Hey Midwest teachers! There are only four more days to RSVP to the 2017 Midwest Regional Teacher Blogger Meet Up! Believe me, you don't want to miss out on this awesome opportunity to collaborate with other teachers, grow as a blogger, expand your TPT business, and just have fun! Oh, and did I mention prizes?!
This Saturday, January 21st, 2017 event takes place in Wisconsin Dells, so consider bringing your family along to have fun at one of the indoor water parks (that's what I'm doing), indoor theme parks, movie theaters, casinos, etc.
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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...
Welcome back for a second round of Caring, Sharing, and Preparing. I am so glad you are here!
(If you missed the details on this linky party, feel free to check them out here.)
I am grateful to be under the leadership of a school district and wonderful principal who see the value in and prioritize character education. We have 5 district-wide character traits: respect, kindness, responsibility, honesty, and perseverance.
We are currently focusing on kindness, which brings me to the topic of this post! I want to tell you about some kindness activities we have been doing in our classroom lately, in hopes that you might find a book, video, or an idea that you will be interested in sharing with your students.
Let me start with some amazing children's picture books that we read and discussed in our classroom. Each of these books correlate with the kindness theme.
I have watched this video below so many times over the past few years and to this day, I cannot watch it without getting choked up. (This is why Mrs. Unger randomly walks around the room and pretends to be busy doing something else when this video is played, hehe.)
Naturally, we are a bucket-filling classroom. This picture was taken before school started, but now each of these buckets have a student photo on them. My kiddos can show kindness in two ways: 1) by placing a "warm fuzzy" (craft pom pom ball) in someone else's bucket or 2) by writing them a kind note. We use some freebie notes from Teaching Mrs. T, but there are SO MANY wonderful freebie notes on Teachers Pay Teachers that I am sure you can find the perfect one for you. Just be sure to leave a kind thank you message to the creator! :)
Of course, we also read all the bucket-filling books that Mrs. Unger owns:
One of my favorite kindness activities is called the "Compliment Car Wash." Unfortunately, I only took a video (no photos) and said student names aloud, so I cannot share the video. But basically, this is what you do:
1) Have the students line up in two parallel lines facing each other, but be sure they leave some space between the two lines.
2) One student at a time walks between the two lines, while the rest of the class randomly says compliments about that person.
Of course, all the students are talking over each other, but they truly LOVE this activity, which is evident by the smiles on their faces. It feels good to know you are receiving so many kind compliments from your peers!
Now it is YOUR TURN! Have you written a blog post recently that could fall under one of these categories below? I am betting you have. Be sure to link it up here as a way to share great ideas with others.
(If you missed the details on how this linky party works, please click here to learn about it!)
Welcome to the very first-ever round of the Caring, Sharing, and Preparing linky party! Here is my contribution...
I have made several changes to our dismissal routine this school year. During those first weeks of school, dismissal was the most stressful part of our day, so I have been tweaking it ever since. I am getting closer to being in a "happy place." I wanted to share these changes with you in hopes that you can pick up a tip or two that will make your dismissal less stressful. Here is what our daily end-of-day routine looks and sounds like.
The first thing we do to get our dismissal routine started is that I pass out our dismissal clips. I bought ours at the Dollar Tree. We use the ladybug, frog, and bumblebee ones, but I have seen the alligator clips in the store, too, and they seem durable as well.
Each student gets a clip. I write their names on the back with permanent marker. They attach the clip to themselves right away (usually on their shirt / jacket collar or sleeve) so they do not lose it. When we eventually get outside and they see the adult who is responsible for picking them up, they know to hand me (in my hand...not in my basket) their clip. The purpose is accountability and safety. I want to know, to the best of my ability, that my students are safe and leaving school with the correct person. For the most part, my students are great about remembering to give their clips back to me. This is one strategy I used in the past as a Kindergarten teacher and even those young kiddos remembered.
During those first weeks of school, I was passing out my students' homework folders, homework (sometimes multiple papers), notes from the office, classroom newsletters, etc. with the assistance of a few student helpers. But most of our class was just sitting at their tables chit-chatting, which is okay for a few minutes, I guess, except they would get louder... and louder... and LOUDER! Mrs. Unger was going bonkers! I needed to figure something else out.
Enter these magical "mailboxes" (or at least that is what we call these hanging pocket charts). I got this idea from one of my first grade teammates.
I bought them at a local teacher store, but you can order them online (example - Really Good Stuff). They certainly were not cheap, in my opinion, especially when I had to buy four of them. However, they have saved time and my sanity! SO.WORTH.THE.MONEY. I was lucky to have that pocket chart stand in my classroom already and it was not yet being used for anything, so it worked out. But you could hang them anywhere within student reach really.
The most recent change to our dismissal routine is this song: "Bye Bye Goodbye" by Super Simple Songs.
The song itself is about two minutes long, so when there are only two minutes left on the clock before the end-of-day bell rings, I play this song. Not only do my students know they have two minutes left to empty their mailboxes, zip their coats, put on their hats, and so on... a calm also comes over the room. The students quiet down and sing this tune. They have even started making up their own gestures! #totalcuteness
The last thing we do is say a see-saw chant. In other words, I say a line, my students say the next line, etc. There are many versions of this chant out there, but I have this one hanging in our classroom:
This freebie comes from Shannon at Technology Rocks - Seriously. My students know there must be silence at the end of the chant. This is my gentle way of saying, "Zip it! We are entering the hallway."
If you are stressing out at the end of the day, try asking yourself, "What are we doing during dismissal that could instead be done during some other part of the day?"
I asked myself this question and then I decided to move the time in which we check out take-home books. We were doing it at the end of the day and some days, my students would not get to check out books because we ran out of time. Not cool. Now we check out take-home books during quiet time. Our quiet time used to be only about 5 minutes, which was enough time for me to take afternoon attendance, address issues that may have come up during recess and/or lunch, etc. So unfortunately, yes, checking out books during this block of time lengthened our quiet time, but it is a much better option than the end of the day.
Okay, I have one more tip for you. If your students go into a coat room or out in the hallway to retrieve their backpacks and such (like my kids do), I suggest having them bring everything into the classroom, instead of getting dressed out there. Now this is coming from a Wisconsin teacher, so when I say "get dressed," I am referring to the jackets, hats, gloves, snow pants, and snow boots that my students put on. This takes some time, especially if I am not keeping an eye on them, they start to dawdle and chit-chat too much. Some of them struggle to carry everything back into the classroom, but they help each other and work it out.
Do you have any other dismissal tips to share that work in your classroom? I would love to hear your ideas! Please comment below.
Alright, now it is your turn - yay! Do you have a recent blog post to share that falls under at least one of these categories?
If so, grab the image(s) above and the blog button below to include in your post, then link up below!
My new(ish) blog quote, Teaching Excellence by Caring, Sharing, and Preparing, got me thinking one day... "that would make for an easy-to-join linky party." So then I contacted the fabulous Alexis Sanchez and asked her to design some linky party images for me. Check 'em out!
So what makes this linky party so EASY to join? Well...it's because you can link up just about any of your blog posts, as long as it falls under one of the three categories below.
What types of blog posts can be categorized as "caring?" Here are just a few ideas that pop into my brain:
suggestions for picture books that focus on character education
ideas for teaching students how to resolving conflicts in healthy ways
tips on how you help students with extreme emotional challenges
ways that you make learning fun and engaging for your students so they want to come to school
suggestions on how to build a strong school-to-home connection
tips for how you build community in your classroom
Oh my word! We teachers are constantly preparing... for back to school, Christmas projects, 100th Day of School celebrations, Parent / Teacher Conferences, extension activities for gifted students, weekly lesson plans...it never ends. So if you have procedural tips, light bulb moments, ideas, or anything that will help others prepare as well, we would love to hear them!
I think this category is my favorite because I love to share! I think my colleagues might believe I am a little crazy because I get excited when other teachers visit my room to browse and borrow from my over-the-top abundant classroom library. As they say, sharing is caring! If your blog post does not fit in one of the above two categories, I bet it will fit in this one! Here are some ideas:
classroom management tips
free products
news that other teachers might find helpful
photos of your classroom organization
tips on differentiated instruction
I bet you are now thinking of blog posts you already write that you could link up here, right!? You might also be wondering... what types of posts do NOT belong in this linky party? Please DO NOT link up posts if you are just looking to promote and sell your products or anything like that. If you are looking to get something out of this (other than the satisfaction of knowing you are helping others), this is not the link-up for you. I really want us to stick to the selfless theme of caring, sharing, and preparing. Any posts that do not fall under those categories will be deleted. Thank you for understanding.
Okay, so let's talk logistics. When can you count on this linky party being up? That is where I would love YOUR feedback! As much as I love to plan ahead, I can also just "go with it" (sometimes, haha) and this would be one of those times. I was nervous about attempting to host a linky party at first because, of course, there is always the chance that it could be a big 'ole fat fail. But I try to have a growth mindset, so I am just going with it!
I am going to post the first linky party TOMORROW and try to get the word out there as much as I can on social media. Then I am going to follow whatever direction is given to me. Thanks for sharing any feedback you have to offer!
So grab any of the images above to include in your blog post, be sure to mention this linky party, and join me back here tomorrow! I am SO looking forward to reading all your brilliant ideas!
