Adding STEM to your Classroom

STEM - Science, Technology, Engineering, & Math has become a buzzword in education. It used to be that when people thought STEM, they thought high school....or at least middle school. But STEM can happen in primary classrooms and it's so important, too! Here's why you should be building STEM into your primary classroom:

1. Children are born scientists. They experiment, play, & work to learn more about their environment. Research shows, however, that children lose that excitement and curiosity by 4th grade. STEM activities in primary classrooms help keep that curiosity and enthusiasm alive.

2. It opens doors for children later in life. When they continue that natural drive to experiment, children are more likely to retain and acquire skills that will enable them to move into STEM careers.

3. Flexible thinking and creative problem solving is strengthened through involvement in STEM activities in the classroom.

4. STEM activities allow for meaningful connections across disciplines: projects naturally connect multiple subjects.

5. Increased ENGAGEMENT!

We've done several STEM activities in my 1st, 2nd, & 3rd Grade Mulit-age classroom. I love how excited my kidlettes get as they work through a problem....make a plan...try it out....adjust their thinking. And they are so excited to SHARE! Here are a few of the activities we've done:

Save Fred! Given just three paper clips, teams have to work together to get 'Fred', a gummy worm, into his little gummy lifesaver life vest. No hands allowed. Without any guidance at all from adults....each group was able to complete the task. There was lots of great problem solving, reflecting & changing plans, and teamwork going on during this fun activity!

We built towers using just marshmallows and spaghetti noodles.

Yesterday, we built catapults using wooden craft sticks and launched candy hearts. Super engaged....and so much learning going on!

We found the plans for this project on Scholastic. They're a FREE download! Just click the pic below to go check them out for yourself!

Interested in finding more terrific STEM project ideas? I've got a whole pin board where I've been collecting them....click the graphic below, stop by, see what interests you, and pin away!

The Holidays are Here! FREEBIE

This time of year, I really start thinking about all the blessings I've had through the past year. I've had a fun year, with lots of great things happening in my classroom and blog. I'm really so blessed to get to be a part of the blogging community. Not only are you all THE.BEST. people around...I'm continually inspired by all the amazing things I read and see you all doing in your classrooms. It's made me a better teacher. Honest.

I know we're all gearing up for the super busy holiday season. I hope you'll enjoy this little treat, and that it'll make this busy season just a little easier. Just click the graphic to download!

Psst! Speaking of holidays.....have you heard about these super Black Friday deals?! After you download the freebie, you'll want to check them out!

Happy Hallo-Wiener! FREEBIE, too!

Halloween is one of my favorite times of the year! It's just so FUN! And there are SO many fun things you can do! Though I admit my most favorite is Christmas...Halloween has an advantage
because it's just a little less stressful and intense....it's just FUN!

On of my favorite Halloween books to read to my kiddos is Dav Pilkey's Happy Hallo-Wiener! It's also a favorite of my kiddos -- they get a kick out of the Halloween costume Oscar's mom makes for him: while he wants to have a fierce, scary costume, he ends up having to wear a HOTDOG costume!! He is mortified...the other dogs make fun of him...and he is bound to have a miserable time trick or treating. Kiddos love the way the story turns around & Oscar ends up the hero.

We are really working on order of events this time of year...sequencing the story and using words like first, next, then, after that, last, or finally. I've created a fun graphic organizer for my kiddos to use. Just click on the pic below to download a copy directly from my dropbox!

If you haven't read this book yet, you should definitely look for a copy. I did a quick search and found this read aloud that could be used in the classroom. I'm thinking it'd make a great workstation or center! Just click the picture of the book below. Enjoy!

Happy Halloween!

Student-Led Conferences

Whew! I had a long big day at school yesterday! Conferences! Wahoo!! Right?

Not right? Yeah-- I know...they can be stressful. There's a lot of information to share in just a few minutes. Then...if you get off schedule....whew! It can be a bit stressful. I do have to say conferences yesterday were the best, least stressful, most effective I've done in a long time! So what was the big difference?

Student-Led Conferences!

Yup! It was awesome! This year, we've really been working hard with my kiddos on goal setting & setting plans to reach the goals. We started way back at the beginning of the year. After benchmarking, I sat down with each kiddo, & we talked about their level, I asked them where they would like to be in x number of weeks (however many until the end of that grading period). Then each child set a plan for reaching their goal. Do you know that saying, "A goal without a plan is just a wish"?! It's not enough to set a goal.....you also have to set a plan for how you're going to get there!

In a mini-lesson, we all worked together to come up with things we could do that would help us reach our goal. (You can read more about that here). I prettied it all up with fonts & clip art, of course (ha!). You can click the pic to download your own copy.

The reason that I'm sharing about the goal setting is that that is what made doing student led conferences so EASY! Seriously! E.Z! It gave even my littles the support they needed to deliver a seriously awesome conference with their parents. In a brief synopsis, here's what it sounded like:
"Back at the first of the year, I was a level J. I worked really hard, and now I'm on Level M. I want to
be on Level N, and my plan to reach my goal is to read every day, practice retelling, and read 20 minutes every day. And look at this mom (pointing at the table at the bottom). Here are the goals for first grade. I'm on level M (pointing)...and it's in the 3rd grade!".

Click to download a copy!

Oh, my. It was marvelous to listen to kiddos sharing this information with their parents. Powerful!
Parents were so impressed. Most importantly-- think about the ownership these kiddos have!

Have you done student-led conferences? I'd love to hear your experiences! How do you set up/plan your student-led conferences?

Empowering Students through Choice

Okay--- I'm going to admit it right here...

Choice? Give my students CHOICE?

All kinds of crazy would ensue!

And besides that-- it just sounds like a lot of work! Yikes!

Yep- that's what I used to think. Then I heard other teachers talk about how they offered students choices and how great it was. It sounded exciting.  I started thinking about how I could provide choices in my classroom. I dabbled in it a bit. 

Then my district implemented a new teacher evaluation rubric. I am in an awesome district & we have a really good rubric. Really. It's a good rubric. We actually choose the areas in which we want to work towards improving. I choice offering student choice. I've been so pleased with how providing choice seems to be improving student learning. 

Planning for student choice in your instruction offers these benefits:

• Gives students a greater sense of control = happier, more actively involved students
• Increases engagement and motivation = more attention to work, more meaningful learning

That's not a difficult equation up there. ..providing student choice increases student achievement. 

I have noticed that my students are indeed more involved. They do take more ownership of their learning, they're more engaged and are performing well academically. 

And they're not running amok. 

Nope- not a bit. My fear of all kinds of crazy? Didn't happen.

Are you like me?  Have you been hearing about this student choice thing & ready to start dabbling? Ready to implement some choice into your instruction?

Here's some reassurance: You don't have to dive in all at once. You can start small and add on when you feel comfortable. A good way to start (and the way I started, too), is to add choice in your workstation or center time. I don't mean it's center time....everyone go make your choices and get started. 

Just choose one or two groups each rotation to make choices.

Just offer two choices to start out.

Here are two ways you can offer choice during your workstation/center time:

During ELA centers, I have kiddos in small groups. This is the chart that I use for our two rotations on Monday. I'm a very visual person, so I use icons. The blue, purple, & orange shapes signify tables in our room. These are assigned tasks whatever activity I have placed at the station is the activity this group completes.

The green C's signify CHOICE. I only put out a max of 4-5 choices per day, and sometimes fewer. It depends on what the kiddos need to work on. On Monday, for example, these choices might be:

• Rainbow Writing Phonics Skill words (a favorite!)
• Snowman Roll & Write
• Possessive Nouns Dice
• Listening Center
• Independent Reading

Here's another way to start out with choice.....

 This is the system I use in Math. This will work for you especially if you want to offer multiple choices, but only one rotation.

It works well for me for math because I do math warm up, mini-lesson, then most kiddos move into independent work while I work with a small group. After they've finished their independent work, each kiddo checks the chart. I have some assigned to an activity/station each day; you can see in this chart that I have 3 children already at each station. These kiddos don't get to make a choice today, but they will get to choose the other days of the week. This is actually a powerpoint slide. I project this on our smartboard and those who are down at the bottom just go up and slide their picture up to their choice.

We did actually try letting everyone make a choice, but we ended up getting bogged down with a line of kiddos waiting to move their picture to their choice. That's not the way we want to spend time. We actually met all together and this is the plan they helped come up with: assign some to each station each day so there aren't as many making choice. Smart cookies, aren't they?!

You can grab your own copy of the Check In Board above! There are a couple ways to use it: you can insert pics of your students like I have, or you can insert text boxes and type in the names of each student. They really love moving their slide around! OH! And I'll let you in on a secret....you don't have to have a Smartboard to use this. Believe me- our Smartboard isn't always working 100% of the time. They're just as happy to move their pic on the computer! Just click the image below to download directly from my dropbox! I'd love to hear how you plan to use it in your room!

If you already provide choice in your instruction, I'd love to hear about it! How does it work in your room?