the moment the students saw the sign posted on our door and noticed the blackened windows, before they could even step a foot inside, there was excitement outside. And it was brewing as they waited to go in. 

Creating a magical environment in which to share our first stories of the year, was such a fun way to celebrate the learning that we have done. It is one moment that will stick with these students for years when they think back on all they learned and did in second grade. Here's a look at what we did throughout the day to create the magic.

First, we shared our original stories. Afterwards, we celebrated with s'mores pops. We spent time reading books from our book boxes at our campsite with flashlights and headlamps. After lunch, we went on a trail in our woods and did a scavenger hunt. You can find the one we used over here. When we came back from the woods, we used the nature we had collected to create artwork. 

T'was the Week Before Thanksgiving

The week before Thanksgiving can be an incredibly crazy time. The students are getting restless and ready for a break, and well, let's face it...the same happens to teachers as well. I've been thinking about ways to make this last week fun while keeping the learning going. How can I keep my classroom engaged? 

One of the things I have been doing for morning meeting this month during morning meeting's sharing time is to list the things we are thankful for. We are writing them on a pumpkin. Once we arrive at the end of the month, I have other plans for this pumpkin.

I have also been working hard to create some activities that can keep the students engaged. I've created lots of writing forms from letter writing to would you rather paragraphs. From writing poems to writing essays. I've focused on two Thanksgiving themed books that I can use this week. Balloons over Broadway is the perfect book to use for many different activities. You can find it on Amazon here  or on Youtube as a read-a-loud.

I've included some comprehension sheets and step-by-step directions to help your students create their own parade balloon.

The other book I have chosen to focus on is called Thanksgiving in the White House. You can find it on Amazon here or as a read-a-loud on Youtube. It is about a turkey that was pardoned by President Lincoln himself. 

To go along with this book, I have created comprehension sheets, a cookie making activity, turkey pardoning simulation, and a loaded bag of thankfulness activity. It is aligned with Common Core standards. You can see it all here. 

Give Thanks Loaded Bag

Loaded bag in color or black line

If you are struggling to find the time to create activities to bring in the season of Thanksgiving, I suggest you check out this activity pack. 

Making Magic Happen

Creating magic in the classroom does not have to take a lot. You can use what you have. I literally raided my garage to find some things from years past to create a special transformation for tomorrow. One of the things I wanted to put up, I could not even find...now I am wondering if I threw it out...and I am kicking myself over it just in case....

So we are ready for our first author's celebration and I wanted to make it special by creating an experience for my seconds. I'm not going to let the cat out of the bag yet, but maybe you can figure it out by looking at some picture clues. 

Can't wait to create a magical moment in my classroom. I'll be back to share the details of our day. What do you do to engage your students?

Pencils are Magical

Sometimes the simplest things make such a huge impact in the classroom. My class, like most,  does not like to clean up at the end of the day. Sometimes it takes so long that we end up leaving the classroom too late. One day, on the spur of the moment, an idea came to me. We have classroom supplies, and not individual supplies. We have lots of plain pencils, by no fun pencils. However, I have a stockpile of fun pencils from previous years that are just waiting to be put to good use. And so, I told the class that the group that cleaned up quickest (floor, projects, work, and table) would receive newly sharpened FUN pencils. I have never seen those students move so fast or be so thorough at cleanup time. Within about two minutes, everything was pretty much spotless and my first winning team, all smiles, was awarded the pencils to use the next day. 

Throughout the rest of the week, those pencils were switched off each day...or they could be kept by the defending team. Whichever team was the quickest to clean up got the pencils the next day. Cleanup time went from a drudgery to an exciting game where teams now work together to get it done! After a week or two, I introduced a new set of pencils and that sparked more excitement.

If you don't have a pencil stash, might I suggest the dollar spot at Target or Dollar Tree. Usually you can get a pack of 12 pencils for about a buck. My groups only have 4-5 students so I can use those packs more than once throughout the year. 

If you want some more cleaning solutions, check out my Making Cleaning Fun post over here. Make cleaning fun, ya'll!

Ultimate Engagement with Kahoot

I knew that Kahoot would be one of those things that my students would absolutely LOVE! It was chaotic in a good way, if that is even possible. My students could not contain themselves. They were just beyond excited the whole time. I am just starting to get over laryngitis and it was so difficult to be heard. I finally had to bring back the silent celebration we have used before instead of cheering wildly each time an answer is revealed. 

So here's 4 of my takeaways:

1: First, we will definitely do this again...and again...and again. They just loved it that much and it can be used for any subject area. I could see us doing it at least a time or two every month.
2: There is not a huge investment in time to set this up. It is super easy to type in some questions and possible answers. You can save your Kahoot games to use from year to year, so once they are done you will be able to reuse them in future years.
3: Some kids may not be able to handle the disappointment and competitiveness of this game. There can be some problems with some technology not working fast enough (that really upset one of my competitive students) and when a student does not win, that could set them off as well. I would still do it again, even with those challenges, but I think that if I had some students who could not handle those situations in a positive way, we would definitely need to do some prep work together about how to handle those situations that are sure to arise. 
4: It will take a while to set the students up on IPADS if you teach primary grades. My students needed help finding the website and some needed help with entering the code. They did like that they can choose a nickname to go by and they were super creative with that and enjoyed their new names.

As a side note, I did give a prize to the student who had the top score. I do not have a prize box, so I just had that student choose one of the flex seats that we have in the common area outside of our classroom and that seat became theirs for the day...BIG HIT!

So there you have it! If you want to try it out for yourself, sign up for a free account here. 

Kahoot!

This weekend we played Kahoot at an evening program for our church. It got me thinking about how fun it would be to use in the classroom. This year we have 1:1 IPADS and so it is possible for us to play as a class. I just set up for first game, a math one. Can't wait to surprise my class with this engaging way to review what we have learned this year so far in math. Have you ever used Kahoot in your class? I will check back in tomorrow night to tell you how it all went. Stay tuned! If you want to create a game of your own (over any topic) for your own class follow this link. For now, I will leave you with this great reminder. 

How will you create happiness in your classroom tomorrow?

Communities

The classrooms at my school are organized into pods. In my pod, we have grades 1-3. Kindergarten is in another pod, but also moves to ours for some activities. Within our pod, we have a rotation of yearly themes. This year, our theme of focus is community. Each classroom can take that focus in any direction they choose. My class has begun by studying the different types of communities: urban, suburban, and rural. We have been creating representations of the different types of communities using different art methods. 

For our Suburban art activity, each student created trees in green and also fall colors. Each student also created a house. Afterwards, we rolled out a long piece of paper and each student claimed a space. Their job was to turn the individual houses into a community project that showed a suburban neighborhood. They had to place their houses and trees in their space and could add grass, a road, clouds, etc. I am loving how it turned out overall...despite that fact that we ended up with three suns....live and learn. Next time I do this project, we will discuss ways to be more successful and only include one sun. 

For the rural area, we did a directed drawing of hills. On each hill, students were to create a pattern of stripes, swirls, circles, or whatever their heart decided. Once the landscape was done, we added fences, a farm, and animals on top of the hills. We simply colored these with crayons. We focus a lot on quality of work at our school and because of that, we will be redoing some of our farm pictures to up that quality. It's a process.

Our final community is the urban city. We looked at some pictures of big cities. We talked about the shapes we saw. We discussed the different types of buildings. Then we drew our own cities. Afterward, we got out the watercolor paints and the details came alive. I am loving these. Most of my friends did an amazing job!

Next week, I hope to wrap all of our community learning up and move on to something new.   

Math Fun with Balloons

The kiddos in my class keep running across the balloons I had in my closet and were wanting to break them open and take one. I keep telling them that I have them for activities. So last week I was trying to think of a fun and easy way to use them. That's when I had the idea that we could use them to practice the money skills we have been working to master. I gave each pair of students a balloon. They had to try to keep it up in the air and each time one of them hit the balloon they would say the next number that you count when counting by 5's (nickels). If they dropped the balloon, they had to start again. After a couple of super-engaged minutes, each pair got a chance to tell me their highest score. Then we switched it and did the same thing counting by 10's (dimes). To say they had fun was an understatement. I held onto the balloons for a couple of days. At the end of day two, I gave each student their own balloon which had some coins inside. They had to pop the balloon and then  they used an exit ticket to tell me which coins were inside, the value of each coin, and the total of all coins. It was quick, it was simple, and sometimes the simple ideas are the best ideas. For less than a buck we practiced skills we needed to in a fun way and got students laughing, interacting with each other, and totally engaged. What's better than that? 

Nature Journals & Scavenger Hunts

When I was engrossed in my master's degree program, nature journaling was a huge part of it. My master's is in outdoor education so we kept field journals full of notes, sketches, and watercolor paintings. That journal has since disappeared somewhere in my mementos, I am sure. But those classes, those moments sitting quietly, soaking nature in by streams, in fields, and by simple planters got me thinking about how this could make a difference in my classroom and with my students. 

In the years since, I have done nature journaling with some classes and not with others. I loved the times that I did do nature journaling and the students seemed to as well. This is a great activity that can enhance observation techniques and documentation skills. It is a reflective activity that brings those tech overloaded students a way to connect again with nature. 

Statistics show that today's children are outdoors less than ever before. While they spend hours staring at a screen each day, the average student spends merely a handful of minutes in unstructured outdoor activities. Despite the research that shows the way students with ADHD and other disorders are impacted positively with a few minutes in nature, students are kept inside, locked in their learning indoors. 

Why can't they go out and experience the calming effect of nature? Why aren't they being allowed to garden, play, walk, and yes, journal in the great outdoors? Students and all people need this connection to nature as it reduces stress and gives a sense of peace. 

This year I have moved to a new school. At our school, we are creating a lot of outdoor learning environments. We have an osprey pole that is waiting for nesting season and an osprey family to build it's first nest. We have a bat house. A pond with an island and dock are situated at the back of our property. A trail has just been blazed through our wooded area. You guys, I am so excited about all that is happening. I have big plans for these gifts our school has been given. But even if your school is in a city with little natural areas, most schools do have flower boxes or shrubs, trees, or even picnic areas. Get those students out of the class. You will never regret it.

Here is a collection of resources to help me along the way. You can also check them out on TPT by clicking on the names below.


Bug Journal

Nature Journal

Scavenger Hunt

I am getting ready to brush off my nature journaling resources and get my students out there to connect with nature again or maybe for the first time. I can't wait to combat their nature deficit disorder with a touch of nature. What about you?

Pop Math Game Fun

The beginning of the year is a great time to spend some time reviewing skills. I needed to spend a couple of weeks reviewing these basic skills to get a feel for where my students were at the beginning of our year together. I was looking for a fun and engaging way to practice tally marks. I found a few ideas, but wanted another game to throw in the mix. That's when I created this simple Pop math review game. It's quick, easy, and will keep your students engaged while you  work with small groups. Check it out over here.