THANKful for New Ideas

Let's see...5 + 6 + 2...  Has it really been 13 years!?? I have been teaching for 13 years and I love that I can find new ideas and try them out.  Every year I start out with a list of new ideas I found over my summer blog hops.  Now that I am joining this wonderful world of sharing ideas, my list just keeps growing and growing.  I am so excited to see such wonderful new ideas on the Blog Hoppin' Linky Party.

So here's what topped my list this year:

Where in the WBT have you been all my life?

Whole Brain Teaching!!  I found this towards the end of last year and tried to use some of it.  This year I am making a better effort to try to include this style in at least some of my subject areas.  My kids love it and really seem to be learning. I am hoping that the more comfortable I get with it, the easier it will come as a natural teaching style for me.  If you haven't seen what WBT is all about -- just google it and there are lots of resources most of which are free (or click WBT in my subtitle to take you to the WBT website) and tons of youtube videos.  Here is one of my favorites.  She is amazing!

Of course, I also found some great posters and resources at TPT (most of which are free).

I found these posters for free on TPT as well as some smart board lessons & power points.

 All you have to do is put it into the search box and find the resources that work best for you!!

Classroom Economy

I have always been a learner.  You might call me one of those life-long learners.  I secretly enjoy doing all that professional development that districts send us to.  Shhh!  I only share that passion with my students.  That being said, one of the many SD's I attended when I taught in Irving, TX stuck with me.  It was put on by another teacher in the district.  She taught 3rd grade and had a complete classroom economy up and running.  I thought it was such a fantastic idea.  Unfortunately, I taught 1st grade and didn't think it would work quite as well with that younger age.  This summer I began researching and found several resources.  I figured I could try and implement this concept into my classroom now that I feel so comfortable in my grade level.  It is up and running.  My kiddos LOVE it.  We started at the beginning of the year during procedures.  Instead of just introducing jobs and rotating students, we discussed what jobs would help keep our classroom going.  Then we listed them and the duties tied to each (of course I encouraged some that I specifically wanted).  The students actually applied for the jobs they wanted with a job application.  I chose them based on their applications and some teacher recommendations for certain, more responsibility required jobs.  I also determined pay rates, bonus opportunities, fines, and rent amounts.  The students are really learning about saving, spending, needs, wants, etc.  We have auctions with different types of things to buy (lunch with a friend in the classroom,  treasure chest items, computer time, show & tell day, slippers in the classroom, change seats for the day, etc.).  We have typical classroom jobs but we also added a banker, police officer, and team manager.  

Each student has an Economy Folder to hold their money and info sheets

Found this awesome product HERE

Our cash box

It's definitely a work in progress and I am learning as I go.  Keep in touch to find out how it goes.

THANKful for Activities Like...

Landform Sculptors

I can't take credit for this idea.  Last year was my first year at my current school.  Later in the year, we had a teaching objective that focused on different types of landforms and continents & oceans.  My team sent out a request for playdough in brown, turquoise/blue, green, and light brown/beige.  They even attached a recipe for those creative parents that wanted to create their own instead of buying.  The amount of donated playdough was HUGE!!  After our study of various landforms and continents & oceans, we gave students a workmat (my students used manilla folders and other teachers gave them cardstock).  Students were encouraged to create their own continent.  On it they had to include at least 4 different landforms.  Most were so eager and excited that they included all the landforms.  We even used small labels and toothpicks to label the different landforms and name of the continent.

Old School Character Masks

Yup -- that's right.  I took it back to the old school days of making characters.  I usually do a character pumpkin around the end of October like so many other teachers and I decided I wanted a change.  A collegue of mine had an old printout for instructions to make a mask out of a wire hanger and pantyhose.  We used it to create a project that students focused on a character from a book they read.  We spent our time learning about character traits and how to understand characters in books.  The students then chose a character and completed a project.  They presented their characters with great detail about what they are like and what they did in the story to prove that trait.  And of course they brought along the mask.  It was so much fun and a great change from pumpkins.

Turkey Settings

Not too long after the character mask focus, we jumped into analyzing a story's setting.  We really dove into how authors use describing to help a reader picture a setting.  We were simultaneously working on creating our own stories and developing setting details.  This project has them write a story about a turkey and develope a setting for him/her.  They created a visual representation for the turkey character and where the story takes place.  You can grab this Talkin' Turkey project at my TPT store.

This one lived in a refrigerator - teehee

& this one lived in a bubble!



Stop by Blog Hoppin' for some more THANKful Activities.


My 1st Linky Party

We Are THANKful Linky Party!

I decided to join my first Linky Party.  And...I'm arriving fashionable late.  So I will play catch up and post both Monday's & today's ideas.  I have always loved so many of these ladies blogs as a go-to for ideas and tips.  Now they are joining forces as Blog Hoppin, and having a 'We Are Thankful' Linky Party.

We Are THANKful for:

Time-Savers

Every time I turn around, my job has another great technology resource available.  But with the excitement, along comes the dreaded need for ANOTHER userID and password.  I try to keep my login information as close to each other as possible but I began to lose track after my list of various resources continued to grow.  I can only imagine that I was complaining about it one day to a fellow colleague and she showed me her list.  A-ha!!  Why didn't I think of that?  So I created a word document that had a list of all the school resources we have usernames and passwords for and I keep it on my "Handy Dandy" Clipboard.  

 Of course, it is clipped to one of my clipboards that has several other important documents and so it get's lost in the stack.  So -- I added a small, blue paper clip to it on it's lower right hand corner and it allows my fingers to find that specific page in a quick second when I am logging on to BrainPopJr or some other great resource.

Helpful Hints

#1 - "Handy Dandy" Clipboards

Let's refer back to those "Handy Dandy" clipboards I mentioned above.  I had a colleague that always to carry around a clipboard.  She kept lots of various important lists, schedules, forms, etc.  I started with just one and my clipboard fascination has evolved to 4 this year.  I found some really cute animal print clipboards at Walmart this summer and grabbed them.  Each clipboard holds certain important things I might need in hand quickly.  This has allowed me to not have to dig through piles to find these items (which was something you might see me do often before).  One clipboard holds my lesson plan, class schedule, class list, student ID numbers, transportation info, my login document, and other VIP papers that pertain to my daily needs.  I have another clipboard that I keep records of grading, rubrics, check-off sheets, class-at-a-glance assessment/progress scores, etc.  The third clipboard holds all the documents my students and I use to keep our Classroom Economy/Behavior Management System running smoothly.  The last one has been used as my schedule & information for volunteers that come into the classroom to help.  I'm pretty sure I could find uses for more, however that is what I am using right now.  

#2 Math Fact Rings

Another helpful tidbit that I can't believe I didn't start before is my fact card rings.  I saw a pin for this idea over the summer, so I created some printable flash cards.  I keep them stored on binder rings by sets.  The students check out the set they are working on and keep it hung on a hook I put on their desk.  They can grab the ring of flash cards at any point in the day when they are finished with assignments.  This allows for practice all throughout the day and it is differentiated for their focus at that time.

#3 Baskets on Desks

I'm sure most teachers have some sort of set up with materials on table groups.  In the past, I have had community supplies as well as individual supplies.  I have now evolved to having some community and some individual.  For example, they each store their own crayons, colored pencils, scissors, and markers in their desks but I have collected all the dry erase markers and pink erasers.  I put these in the baskets on each table group and they use them as they need to.  But the best part about my baskets is the sets of books I keep out.  My class has their own book bag with books from the classroom library they have checked out for the week.  They are always welcomed to grab their bags for reading when they have down time.  However, I have found that they love to also just grab a book from the baskets.  I have several books on various levels and various genres.  I also include the science readers that our district discontinued a few years ago.  My kiddos really do sometimes just dive into the various readers at their table and love to share what they find in them like vocabulary words, spelling patterns, and other concepts we've covered.

Idioms (or shall I say Literal vs- Non-Literal Meanings)

Alright - our school-wide focus is on how to translate the state objectives and create high rigor lessons that really meet the expectation of learning.  So after lots and lots of thinking and searching for great resources, I found some great learning ideas to go along with Literal & Non-Literal meanings.  I found a fun idea about introducing idioms to the students by letting them use alphabet cereal to create words and then telling them to "eat their words."  I didn't find Post Alpha-bits cereal at our local store so I settled for alphabet shaped cookies.  My kiddos were so excited and inventive in finding ways to make letters of words they wanted to spell.

 Look at that LONG vocabulary word!!

 She created the letters she needed with pieces of cookies!!

When I told them that now I wanted them to "eat their words," they were excited because who doesn't love a snack but it also led us into a great discussion about what that phrase can also mean.  Throughout the days we spent talking about idioms, we referred back to ourselves LITERALLY eating our words often!!