Wordle has taken over the classroom. Here's how to make your own Wordle type game and board to get students excited about words!
As I prepare for and welcome baby into our home I will have a few great friends posting for me over the next few months. I'll be back occasi...
The beginning of a new school year is exciting but can also be a little bit nerve-racking for children and teachers alike! The first days need to fulfil several objectives including allowing everybody to settle in, to begin to re-connect/make new connections and to be filled with enthusiasm for the year ahead. Whole school or class projects are a great way to start the year with a bang, so here are 16 ideas to inspire and make everybody feel part of the team.
Games are a tried and true way to engage students. Whether teaching in-person or remotely via a live session like Zoom or Google Meets, teac...
After learning about the Tabernacle the Cowlands joined us in this fun activity of recreating it out of graham crackers and frosting. Here Ethan is making one of the items that went inside (the bowl I think) out of starburst. They are great for molding into all sorts of things after just a few seconds in the microwave. James, Ethan and Emmy could not keep their fingers out of the frosting!!! Here are the boys with their finished project.
Add some color and inspiration with classroom posters. Here are 27 free classroom posters sets for and grade level! These instant download poster sets cover inspirational quotes,
Today is Mardi Gras, literally "Fat Tuesday," the last day of the Carnival season. In my home state of Louisiana, it brings a half or full week of school
One of our first grade standards in SC is to teach students to edit for punctuation,capitalization, and spelling in writing. For those o...
Games are a tried and true way to engage students. Whether teaching in-person or remotely via a live session like Zoom or Google Meets, teac...
First of all, I have to apologize for the long absence! One of my boys has been struggling with some medical issues this fall and I've been working hard to juggle everything. Unfortunately, blogging had to take a back seat to family for a while. I do want to get back into the swing of things with a new emotions cue card. I'll admit that one of my pet peeves are emotions posters that are so exaggerated they don't help our students learn to read realistic non-verbal cues. I finally decided to make my own with a mixture of kids and adults with *hopefully!* more realistic expressions. Feel free to download it for your own use! Click here to download. Have a happy day ~ Kelley https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4qTMzRlgqGscThlS2QtVE1LcHM/view?usp=sharing
Games are a tried and true way to engage students. Whether teaching in-person or remotely via a live session like Zoom or Google Meets, teac...
Welcome to our class! I’ve changed some parts of my classroom this year and I have to say that I’m loving how everything turned out. Please note that this is my 12th year of teaching and I did not create this environment overnight. It’s taken years to accumulate and/or create everything that is in this ... Read More about Learning in Wonderland Classroom Tour
Happy Friday! Sorry about not blogging yesterday. I have been trying to make an effort to blog every week day, however yesterday t...
Games are a tried and true way to engage students. Whether teaching in-person or remotely via a live session like Zoom or Google Meets, teac...
Ready to "cook up" a great first day of school? It's easy with this recipe for a successful start to the school year! PREP: ➤ ...
Games are a tried and true way to engage students. Whether teaching in-person or remotely via a live session like Zoom or Google Meets, teac...
Classroom walls don’t have to be Instagram-worthy so long as they display the right information and allow students to shine.
I have received a number of requests for printable copies of this poem. Here it is – as a jpeg – which should be easy to print if you so choose. Again, I could write more about this… bu…
Pronoun practice thats meaningful for kids. Create a pronoun patch bulletin board as a whole class anchor chart and play fun themed pronoun games.
Games are a tried and true way to engage students. Whether teaching in-person or remotely via a live session like Zoom or Google Meets, teac...
Planning and prepping differentiated math centers can be simple when using the Math Workshop framework. Less prep time and greater student growth is a win-win.
Teaching with Biographies and Ben Franklin With all of the fabulous biographies available today for children, teaching about and with biographies can be such fun for your students. It hasn't always been this way. When I was a little girl (many, many years ago...) I remember biographies being boring, fact-filled chapter books. They were definitely not the books that I chose when I went to the library. The only biographies I remember reading were those assigned to me by my teachers. Today's biographies for children are very different. Biographies for children are now colorful picture books full of interesting information that grab the reader's attention and are enjoyable to read. I recently gathered a variety of biographies for my students on Benjamin Franklin. My school library has several wonderful biographies about Mr. Franklin. We combined learning about the characteristics of biographies with learning more about this U.S. founding father. Some great biographies about Benjamin Franklin include: Ben Franklin His Wit and Wisdom by Alan Schroeder Who Was Ben Franklin? by Dennis Fradin Now and Ben by Gene Barretta Although all of these books are excellent, I chose to begin by using How Ben Franklin Stole the Lightning by Rosalyn Schanzer. Before we read this book, I had the students to do a variation of an ABC brainstorm activity. With ABC brainstorm, students write what they know about a given topic using each letter of the alphabet. Instead of ABC's, we did a BEN brainstorm. Students wrote one fact about Ben Franklin with each of the 3 letters: "B", "E", and "N". (3 facts are much faster to write than 26.) I discovered that many of my students knew very little of Ben Franklin or thought he was one of our presidents. After we discussed our prior knowledge, we then discussed characteristics of biographies. My sweet teacher friend next door has this adorable biography anchor chart that she let me share. After reviewing the characteristics of a biography, we read and discussed How Ben Franklin Stole the Lightning. My students really enjoyed this colorful and interesting biography. Next, students used their Chromebooks to read an online book about Ben Franklin. This book is actually part of a paid website that my school system has purchased called myOn. It was a fun graphic biography that my students enjoyed, but if you do not have access to this website, another great choice is this page from Mr. Nussbaum. The students then used the information they learned from both resources to complete a graphic organizer. This biography graphic organizer can be found in my store in a packet containing four graphic organizers for your students to use as templates as they research and write about a person. Choose the graphic organizer that is perfect for your whole class, assign different graphic organizers for different groups of students, or choose specific organizers to differentiate the needs of your students. Use the graphic organizer alone, or as a writing template for the writing page essay paper. A grading rubric is also included if you choose to use this as an assessment. Click here or the picture below to purchase. Finally, we watched a 90 second video that recapped the information we had learned about Benjamin Franklin. This short video can be found here. If you are looking for a fun lesson to use with biographies, I hope you may want to try these activities out with your students. I know my kiddos had a lot of fun and learned a lot about Benjamin Franklin and biographies. Have a blessed day! Check out my blog: Teaching Fourth Visit my TpT Store Find me on Instagram Follow me on Facebook Follow me on Pinterest
L loves playing with magnets and I've made tons of homemade magnets , so when I saw THESE , I knew he'd love them and they'd mak...
I was at a point where I wanted to change things up for the students and for myself. Last year, I decided to try something ambitious with the students. They created AP World History Review Game Boa…
Games are a tried and true way to engage students. Whether teaching in-person or remotely via a live session like Zoom or Google Meets, teac...
Learn about: Deciding to adopt from Langka Treadwell,...
Over the past two-three weeks, I have been working on classroom posters and diagrams for my room. I teach first grade and took the opportunity of moving into a new room to redecorate my room a litt…
picture source I think anyone that does writer's workshop has a writing process chart of some sort hanging in their room to keep track of where their friends are in the writing process. In my room, I've gone through several versions of this. Originally, I had a big ol' pocket chart with the writing process step headings at the top. Each friend had an index card with their name on it that they would move as they hit each step of the process. In the end the chart was just way too big and took up too much space in my room. Next, I moved to a wheel with laundry clips. I wrote my friends' names on the clip and they moved it to a different sector of the wheel as they hit that particular step. It looked kind of like this, but a bit smaller and imaging laundry clips all around it. picture sourceThis was also a fail for me. The clips would fall off. I couldn't tell exactly who was at each step. It just wasn't working. So then, I tried Popsicle sticks in a smaller chart. Kind of like this one. picture sourceThis worked because it was smaller, just about the size I wanted it to be. It didn't work because I had a hard time telling who was in what step. The Popsicle sticks would jumble together so I couldn't see names. I actually then went out and got those paper pencils you see above, but they did the same thing. One would fall behind the other not letting me see names. Another fail. It was last year that I finally found "THE ONE!" Here is what it looks like in my room: In the white area I blocked out, I have written each of my friends' names in bold, black sharpie marker. I can see it from across the room. At the top, I wrote a step of the writing process on different color cards. As my friends move through the steps, they change the color of the card. Again, I can see this from any spot in my classroom and immediately know who is where. The size is just perfect. It's only about 22" high and 19" wide. I also find my friends are much more eager to change their color than they were to move their card or clip on any of the other charts I've tried in the past. Last year, I kept a small container with all the different color cards in them, but this year I just put all five cards in each pocket. No lost cards that way! The funny thing is that this is not sold as a writing pocket chart. It's actually a behavior management chart. Here is the exact chart I purchased from Lakeshore Learning Center. There is a small clear pocket for the white card with the students name and a larger clear pocket directly behind it for the color cards. The pocket chart comes with all the cards. It also comes with that, "How am I doing today?" header. I just flipped it over and wrote my own title for writing. Here's the back of my title. See, same chart! If you notice in the section where I put the steps of the writing process, there are actually six slots, so you can break the process up into even one more step than I have. If you use the top section for the steps of the writing process, you have room for the names of 30 friends. I used it for the headers, so mine will hold 24 names. 25 if I use the blank one at the top, which I do now because I got a new friend this month. The best things about this chart for me would be the size and easy viewing. It takes up a small space in my room, and I can quickly see exactly who is where. One last thing. I have also found that it tends to motivate my pokey puppies, those friends who seem to move at the pace of slow or slower. When the colors start to change on that chart, they do not want to be the only one who hasn't moved on to the new color! This pocket chart sells at Lakeshore for $21.95, but it is also at Amazon for the same price. I think it is well worth the price! By the way, this is all my opinion. I'm not being paid to push any products here. This is just what's working for me as far as tracking my writers. How do you keep track of yours?
I was so excited for my Presidents Day long weekend! Saturday was great! I got to meet Kelley from Buggy for Second Grade and she is such a sweetheart! I also happened to win her giveaway a few weeks ago and she made me this lovely board for my classroom. She customized it to match my decor and everything! Saturday evening I had a girls night with my 2 year old and we had fun riding the carousel at our local mall and shopping. Then, Sunday I came down with sore throat, that turned to congestion, that turned into a few days of a fever that won't go away! Boo! So, most of my long weekend was spent being sicko but that's how it goes, I guess :) Since I'm stuck at home I thought I would finally update you guys with a few new games I made. The first is a money trading game, a lot like the chip trading game I described here. This game is VERY simple but powerful for the kids because it helps them to make those connections that 5 pennies = 1 nickel, 2 nickels = 1 dime, etc... Each student has a gameboard and there is one student in each group that I select to be the banker. I love using these chip trays to organize manipulatives! Gotta love the Dollar Tree! :) Students roll dice and collect coins from the banker and keep making trades. I call this game, "Race to a Quarter!" The other game I made so my students could simply have practice using coins to show different amounts. It's called, "Piggy Race", because they are trying to get to the piggy in the middle first to be the winner. This game is also very simple, but I think that's how it needs to be to work for all learners. You can find these games in my TpT store HERE for $1.50 each. The first 2 people to guess correctly what big game I'll be watching on Saturday will win both of these!!! hint: see this post {don't forget to leave your email} Have a fabulous week!
Games are a tried and true way to engage students. Whether teaching in-person or remotely via a live session like Zoom or Google Meets, teac...
