Thank You...

Ron Clark has inspired me to come up with my own by combing two of his rules.

I believe appreciation and saying thank is extremely important.  Therefore, every week, have your class write a thank you note for someone working hard in the school (but not always receiving the gratitude they deserve).

These people can be:
cafeteria workers, bus drivers, janitors, volunteers that come to the school, other teachers who come and help out in the classroom, etc.

Who doesn't like being thanked for what they do?!  Plus, it teaches your students to be more grateful!

Ask ?Questions?

Inquiry lessons take more time to plan and do BUT they are so important and beneficial to the classroom.  Wait, you might be asking a question...what is an inquiry lesson?  Perhaps, you do these all the time (I hope!). 

Inquiry lessons provide students the opportunity to ask questions AND find out answers for themselves...with you helping and guiding along the way of course!  It might hard to do lessons like these every single day, but once a week is quite manageable!  

An example of an inquiry lesson (combining science and math) is giving your students various sodas and scales and get them asking questions.  You can model a few questions to get them to start thinking:  does diet weigh less than regular; does carbonated weigh more than flat soda; etc.  They can use the scientific method to test the various questions they come up with; come up with a hypothesis, and so on.  Let them come up with the questions and be the curious beings that they are (or hopefully are)!

Positively Positive!

Notice when someone asks you to do something in a nice way, you're bound to do it more than if you were asked in a negative way?  Yeah, that's the idea with children.  They ARE human beings after all so when treated with respect, they'll treat you back respectfully (HOPEFULLY)!  However, I see way to many adults who treat children like someone less than them.  No, they deserve respect too!

Therefore, using positive statements when asking your students to do something can make quite a difference.

It's not "don't run"  it's "walk please".
It's not "don't talk while I'm talking" it's "please be quiet while I'm talking".

You get the drift!

Experience Social Studies

I am all about variety in the classroom!  Here are various ways to make social studies come alive for students:

*primary sources
*re-enacting
*current events (newspaper, magazines, etc)
*guest speakers
*field trips
*movies
*music
*art
*props/costumes
*timeline
*map
*children's literature (especially ones from various cultures so children have various perspectives on the same event)

What Do You Think Of....

I like the introductory activity that goes something like this:

What do you think of when I say...penguin?!

Or what do you think of when I say...Greece?

Whatever the topic is for that day, you use the word instead and write their answers on the board, overhead, Smart Board, etc...

It gets your students thinking about the topic and you can assess them on what they already know and what connections they have already with the topic.  Not bad, eh?  Easy, fun, AND useful! :)

Vocab Fun and Plus

Here's a few activities to learn vocab!

Cubing:  making paper cubes with questions such as:  1.  What does it look like?  2.  Where does it live?  3.  What does it feel like?  Etc.  Can be used as activity in the beginning to assess what students know already, in the middle to expand their knowledge, or at the end to assess what they have learned.  You can even use this for math problems as shown below!

Connect To:  giving students words or having them come up with 2 lists of words, and then have students connect one word from one list to another word in the other list.  They can be a stretch but it really makes them think.  The activity can show you if students have any misconceptions about any of the words and the level of comprehension the students are at. 

Manipulative Graphic Organizers:  give your students words that can be put into categories and straws and let them take it away!  This can be used for vocab in any subject:  math (real numbers, non real numbers, integers, etc); science (warm-blooded, cold-blooded, mammals, birds, etc) social studies (Northeastern states, Southern states, etc); word study (nouns, adjectives, etc)...you get idea!  I like that it's a hands-on graphic organizer!

Ron Clark

So I have been reading a book called The Essential 55 by Ron Clark, and it is SUCH a fabulous book!  I recommend everyone to check it out!  Ron Clark just inspires you to be a passionate teacher like no other!  Check out the website:  http://www.ronclarkacademy.com/!

Koool Subjects

Math.  Science.  Social Studies.  Reading.  Writing.  Sound familiar?  Uh duh!

Well, why spin those names into something fun and creative?!  Writing can be Author Time!  Who says it can't?! Kids will be more excited about going to Author Time rather than to...Writing.

I'll be honest, I totally stole this idea from Educating Esme:  A Diary of a Teacher's First Year.  But then again, teachers don't steal ever...they borrow! :)

So be creative and come up with your own cool names for subjects!  If anything, you can always purchase the book.  When our professor read it to us, I absolutely loved it!  It's definitely worth having this in your library!

Spelling on the Ceiling

Want your students to know all the spelling words?!  Put them on the ceiling!  Even before the end of the year, they'll know all the words already without a problem!

Yes, they can obviously cheat during tests but they'll know them so well by the end that it'll be worth it.  Since that's what matters in the end, right?!

Where Are You?

So in curriculum, my professor modeled a very awesome lesson for us today about latitude!

Before we went outside, she passed out two note cards randomly to each student with the vocabulary and their degrees latitude on a separate card:

North/South Pole
Arctic Circle /Antarctic Circle
Equator
Tropic of Cancer/Capricorn
Southern/Northern Hemisphere

Outside, in chalk, she drew an "earth" with the mentioned above words but unlabeled of course.  She placed a student at the North Pole with a scarf on and another student at the South Pole with ear muffs on indicating cold.  At the equator she had a student on each side sitting on beach chairs with sunglasses and hats indicating lots of sun.  That  was really cool because it was such a great visual!

Then, she placed a boat in the middle of the ocean and said it was lost.  How were we to find it?  This is where the importance of latitude and longitude came in!  That day we only focused on latitude but you can introduce longitude and its importance or save it for the next day.  This was a really great way to relate to students because at some point, they have probably got lost somewhere before.

After everything was in place, we started putting our note cards on the corresponding lines on latitude.  While we're doing this, we had a worksheet with a circle on it to place what we had on our "earth" already.  Having a sheet to fill out as we go makes it less possible for students to stop paying attention once they were done placing the cards they had in their hands.

It was so hands-on and even though I obviously knew all these concepts, I think from a child's point of view, I would've remembered it a lot better than just sitting in class and doing a worksheet!