Interactive Morning Messages

Hi!  I'm Jennifer and I blog over at Elementary School Garden!  I am in my seventh year of teaching 4th grade and am currently at home on maternity leave after giving birth to my first daughter.  I'm very excited to embark on this new blogging adventure with all these amazing bloggers at Who's Who and Who's New.

Today I wanted to talk to you a little about Interactive Morning Messages.

Our district uses a responsive classroom approach.  Each morning we have a morning meeting which includes an interactive morning message.

When I first started teaching I would spend my precious morning minutes creating a fun morning message that would often be ignored by distracted students as they arrived.  How could I save my morning time and present a morning message in a way that would catch students attention immediately as they entered each morning?

I decided to make my morning messages interactive!

How do I do this?  By adding a section at the bottom of each message for students to respond.  I keep a little bin of post-it notes and markers nearby.  I post my morning message up front by our door so it's the first thing students see when they enter our classroom.  They stop, read the message, and immediately respond.  Then, we read and discuss our morning message as part of our morning meeting.

To save time I bring the pad of paper home over breaks or long weekends and write out a months worth of messages all at once.  I follow a simple schedule:

Monday - Weekend Happenings

Tuesday - Social Studies / Science

Wednesday - Math

Thursday - Language Arts

Friday - Riddles, Jokes, and Fun Stuff

This schedule helps me think of new and creative messages rather than falling into a pattern of the same boring posts.

Here are some examples:

This is the message that I plan to post on the first day back from February Break.  This will also be my first day teaching after my long maternity leave.

You can underline key words to make them pop.  Use color to make different parts of your message stand out.  Place a post-it note on the message as an example of your expectations for students.

Here is another example.  This morning message ties in our math content.  I am collecting data about students' favorite colors.  We will use the tally chart to make a bar graph during morning meeting.

Notice how I left the day and part of the year blank at the top of the message?  I do this so I can reuse the message next year.  I'll just cut off the bottom and put a new piece of paper underneath it.  You can use post-it notes to add the date to the top of your message or have students help you fill in the date during your morning meeting.

Here are some helpful tips to make your interactive morning messages amazing:

Do you use morning messages in your classroom?  What tips would you share?

Get Your Song On: How To Use Music In The Classroom To Engage Your Learners!

Love them or loathe them? If there are two things I know about children it is this: children love singing and children love games! I always start a class with a fun song or a game, and end my classes the same way. The reason is simple: because your students will come to class excited to learn and will leave with a smile on their face. (And don't tell my students I cram in all that tough learning stuff into the middle...) Anyone can add music to their daily classroom routine AND it can be educational, as well as fun. So let me take you inside my world of music and learning to inspire your inner musician.

I'm kicking off my first ever blog post with a fun brain break FREEBIE! Down By The Bay is a brilliant song for any classroom because it is an echo song which will assist students that are developing their pitch and it focuses on rhyming, a skill which can be tricky for students to learn.

Click the link on the line below to get your FREEBIE:
DOWN BY THE BAY MUSIC AND LITERACY BRAIN BREAK-FREEBIE

After every line that I have sung, your students can echo the lines in this interactive song. Within the powerpoint presentation you can use the play mode to click on the middle box to reveal a new rhyme. I have also left a fun interactive surprise at the end of the song that I am sure will amuse all.

You can create a class song book to go with Down By The Bay by having students publish their own rhyming page with the template provided in the package.

I also have my students make a mini flip book to go with this song so they have their own copy to keep. In their individual flip books students can create and illustrate their own rhyme. In this divine little picture, Jaida has made her own rhyme and illustration of "a frog on a log." Activities such as this allow for your students to extend their learning beyond the classroom, as they can take their song flip books home and sing with their parents.

A simple little singing game that is a hit with all my primary classes is "Bee, Bee, Bumblebee". I have made a short singing sample of this song for teachers that are unfamiliar with the tune and added a backbeat to highlight the steady beat. Just click on the link below and you can learn this simple song. Tip: To hear the sample song in TuneScoop you need to click the play button at the very bottom of the page (the middle play button will lead to you to some non related advertising).

Click on the link on the line below to hear my version of Bee Bee Bumblebee:
Bee Bee Bumblebee Song

Don't let the bizarre lyrics and simply melody deter you from trying this with your class. If you play this game the Tweet Music way, your students will love it!

How to play: Once you have taught students the song, instruct them to make a standing circle. To begin the game one student is selected to "pass the clap" around the circle. Then every student after the first follows suit by clapping the next beat and the clapping continues from student to student until the song ends. The students that take their claps on the words "buzz, buzz, buzz" are out, and those three must sit down. Play then continues by repeating the song again until only one student remains.

The point to this game is for students to feel the steady beat of the song, and to demonstrate it by clapping ON the beat. If students rush their claps or begin to clap out of turn, I simply assist by pointing to each student as they are meant to clap.

I love this game for so many reasons:

1) It is a simple, but effective way to practice steady beat.

2) The "winner" is determined by luck, not skill, and because of this my students love that they all have an equal opportunity to win a game. I always reward my students with a special "winners" sticker for a bit of extra excitement!

3) It can easily be differentiated for various age levels and abilities: for young students I play the beat on a drum so they know when it is their turn to clap and for older students I have them say the syllables individually on their turn for rhythm practice.

4) My students love it! They could play it over and over again, and never tire of it.

Now,  if you've read this far then let me take a moment to say g'day! I am Chrystine, a music teacher from Sydney, Australia. I started my TpT store last year with one vision: to bring more music into homes and classrooms. I've always believed that learning that is fun, is learning that is memorable and so I try to put a little piece of this belief into every resource I make.

In closing, I'd love to hear how you are going to use music and learning in your classroom? And remember, don't be afraid to get your song on!

                                                                                    

Graphics provided by:
Graphics From The Pond

An Ode to Toilet Paper Rolls...

Confession time... in my garage I have 14 empty egg cartons, 5 Pringles cans,  a crate of empty toilet paper rolls, and a bucket of broken crayon bits. My husband thinks I'm a hoarder... or a borderline hoarder at the very least. I always explain that while I do have these seemingly useless piles of junk sitting around gathering dust bunnies, it's not because of an emotional attachment on my part. It's practicality.

My Junk Pile... Rich With Treasures!

He doesn't realize how difficult it is to acquire 125 dead CD's for a radial weaving unit or enough toilet paper rolls to assemble a faux chrysalis for 5 separate kindergarten classrooms. It's nearly impossible to not look like a crazy person if you have to actually buy 50 pairs of nude knee-high stockings... not to mention putting a sizable dent in your pocketbook.

My name is Jenny and I'm an elementary art teacher... or I was. As of this school year I am a stay-at-home mom to my four amazing children (including a set of infant twins), but I just can't shake the urge to hold onto baby food jars and bits of interesting ribbon, just in case. I am excited to add my voice to this blog and, hopefully, add some creative ideas for you as well.

The Humble Cardboard Cylinder

Today, as you may have guessed, I want to talk to you about the plain, ole' toilet paper roll. This humble cylinder of cardboard literally has endless uses and is extremely easy to collect. If you fly by the seat of your pants, as I am sometimes known to do, you really only need a day or two's notice to send out a plea to fellow teachers or parents for some and you will have toilet paper rolls coming out of your ears! If you find that you want to join the green bandwagon and utilize your community regularly for re-purposing household items then you might like to have a standard note like this one on hand:

Why type a new letter every time?

This is a letter I have sent to parents numerous times for random things... like dryer lint. More on that another time! You can download a copy of mine here and use the customizable form fields to fill in your donation request, the purpose, the deadline, and your name.

Now, back to toilet paper rolls! I have used them as time capsules, as simple sculpture materials, as poster holders, as mailboxes, as stamps, as seedling pots, as simple looms, and probably more that I can't remember.

Their newest reincarnation is a fabulous-but-cheap textured rolling pin covers for some fantastic printmaking. I have bought the miniature textured rolling pins before, but it costs between $10-$15 for a set of four and if you are working in a whole class setting, the math of that just doesn't add up! Another thing that I don't like is that there are usually only a couple of pattern types available. . . stripes, dots, and waves. By making your own, the possibilities are ENDLESS!

First: The Rollers!

Cheap, durable, awesome: PVC.

Seriously, those miniature wooden rolling pins  from school supply companies are cute but they break in two seconds. I needed something tough. I went to Home Depot to the plumbing section and picked up (okay, technically my husband picked it up) a piece of 1.25 inch PVC pipe. They are sold in 10 foot lengths and it cost about $5. I had a clerk at Home Depot cut the PVC pipe into pieces for me and ended up with about 20 sections. I sanded the edges just a bit for smoothness, but it was pretty quick and easy. Basically, you can make a classroom set of rolling pins (for paint, for clay, for playdough, for printmaking) for under $10, depending on how many you need. 

Second: The Texture!

The self-stick foam sheets are ideal and easy to use.

This is where my old friend the toilet paper roll comes in handy. You can take sheets of craft foam (or if you want to make it really easy, the self adhesive foam stickers) and attach custom shapes or designs to the exterior cardboard with a strong glue. Let them dry completely!!!
 

Third: The Paint!

Not only are these fun, they are easy to clean up.

The toilet tubes will slide nice and tight onto the PVC pipe if you've sized it correctly (a quick suggestion is to actually take a sample of your toilet paper tubes when you buy it to make sure they fit because there is a little variance among brands) and you now have a custom designed texture roller. Most craft paint, acrylic, or tempera paint will work just fine with these. Spread the paint in a thin layer and roll the pipe several times until it is covered evenly. Roll onto paper in any combinations, designs, and colors you want! If you roll them by hand, you will get messy and while I think that's half the fun I have an alternative: Slide a medium-thick dowel through the PVC pipe to act as a handle.

Fourth: The Final Project!

Voila! Beautiful!

What I love about projects like this is that you can connect it to so many other areas. You could talk about positive and negative when you cut shapes from foam, you could discuss repetition and patterns, you could make it seasonal by using themed shapes, etc. 

What have you used toilet paper rolls for? I am SURE I can't be the only aficionado... 

Public Service Announcements

Hello, my name is Teresa Kwant and I am thrilled to be a part of this new blog! I teach 6th grade in an elementary school in Utah. Recently, I finished my technology endorsement through a program called eMINTS. The goal of eMINTS is to encourage inquiry-based learning, build cooperative learning, and create technology-rich learning environments. Here's a peek at what my classroom looks like:

We have all kinds of fun using technology on a daily basis!

Recently I decided to have my students create Public Service Announcements to spread some positive messages around our classroom and school community. It turned out to be a fun writing project as well. To engage the students and get them excited for the project, I first showed them commercials from [this] website. Some of my favorites are titled Imagine, Concert, The Greatest, Top Shelf, and Bus. Then we discussed as a class why these commercials impact people and in what ways they leave impressions. 

Next, with a partner, students brainstormed as many positive values as they could and created a [wordle].

Depending on the technology available to you, this may be done on your classroom computers, as a whole class creating a wordle on the teacher computer, during centers, or in the computer lab.

Once the wordle was completed it was time to get started on the writing. A Public Service Announcement (PSA) is an excellent example of persuasive writing (which fits right into the common core). This writing prompt was a great introduction for their paper:

After students had read the prompt, I passed out a graphic organizer and told the students that they had to choose one value they wanted to persuade our class and school community to follow. Why is it an important value? Why should anyone incorporate this value into their lives? They could refer back to ideas brainstormed in their wordle as needed. 

The next day we started writing a persuasive essay about the value of their choice. Once the rough draft was finished, students did a self and peer edit of their writing. Last, I had them publish their writing on this template page:

For the final project students were put into small groups of 4 or 5. They chose one of the values a team member had written on, and started creating a PSA. They were given a storyboard for thoughts and details to map out their ideas. Once a storyboard was finished, students practiced their PSA. When they finished practicing (which was a day or so later) students then recorded their PSA's (filming with iPODS) and uploaded them to the computers. I set up time slots for my students to film during recess so I could guide and monitor each group and so there wasn't any unnecessary background noise. My class used a program called Windows Live Movie Maker to create their work.When all the videos were completed we watched them together as a class. Unfortunately I can't post student samples, but they did PSA's on topics like "Caring," "sportsmanship," and "being a friend."

 If you do not have access to technology or computer labs often, try having students make skits and performing them in front of the class or designing a poster about their values to hang around the school.

This activity definitely added a closer community feel to our classroom and they enjoyed working together to make the videos. PSA's are a great way to get your students involved, no matter how big or small, in their community. Here is a link to my store with the PSA pages [here].

If you are interested in other CCSS writing units, check out my Writing by the Month Units in my TPT store [here].

(Graphic Provided by Krista Wallden)

Let It Snow!

Hi everyone!  I am Jane Feener and I am so excited to be a part of this blog.  A big thank you to Hilary for inviting me to contribute as I am newbie when it comes to blogging.  I have enjoyed reading all of the daily blog posts and I have already gathered up a number of ideas I can't wait to try in my class.  I am a grade 5 teacher from Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.  In case you are wondering, Newfoundland is a beautiful island located in the north Atlantic.   We are also located in the most easterly part of North America. When you live where I do you need to embrace winter and the snow.  This is what can often face you when you open the front door after one of our nor'easter storms.

You might be asking what are some of the ways we make the best of our long winters.  One activity we always enjoy is decorating our classroom doors and holding a competition for the best decorated door.  Using a combination of ideas I saw on Pinterest my class managed to receive a honorable mention with this one.

Due to all the snow outside our students usually have to stay inside during recess and lunch.  This can be challenging for my class at times because I have 13 boys this year who love to get up and move.  Since returning after the Christmas break my students are slowly beginning to settle back into their school routines.  To help with classroom management, I have created a bulletin board in the class which helps students to work towards a group reward.  The students refer to it as the "OSCAR board".  I guess you figured out that I have a Hollywood theme going on in my room this year.  O.S.C.A.R -stands for "Our Students Can Act Responsibly"

  

Basically, the way it works is that students can receive compliments from the teachers who are on lunch and recess duty for displaying good behavior.  If a teacher compliments them on their excellent behavior they earn numbers which we track on our whiteboard.

On Friday afternoon the student of the week gets to draw numbers from a box which contains the numbers 1 -100 which have been cut into small squares.  The number of numbers drawn from the box depends on how many points were earned that week.  This week so far my students have earned the right to have 9 numbers  drawn.  As the student calls out the numbers, another student uses a whiteboard marker to place an X on the corresponding number on the hundreds chart that was called.  The students try to form a straight line either vertically, horizontally or diagonally.  If it sounds like playing Bingo, you are correct.  It is a big hit in my class and the students are so excited when they get Bingo and earn a class reward.  Our last class reward was a movie and popcorn. 

Finally, the best way I have found to embrace winter is to incorporate it whenever I can as part of our daily curriculum.  This year I am so excited about the upcoming winter games.  I plan to use this theme to cover many of my learning outcomes or standards in the upcoming weeks.  In math, we will be graphing the medal results for Canada, United States, Russia, and Germany.  We are learning about double bar graphs so we will be comparing our results with the medal count from the Vancouver winter games.  As part of our guided reading program we will be completing word work and work on writing activities using writing prompts and vocabulary that pertain to the winter games.  I created some vocabulary cards to help my students with spelling all the different sports.  You can grab this freebie by clicking (here)

15 Sporting events word cards

How are you planning on embracing winter and having your students take part in the upcoming winter games?

Diary of a Second Grader - a class writing project

Hey everyone!  I'm Allie from Ms. Lilypad's Primary Pond.  I'm a first and second grade Dual Language teacher, and I've also taught Kindergarten and PreK.  I love the primary grades!  I'm also a reading specialist and just love teaching writing, so I think it's fitting that my first post on the blog will be about a writing project I did recently with my second graders!  

So for our first week back after winter break, I wanted an activity that would be fun, somewhat brief, and help get my little writers back into the groove of things.  So I came up with our "Diary of a Second Grader" project!  This was partially inspired by the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books and movies (I'm not the biggest fan, but my kids do love them).  Diary-style books seem to be pretty popular now, so my kiddos immediately bought into the project.

The project really only took 3 days (or 3 writing workshop blocks, rather).  Here's the breakdown of what we did each day:

Day 1:  Brainstorming

I started off this lesson by introducing the project.  I explained that each student in the class would be writing just one diary entry.  They could write it as themselves, they could write it as someone else, it could be realistic or off-the-wall:  it was their choice.  I just asked that they each pretend to be a second grader writing the entry, because our book title was going to be "Diary of a Second Grader - A Day in the Life."  I told them that I was going to put all their entries together to make a compilation book, and bind it so that everyone in the class could read it.

Then, I asked my kiddos what books they'd read that were written in a diary format, and they named a few.  Then, I brought out this book:

This is Diary of a Spider, by Doreen Cronin.  There are some other similar books out there, like Diary of a Worm.  Anyway, I told my students that I was going to read them just a few entries from the book.  I asked them to think about what they noticed about the diary entries as they were listening to the story.  I also projected the book so that they could see it more clearly.

After I finished reading a few entries, we made this anchor chart:

You will have to forgive me; I am not one of those teachers who can make gorgeous anchor charts! :)  

After we made the chart, I wrote this on the board:

Who - 
What - 
When - 
Where -

I asked students to tell a partner about their plans for their own diary entries by explaining who was going to be the main character, what was going to happen in the entry, when it was going to happen, and where it was going to take place.  Then, I had them take out a sheet of paper and jot down their plans.  That's it for Day One!

Day 2:  Drafting

On the second day, the kids took out their plans from the previous day and began drafting.  I gave them lined writing paper that had a place for the date.  We also went over the anchor chart from the previous day.  As I conferred with the students, most of them got the idea, but some were writing their entries as fictional stories in the third person.  I took out one of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books and explained how it was different from a typical story, and then they caught on.

Here's one of my kiddos hard at work on her draft!  

Day 3:  Publishing

By the third day, quite a few students had already finished their first drafts.  I began the lesson by asking the kids, "If you know that your diary entry is going to be read by everyone in the class, what does that tell you about how your work should be?"  They pointed out that it needed to be written neatly, have good spelling/capitalization/punctuation, lots of details, etc.  I explained that everyone would be finishing their entries, proofreading them, and then copying them over onto a fresh sheet of paper.  I supported the kids in fixing up their work, and I also gave them extra writing time today so that everyone could finish.  A lot of my kids typically finish their writing quickly and tell me that there are absolutely no errors in their work.  But this day, I really felt that they were taking their time to make their writing look nice.  Just goes to show the importance of having a real audience, right?!

Here's the finished class book!

They were so excited to read it and take turns with it!  This definitely turned out to be a highly-motivating project for them.

By the way, I also allowed each child to draw a picture to go with their diary entry, if they wanted.  I laid out the book like this, so you can see both the diary entry and picture:

That's it for today!  Happy writing!

Allie

Close Reading Plus Accountable Talk Equals Super Readers

 Hey everyone, I'm Heather from Second Grade Perks. I also have a TPT shop that you can check out {HERE}. Today I want to share something that I have become obsessed with in my classroom and have seen a huge increase in my students' reading skills. Close reading and accountable talk.  I started using both of these with my class a couple of months ago and I fell in love with the whole process.

With the implementation of common core standards close reading is a must now. I have started this with my class and can see a tremendous growth in their reading skills. The college and career readiness (CCR) anchor standards are often overlooked and the first one states that students must read closely. When I realized this, I quickly started researching what exactly close reading was and how to do it. Here is what I learned:

Close reading is thoughtful, critical analysis of a text that focuses on significant details or patterns in order to develop a deep, precise understanding of the text’s form, craft, meanings, etc. It is a key requirement of the Common Core State Standards and directs the reader’s attention to the text itself.

• Using short passages and excerpts
• Diving right into the text with limited pre-reading activities
• Focusing on the text itself
• Rereading deliberately
• Reading with a pencil
• Noticing things that are confusing
• Discussing the text with others
• Think-Pair Share or Turn and Talk frequently
• Small groups and whole class
• Responding to text-dependent questions

• Can only be answered with evidence from the text.
• Can be literal (checking for understanding), but must also involve analysis, synthesis, evaluation.
• Focus on word, sentence, and paragraph, as well as larger ideas, themes, or events.
• Focus on difficult portions of text in order to enhance reading proficiency.

I will give my students a passage and have them read it alone first while coding the text. They will code things such as parts they had a connection to, parts that was new  information or something they already knew, etc. I have several posters in my room that we refer to when close reading. "Show Your Thinking" is one of them, and it reminds them what each code they can use is. They also circle words they don't know and underline parts that are confusing to them.

Next, I read the passage to the students and they check anything that now makes sense to them that they might have underlined before. We discuss any parts that are still confusing or words they don't know and they share their codes.

The text dependent questions come in next. When responding to the questions I require my students to answer by writing or talking with a partner using the following "Be a Text Talker" options. This involves them going back and reading the text for a third time. They also are required to highlight their answers or use a red pen and put Q and the # by the text evidence for their answer (example, question 1=Q1) 



I also give them free talk time and they use the "Talk About it" posters.

If you think close reading is something you would like to try I offer a packet in my TPT shop: Close Reading: Informational Text {Common Core Style}. It includes all of the posters above, 11 nonfiction passages with 2 pages of text dependent questions for each passage, plus more. Click on any of the pictures below. I am going to offer it 20% off today until Sunday night.

So after I learned all of this and started to use it in my room I decided to try and incorporate accountable talk which I was already doing before close reading. Accountable talk requires several things of students:

• Careful listening to others
• Building on each others ideas
• Paraphrasing and seeking clarification
• Respectful disagreement
• Being specific and accurate
• Resisting saying “anything that comes to mind”
• Working to link clear statements, claims and evidence
• Participating in the discussion

I made posters for accountable talk to hang in my room and students use them when answering questions during reading or math. It has been amazing seeing the kids use these posters. When they answer my questions I hear things like I agree/disagree with so and so because......, or Mrs. Perkins I would like to show how I found my answer a different way.  Yes, you read right. They talk like this without me even asking them to now. I love it. I also made accountable talk bookmarks to use during guided reading groups. You can get these for FREE by clicking on the picture below.

Well that's it for me today. I hope you were able to take something away from this post for your classroom. Make sure you follow me on Bloglovin' for more ideas and resources!