Let me help you get your classroom back on track with these 5 classroom routines and procedures to "reset" when things feel chaotic!
This is a great activity that teaches how to build classroom community and mindfulness in the classroom. It's perfect for a variety of ages.
Have you ever had a class that just tried your patience day after day? Have you ever felt like you could walk away from teaching forever tom...
Are you tired of hearing the following questions 10 times a day:“What did we do yesterday?”“Was there homework?”“I lost my paper. Can I have a new one?”“What are we doing today? Anything FUN?”“Where do I turn this in? I know I was. Want to save your sanity? I cannot express to you how important it ... Read more
Unlock creativity in your atelier with unique storage solutions. Enhance accessibility and inspire young artists. Reimagine your space now!
When a student elopes, it’s one of those behaviors we generally cannot ignore. Here are 3 ways to support students when this happens.
Teach your students about the five senses, touch. What exactly can they feel? wood - hard, cotton wool - soft / fluffy, and so on.
Looking for ways to connect and engage your students in positive behavior practice? Check out a guest blog post on using Conscious Discipline.
Hello Everyone! What a great day to start a study on clouds!! Dark clouds this morning releasing a deluge of rain! By 1:00 beautiful clear sky with just a few cirrus clouds! Perfect example of our ever changing skies. I'll share our Cloud Unit in a second, but first I wanted to show some pics of our whole group math lesson. We are continuing our study of place value. After all the activities we did last week, it was time to see how all of this fits in relationship to other numbers. I pulled out our bigger than life 100 board and handed out some mystery picture clues. Each clue described a number in place value (tens and ones). The kids took turns putting their cards on the number for which their clue stood. When we finished putting all the clues down, a cloud was revealed! Use your imagination! It looks like a cloud, right??? The kids loved working together to create it!! I'm not even sure they realized they were growing their number sense!!! I did put together a little integrated cloud unit. We are going to try to get most of this in this week!! The unit also includes some poetry, another science activity and more!! You can get it if you click HERE!! Stay tuned for more cloud fun later in the week! Until then, have a wonderful week!! Thanks for stopping by for a peek!! Joyfully! Nancy
A few weeks ago our little daredevil had her first x-ray due to a little jumping on the bed incident. Yup 1 little monkey jumping on the bed, she fell off and bumped her head… broke her clavicle. Well ever since, she has been fascinated with the bones inside her body so there couldn’t be […]
Hey-O friends! How do you manage changing classes (my class doesn’t but I’m curious), or even moving from subject to subject within your own classroom? I teach in a self-contained classroom and it’s easy to shift subjects down the schedule a little when things don’t go as planned. #WhoopsWritingWasSupposedToStart20MinutesAgo? ahahahaha #NoShame When it’s time to check morning work, I play a song When it’s time to come to the carpet for a lesson I play a song. Subject change & it’s time to get out a different interactive notebook and folder— YES, I have a song for that! I keep a slew of songs on my iTunes and iPhone/iPad and I just click depending on what I need! It’s easy to say that it’s time to start something new and kids take that task as, “Okay I can chat with my friend now for 1049813582305 minutes”. If they’re singing—they’re on task and still able to talk–but they’re singing to a tune. When the music stops they must be ready! Beginning of the year I introduce a song for a new subject/idea slowly. I want the kids to get used to it and understand the rules that follow when the song […]
Free Line up songs for kindergarten classroom management. Make transitions easier with fun chants.
Developing empathy in children has never been more fun than with this collection of 19 simple empathy activities for kids!
Are student rewards or your treasure box making you go broke? Not anymore! Check out this list of 50 absolutely free student rewards!
Interest Area Poster with info on how specific interest area benefits children while they play. It also links the EYLF Learning Outcomes and QIAS principles.
I can't believe that a week has come and gone. With the new month, I have started working with my 6th graders on Fictional Narratives. I HAVE decided that I am going to take a couple of months on this genre and REALLY get into the nitty gritty of it. We have been studying the structure of fictional narratives, reading mentor texts, and talking about what we read during the day from a "writer's perspective". It is really fun to hear the kids start to talk about the things they read as a writer! For my bulletin board, I had my amazing wife do all the writing for me. I got the purpose (top left corner), the title, and of course... THE ANCHOR CHARTS started and posted. Because I am taking it slow and covering the concept in depth, I am still working on teaching the lessons that will fill in all the anchor chart spaces, and I am working to do those quickly- but with understanding. However, we just had a mini-lesson on the framework of a fictional narrative and the students drew the anchor chart in their journals. It took a little while, but I love that they have mini-charts in their notebooks. Shoot! I should have taken a picture of a student notebook. They did such a great job with them! My wife made this poster sized one for my board. I really like how it turned out! I also love that since I started at the back of the chart book and am moving forward, the anchor chart for Personal Memoirs is still accessible to the students by simply lifting up the paper (as shown below)! I love when I have good ideas (because they don't seem to happen as often as I would like). As we continue through our journey with Fictional Narratives, I will continue to share what we do so you can enjoy the journey with me. Today, we worked on studying mentor texts and writing rules for punctuating dialogue. We found that there are four different ways that dialogue is written. We will have our anchor chart made by the end of tomorrow and my wife will take my sloppy copy and make it a thing of beauty- THEN I will share it with you. I am excited to take the adventure with my students. I realize that the new core standards want us to focus on and push non-fiction reading and writing, and I will, but I feel that I need to get them excited about writing FIRST and then we can move on to those other concepts. Writing ROCKS! Cheers! -MrHughes
I'm so excited to share with you my newest TPT product! I'll be teaching a human body class this upcoming semester at our local co-op. I needed a human body project for kids in my class that will allow them to organize and store the information we learn. I came up with this file folder
Guest post by Jennifer Gonzalez As the parent of three elementary students, I get a lot of classroom newsletters. And every time I get one, I fully intend to read it. I know how important it is to keep track of school activities, to know what my kids are learning, and to support their teachers. But I
Explore different materials and their properties with this engaging unit. Activities and printables for the Foundation and Prep Year chemistry strand.
I am linking up with DeeDee and sharing a peek at my week... and year. It's been a little chaotic around here lately, so I created a weekl...
Our theme this week was "Our Five Senses" and we focused on the letter B and the shape circle. We read this week: Ferdinand by Munro Leaf Paddington by Mark Brown Paddington and the Busy Bee Carnival by Mark Brown The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle Stellaluna by Janelle Cannon Our question of the week was "What is something that you are really good at?" For our theme of the week, we talked a lot about our senses, what they help us do and why we need them. We made texture collages: This week is full of some of my favorite activities from the year, these texture collages being one of them. I love how each one is different, and the kids are so proud of the texture choices that they make. AND they look amazing on the wall. We tasted sweet, salty and sour things, and the kids had to vote on their favorite taste. (They think it's awesome when they get to eat things as part of a project.) We tested their sense of smells with this project where I asked them to describe the things that they were smelling. I used perfume, shampoo, chocolate syrup, pickle juice, toothpaste and (the most tricky) water. Out on our schools nature trail we talked about the different sounds that we could hear. We did this at various points of our walk, close to the school, by the parking lot and deeper in the woods. Lastly we did another activity with the sense of touch. I set up my table with different texture objects. I used flour, rice, oatmeal, sand and a scrubbing sponge. As the students felt each thing, I asked them to describe what they were feeling. It was hard to get them away from just telling them what the items were and to use describing words, but we got there in the end. For our shape of the week, the kids practiced drawing circles with this cool worksheet of circles and another with squares and circles. We also worked on recognizing circles out of other shapes. We talked a lot about things that are circles. We sang the song "This is a circle, this is a circle. How can you tell? How can you tell? It goes round and round, No end can be found, It's a circle, it's a circle." -Found Here For our letter activities, we used our handwriting sheet for the letter B, the sheet that helps work on letter recognition, both were mentioned in the "All About Me" post. The students also wrote in their journals for the letter B. We turned B's into Bees! After we read Ferdinand we all made our own bees. This was a great way for the kids to practice their cutting skills. I love how each child's bee is different. Another project that we did (another one of my favorites all year) is the Boat Builder activity. I love it because I give the students the materials and the end result is something completely their own. Each child got a piece of white paper, a square of brown paper, a skinny black rectangle, scissors, a glue stick and crayons with the instruction of make me a boat however you want to. (They love when I say that). If I get "I don't know how..." or " I can't do it.." We go back a few steps and talk about boats.. what do they look like, where do we find them, what do they do, and then the creative juices start flowing. Here's the end results! Love it! For our Alphabet wall we made butterflies with coffee filters and water color paint. After the children painted their coffee filters and they dried I used small pipe cleaners to turn them into butterflies! And with the B addition, our wall now looks like... Our list for words beginning with B's was very impressive. Here it is! As a side note, teachers always need to be flexible, and as such, it was in the best interest of the flow of the classroom to switch two centers, the library and dramatic play center. And I'm always telling the kids to make sure that they turn off the water faucet after getting a drink or washing their hands. I tell them to "Save the water for the fishes, so I painted a mural for above the sink to remind them. Up next week: The letter C, Triangles and "Our Feelings".
My daughter wanted to create a family night game together that would be both fun and teach a lesson. We created The Choose Kindness Game.
Wish you could find matte laminating sheets? Are you looking for an easy way to get rid of the glare coming off your laminated classroom word wall and bulletin board references? I searched and searched for matte laminate pouches but came up empty! In this post is a simple - and even better - solution to eliminating glare from lamination so that your word walls can be easily read by students anywhere in your classroom! It’s a great alternative to matte laminate pouches, especially since they are hard to find.
A blog by Melanie Lloyd (From the Pond) about classroom activities and printables for K-3 learners.
Have you thought of creating a Calm Down Corner to teach calm down techniques to help your students develop self-regulation and manage their big emotions? It includes calm-down techniques, breathing strategies, and more! Teaching students how to manage their emotions is a life skill! These activitie...
How do we make shadows? Explore how shadows are created with this hands-on STEAM activity for preschoolers.
As a 4th grade teacher, you know the value of engaging your students with compelling stories that not only capture their imaginations but also teach valuable lessons. Here’s a list of 25 beloved books that both students and teachers love, complete with short summaries and reasons why they make excellent novel studies or at least […]
If you want to know how to teach kids about germs and the importance of proper handwashing, this collection of germ activities for kids will not disappoint!
How could changing the lighting in your classroom help with behavior?! Well, as you may know, I spent an entire summer researching ways to dramatically improve my behavior management plan after a truly horrible year. With this research, a topic kept coming up that I knew would – an influx of students with autism. I […]
Kiddos have a natural sense of wonder and desire to explore, experiment, and discover. I chose…
Our free Fight, Flight, and Freeze poster highlights common stress response behaviors in kids when they experience stress.
Create a calm and safe space for students.
Hello All! I'm linking with Tara at 4th Grade Frolics again for another Monday Made It! The last weeks of summer are flying by. And not at jet plane speed, either. That I could handle... But this lighting speed crud?? Come on!! Didn't I JUST say good-bye to twenty-four 4th graders?? Anyway, this week's Monday Made It contains a lot of "made its'. And I'm including a Freebie! Yay! First up, my out-of-classroom-passes & sign for my sharp/unsharp pencils. Last year I made REALLY cute passes (they were lost) and bought REALLY cute passes (they were also lost) so this year I QUICKLY made a-ok passes. I totally realize I will need to make more toward the end of the year. Last year I would just hand random objects to my students when they left the room... Paper flowers, a Native American talking stick, rubber bands-- Basically, whatever I grabbed. I got my super cute broken pencils / sharpened pencil printables from The First Grade Derby HERE! Next up, classroom manager positions! While in college at the University of Houston (GO COOGS!), I attended an inservice called Consistency Management and Cooperative Discipline. As described on the website, CMCD is "is an innovative school-wide (preK-12th grade) research based, classroom-tested classroom management reform program that builds on shared responsibility for learning and classroom organization between teachers and students." Summed up: it's great. One of the points was having classroom "managers" with legit jobs that help the classroom function. Did I mention there needs to be a job for EVERY student?? Yes, that means I created 24 manager positions... As you can see from the pic, one is "Classroom Detective". Job Description? Helping me find items when I've lost them... hehehe! Also, my students will interview for their positions. I'll rotate them out every month or so to make sure everyone gets to manage their area of choice. FUN! Last year, my students took their jobs VERY seriously (and came up with the CUTEST interview answers) and it truly did make the classroom a functioning, cooperative place! And now to my new system of turning papers in... Magnets! While at CAMT, I attended a session by Nikki Bitzer. She has a set of numbered magnets in her classroom and when students complete their assignment, they get their number magnet and use it to secure their paper to the board. The numbers are assigned in alphabetical order-- and students keep them in the correct number order on the board-- so when you collect the papers, THEY'RE IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER! Gradebook WIN! Also, it's super easy to see who hasn't turned their work in. Love this idea! Lastly, I pinned an awesome "STOP: Please stop what you're doing and make a better choice" sign weeks ago. When I finally got around to following the the blog link, I was taken to Ms. M's Blog. Great blog- but I could not find the sign anywhere. So I made my own little guys. I think these are an awesome and discreet way of redirecting a kiddo while teaching. Just walk up to the student and place one on their desk and they'll get the hint! I'm always circling the room so other students wouldn't even realize what's happening. Awesome! Want some? I've uploaded mine HERE. Well, colleagues, I hope your summers have been fantastic. Enjoy these last lazy moments!
Is homework stressing you out? Here are my top 6 strategies for simplifying your homework systems.
Fantastic preschool science activities for your science center or preschool science area. These science activities are great for kindergarten too.
Chart detailing monthly themes including holidays, seasons, and social skills. Helpful to plan activities for the entire school year. Appropriate for multiple age levels.
