Homemade classroom goodies!

While I spent most of my Christmas break with my family visiting from Ireland, I have been able to in the past two days to really crank out some homemade new learning activities for my reading centers and my upgraded math centers.

Firstly, I would strongly recommend that you look at this link. This is where I got the ideas to make all of these centers and where I will be going to get more ideas. It also includes a sample worksheet that you can use with each center! I will probably just have students record work on notebook paper to save on paper (it is scarce!).

Word Family Cans

I used snack size cans for the container, milk/orange juice lids and notecards to create a great review center for students doing word work.

Students will record their created REAL words to turn in for accountability.

Paint Stick Sentences

I used paint sticks from Home Depot, clothespins and notecards (although when I can, I will probably find some flash cards to use instead). 

Students will take a notecard with a clothespin to plug into the sentences on the paint sticks to create a sentence that makes sense. They will then write down their new sentence.

I think this will be very helpful for my ESL students because I'm trying to use visuals to help them understand a patten in sentence structure.

Dolch Word Cards

I cut apart paint cards from Home Depot to write the Dolch words from each list to sort into groups. Now I may use these as a practice flash card center or what I really like to do is make a telephone center.

For the telephone center, you have two telephones linked to each other. One student calls the other, the student will say one of the Dolch words to the other, then they must write the word correctly. The student will hold up the word they wrote, the caller will check it; if the word is correct then they hang up and switch roles.

Now I just need two phones.....

*******************************************************************************

I am doing something brand new in Math. I've been really happy with using the Daily 5 for reading. The students love it and I've seen tremendous improvement in almost every student. I was looking for a way to bring that kind of excitement and results to math when I found BUILD.

They are math centers set up a lot like the Daily 5 with a lot of independence. It stands for:

Buddy Games

Using Manipulatives

Independent Working/Reading

Learning about Numbers

Doing Math

I'm going to start with whole group math and then pull small groups for reteaching and reinforcement while the rest of the class is doing their BUILD centers. I am so excited and I think the students will be too!

Clothespin Facts

To help build (ha ha) up their knowledge about fact families, students will choose a number on a notecard and then must find facts in the container that equal that number. Students will write down their answers on an accountability sheet for every BUILD station (just notebook paper for me!).

The first one I've made is just addition facts for numbers 8-18 that have switched factors. I tried to focus on double, double plus 1, and plus ten facts when choosing the facts.  I think for my next one I'll have just subtraction and then maybe mix them once the students get really good at this.

Math BANG!

This is a fun game that just requires popsicle sticks with math concepts and skills written on them (mainly for review) and some sticks with the word BANG! written on them.

To play this game, a group of students would take turns drawing sticks from the container. If the student can answer the stick correctly, then they get to keep the stick. They keep playing until someone draws a stick that says BANG! which means that round is over and whoever has the most sticks won that round. The sticks go back in and the game restarts. 

I think my students will love this :)

I looking forward to kicking off the new year will all of these new goodies! I will continue to be posting more homemade things that I make so you can see what we're up to in class and you might want to make your own!

Smart Board Interactive Websites!

Okay so this is going to be a really short post, but I was very excited to share some news. All of the teachers at my school are getting smart boards! I am busy looking into great resources to use in my classroom with my smart board. I just wanted to share some of what I found and if you have any suggestions for more ideas feel free to post. BTW all of the sites are FREE!

I am very excited to use this as a classroom management system. Class Dojo is this awesome site that lets you create little icons for each of your students and during class you can give points to students to reward them for being helpful, participating, doing well with partners, etc. You can also take away points for negative behaviors. I LOVE that parents can also log on at any time to see how their child is doing. I'm planning on using it to reward students once they reach a certain amount of points.

I'm also looking at working on nouns, verbs, and adjectives soon and I found this game that I thought would be great to play as a class. It's called Noun Dunk. I think they kids would be excited about getting up to play the game. It's fun to check out if you have the time!

The last one that I think I'll have to try out is mainly for science. I've used it before hooked up through my Document Camera (through the computer), but being able to create the static electricity and do the different experiments by actually touching the balloons together on the screen would be a ton of fun! The main website has tons of science interactive demonstrations where the students need to move items to create reactions. The site is called Engineering Interact and I recommend it!

One more goodie that I want to share has to do with place value. It's like Pacman, but with place value! Looks like a super fun game that we could play together and then I could have them practice on their own on laptops! It's called Place Value Eaters!

I hope you enjoyed all of the goodies! I am very excited for a smart board and excited to let the kids use their hands with this technology for learning!

Thankful Updates!

Thankfully I'm finally finding some time to blog! I even had time to decorate my door! I'm feeling so grateful for the teachers who have helped me; at Welborn and other schools! 

Like the door decorations were things that a retired teacher from Onaga gave my mom to give to me! I've also had a chance to work together with teachers to collaborate ideas for teaching and behavior.

Word Work

I created this "game" for a new word work station to practice compound words that "anyone" :) could make! I just wrote on both sides of popsicle sticks (writing to one side or the other depending if it was to be the first or last part of the compound word) and students will have the chance to pull sticks to make words and will write their created words onto a notecard to turn in (for that accountable piece).

Math Anchor Charts

I am working very hard to continue to use anchor charts this year and I've seen a real difference in the class. Even if I take down or move the chart, the students will still look there like they can read the words somehow!

I already had my money identification anchor charts posted (though I may need to review/ refresh those soon!), I made some recently for word problems and strategies for solving. We also reviewed even/odd numbers this week so I made a mini anchor chart for that!

My plan is to try to develop more anchor charts for reading. We already use songs for learning digraphs, vowel sounds and compound words, but perhaps I should post the songs or some rules. Any thoughts or suggestions?

Behavior

I am very happy to announce that our school has taken on a school-wide behavior initiative called "Welborn Bucks." I was able to be a part of the committee that got the program started and so far I've had a lot of success with it-- I've even used it as a replacement for some of the other strategies I've been using (it was time to adjust anyway!). The school has a system set up that if students earn 100 Welborn Bucks they can buy a "dress down pass." I also love that any teacher can give the dollars to any student in the school.

They can earn Welborn Bucks for following the guidelines: I am peaceful. I am a learner.

So I am giving bucks out during class and giving them for successful formative and summative tests/quizzes. The students love their bucks-- and I'm loving them too! I can't copy them fast enough!

Gateway Game

Wow I've gotten busy! Here is a new classroom management strategy that I'm using my classroom to have students monitoring themselves and others' behavior.

The Gateway Game

Our school made a big push last year to address gateway behavior. Gateway behavior is those behaviors that aren't huge displays of disrespect, but minor things like eye rolling, sighing, or tapping their feet and they can lead to bigger gateway behaviors like cussing, talking back, or shoving others. These are the kind of behaviors that lead to trouble.

I like to explain it to the kids with an analogy. A puppy!

We start by talking about what a puppy is like, particularly how puppies try to get out of fences.  Then I ask if the puppy is safe when they get out and of course the class says no because there are cars and other animals or the puppy could get lost.  That's when I tell the class that my job is to make sure the fence is strong.

Then we talk about how the fence can get holes in it when people start doing little behaviors that aren't very safe.  This is where I use the marker to draw holes in my fence and the students share out gateway behaviors that would cause that hole.  I have this on the front board and have reminded the students that I will add to the holes if I see any new behaviors that are causing holes and letting my puppy out!

The scoreboard in my room is changed every week with me vs. the class. If they do gateway behavior, I get a point. If they do responsible, caring, helpful, or respectful things, they get a point. At the end of the day we see who has the most tally marks.  The yellow page below is our overall score for the month. At the end of the month is the class beats me, we'll have a big celebration. Then, the competition will restart for next month!

Sometimes I know that kids may do little behaviors like tapping their feet without really thinking about it. I like to give students a fair chance so I have two reminders that I say to students if I notice them doing a minor gateway behavior. They are "are you okay?" and "Don't let my puppy out!"

The cutest thing ever is when the students catch each other doing gateway and they whisper "you're going to let her puppy out!" :)

I just started this last week, but it's been very successful so far! Feel free to leave any comments or questions!

Double Trouble Mysteries!

I'm overdue for an update so I thought I'd catch everyone up on what we've been up to and where we're going!

Math

We've just finished up working on our doubles facts and working with money (although we will certainly continue reviewing and practicing those skills). We had a magic doubling pot and have practiced using graph paper to work on our doubling facts.

We're now moving into geometry! We're working on shapes and symmetry-- hopefully the next post will have some of those pictures :)

Continue to work on those skills at home and we'll continue at school!

We are preparing for the end of the first quarter and our summative test for math is coming up on October 8th and grade cards come out on October 10th!

Reading and Writing

In addition to practicing writing complete sentences (with a naming and telling part and with end punctuation), we just started looking at mystery writing last week and now we are working on creating our own mysteries in our Daily 5 reading groups.

We've been reading The Mystery of the Missing Moon and we completed this graphic organizer to organize the story.

Tomorrow we will be watching a Scooby Doo mystery while using the same graphic organizer to understand the format of a mystery story.

For the rest of this week we will be working on creating a mystery in our leveled reading groups (with my guidance).  I'm hoping to have the groups read their mystery to the rest of the class by Friday-- we will go to Monday if need be!

This was our first week doing full-out reading groups! Today was our first day and it went great! I'm very excited and hopeful to get math groups started shortly as well.

We are preparing for our main summative test for reading on October 3rd.

Science

I wish I had more pictures of us doing science, but I don't right now-- I will be sure to get some up for our next post as well as some social studies pictures!

In reading, we've been learning about the phases of the moon. In our National Geographic curriculum, we've been studying rocks, minerals and soil and are preparing for a rocks test on October 2nd and a soil test on October 5th.

Extracurricular

I was a part of the Welborn kickball team. I can't say that we won any games, but I was able to rediscover my skills :)

Until next time!