Get Student Attention with These!
I wore these today. As I walked down the hallway, I had multiple kindergarteners tell me they liked my glasses. Looking at them makes me smile, too! I got the glasses from Amazon and the eyelashes from the Dollar Tree. These work great for a lesson on being original!
Is Your Brain Sweating? You need this.
I had listened to Ian Byrd over at byrdseed.com wh’llenging to do. I have borrowed his idea when I give my students difficult puzzles etc. I tell the students they are going to need brain deodorant because I am going to make their brain sweat so bad. Well this year, for humor’s sake I actually brought in a tube of brain deodorant. This is actually a tube of deodorant that I don’t use. I just added a label that says brain deodorant. The students actually rub their head with it (haha!) when I ask them to do something hard. I kind of love this. :). When I am not so teacher busy, I will make a better label for it, but you get the idea.
Even My Principal Remarked How Calming My Room Smelled
Like many of you I have been cleaning my room. Because of the last two years of germ hyper vigilance, I wanted to make sure everything was dust and germ free. With that, I used a Norwex cloth AND my Thieves household cleaner. Both of them knock germs out! The Norwex cloth is rather amazing because it sucks dust up and doesn’t just push it around. I’ve never seen anything like a Norwex cloth, and I keep one at school. Right before the first day of school, my principal came by and remarked how calming my room smelled!
The great thing about Thieves cleaner is that you only need about an ounce to mix with water. I use a Dollar Tree spray bottle and keep it in my classroom for any cleaning needs. The BONUS is that it freshens the air while you clean without any toxic cleaners.
I Want to Be Kind
I rarely leave kindergarten without a story to tell about the events that happened while I was there. The story I am about to relate is probably my favorite one from the whole year.
I taught my normal lesson, and at some point during the time, I needed children to pull out a glue stick. It rarely fails that at least one child is without a glue stick when I ask them to pull one out. When one child let me know he didn’t have a glue stick another child readily volunteered his. I spoke to the one who lent the glue stick and said, “Thank you Johnny for being kind.” Immediately after this tears erupted from close by. Why the tears, you ask? The tears were accompanied by these words. ” I wanted to be kind…I wanted to be kind.”
I love the rawness of kindergarten–raw emotion. There is no holding back as with adults or grown up children. In fact, I think most adult behaviors could be explained with a trip to kindergarten.
In all honesty, don’t we all want to be recognized for being kind? In many cases, we as adults aren’t kind because it helps someone or because it is the right thing to do. We do it because in our pride we selfishly want accolades for our kindness.
Are YOU ready…Freddy?
Every time I enter a K-2 classroom to teach enrichment, I bring Freddy. Freddy is one of my classroom management posters. I bought some clipart and added a “Ready” title to the bottom of this page. The “Freddy” part kind of evolved with the children’s input. What is great about Freddy is that he looks exactly like I want the children to look when I am teaching. At the beginning of the year, we talk about what it looks like to listen and pay attention. Then as I am teaching, I walk around with Freddy and point to him when I see children not acting appropriately. Freddy and his friends are in page protectors in a binder that I carry with me when I am teaching an enrichment class, which lasts about 30-40 minutes.
Freddy has friends, too. With the children’s help I also have named a “Ready Betty”. As time has progressed, Freddy has made friends and I have included them in the binder, too. In addition, I have included a “lip sandwich” poster. I must give credit to a teacher friend for a lip sandwich idea. We discuss what a lip sandwich is at the beginning of the year so that children know the expectation. More than anything, showing them what Ready Freddy looks like gets results whether on the carpet in “criss cross applesauce” style or when children are at their seat. My principal even noticed how effective the posters were and commented on this, and I have had teachers ask their students to get in the Ready Freddy position.
Sometimes I am able to make a story about how Freddy is watching the children and I cover my eyes for five seconds and count and say that I know they will be ready when I open my eyes. I have also told children that Freddy is friends with Elf or Santa at Christmas. There are a myriad of fun imaginative stories you can make up where Freddy is involved especially since children thrive on imagination.
Here is the poster set I made for use at my school. There are most multicultural groups represented in this set.
What Will Become of Our Children?
I am starting to see my students grow up. At times they wait on me in a grocery store or they are a waiter etc. Looking at the struggles our current students are having in school and the push of education in a direction that leaves out common sense concerns me.
- I had a cashier struggle to count a mix of bills at the checkout. I mean maybe he was stressed from the long line and thereby flustered, but maybe not. With the dependence on a debit card, will children be able to count money? It seems at least in my district that the money standards are pushed all the way to the end of the year. We all know what happens when a topic is pushed to the end…it often gets left out.
- I teach some of the brightest students, yet some struggled to tell time. Is this becoming the norm? I had a teacher friend tell me that her grown daughter has to think a minute when looking at an analog clock. The school secretary mentioned that a parent couldn’t tell time from the analog clock in the office. Has our dependence on the digital clock on the cell phone crimped our brain?
- I am all about critical thinking and math, but I am hearing teachers comment that children in grades 3-5 struggle with multiplication facts. The leaders of the math department are insisting that it is okay that children arrive at the answer by reasoning from a known fact. That is great that children can do that…but what happens with just knowing it in a second is important. Clogging up your brain with reasoning to get to the answer slows down your reasoning when you arrive at more difficult problems.
- This one is unrelated to math. Has Google broken our critical thinking minds? Please say it isn’t so! I assigned a research project recently about planets. I asked some questions such as what kind of clothing would you need on this planet? What kind of food would you need? I had a child tell me they would bring Sonic and hibachi. I asked them if they thought there were drive thru windows in space and if that would sustain them for the years that it would take them to travel to their planet. I had children literally type these questions in on Google expecting that the answer would be there. In other words, they didn’t think I was going to make them think. I gave them a lecture about how Google doesn’t know everything, and that I expected them to reason about the questions.
Maybe I just needed to rant about these things, but I really am quite concerned. Public education needs an overhaul of common sense, but these are areas (especially the research one I am going to work on with my students).
Below are some resources to teach time, money, and multiplication.
Set Up Your Cooperative Groups by Doing This
Each time I begin a year, we practice these expectations.
Number 1. We talk about how sharing materials could go badly–scattering materials, sharing germs, not everyone’s hand can fit in the container, etc.
Number 2. We practice saying all of these rules several times so that students get accustomed to saying these words and have this tool in their tool chest of ways to interact with peers.
Number 3. I let the students discuss how they will settle a disagreement. Most students arrive at Rock Paper Scissors as being the best way to solve disagreements. Students also say things like that they could talk out whose ideas was the best. I also mention who has the birthday closest to today, who is closer to the floor (shorter), closest to the ceiling (taller).
After we have talked over all of these rules, we practice saying them first thing in class for several class periods. Before long there are very few disagreements or problems among students.
I hope this helps your cooperative groups run more smoothly, too!
Have You Used These for Grading Pens?
For grading pens there are many options, but I am going to tell you about one I used last year that I wished I had used before–Crayola fine line markers. These worked wonderfully for me to grade creativity tests in which there are so many components. The colors helped me keep track of each test part. Not only are they great for using because of their multiple colors, they are cheap in comparison to other pens. They can also double as colorful note writing pens. I enjoyed these more than flair pens or Vis a Vis although I have used both of those for grading also. I hope you scoop up a few extra packs at back to school season time to last you throughout the year!
Have You Filled a Bucket Lesson Fun! {Giveaway}
One of my friends calls it punting when you come up with a lesson at the last minute that turns out better than one you spent hours planning. Now, I did have a ready to go lesson and was ready to teach it when I thought this idea would be so much better. In a school where I have difficulty with the students treating one another with kindness, this idea seemed perfect. I used the idea from Have You Filled a Bucket Today? for this lesson, but I never actually got around to reading the book.
Here is what I did. I brought a bucket of sorts which actually was a Dollar Tree gift box and it was filled with red die cut hearts and puff balls. I gathered the students in a circle and threw out puffballs one at a time while saying things that kids say to one another that are hurtful. For example, “you’re ugly, your breath stinks, you’re wearing cheap shoes, no one likes you, you can’t play kickball” etc. Every time I would say an ugly comment I would drop a puffball or heart on the floor. Then I showed the kids how the box is like your heart and it is like you are hurting someone when you say mean things to them.
Next, I gave each child a puffball in the circle and had them think of something nice to say about someone else in the circle. I started so that the students had an example to follow. Then as they said a nice comment about someone, I let them put the puffball back in the box. Then at the end I let the kids see how the box was filled up because they said nice things about one another.
Note: It is hard to get young children to say something nice about someone that isn’t about their physical appearance, so this requires modeling or else the children will say that johnny has a nice shirt or that they like someone’s hair. After we sat on the carpet and did all of this I had the children write something on a paper heart that they would say nice about someone else. Then I collected all of the hearts and made a bucket to post on the wall so that the children could be reminded of what we had talked about.
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