The Ugly Gift

I got this from a friend of mine and thought it was so wonderful.

Her sons are in elementary school and last December the one boy’s teacher came up with this amazing idea. This is “The Ugly Gift”.

Have each student go home and find an ugly gift. This could be the one sock that lost it’s match, a banana peel, a super short pencil, a half used eraser, a candy wrapper, anything. The students are not allowed to spend any money on this gift and have to wrap it using something at their house (aluminum, news paper, old wrapping paper, plastic bags, etc). The goal is to make this gift something that you might not want to get handed to you over the holidays.

The students bring the gifts in and then they are randomly distributed. No one gets their own gift. Then comes the big reveal, everyone gets to open their present. There will probably be a lot of “ew”, “what?”, “huh?”, “gross”, and other exclamations from your students. My recommendation would be to have everyone open their gifts all at once to just make it one moment.

Then the students must analyze their gift. We automatically will look at these presents and think about how disappointed we are that we didn’t get something “good”. We won’t like this gift and will want to give it back. However, it was given to us. We should find the positive in this gift. Here come’s the educational part.

The students will have to find something special about their gift. It will be something nice about the object. The will write a thank you note for the gift.

For example:

Thank you for my single sock. It has so many uses. I can make a sock puppet, I can hide secret objects in it, or I can use it if I ever lose one sock. This gift is special and unique.

All the students will write their note and can read it to the rest of the class and share their object. This takes the ugly object and make it into a lovely present. It shows the students that they can be thankful and happy with anything and also how to be grateful.

Put your own spin on it and allow your students to experience this cool lesson.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Quiet Challenge

This has been used several times in the last few weeks in my classroom. My students have had trouble with not talking when I am talking, or interrupting me, or not listening to my directions because they are talking to themselves. All of the teachers reading this are nodding right now because they know exactly what I am talking about. It is one of the biggest struggles that we face. How do I get my kiddos quiet for the 2 minutes it will take me to say what I need to say?!?

This challenge is one that has 2 adaptations. I’ve enjoyed using both several times, but it takes a lot of dedication on your part as well as on the student’s part. If they won’t buy in, this will not work for you. If you do not fully commit, it will not work.

Adaptation 1: The Quiet Class

For this adaptation, the class is the quiet group. It is a competition. Every kid for themselves. Whoever is the quietest will win the game. I generally use this if I know I need to give a longer set of directions. It begins by telling the class that we are going to play a game. Every kid for his or her self. If you talk, you face the consequences. No one else. If a student talks or makes a noise, the teacher will write their name on the board (KEY POINT: Do not stop teaching! Just write the name and keep going like nothing happened). If they make noise or talk again, they get a tally mark. 5 tallies and you are out! No, sneezing and coughing do not count as noise. Yes, if you laugh it counts. No, if you move your chair to see better it does not count. Yes, if you ask to go to the bathroom and don’t use the signal that counts. If you have a question and I call on you, that does not count. If you call out to ask a question that does count. These and many other questions you will get. I try to address them up front.

This will only work once a day with the sam group of kids. I’ve tried to use it more than once and the game looses all effectiveness and I can’t use it again for another month or so.

Adaptation 2: The Quiet Teacher

I have a lot of fun with this. I did it last Thursday and it made my one student actually focus more than he has in weeks!!

This one is very simple, but takes a lot of teacher power. You cannot talk. You do no talk. You give all your directions in writing or by pointing. The students will need to pay close attention. If they do not follow directions, there are consequences. In my small group, I wrote our directions for the class on the board. The boys took turns reading it as I pointed to the direction and to them. I was only allowed to read the questions on the page and answer questions if they had any. Outside of that, I said nothing. If a student messed up reading a word in his book, I leaned over and tapped the word, or pointed to the other child to help him out. If they did not get the answer right to the question, I made them read the page again. All by pointing. I honestly think that I said 50 words for the whole 30 minutes of my small group, and that was just reading questions off the page! My boys really had to buckle down and concentrate in order to complete the work for the day and earn a stamp towards our goal.

As with everything that I post here, these are just the skeleton concepts for activities you can do in your room. Customize it to fit your needs and your students. Every room is different and every teacher has a way they like things done. So make it your own!

And remember…SHH!!!

Transition: Cats

This one was a favorite of mine at my last school. It started with a suggestion from a 2nd grader. We were learning about animals and she mentioned that the cats prowl through the jungle like how we need to go through the hallways: quietly and slowly. This started the new transition.

Begin by lining up your students. Then ask them how a cat moves. Some will demonstrate it, some will just tell you that they move slowly and quietly. They sneak around and it can be very hard to tell where they are in the house because they are so quiet. The goal for this transition will be to move through the halls like cats. We don’t want anyone to know where we are in the hallways. Cats do not make loud clumpy sounds so we can’t either.

When I did this with my class we would sometimes pretend to be a specific cat and sneak up on the specials teacher that we were going to see that day. My favorite was when we were all panthers (my high school mascot) and snuck up on the science teacher. She asked what animal we were that day and the whole class growled and said “panthers!” (which was completely unplanned). Have fun with this

Enjoy your prowling!

Let’s Get The Ball Rolling (Morning Meeting)

This is a morning meeting greeting game that I got from another teacher. It is something that most of us have seen at some point in our teaching careers.

This game is very simple and is a lot of fun…if the students act appropriately.

Start with a small ball. I recommend a wiffle ball or a soft stress ball. The students should be sitting on the floor in a circle. The teacher starts with the ball and establishes a greeting with the class. Will you say “Good Morning”, “Hello”, “How are you”? Tell the students to first say the name of the student and give them the greeting (ex. Good Morning Jack!) and THEN they can roll the ball. The student must say the whole greeting before they can roll the ball. This way the other student is prepared. Once the second student receives the ball, the return the greeting. Then they greet another child and roll the ball to them. This continues until the teacher is the only one who has not yet gotten a greeting. Then the last student greets the teacher, and the ball returns to the start.

While this seems like a very simple game, you need to establish all your rules are the very beginning. You are not allowed to throw the ball. You must roll the ball softly. You have to say the whole greeting before the ball leaves your hand. You have to roll the ball to someone who has not had the ball yet. Add your own rules if you need to. Just make sure this is all controlled and you will have a fun greeting during your morning meeting!

So let’s get the ball rolling on another great day of school tomorrow!

OH MY GOSH! WE WON!

Well today is the best day ever! Last night, our Philadelphia Eagles won Super Bowl 52! I can’t believe it! It is so amazing that such a great team finally got the recognition and reward that they deserve! I could not be a happier teacher right now.

Unfortunately, I did have to come to work this morning (in my Eagles gear though). Which means that as a tired teacher who stayed up for the whole game, I had to teach. Thankfully, my students earned a reward day and we were able to have that this morning. Which left me with my reading classes in the afternoon.

Today we read an article about last night’s win! Here is the original article (Eagles Super Bowl Win from Philly.com). I took this and edited it down to 4 pages that are at a 4th/5th grade reading level. This was a challenge for some of my students, but it is good for us to challenge ourselves after a relaxing morning. After reading this article we discussed it as many of my students have comprehension goals in their IEPs. However, if I was to do this for a full class of students, I’d want some more activities involved.

I’d divide them into small groups to read and discuss the article together. Then they could talk about what they did and the game itself. Many of the students at my school watched the game or went to parties with their families. This would be something they would want to share. Why don’t they write about it?

Come up with some writing prompts for the students. Here are some ideas below:

1. Where were you when the Eagles won the Super Bowl? Tell about what was around you, who you were with, what you were doing, and how you felt.
2. The Eagles must be very happy that they won. What should they do to reward themselves after the win? Write a letter to one of the Eagles players or a coach telling them what they should do as a reward for winning. Should they go to Disney World? Take a vacation? Stay home and sleep?
3. Write a letter to a player or the coach telling them how happy you are. What did they do well? Have they inspired you? How?

These are just a few ideas or you can even make up your own! Enjoy and FLY EAGLES FLY!!

E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES!!

OH MY GOSH!!! My Eagles are in the Super Bowl! I can’t believe it!

In case you can’t tell. I’m a big Eagles fan. My mother is a huge Philly sports fan and I guess she rubbed some of that off on me. My room currently has a green theme and I’ve been decked out in Eagles gear on our Eagles Spirit days that we have had. It is a wonderful time to be a Philadelphia sports fan!

With that being said, I’ve had the opportunity to give my students an excess of Eagles related activities. And now I can share some of them with you.

Firstly is math. We have currently been working on fractions and word problems with my fourth and fifth graders. I gave them a warm up problem related to the game. This can be any sort of problem you want! My students are particularly trying to focus on understanding word problems. I gave them the below problem as a warm up. It is super simple, but easy to complete incorrectly.

“The Eagles are going to the Super Bowl. This is Super Bowl 52. They are playing against the New England Patriots. In the game the Patriots played, they won 24 to 20 against the Jacksonville Jaguars. When the Eagles played the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday, February 21st, the score of the game was 38 to 7. The Eagles are now 13 and 3 for the whole season. This is a great record for them. The last time that the Eagles were in the Super Bowl was 2004. The score of that game was 24 to 21 What was the difference in the score of the Eagles and Vikings game on Sunday?”

I love the complex problems! I threw as many stats in there as I could. My students did everything I wanted them to! I wanted them to add, subtract, multiply, and divide all the number combinations possible and they did!!!! We used this to look through the problem and take our time!

Our steps to solve word problems are:

1. Circle the problem (What is the question that they want us to answer?)
2. Underline the important information (What matters in this problem and will help me solve it?)
3. Write out the problem (Use the information we found to determine what I need to solve)
4. Solve the problem

For this, my students just need to subtract 38-7. That is it. But with all that other information, it can get very confusing. The PSSAs do this a lot too. Not as extreme as this though. When my students realized what they actually needed to do, it was so funny. Most just groaned at me, others whined about how I was trying to be mean, some just laughed and moved on. It was a great lesson.

Next lesson is short and sweet. A POEM! Acrostic poems are a fun project that students can complete independently. I gave directions on how to write an acrostic poem in my Thanksgiving post (Check that out here).

For this fun season, have the students make an acrostic poem for the team. Use the words Philly, Eagles, Foles, Wentz (or any player name), Football, or Super Bowl. Get them excited. Write about the player, the team, the game, or their emotions. This can be a lot of fun and are really cool to share with the class, hang up, or send home as a fun project.

Enjoy your week and GO BIRDS!!

What’s that feeling in my mouth?

Okay, this one may sound gross from the title, but it is a lot of fun and requires a lot of creative thinking on the student’s part.

During one of our lunch sessions at my last job, my students were bored with the usual, colorful food, mindful eating, thinking about their food that we had been doing. I needed something else to grab them. That year, I had a lot of kids that liked to talk about gross stuff. Gross feelings, gross smells, gross stories, all of it was gross. This gave me the inspiration for this mindful eating exercise.

Set a timer for 5 minutes. During this time, as the children to quietly eat their lunches. They have to sample everything in their lunch. Then, they must determine what each food feels like in their mouth. What does the PB and J feel like? Soft? Sticky? Gooey? How does a chip feel? Hard? Sharp? How about Jell-O? Wiggly?

The students will then take 5 or so silent minutes to feel their food in their mouths. Then, give them another 5 minutes to talk about the feelings with their table or with the people near them. Allow a few minutes at the end of lunch to discuss what their food felt like.

I used this to work on descriptive words as well. Students would need to give me words better than just “soft” or “hard”. Some gave me very creative words. Chicken nuggets felt “crumbly then soft”. Chips felt “sharp and breakable”. A brownie felt “smooth and thick”.

Happy eating!

Ninjas!

Over the 14 years (yes, 14 YEARS) of working with students in some way or another, I’ve found that ninjas are timeless. They never are lacking in their popularity. My students all want to be the next ninja turtles or some other samurai character.

For this transition, I took the popularity of the ninja and used it to my advantage. Start this by collecting your students together in a line. tell them that you are the new Sensei and you will be training them to become the best ninjas in the world! They will need to follow the laws of the ninjas in order to be the best.

The Rules Of The Ninjas:

1. Ninjas are silent warriors. They are stealthy and sneaky. If someone hears the ninja, the ninja has failed. They are not to be seen or heard.
2. Ninjas work alone. While we must walk together as a class, you are worried about you. If someone else fails, do not let them bring you down. YOU ARE THE LONE NINJA! BE THE BEST!
3. Ninjas are invisible. You should be sure to stay near the wall. If you are walking in the middle of the hall, everyone will see you. If you are walking near the wall, no one will notice as you walk by.
4. Ninjas focus on their mission and target. Your mission is to get from point A to Point B. You cannot let others in the hallway distract you from your mission.

After explaining the rules, tell the students where you are going between and then be sure to remind them of the rules as you move from place to place.

This is also a great tool for a classroom reward system. Students can earn belts for their transition performances. If the whole class gets black belts (the highest belt), you can have a party or give them all a big reward.

Remember the code of the ninja. Focus on your mission of being the best teacher ever!

From,

Your Sensei 😉

Tin Soldiers

This is a game that was invented in a fun way. Our students were waiting for their parents to arrive for our winter festival. We had gotten to the meeting place almost 10 minutes early due to an error from the office. Imaging a group of 12 students, with ADHD, who just had candy canes as a reward while watching The Nutcracker, and telling them to wait for 10 minutes in a single area. Not a pretty picture. My head teacher looked at me after asking the class for the fifth time to keep the noise level down. I immediately looked into my “mental filing cabinet” of games and made this up on the spot.

Here’s how Tin Soldiers works:

1. Line the students up in a single file line shoulder to shoulder.
2. This game is a quiet game. Introduce this by telling them that they are all tin soldiers, and toys don’t talk.
3. You play the role of General. You call out different orders to the group and they must follow them all to the letter! If they don’t, they will be taken off the shelf and not be sold as good little soldiers.
4. Start with simple commands such as “march”, “salute”, “turn”, etc. If you feel like it, teach the students the correct terms, such as “forward march”, “halt”, “about face”, etc.
5. The students must make all movements like a tin soldier. There are no joints. All stiff arms and legs.
6. If a student does not follow a command correctly then they are out. When they are out, they go back to the shelf (the starting line) and wait until the next round.

Sound familiar? This game is basically Simon Says with a different theme. I noticed that I could change a small piece of a game, give it a silly name, and I presented it in an exciting way, I could use all the classics in a new way.

Hope your new year is off to a great start!

What Will I Do In 2018?

New Year’s resolutions. They have been the bane of my existence for so long. I honestly hate them. I used to not make one, but then people would tell me about how well they were doing on theirs. “I’m getting so fit”, “I’m losing all this weight”, “I’ve saved so much money”, etc. It got to a point that I felt the pressure to start a resolution. And I wanted it to be something easy that I knew I could do. I would make it something simple like, “I’ll spend less money on stuff I don’t need”, “I’ll make an effort to make my bed every day”, “I’ll make sure I’m more prepared when I pack my school bag”, etc. Once I set a goal for myself, I was more likely to get something done, especially if I set a reward for myself too.

This makes a great lesson for my students. Some teachers do goals at the beginning of the year. I like a mid year goal personally. It gives the students time to get used to school and take some time to learn how school and how my class works. Now that they have had 3 months, they can now set goals for themselves. A New Year’s School Resolution.

The first step is to think of something that they are good at. This is a jumping off point. Make sure the students know that they are successful.

Then have them reflect on something they want to work on. This could be something simple like “Raise my hand more”, “Participate in class”, “Keep my hands to myself”. Or it could be something a little more challenging like “Master my multiplication facts”, “Write my name in cursive”, “Get an A+ on my Social Studies test”.

Once they have a goal in mind, have them write it down. These can be typed and placed on desks, in assignment books, or in a homework folder where the student can look at it and remember their goal.

Remind them occasionally during the year to look at their goal. If they meet their goal, reward them. If they are struggling, help them, encourage them. Make this an activity that lasts the rest of the year.

This year, my resolution is going to be to have a successful first year as a Learning Support Teacher!

Share with me your resolutions!

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!