This post may contain affiliate links.There is a simple trick that school therapists and teachers use a lot for kids who have trouble sitting still. It is to put some Thera-Band stretched around a chair’s legs so that the student can push on it while sitting in their chair. It can help a child who...
Looking for a fun way to teach 2D shapes? This marshmallow geometry activity will do the trick - and fill your tummy!
My kiddos are always asking for hands on science activities, even if it’s one we have done over and over like this Hovercraft Science experiment project.
Life-Sized Felt Anatomy Model
Learn how do hands work with this fun, hands-on human body project for kids. In this working model children will learn about muscles!
Ok, just because I've been gone from 'blogging land' doesn't mean we haven't been working hard in 4B. I've definitely been documenting a lot of what we've been doing! To start, it was clear to me that our old way of peer conferencing just wasn't working. Kids seemed to be goofing around, not really helping each other, and it was a waste of everyone's time. It frustrated me when most of my one-on-one conference time was spent managing unruly PEER conferences. I knew something had to change. I decided to revamp our workshop so that our peer conferences would hold both the author and the peer more accountable AND work on our 6-traits language. I introduced our 'new' method for peer conferencing using this anchor chart to document our process. After students finish drafting, they are to grab a 6-traits peer conferencing sheet and assess themselves by circling all the descriptors for each trait that they feel match their own writing. Mind you, we did a lot of whole-class practice with scoring writing based on the 6-traits criteria so students would feel comfortable doing this process on their own (and being HONEST!). Through our mini-lessons we've learned that it's possible to have high scores in some traits but lower scores in others. That's how we grow! Here you see Devin circling where he thinks his writing falls on our 6-traits rubric. (Note: The link to the 6-traits peer conferencing sheet above will bring you to an even more updated version than the one shown in this blog posting! Just FYI!) Here's another student assessing her own writing after she's drafted. This student has finished assessing her writing using our rubric. She decides on a final number score and circles it to the left of the descriptors. Then it's time to meet with a peer. (We have a peer conference sign-up sheet in our room which helps students know which other students in the room are also ready to peer conference.) Here you see this author reading his story to his peer. After he's done reading, he will explain to his peer the scores he gave himself and why. It's important for the peer to listen carefully to the author because it will soon be her turn to assign a score to this author for each trait . On the lines on the rubric, she will write to explain the scores she gives him. The peer needs to follow the following sentence stems in his/her scoring response: * I give this a writer a ___ because... * This writer needs to work on ... This process requires peers to truly work together, hold each other accountable, and it gets the kids using our 6-traits language a lot more. The second sentence stem helps the writer establish a goal for what to work on when revising! To see more of this peer conferencing process, watch a clip of us practicing this stage! Our focus lately has been on the trait of organization. We've been looking thoroughly at different beginnings and endings of both student and published writing. Here is our anchor chart documenting what we noticed! In other Writer's Workshop news, these are a few additional anchor charts we have in our room to help keep our writing organized. This anchor chart reminds us of powerful words to use to spice up 'said'! In reading we have been working hard on purposeful talk.This is so very important to the social construction of knowledge in any classroom! It's essential to teach students purposeful talk behaviors before even considering literature discussion groups (LDGs). The majority of kids talk like...well, KIDS! So, if we expect kids to talk like mature young people about different texts they read, we need to explicitly teach them how! Talking about Text by Maria Nichols is a great place to start if you're interesting in learning more about purposeful talk behaviors. I taught each of the behaviors individually through two separate mini-lessons - one day to explain 'hearing all voices' in a concrete way (without text), and a second day to practice 'hearing all voices' using text. Then I taught 'saying something meaningful' in a concrete way without using text, and the next day we practiced 'saying something meaningful' using text , and so on. Eventually all of the purposeful talk behaviors kind of blended together and kids started to discover that we often need to use all of these things at the same time in order to truly talk purposefully about anything! We did a lot of practicing, and I've been taping students in this process. Here is a clip of students practicing their behaviors while they talk about their families. (We had read a few books about different kinds of families to foster a safe environment to celebrate the fact that we all have different kinds of families!) We also had students practice their purposeful talk behaviors while discussing their best or worst memory in school (which helped warm up their brains for a timed writing activity we did during writer's workshop). Here is a clip! As a class, we watched these video clips to analyze our body language and other purposeful talk behaviors. I think taping and analyzing is a very effective way for students to learn how they should look and sound in an LDG. 'Keeping the lines of thinking alive' is a tough concept for many youngsters. Sometimes what happens is that students take turns talking, but they don't really build on what the person before them said. In other words, they don't really DISCUSS, they just share and listen. We applauded the first group in this clip because they had good body language and were respectful as listeners, but we discovered their conversation needed to be more 'alive' by asking questions and making connections to each other's ideas and thoughts. Mrs. Pierce and I taped ourselves doing a weak LDG and a strong LDG. As we watched each example, we used dots and lines to 'map out' our conversations (see chart below). In the weak LDG, we discovered Mrs. Pierce and I shared a lot of individual thoughts. The thought started, and then it stopped. There was really no discussion about anything we said; and Mrs. Pierce wasn't even looking at me during part of our time together! How rude! ;) In the strong LDG example, we mapped out a lot of dots and lines that were connected because we took each other's ideas and built on them. We truly discussed the text to dig deeper. We introduced several conversational moves for students to use to help get their voice heard in a conversation. Students also have these conversational moves on a bookmark that they keep in their LDG books. After we learned the respectful ways to speak and act when discussing with others, it was time to teach our kids how to flag their thinking. This is a crucial step to holding a successful literature discussion group because it allows the kids to track their important thoughts while reading so they have ideas for discussion the next day. Here are the 'codes' we use to track our thinking on post-its. We encourage students to use one of our codes to categorize the kind of thought they have and then write a few words to trigger their thought. This helps them when they get into a discussion group; they'll actually have pinpointed ideas to discuss! Students kept a chart in their Thoughtful Logs with all of our codes on it for easy reference. Here's a clip of our students as they practice flagging their thinking for the first time. The next day, students put all their new learning to the test. We put them in small groups to discuss the text "Slower Than the Rest" which is a short realistic fiction story out of Cynthia Rylant's book Every Living Thing. On another day, we used a high-interest two-page non-fiction text about leeches to continue practicing flagging our thoughts. Here's a clip of our kids flagging their thinking just after we modeled it during our mini-lesson. Below are some pictures of the kids' flagged thoughts. In addition to purposeful talk, we've also been studying the historical fiction genre. We've read several mentor texts, including Dakota Dugout by Ann Turner and Dandelions by Eve Bunting. Our first round of literature discussion books are all within the historical fiction genre. Here are a few of our historical fiction LDGs hard at work: Dear Levi: Letters from the Overland Trail Scraps of Time: Abby Takes a Stand The River and the Trace (I think I put my finger over the microphone at minute 2:00!) Oftentimes, historical fiction books will have a flashback in them. One group's book, called A Scrap of Time: Abby Takes a Stand by Patricia McKissick, has a flashback that occurs towards the beginning of the story. I photocopied some of the pages to try to explain this technique during a whole class mini-lesson. In the first section of the book, three grandkids are spending time with their grandma in her attic. They find an old menu and ask their grandma why she saved it. Chapters 1 through 12 flash back to 1960, where 'grandma' is just 10-years-old, living in Nashville, Tennessee at the time of a lot of civil rights protests. The menu is from a restaurant where a lot of sit-ins took place. Through the flashback a reader learns all about life during the 1960s. In the final section of the book, a reader finds him/herself back in the present - in grandma's attic, where the three grandkids ask their grandma some questions about her life during the sixties. There was also another flashback in the story Dakota Dugout by Ann Turner. We also read The Wreck of the Zephyr by Chris VanAllsburg as an example of a flashback in a fantasy book! In other reading news, here is a picture of the anchor chart that stored all the non-fiction text features we've learned. In social studies, we've been studying the economy of the five U.S. regions. Students have been reading small sections of non-fiction leveled readers to summarize a product or industry that is important to each region's economy. Students are typing up their summaries and we're calling those summaries 'articles' as they each create a magazine of our economy. Through this project, students have learned to: * Summarize main ideas * Center and left-justify their cursor * Use the tab key to indent * Change font size, color, and style * Bold, underline, and italicize * Safe image searches * Copy and paste * Cite their picture resources Here is the inside of one student's magazine. Next week we will be using this site to create magazine covers! Lastly, we had a chance to meet with our second-grade buddies earlier this month. We split the buddies up into two groups and one group stayed with Mrs. Adams to play holiday bingo. The other group was with me in the computer lab. Buddies used this site to play a variety of math and English games. One of the most popular games to play was called 'Story Plant' where students could click on different leaves to create the beginning to a unique story. Depending on what leaves were clicked, you would get a different combination of characters, settings, problems, etc. The computer generates a beginning to a story that the kids can print off and finish during writer's workshop! Have a wonderful weekend!
I am sharing the tools, tricks, and resources I’ve developed in my 25+ years in the classroom to help you take back your personal time and successfully meet
Basic vocabulary, like knowing prepositions, is necessary for beginning readers. Teach prepositions with this simple game.
Anna Bykova is a lazy mom. And she isn’t ashamed to admit that. Moreover, the psychologist and the author of several best-selling books is even proud of this “title” as she believes that it gives her children an opportunity to become more independent. However, by laziness, Anna doesn’t mean lying on the sofa all day long, but a desire to not do everything herself. For example, sometimes it’s better to be “lazy” and let a 7-year-old do the dishes to improve their fine motor skills. And it’s fine that you’ll have to wipe the floor dry after this and wash the dishes again when the child isn’t looking.
These 4th grade anchor charts reinforce concepts for reading, science, math, behavior management, environmentalism, and more!
I’ve been spending some serious amounts of time this summer leading conversations around the country focused on the integration of social studies and literacy. And for the last few years, I…
Discover five effective strategies for teaching ESL reading comprehension to help your students overcome language barriers and...
We have a really simple balloon and cardboard muscle model that you can make with kids to answer the question, how do muscles work? Kids can learn quickly
These 15 creative paper towel and toilet paper roll crafts let you recycle and keep kids entertained at the same time! (They're also fun for adults!)
The origins of this art lesson came from a pin that I found on Pinterest connecting to the blog B Art Z - Elementary Art. I have been SO excited to blog about my new and improved cup weaving lesson! So last year I attempted to do cup weaving with my some of my students.. and while I loved the results.. the process was infuriating! For some reason I thought it was a great idea to weave with plastic cups - which made sharp jagged edges when cut by children. When that didn't go smoothly I thought myself sooooo clever to switch to styrofoam cups - which ended up making spokes (warp strips) that snapped off when pulled on to much. FINALLY I figured it out - PAPER CUPS!! These work PERFECTLY!! It is easy for the kids to cut the strips themselves AND they are surprisingly very durable. **Get them in bulk here! The first thing I had my kids do was write their name on the bottom of their cup with a sharpie. Then they placed their upside-down cup onto a template I created and made a tick mark on the rim of the cup everywhere where they saw a triangle poking out - this gave them evenly spaced points to cut from. When cutting out the spokes/warp strips, it is extremely important to remember to cut out an odd number of strips so that when you are weaving your AB pattern, the pattern alternates each consecutive time around. I found that with the 9oz cups my kids were using, 9 strips turned out to be the perfect number. Once the strips were cut, students double-knotted a piece of yarn to one of the strips, then began weaving! This particular class worked for 5 days straight on this (they really are a wonderful group).. and I had a few students who even completed 3 very well done cups in this amount of time (a couple even got pulled for our county art show)! :)
Over 80 amazing, simple proprioceptive activities for kids. Learn benefits of proprioceptive input to calm, focus, and alert.
An overview of emotion coaching, an EFFT tool, and a step-by-step guide for using emotion coaching to teach your child self-regulation
I came across this game from one of my peers and think it’s really awesome. In fact I have been using this regularly this year as a fun and creative way to review before a test. So far I have used it prior to my grade 10 chemistry and biology test using the practice questions […]
Middle school is tough, so arm your kids well with these 10 truth bombs so that when the going gets tough, they'll know just how to respond.
Make a homemade spectroscope with a few simple materials and explore the spectrum of different light sources. You’ll see all kinds of rainbows! This science activity for kids makes a great addition to a unit on light or weather and is perfect for St. Patrick’s Day too! Follow our Science for Kids Pinterest board! Light …
Challenge your child’s problem solving skills with this simple STEAM learning activity that combines, art, engineering, and water play. STEAM is the combination of Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math. Most people are familiar with STEM, but we suggest adding the A for Art because Art is an essential part to learning and developing creative...Read More
Stop trying to do parenting in your own strength. Look to the Bible instead. Correcting bad behavior using the Bible is the best way to parent your kids.
Discover over 45 vestibular activities that can calm, regulate, and improve attention in your child. Plus, get vestibular exercises for...
Understanding characters can be tricky! Learn my favorite strategies for helping students master character traits and changes.
This water whistle experiment is good to do if you have 5-10 minutes spare. EC and I had a go making between finishing homework and a music lesson.
Winter solstice has been celebrated all over the world for thousands of years. It occurs on the shortest day and longest night. Although this is often the first day of winter, it also promises the return of the sun after an extended period of darkness.
This is a really easy way to learn about making paper with kids. And we made our paper glittery, too! First: Get Your Supplies! Next: Get to Work! 'Mommy, how do you make paper?' My five year old asked me this question a few weeks ago. I tried explaining it to him, and he wasn't convinced. I showed him a video of how you can make it at home using a mesh screen and paper pulp, and he was obsessed! I wondered about making a screen so that we could try this at home, but then I noticed a Paper
Is it just me or do second graders can not write sentences? These activities are the perfect way to teach your students how to write better sentences!
Here’s a fun science experiment that will definitely get a “wow” from the kids. Combine baking soda and vinegar to make sodium acetate, or hot ice! It crystalizes instantly when you pour it, allowing you to create a tower of crystals. Since the process of crystallization is exothermic, the “ice” that forms will be hot […]
An Interactive Way to Teach Kids Their Address as well as their state, country, continent, and planet! A fun introduction to geography for kids!
Now that we have gone over what to do in early labor, you may wonder what's next. "How will I know once I'm in active labor?" and "What do I do once I'm
Pick something off this list of family-friendly volunteer opportunities to spread kindness and participate in community service projects with your kids.
The kids will have a blast and learn such a powerful lesson with this "Making Good Choices Object Lesson & Family Discussion Outline." Such a cool idea!!
These JANUARY scholarships are snow joke! Discover generous FREE financial aid to help pay for your college education with scholarships like...
The kids and I have been talking about words with ing added on the end. My youngest has just started coming across these words in his reading and his big sister was showing him how to break the wo…
It's Marble Mania! filled with marble games, art and play.
A fun, hands-on way to explore the letter Xx with your students! My students explored the letter Xx and the best word that I know of to examine the letter Xx is x-ray! Begin with a Book We had lots of fun with the word x-ray and today, I will share
So I've been thinking lately, sometimes, especially at night, or when angry, it's hard for a few of my kids to wind down. I've been noticing those glitter bottles around pinterest and I think they would make the perfect calming down activity. That got me thinking....maybe there's also other tips I can use to help my sometimes-angry kids calm down. I've got a great roundup of ideas here, feel free to share and use if you could benefit too! 1. So here's the glitter bottles that I mentioned. Haven't tried them yet, but we seriously need them so bad.
It's that time of year! Back to school time (even though I know some of my bloggy friends have been back for a couple of weeks now.) While you may be in a district that wants you to hit the academics hard core from the first day of school and cut out "fluff", there's nothing fluffy about a cohesive classroom. And you can forget good things happening academically when nobody can get along. Do you hear me administrators? I think it's a wise idea to spend some time helping your students learn to live together in a room that gives everybody about one square foot of personal space. So here's a little collection of some fabuloso ideas I found through the wonderful world of blogging. Here are some great ideas to get your new friends talking to each other, working together, and thinking about what a successful classroom looks like. 1. Talk about how to treat each other. Tales from a Tidy Teacher shares a lesson using Finding the Green Stone by Alice Walker. She gives each student a shiny green "stone". They plan how they will keep their stones shiny all year. I think this would be a great anchor lesson to refer to all year long. Here's a post from Mrs. Robinson's Classroom Blog. She has a different question each day to get kids thinking about their role in the classroom. Your actions are who you are. When things were getting cranky in my classroom last year, we worked on this activity. We planned out the words that we would want our principal to use when describing us. Then we planned out the actions that would get us there. 2. Talk about words and what they can do (for good and evil). I love love love this poster. It is from Sweet Blessings who also happens to be the genius behind Technology Rocks. Seriously. I had it printed as an 11x17 on glossy card stock ($1.50 at Office Max). I referred to it all year long the last couple of years. By the second month of school, all I had to do was say, "THINK before you speak" and they knew exactly what had gone wrong. Yes, Mrs. O Knows will convince you that toothpaste and toothpicks will teach kids everything they need to know about words. I tried so hard to find the original source for this one. Please leave a comment if you know where it came from. Cause it's awesome. 3. Have kids work together in a fun way. Who wouldn't want to save Fred? This is a great team work lesson from Fabulous Fourth Grade Froggies. This one's from Science Gal. Now tell me that doesn't look fun? And because the best way to learn that the world does not revolve around you, have your kids perform RACKS. Random Acts of Classroom Kindness. Here's an idea from 3rd Grade Thoughts. There are tons more great ideas out there on this, too. Have kids work in teams to plan out some RACKS for each the classroom, other students, and staff, too. And now for a little giggle: Hope you have a great school year!
Crafters of all ages will love getting creative with these fun and easy projects. From handmade jewelry to science projects, paper crafts and pom-poms, these crafts for kids will delight little ones and adults alike.
Crossing the midline activities for kids. What on earth are those? Sometimes in the educational world we start speaking a slightly different language than 'normal' people. Not that teachers aren't normal ... though ... you do need to be a little insane to work with small children all day long, don't you? Anyways. I had
How do you stop students from blurting out in the classroom? Do you have some processes in place to curb blurting, but they're just not working for you
It seems like every day there is an endless stream of students reporting behaviors or incidents that happen in the classroom. On one hand, we want to help our students feel heard and validated so they know we are a safe person for them to talk to. On the other hand, we certainly don't want to feed into the tattle machine. It's a fine line to walk. So how do we handle tattling in our classrooms?
