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.
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These three icebreakers for teens will make the first class, youth group, or club fun for everyone, even the introverts.
Give students a visual to assist them in advocating for themselves while self-assessing, and keeping students engaged in their learning.
All of these organizational printables shown on this blog post are FREE! This page contains affiliate links. Read Full Disclosure
If you have an extra-chatty class, check out this post with tips for how to get your students to stop talking in just one week!
The best "icebreaker" activity for high school students (who hate icebreaker activities). Get a jump start on creating a bond with your students.
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A group of teenage boys captivated a crowd with a surprising and perfectly synchronized skit, showcasing the power of creativity and precision in performance.
Use classroom jobs to help develop independence, leadership skills, for classroom community, and as a behavior management tool too!
Dale Chihuly is one of my favorite glass artist. You see his work a lot here in the Northwest. He even had a piece on the Frasier TV show. But not all of us can do blown glass. I really like wh…
You can grab these geometric art printable...and let your kids imaginations run wild! A perfect free printable to let the creativity flow.
Help the learning process with these simple strategies for making studennt thinking visible. Perfect for middle and high school English classes.
Classroom/behavior management is one of the most important things to master in your classroom. Having solid behavior management helps maintain a positive classroom environment, while enabling teachers and students to accomplish LEARNING! Here are TEN tips and tricks for behavior management I use in my classroom: Greeting Students at the Door The way you start
If you work with children, I can promise you that you will come across at least one student that has these difficult behaviors. Not only are they really stressful for the teacher but they impact the student’s life in many ways. Behaviors like disrespect and defiance can make classroom's chaotic.
Ever felt like your students could benefit from slowing down and taking a moment calm? Well, you're in for a treat. Mindfulness isn't just a buzzword; it's a game-changer. It's about hitting the pause button, taking a deep breath, and diving into the magic of the present moment. And here's the kicker – it's not just for adults; it's for kids too! So, picture this: A classroom where calm reigns supreme, thoughts find their chill, and focus becomes a superpower. That's the power of mindfulness. And guess what? We're not stopping there. We're bringing you the tools to create a Calming Corner that'll turn your classroom into a sanctuary of serenity. Let's dive in! (GREAT NEWS! I've put together exclusive FREEBIES for mindfulness. Click here to receive them!) Mindfulness meditation is a way of focusing the mind so that it is fully attending to what’s happening right now, to what we’re doing, and to the space that we’re currently in. Cultivating mindfulness means to be present, to pay attention, and to be aware of our emotions and the way that we respond to them. Recent neuroscience research points to many benefits of mindfulness meditation: ➧ increased focus ➧ a sense of calm ➧ decreased stress ➧ decreased anxiety ➧ improved impulse control ➧ greater empathy for others ➧ improved conflict resolution skills Our students need opportunities to practice mindfulness mediation. Since the human mind often wanders from the present. Our brains have a tendency to become absorbed with thoughts about the past or the future. This kind of thinking makes us anxious. Academic pressure now affects kids as early as kindergarten, resulting in less time for play and other stress-reducing activities. Today’s students are faced with an unprecedented amount of anxiety. The pressure only grows greater in middle and high school. Surveys have found students reporting stress and fatigue as much as 75% of the time. What’s needed is a way to decrease anxiety and help students to manage their emotions. That’s where mindfulness comes in. Infusing moments of mindfulness in the classroom is not only powerful, it’s also quite simple. In general, to practice mindfulness, have students start by bringing attention to their own body. Then, have them breathe in through their noses and out through their mouths. When they notice that their mind has wondered away from the present moment, they should gently bring their attention back to their breathing. It’s also a great idea to intentionally plan moments of mindfulness in the classroom! Here are some simple ways to do just that… 1. A Mindful Moment At the beginning of class, or after a transition, have your students close their eyes and take several deep breaths. Ask them to pay attention to their breathing and what it feels like. 2. A Mindful Break Once or twice during a standard length class, just stop. Have your students stand up and stretch and then sit back down and do 30 seconds of mindful breathing. This takes no more than a minute, and it gives everyone a needed break. 3. A Mindful Quote Use motivational and inspirational quotes to help focus students’ minds during a moment of mindfulness. It’s as easy as sharing a quote, or you can download this free set of mindfulness quotes and put together a container to pull from all year long. If you'd like me to send you a free set of 24 mindfulness quotes and the materials to make a container like above, add your name and email address below: Yes! Please send me MINDFULNESS RESOURCES! 4. Attention Check During a long lesson, stop and ask your students to pause and “check their attention.” Is their mind on what is being done in class, or has it been wandering? This gives kids the chance to deliberately redirect their attention to the matter at hand. 5. Finger Labyrinths Traditionally, labyrinths are used for mediation and relaxation. Often, people walk through labyrinths. Give students the same sensation with finger labyrinths. I’ve made a collection of them that students can use when they need to focus their minds. Students simply trace the spiral paths as they practice mindfulness. Add your name and email address below to receive the finger labyrinths and mindfulness quotes in your email inbox! Yes! Please send me MINDFULNESS RESOURCES! 6. Mindful Closure At the end of class, have students close their eyes and focus on their breathing again. Ask them to think of what they have learned and perhaps congratulate themselves on their progress and accomplishments. As teachers. we have many opportunities to introduce students to mindfulness practices. Of course, one of the most important ways we can do this is by cultivating mindfulness in ourselves. If we, as teachers, are present and aware of our own emotions and responses, we set an invaluable example for our students. Many of these mindfulness activities work well in a Calming Corner in the Classroom. Add the quotes or labyrinths to the calming corner to help students when they need to take a step back and become more present in the moment. Find more ideas for creating a calming classroom environment here. Thanks so much for stopping by! Mary Beth
This activity is heavily scaffolded for beginners. Students orally create the word bank and sentences, but I write the words and sentences on the board using
FREE Call Backs and attention getters for the kindergarten classroom! Great classroom management tool!
Teaching Honesty in the Classroom; character education; classroom community; honesty for kids
Check out these great ideas for helping your students feel like part of a classroom community during distance learning & social distancing.
Have a chatty class? Do your talkative students get louder and louder during small groups until it feels like chaos? Do they talk when you'r...
Explaining how my middle school students create one word goals in my class using my One Word Goal Activity!
Tips for Classroom management! Behavior is the most important aspect of a strong classroom. Learn how to get control of your new class- even the tough ones!
Are you new to interactive note taking? This post shares everything you need to know about how to use interactive notebooks.
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 …
In this post you'll find out what desk pets are, why you need them, the best ideas that teachers are using to add them to their class. Plus, where to find the best ones!
Reading music is like reading a book in another language. It has its own characters and sounds. The following collection of music lesson plans for the elementary music classroom will help music tea…
Here’s a fun Mona Lisa art project, starting with her very famous face and then filling in your own background with lines, just for contrast.
Guest Blog Post By Sam Bradford During my student teaching, I tried to observe as many different teachers as possible. All grade levels, all subjects--my goal was to find the teachers whose classes the students put a little extra pep in their step to get to. Then, with my own eyes and ears, I tried to figure out what made those classes successful. I’ll never forget the way one teacher used a quote wall, and how it single-handedly built community, created an engaging atmosphere, and solidified important concepts. I’ve spent the last thirteen years experimenting with the concept, and I’d like to share my findings with you. As with any powerful educational tool, the concept is simple and the technology is simpler. All you need is a whiteboard, a marker, and human beings. Here’s the idea: the teacher sets aside a portion of wall space for interesting quotes that students say in class over the course of the year. You get to determine what “interesting” means. When the moment happens, you allow the student to write the quote on the board and sign their name. As the year progresses, the space slowly fills with quotes. It seems like such a trifling concept, doesn’t it? I think it’s often the trifling concepts that make the difference between classes students tolerate versus classes that allow students to thrive. Let’s examine a sample of what’s at play with such a concept. First of all, not to get too Paulo Freire on you, but it democratizes the classroom by giving students a voice. It’s not the teacher’s words that go on the wall; it’s theirs. Their words have the power to adorn the classroom. Think about buildings with other people’s quotes on the walls. They are often important places, right? Places of worship, courthouses, state capitals. Shouldn’t classrooms be as important as those other spaces? And what if your words were that worthy to be immortalized in an important place? Furthermore, it encourages students to be clever. They now have an incentive to sound smart, to experiment with wordplay, to be original, to think, to get a laugh out of their peers and teacher. There is so much social cache, even with twelfth graders, to be the one who gets to go to the board and write their quote. There’s a subtle sub-point here as well: notice that I wrote “get a laugh out of their peers and teacher.” We’re always going to have students who act out for attention (I was that student), but a quote wall creates a structured environment for that acting out to happen in a productive way that’s on the teacher’s terms. The student who struggles with, as my fifth-grade report card stated, “attention-seeking antics,” is no longer saying funny things in spite of you. They’re saying things to get on the wall, and that will inevitably change what subjects and language they give their efforts to in order to get that attention. It also encourages spontaneity and being in the moment--that’s both for you and for them. You never know when that quote will come. You’ll never guess what question will receive the pithy answer. The effect is that it rouses both teacher and student from “going through the motions.” You will be shocked at how students will so eloquently capture a concept, and with the quote on the wall, it reinforces it for everybody. Most importantly, quote walls wake us up to celebrate little joys and remember that we’re in the presence of human beings, and human beings are marvelous, infinitely interesting things. If you’re sold on the concept, which I hope you are, here are some tips and tricks I’ve found over the years: At the end of the year or semester (or whenever you run out of space), type up the quotes and print them out, posting them off to the side as a time-stamped Wall of Fame. I have gotten traction with students over this--reading the things their peers said last semester. I have a “quote of the week,” which is usually something inspiring I get from what we’ve read or, frankly, from the internet. Daily would be too much--a weekly quote I can commit to. To me, teaching is kind of like troll fishing--you throw out as many lines of connection as possible, and wait and hope that something resonates with someone. I rarely, if ever, mention the quote, but I have had student feedback that said “I always looked forward to seeing what the new quote of the week would be.” You get to set the standard for a good quote. I teach in high school, where sarcasm works effectively for some of my colleagues. My style is more on the Mr. Rogers side of the spectrum, so the quotes I allow never involve putting another person down, no matter how artfully done. Once the year settles in, the students sometimes petition for other students, which, to me, further democratizes the classroom. I love it when I hear a student say, “Oh, Mr. Bradford, that quote should definitely go on the wall!” As long as it’s appropriate (see point above), I don’t have a problem with it. You can use the quote wall as an internal equity diagnostic: are you favoring one section over another? One gender over another? As you’re planning for the new year, set aside some space on your wall. See what happens! Related Blog Posts After 12 Years of Teaching, I've Found That Norms are Better Than Rules. This is Why. Hey, English Teachers, I Planned Your First Week Back To School
I am all done with parent conferences and it feels great! I had the most terrific year and I’m so happy to share my students’ progress with their parents. During parent conference time, I always love to have lots of student work to display. I absolutely love to incorporate student pictures into student work. This ... Read More about Silhouette Autobiographies and Read Across America
If you want to teach your little ones about the concept of opposites you will want to check out these fun opposites worksheets and activities.
Use one of these systems to help get your middle school students engaged!
Upper elementary blog with practical, rigorous, classroom tested ideas to implement with your students.
Force and motion have to be one of my favorite units to teach! First, you can teach it at any time of the year. Movement doesn't happen at certain times of the year. It's everywhere all the time! Second, it's fun to teach because it's hands on. And that's what kids love. It keeps them
My three-year old is very artistic. She loves to color, paint, cut, draw, etc. She is also very imaginative. We created our own little paper...
