Let's Celebrate!

My list of favorite things about teaching grows each and everyday. Here's one of the things I love about being a teacher (put quite nicely by Todd Whitaker):

We all have the opportunity for this year to be whatever we want it to be. That is one thing that makes teaching so special. #IAedchat

— Todd (@ToddWhitaker) July 27, 2015

One of my goals for this brand-spankin' new year is to celebrate more. One way to celebrate more is with birthdays. We've all got them! Each one of my students deserves a day where they can be truly celebrated. 

Therefore, I present to you our birthday treats of room 52:

I made my schnazzy birthday tags with KG fonts, ribbon, and tasty kid-approved snacks. 

You can download your own copy of these birthday tags through Google Drive here.  

How do you celebrate in your classroom? 

Share with me! Help me reach my goals!

Meet the Fairy Scientist

Every year, we begin our year in science by chatting about scientist stereotypes. Students illustrate a picture of the "scientist" they have envisioned in their head and we have great conversations about how we ALL are scientists.. we don't have to look like a mad man to be a scientist! Every year, I have structured the activity differently and each year yields different conversation. One year, I even dressed up like a mad scientist - now that was FUN! Read about it here.

Like year's past, students first illustrated a picture independently in their science notebook of the scientist they were imagining in their head. Then, we chatted about similarities in all of the pictures and common themes and characteriristics we noticed. 

For the most part, the illustrations looked something like this....

 

Then, I brought everyone to the carpet and showed them this video:

Lydia the Fairy Scientist

At the conclusion of the video I posed the following question to the class, "Why would I show you this video?"

The conversation was amazing! Students were breaking down stereotypes of scientists and talking about how scientists can be anyone and have a passion for ANYTHING. 

To wrap up the lesson, we wrote in our notebooks, "A scientist is someone who..." Then small groups filled in various characteristics based on our conversation. 

Fantastic way to kick off the year!

Seeking Input for our Morning Procedure

There are two procedures that have caused me the most grief over the past five years (see! I have so much to learn) and those are: morning and afternoon procedures.  This year, I decided to shake things up a bit and make a change - for the better! Instead of creating a procedure for the kids to memorize and follow... we established a procedure as a class. Which, I must add, coincidentally was exactly what I wanted them to do anyway! 

Using another idea, and quality tool, presented in our district-wide kick off meetings, I asked students the following questions:

What is YOUR job in the mornings? Specifically from 7:50-8:12 AM...

What is MY (the teacher) job in the morning?

What is our job as a classroom in the morning?

Each student was given the opportunity to answer the questions on their own and stick their post-it note on the front board. 

As a class, we read through and grouped similar responses under the "Your Job, My Job, Our Job" categories. Some of the "Your Job" responses were: filling out planners, sharpening pencils, unpacking backpacks, using the restroom, etc. As for "My Job", students wanted to be greeted, wanted me to prepare for the school day, drink my coffee (hah!), give hugs, and talk to them. For "Our Job" students felt it was important to get prepared for the school day. 

Umm.. NAILED IT. 

We drafted our morning procedure and hung it proudly on the whiteboard for all to see. It would have been easier to iron out this procedure for me to write this on my own, but seeking input from my students was far more powerful. When students came in Friday morning, the morning ran like clockwork. It was ah-maze-ing. 

Now... let's hope they remember over the weekend! If not, we can always practice the procedure they created. :)

What tips do you have for establishing classroom procedures?

Creating a Classroom Mission Statement

Like most teachers, our first order of business in the classroom is to establish a solid foundation for the rest of the school year. This includes establishing a classroom community, getting to know one another, ironing out the procedures and routines of our room, figuring out our daily schedule... and learning on the fly. Let's just say, we had several "teachable moments" today on the second day of 5th grade. 

My district kicked off back to school meetings by introducing six different quality tools we could implement in our classrooms in the following days. Of course, I left our meetings and started rewriting my lesson plans to start adding in some of the tools introduced. If you're interested in quality tools (i.e. plus/deltas, consensograms, affinity diagrams, etc.) click on the link here.  

In previous years (four to be exact), I've used the story "The Kingdom With No Rules or Laws" to begin our conversation on classroom norms. After reading the story, students would suggest classroom norms and we would compile all of the results into a positive list, sign the document, and post it for all to see. 

This year, in place of "The Kingdom..." story, we created a classroom mission statement. I began the conversation by showing students our SOTO Mission Statement - which was a conversation in itself. I'm certain none of my students were aware this "phrase" existed. 

Disclaimer: This is how I chose to do this activity in my classroom, by no means am I saying this is the absolute way it has to happen. :)

Yes! We can!

 Next, I explained to the class how we could create a classroom mission statement to simply state who we are and our purpose for the year.  After handing out post-its to five different tables, I posed the following questions:

Who are we?

What will you need to do in order to be successful this year?

What can I, the teacher, do to help you be successful this year?

What should the students do in order for things to run smoothly?

How are we going to accomplish these tasks?

After about five minutes, groups shared out their responses from the post-it notes. As students were talking, I help form their thoughts into a cohesive paragraph. After a few minutes of collaborating, our classroom mission statement had been created!

Perhaps I'm biased, but my favorite part of the statement is where they asked for me to entertain them. Oh, my students! Ask and you shall receive. 

To polish things off, each student took turns signing our mission statement and vowed to hold one another accountable to our classroom expectations. 

It's going to be a great year!

Letter to Future Me

Tuck this idea away for the start (and end) of the school year....

 I was inspired to do this project by a teacher at my high school who had her students write letters to themselves in her classroom. Her promise was mail the letters back to each student several years down the road. Imagine the surprise when my friends opened up the letters they had written in high school to themselves! I wanted to create the same type of nostalgic experience for my students... with a slightly shorter time period. 

On one of the first few days of school, I have my brand new 5th graders write letters to their "future selfs". After discussing goals for the school year, I have students write a letter to themselves for the last week of school. Then, once my students leave my doors for the last time (and I've dried my tears), I send their letters to them in the mail. Of course, I always take a peak once more at their writing and admire how much they have grown over the past school year. I'll admit, it's a neat experience for me as a teacher. 

This year, I had several students remind ME about my promise to send the letters in late May. They were not going to let me forget that I had made them a promise on the first day of school!

Calling Mr. Postman!

Teaching Like a Pirate!

I know for a fact I am not the only teacher out there obsessed with Dave Burgess' book, "Teach Like a Pirate". It captivated me this summer and I encouraged several of my coworkers to read it as well. We are constantly swapping pirate-like ideas and love speaking out Burgess' book like he is an old friend. If for some reason you haven't jumped on the Pirate bandwagon - now is your chance! 

Hop to it!

Fresh Out of the Amazon Package!

In the book, Burgess walks teachers through his first three days of school. One of the activities he does with his new students is with play-doh. He gives each of his (high school!!) students play-doh and asks them to create something that describes them. While students are making play-doh creations, he walks around the room getting to know the students on a personal level. 

As soon as I read this idea, I knew I had to try it with my class - plus, who doesn't love play-doh? One afternoon, I passed out play-doh and gave the students the challenge of creating something with the 'doh about themselves. As I moved around the room, I witnessed a variety of objects being created. I had softballs, flowers, bow and arrows, high heels, horseshoes, and so on. It also gave me time to ask students why they were creating what they were. What that bow and arrow or softball meant to them - it was an excellent time to really get to know my kids. 

A Horseshoe for the Horse Lover

How do you get to know your students at the beginning of school? Do share!

Classroom Blueprints

We are starting the fifth week of fifth grade and I am just now blogging about our first week activities! Oops, I guess with the start of a new school year something had to take the back burner and my poor little blog was the one that got tossed. 

Thanks to an inspirational blog post by a teacher blogger, I decided to have my students draw blueprints for the tables and chairs in the classroom. (I could have let them move the bookshelves...but I stuck with just tables!) 

In small groups, students collaborated on a set up for our classroom. They had to agree upon a layout for our five tables. My only request was for there to be at least four chairs at each table. Once groups were finished with their blueprint, it was hung on the board for class voting. 

To end the activity, students walked around the room and added a tally mark to the layout they liked the best. It was a really fun activity, and I was quite impressed with the table arrangements my kids came up with - very creative use of space! 

Happy Monday! 

Back to School - Setting Goals!

Wow! The first week went by so quickly. By Friday I felt like we were getting into a groove for the school year and my new crew was coming out of their shells. We even had several moments of dancing as a group. Talk about a good week! 

The entire week was devoted to getting to know each other as a classroom community and becoming one big happy family. An activity we did involved goal setting and decorating pennants. I can thank my wonderful friend/coworker for giving me an idea on how to get us started thinking about goals. Here's how the activity played out:

My entire class is standing in the grass on the playground in a straight (horizontal) line. I looked at them and said, "Are you ready?" I got blank stares. I said, "Are you READY???" Then I said, "GO!" No one moved. I said.. "GO!" I heard several confused responses from my class like, "huh?" "where?" "are you serious?". Then I said, "RUN!"

Next thing you know my kids are running all over the place. No one had any idea where to go, when to stop, or if they could start playing kickball. It was quite the mess of 5th grade confusion. I rallied everyone back to the grass and gave them a goal. I said, "Run to the soccer net!" My kids took off running with an end result in mind. Once everyone made it to the net, we began having a conversation about the purpose of setting goals, how we can help one another achieve our goals, and how we all reach goals at different times - and that's okay folks! 

After our chat, I instructed students to come up with two goals for themselves academically.  Each student was given a pennant (that I modeled after one I saw in a magazine and recreated on Word). The pennant was to be decorated to their liking, have two goals written, and their picture would be placed in the circle. 

All the pennants are done and goals are set.  Now they are proudly on display in our classroom. (Side note, another goal of mine this year was to incorporate more student photos around the room. I think this will add to the ownership factor of our classroom. It's their home away from home, might as well feel like it!)

How was your first week? Hopefully wonderfully! Share your fun ideas with me as well. 

Building Community with Padlet

I've started planning my first few days of school and my mind has been spinning with ideas. My mind is racing so much that it's started to affect my dreams. Each night they get a little weirder and complicated. Once, I dreamt I arrived at school to find the entire hallway decorated like a farm. Everyone was dressed in farm attire with cows and goats. I missed the memo and barely remembered to put on pants! I was distraught because my classroom looked nothing like a farm... Weird, huh? 

Back to planning... :)

In one of my Specialist classes this summer, our icebreaker activity was to post on the discussion board a photo that represents us and write a brief explanation. Why not have 5th graders do the same? Since I don't use a discussion board format, I thought it would be fun to get a jumpstart with Padlet (formally Wallwisher). This activity will introduce my students to the functions of padlet: uploading images, writing text, and posting on the board as well as introducing themselves to one another. Not too shabby if you ask me! 

I've started our Padlet wall with my own intro and image. I'm excited to see what unique posts my students create!

Created with Padlet

Step One: Build Community

One week down, folks! It's been a very busy week in and out of the classroom. I'm sure I'm not the only teacher who has been cashing in early mornings and late nights. Although, I've said several times that I've been anxiously awaiting having an actual to do list. Now my to do list grows everyday! I've noticed that I've been adding things on the list that I know I can easily accomplish. For example: wake up. check! eat breakfast. check! You can see where I'm going with this. Other things, such as grading assessments and cutting out tribal tickets seem to be reoccurring events that haven't quite been crossed off. 

I wanted to share some of the community building and back to school activities we've been testing out this year. In return, I would love to hear how you're promoting a positive atmosphere in YOUR room. I do love bloggy collaboration!

Scrabble. 

I talked in great detail of my personal Scrabble woes and my plan to use it in the classroom here. It was AWESOME! I handed out the cut up tiles and challenged the students to create their name (in some way). We had nicknames, last names, and some first names. Students approached our class Scrabble board (butcher paper) and placed their tiles to spell their name. When others were stumped, I had several students chiming in suggestions to help out. It was a beautiful, collaborative, and student driven activity. 

I wish I could show you our finished product, but since it's full of my student's names - you'll have to pretend!

Toilet Paper.

Yes, I busted out three rolls of toilet paper in my classroom. I was very vague with my details as I tossed around TP.  All I said was, "take some toilet paper!" The kids thought it was hilarious. Kids were looping it around their hands while some were taking one single square.  Then, I dropped a community building bomb on them. The rules were that for however many sheets of toilet paper they grabbed, they had to share that many facts about them. Cue the groans all over the room. After they got over the trickery aspect, they had a good time!

Establishing Classroom Norms & Rules. 

Earlier in the summer, I shared my ultra-exciting guest blogging experience HERE with Really Good Stuff. As a class, we came up with a list of our norms. One student asked, "what's a norm?" Before I could chime in an appropriate answer another gentleman replied, "Umm.. it's something you wear to the beach." 

Not quite. Then we had a reminder mini lesson on raising our hand. :)

Job Applications.

As of Monday, students were officially hired for jobs in the classroom. After the excruciating job application process (I kid.. I kid), I reviewed the applications and assigned our first quarter jobs. Two days in and my heart rate isn't near as elevated at the end of the day. Read more about my job applications here!

Later this week, I plan on sharing a few writing and "get to know you" activities! 

Th-th-that's all folks!

Build Community With Scrabble!

Scrabble is one of my favorite games. Like most people around the world (including Alec Baldwin), I was addicted to Words With Friends. Not only could I play Scrabble but I could play long drawn out games with all of my friends. Perfect!

Unfortunately, I'm not very good. Honestly, I'm pretty terrible, but I keep playing. I'm 99.9% sure that my friends kept playing me so they could rack up their wins. Actually, I'm positive of this... because I've been informed of this.

I've taken several beatings. 

I had a pretty powerful streak of losing going on there for awhile. My friend's dad and I played for MONTHS. Then, sweet victory came my way and I won.  On the day I finally beat him.... I didn't plan on challenging him to another game,  but I accepted and ended up losing...again. Obviously, I haven't played in sometime. I suppose the sting of all of the losing finally caught up with me. OR! I just got hooked on Draw Something! and I couldn't handle that many games going on with friends. 

We're very familiar with the first few days of school being quite stressful and busy busy busy.  This year, I wanted to tie in Scrabble with my community building activities. It's been decided (and written in my plans) that the class will play a collective game of Scrabble. Why not!?

Here's how:

I'll start the game by giving an introduction to the game of Scrabble and how it works. I have a scrabble board and actual tiles to demonstrate. 

Next, I'll issue the challenge: As a class, we must fit our names together on the scrabble "board". The board will actually be the wall and the "tiles" are made of paper. Thanks to Christniana and her awesome Scrabble Freebie on TpT! 

I'll start with my name, first. Then, students can grab tiles (that have been cut and laminated for future use!) and spell out their first, last, middle, or nickname. I'm hoping students use nicknames to add into the fun. 

Not only will we be practicing our names, but we can learn more about each other as each student adds their name to our classroom board! I plan to encourage students to help one another by building from the growing names on the board. We may have to fudge on the rules of actual Scrabble just a tad to make it work. 

What community building activities do you use to start off the year?