All of these organizational printables shown on this blog post are FREE! This page contains affiliate links. Read Full Disclosure
Easy student sticker reward system that is great for classroom management! Sharing how my students earn stickers and more!
Explore these fun and informative ideas to build a strong classroom community in primary grades! From student jobs to team building activities, foster a sense of belonging in kindergarten, 1st grade, and 2nd grade. These classroom community lessons to build friendship, respect, and kindness will help you create a learning environment where students thrive. Grab the FREE classroom community activities and respect scenario role play task cards to get you started!
9 valuable lessons I've learned about Classroom Management as a middle school teacher!
What is better than creating an engaging lesson for your class? Creating a fliphunt! Check out the details and start the adventure!
Teach children art history through a variety of fun art projects and lessons. We love using artists as inspiration for our own creations.
This is a great object lesson to explain God's love to kids
These all about me, back to school art activities for kids are engaging icebreakers. Encourage creativity and build community during the first week back
Social Emotional Learning (SEL) has been found to promote academic success and increase students' commitment to school. Generally, there are five key components that make up social emotional learning. These competencies include self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and decision making. Today, I'd like to focus on ways to help students develop self-awareness. Self-awareness includes one's ability to recognize emotions, have an accurate self-perception, identify strengths, develop confidence, and show self-efficacy. Researchers have found that a student's ability to control his or her feelings, thoughts, and behaviors can be linked to academic success. So, let's take a look at some easy ways to help students develop an awareness of their individual characteristics and personal emotions. All About Me - A - Z This activity helps students to define and identify a variety of aspects about themselves. They'll create a list about themselves with a characteristic, quality, or emotion for each letter of the alphabet. Materials: Piece of paper, pen or pencil Directions: - On a piece of paper, have students create two columns. (Or grab a ready-made poster here.) - Have them write all the letters of the alphabet in each column. - Then, challenge them to write something about themselves for each letter. For instance, they might write "gregarious" for G or "curious" for C. Ideas: - Share your own A to Z list with students first. - Create a class list of emotions and descriptive words to get students started. - Assemble students' finished lists in a class book. Moment of Mindfulness Mindfulness is a great way to build self-awareness. Since mindfulness is all about paying attention to the present moment, it's a great way for students to pause and reflect on how they are feeling, what they are thinking, and what they need in the present. It's simple to do too! Ways to take a moment of mindfulness: - At the beginning of class, have students close their eyes and take several deep breaths. Ask students to pay attention to their breathing. - Share a mindfulness quote with students to help focus students' thoughts during a moment of mindfulness. - Pause during instruction and have students do a self-awareness check. Encourage them to be mindful of their thoughts and feelings. Reflective Journaling Reflective journaling is a powerful way to help students become self-aware. With targeted writing prompts, students can develop insight into their feelings, make sense of their experiences, and build clarity on their thoughts. When students write about their own experiences and feelings, they become more self-aware. Materials: - A notebook and/or computer, pen or pencil, writing prompts - A list of writing prompts that spark self-reflection, these might include: --- Write about a time when you were proud of yourself. --- List ten things that make you feel excited. --- Reflect on how you have changed this year. --- What is something that you find challenging? (Check out a set of 10 engaging prompts here.) Ideas: - Have students respond to their prompts as if they are writing a letter to themselves..."Dear me..." - Read students' responses and respond to their writing in the margins. Add questions and positive notes at the end of their writing to build connections and spark further reflections. - Schedule a time each day or week for journaling to make it an intentional part of your classroom community. Growth Mindset There are many ways to help students develop a growth mindset. When students develop an understanding that all forms of intelligence are malleable, they are inspired to work toward success. That's why it is so powerful to infuse lessons about growth mindset into instruction. Giving students a moment to reflect on their own mindsets builds self-awareness. Materials: - Short lessons or articles about Growth Mindset to help students understand the differences between a fixed and growth mindset. - Series of questions about students' own mindsets. Directions: - After teaching students about Growth Mindset, have students respond to questions about their own mindsets. - Give students a chance to share their responses with a partner, small group, or the entire class. Ideas: - Share and display inspirational quotes about growth mindset. (I particularly love paper desk tents. They are an easy way to display quotes right on students' desks.) - Highlight important people who demonstrate a growth mindset. Emotions Skits Researchers have noted that there are at least six universal emotions. These include happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, fear, and disgust. Help students investigate and demonstrate these universal emotions by challenging them to write a short play or skit that involves a character or many characters experiencing one of the universal emotions. Materials: - List of the universal emotions, paper, pen - Skit planning pages (optional) Ideas: - Review the six universal emotions with students. As a class have students brainstorm what each emotion looks like (how people look when they are experiencing that emotion) and sounds like (what people might say when experiencing that emotion). - Brainstorm situations where people might feel each emotion. Encourage students to share personal situations when they felt a certain way. - Divide students into small groups. Secretly assign each group an emotion. - Challenge students to write a script that their small group could act out for the class that demonstrates that emotion. - Have small groups perform for the class. Have the audience identify the emotion prevalent in the skit. Self Check-In Daily feelings check-ins are a great way to build self-awareness. When students are given the opportunity to assess how they are feeling and share their emotions with others, they begin to know themselves more fully. Self check-ins also help normalize feelings. Materials: - Paper with an open grid shape - List of feelings Directions: - Pass out the gridded paper to students. - Have them fill the grid with different emotions. - Then, have students display the grid on their desks. - Have them place a token or shape on the emotion that shows how they are feeling at a particular moment. Ideas: - Once students can recognize their feelings, help them to develop strategies for regulating their emotions. - Encourage students to track their feelings over an entire school day. Then, discuss how feelings change in different situations. -------------------------------------------------- I hope you've found a few ways to help students develop self-awareness. Incorporating lessons that target social emotional learning is essential in today's classrooms. If you're looking for ready-made resources, check out this set of 10 SEL reading passages and this set of 6 Self-Awareness Activities. Thanks for stopping by! Mary Beth
This post explains how teachers can use an academic version of the highly engaging Spoons game to review concepts. Free games included!
Here are some of my favorites STEM books for kids that you can add to your collection today! Before starting a STEM or building challenge, I always read a book with my class. I love connecting literacy, sitting together on the carpet, and engaging my students in discussions. There are so many amazing books that ... Read more
A lesson plan! A lesson plan! My kingdom for a lesson plan!
These three icebreakers for teens will make the first class, youth group, or club fun for everyone, even the introverts.
The story of Zacchaeus is a great way to teach your little ones how they should treat their friends. A man that no one was too fond of and Jesus went to HIS house...what a great story of kindness!Here's how I taught this story to my little learners...ARRIVALWe started class just like every week. During the
Whether you are in remote learning or in the classroom, you can spice up learning by incorporating science songs into your classroom. If you are distance teaching, I love the idea of starting the Google Meet or Zoom session by playing one of these songs to get your students motivated and engaged for science class. ... Read more
So, yesterday I showed you how I got my angle studies kicked off with my students–how I solidified understanding of “right angle”. We had lots left to accomplish–so I’ll try to share some of the different lessons and activities we did over the next days! Tip 1: If you can get your hands on thin […]
Happy Fall! I don’t know about you, but for me, at this time in the year, the back to school rush of adrenaline has worn off. Students have settled into their classes, behaviors start to escalate and as an art teacher, you’re just plain worn out. But after classes are done for the day, you have to attend to all of the cleaning, organizing, school duties, meetings lesson planning & prepping for the next day. . Art teachers are really AMAZING. The amount of work you do on a daily basis is unreal a
Developing empathy in children has never been more fun than with this collection of 19 simple empathy activities for kids!
The Kindergarten artists and PreKinders also created some artwork inspired by Mondrian. The PreKinders glued down black lines creating squares and rectangles they then colored some of their shapes …
One of the great (and probably easiest) ways to gamify your teaching is through the use of game generators. These are tools that enable you to easily create various educational games without the need for any coding knowledge. And if you are wondering which tools to use, I have recommendations for you!
Geometric Art
Use letter activities like alphabet collages or letter mats to help kids learn letter recognition and to reinforce letter-sound associations. Here are over 200 material ideas that you can use for your
Our art and craft printables have moved and can now be found HERE>>>
This spring is presenting new challenges for teachers all across the country. Some of us are getting ready to go back to the classroom for the first time this year. Some of us have been in person all year, but we are about to get new virtual kids. Some of you have been in the ... Read More about Classroom Management and Expectations
PRIMARY SCIENCE UNIT 1 - THE HUMAN BODY We are so excited to dig into Unit 1 in our science sequence! We kick off science this year with My Body and My Five Senses . It is the perfect place to start science with our primary kiddos. This year we are going to explore and learn about the
Students can travel across the globe without leaving the classroom. Check out these fun geography lessons for any grade and curriculum.
Free homeschool art curriculum with famous artists, art history lessons, world culture, easy art techniques and a weekly online art lesson.
DIY Song Cubes to help children learn music "old favorites" and practice finding and keeping the beat; for preschool, pre-k, and kindergarten.
Earlier this year, my co-worker Jayne found the idea to make a collaborative school-wide paper mural based on the artwork of Thank YouX. The idea for a student mural originally came from Jenell Novello and you can see the lesson plan write-up on Artsonia. She also so generously provided the lesson plan and templates on Google docs. Thank You X got his name by accident. In 2009 Andy Warhol’s spray painted portrait was spotted on a city street in L.A.. … Read more... →
Don't let a short schedule keep you from providing engaging library programming. These 30-minute library lessons are perfect for librarians!
Check out these gorgeous Romero Britto inspired art activities...
We've been excited about sharing all of the fabulous and free creation crafts that are perfect for teaching about our amazing creator! Grab our Creation Craft Globe for kids!
Teaching kids about our world, geography, maps, and more. Kindergarten Social Studies Lessons made easy #kindergarten #socialstudies
Check out this list of over 85 Apps that Integrate with Google Classroom! Did you know that Google Classroom plays well with others? Yep! Google is known for making their applications open to working with third-party applications, and Google Classroom is no exception.
Learn why one-pagers are one of my go-to activities for breaking down complex topics and texts. Understand what they are, why you and your students will love them, and how to implement them in your ELA classroom. I even have the advice to help you tackle the biggest obstacle you’ll encounter with this activity.
This blog post explores innovative and engaging lesson plans for any novel unit... ranging from task cards to book instagram pages to a novel podcast project. Student choice is key here, and students can find something they would like to complete in order to convey their reading, comprehension, and
Super fun project for your Pre-k, Kindergarteners, and even 1st Graders. Your students will have so much fun mixing colors, whether they are just learning about color, or revisiting color mixing. This project is very versatile and can be created using a variety of mediums such as watercolor paint, t...
Learn how to create simple models and maps with early years students with this free geography printable!
