Growth Mindset in Action, Linky Party, and Freebie!

Okay, here is a "sharing" blog post for you!

In our first grade classroom, we have focused a lot of our character education time on growth mindset.  I had previously read (on other teacher blogs) that the book, Rosie Revere, Engineer, is great for reinforcing the idea of growth mindset...and boy, were those teachers right!

I wanted to do more than just read and discuss this fabulous book, so I went on a Teachers Pay Teachers hunt and found a fabulous product created by Kirsten Tulsian.  All the activities align nicely with the book.

I created a simple packet cover to stick on the front of the activity sheets because I really wanted the focus to remain on GROWTH MINDSET.  Whenever we come back to this project, it is a reminder to open up the discussion and/or reflection in a way that focuses on how we are keeping a growth mindset throughout the process.  You can pick it up for free by visiting my TPT store.

My favorite part about Kirsten's product is that she includes two S.T.E.M. activities.  Instead of picking one or the other, I gave my students a container with all of the gadgets and gizmos (just like Rosie in the book) for both of the S.T.E.M. projects and instead of specifying a certain product, I just told them their task was to make something that "goes in the air" (again, just like Rosie in the book).

Here are some "in action" photos of my students hard at work.  Just look at that partner collaboration!  :)

Do you have neat ideas for teaching the idea of growth mindset in your classroom?  I would love to hear them!

As a matter of fact, if you have ANY great ideas to share, I would love to hear those, too!  Please consider joining my linky party.

You can read specific details here if you wish, but the general idea behind the linky party is that we share great teaching ideas.  You can include any of the linky party images in your blog post.

Feel free to grab the linky party button below and...

...link up right below!

As always, thanks for stopping by!  :)

Featured Teacher Tuesday - Week 18

It is FEATURED TEACHER TUESDAY!

This week our featured teacher is Stephanie Darling from Special Adventures!

Stephanie Darling is currently a 1st grade teacher in Central Arkansas.  This is Stephanie’s first year in 1st grade; she previously taught special education for 5 years.

Stephanie is married to her husband Kenny, who is also a teacher.  They work in the same elementary school where they met just a couple years ago.  They were engaged and “ran off to Vegas” to get married.  Their little family has grown by 1 as they have a yellow lab, Ozzie keeping them on their toes.  

Stephanie loves teaching!   She is having a blast this year in first grade and is very passionate about helping all students learn in fun and engaging ways.  Stephanie has really enjoyed learning so many new things from teachers in her online teaching communities such as Facebook, blog, TPT, and more. You can find Stephanie on:

Facebook  

Instagram @specialadventures

Periscope @StephaneDarling

Blab @StephaneDarling

Twitter @StephaneDarling

Pinterest

Besides running her blog, Stephanie is also a TPT author!  You can find her store at Special Adventures with Stephanie Darling. Some of her newest products include…

*Seasonal Mystery Passages for Fun Close Reading Practice*

Click the link to check out Stephanie’s latest winter-themed passage.

These packs are perfect for working on reading comprehension and close reading as well as vocabulary development.  

Stephanie also has created an entire year of 2nd Grade Math Curriculum and has a growing bundle that (when completed in June) will be an entire year of 1st Grade Math Curriculum.  These sets are aligned to CCSS and have all you need: games, hands-on engaging lesson plans, reinforcement pages, differentiation, assessments, explicit instructions for use, etc. to save any teacher time, money, and energy in planning and teaching math.

Thanks for stopping by! :)

Featured Teacher Tuesday - Week 17

It’s Featured Teacher Tuesday!

This week I would like to you to meet Christina from Hanging Around In Primary.

Christina has been teaching for 21 years (gasp!) Most of her teaching has been in Grade 1 but she has also taught Kindergarten through Grade 4.  She also spent 3 ½ years working as a substitute teacher at the beginning of her career.  She has been teaching in a small village just outside of Kingston, Ontario, Canada for most of her career.  

When not teaching Christina is spending time with her family: a busy 12 and 15 year old and a husband who runs his own business.  She loves to travel and spend time time at the cottage.  

Christina has always had a passion for teaching.  When she was growing up there was no question about what she wanted to do when she grew up.  A first grade teacher was her dream job and she has been fortunate enough to teacher 6 year olds for the majority of her career so far.  

Christina has always had a passion for creating her own classroom materials and sharing ideas with her colleagues.  She stumbled upon Teachers Pay Teachers in 2012 and got the nerve up to post her own products in the winter of 2013.  Since then she has continued to add products and really grow her store.  She has many freebies to help early primary teachers out in Math, Literacy and Classroom Management.  Click on the covers below to check out some of her popular freebies.  

Christina loves to teach using centers to engage students and keep them practicing crucial skills.  Some of her most popular math centers are

She also creates products that support directed teaching as well.  These comprehension checks are perfect for whole group teaching as well for small group instruction.  The Word Jail is one of her favourite products.  She uses it to help students learn to read and spell those tricky rule breaker words.  Her students love it.  

   

Christina has been blogging for about a year and half.  She enjoys sharing what is happening in her classroom and showing off her products in actions.  You can check out a few of her most popular posts below.  If you like what you read be sure to follow her to keep up with her posts!  

 

You can also follow Christina on Social media.   Check out her accounts below:

I hope you enjoyed meeting Christina this week for our weekly Featured Teacher post.  See you again next week when you will meet another first grade teacher!  

Thanks for stopping by! :)

Featured Teacher Tuesday - Week 16

Welcome back for another week of Featured Teacher Tuesdays!

This week’s featured teacher is Lauren, over at Curriculum and Coffee!

Lauren is a wife, aunt, daughter, sister, and a dog mom to her Brittany Spaniel, Ace.

Isn’t he cute?!

Lauren is in her third year of teaching first grade in Southwest Ohio. She loves to create, blog {when she can! The school year is SO busy}, and spend time outdoors with The Hubs and Ace. With a knack for tech, Lauren has taken those skills and applied them to the blogosphere, serving as her school’s Technology Learning Consultant, and to her TpT store.

One of Lauren’s best sellers in her TpT store is her Fact Family Activities!

These activities are interactive, and encourage student engagement with cutting, pasting and putting together fact family puzzles.

Another one of Lauren’s favorite things to teach is grammar and writing conventions. She saw a need for a product that was engaging and fun, but still served the need for her students to practice those capital letters, punctuation marks, proper nouns, commas in a series, dates, and all of the other CCSS convention standards! The best thing? You can grab all THREE of her DOLs in one big bundle!

Lauren’s students LOVE taking a red pen to these pages and becoming the grader. Students gets to find all of the mistakes and then rewrite the sentence. After, Lauren has her students complete a dictation sentence where she tells them how many points the sentence would be out of (capital, period, name title {Mr.}, commas, etc) and students get to grade each other’s dictation sentence.

Check out these other awesome products that you can find in Lauren’s TpT store that are 20% off this week, February 9-12!

Don’t forget to follow Lauren!

As always, thanks for stopping by! :)