Kindness Counts Freebie :)

Hi, everyone! It's Melissa from over at Inspire Me, ASAP.

I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving holiday! It is hard to believe we go back to school again tomorrow! I don't know about you, but my mind is starting to plan all of my Christmas/holiday themed activities and lessons that I want to include in my lesson plans for the next 3 weeks of school.

One cute little item that is already packed in my car, ready to be placed in my classroom tomorrow, is our classroom kindness tree. Our classroom kindness tree is what I use to kickoff the acts of kindness that I encourage my students to perform through various activities in the upcoming weeks.

The idea is simple- every time that I see a student perform a random act of kindness for someone else, I recognize that student and place an ornament on the tree.

I then have that student who performed the act to write down what they did on the colorful “Kindness Counts” poster (click on the picture above for this freebie, which includes the poster.) You can purchase small trees and ornaments at Target or even the Dollar Store.

Although you can implement this idea as you wish, I would suggest reminding your students that the reason why they are doing acts of kindness is because they are being kind…not because they are getting an ornament on the tree for every little thing they do! I remind my students that they will NOT get an ornament for every nice act of kindness- that is not the purpose of the activity. When all the ornaments are placed on the tree, you can decide if you would like to reward your students by showing them a random act of kindness. For example, you can take them out for an extra 15 minute recess “just because” or show a short Brain Pop video.


Click on the image above to download the poster and idea from my TpT store!

Enjoy your Sunday, my friends! :)
Take care,
Melissa

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Behavior Management Tip plus FREE Task Cards

Happy Holiday!  It's Michelle from Teach123.  This month I thought I would share a tip to help your students during work time, give you a strategy to use with your wigglers, plus share a little holiday gift.

This time of year can be so stressful for you and your students.  The change in weather frequently means inside recess, two words a teacher hates to hear.  Students are often off schedule at home and school because of holiday activities, and by this time of year, our bag of tricks is running low.

Have you heard of a sensory diet?  If you have year-round wigglers, you will want to read more about this topic so you can add sensory diet strategies to your bag of tricks.  I wrote a blog post that gives tips and has a freebie for you. 

One sensory diet strategy I like to use is a stamping station. Stamping stations are a great antidote to the wiggles, whether it is seasonal wiggles or the year-round variety.  Set up a stamping station near your desk with a stamp pad and stamp.  As a student completes part of his/her assignment, he or she will go to the stamping station to put a stamp on his/her work or a chart. You can set this up different ways.  

• Time increments:  Each time your student works 10 minutes; he/she will take his/her assignment to the stamping station and put a stamp on which problem he/she has completed in that amount of time.  Go back to his/her desk and work 10 more minutes.  At the end of 10 minutes, go to the stamping station to stamp the last problem he/she completed.  This is great for RTI!  You can use different amounts of time.  In the beginning, I use a small amount of time and gradually increase the length.  This is a great strategy to use with math assignments.
• Charts:  Use a chart when your students' assignment is going to be displayed in the hallway or for when you don't want a stamp on the actual assignment.  With a chart, you can use a stamp, sticker, or paper-hole punch.  You would be amazed at how exciting a paper-hole punch can be to your little wigglers. The two charts below are examples of charts that would work for this.  These charts are included in my Christmas Place Value Task Card packet.  This packet is FREE.

Do you need some more behavior management tips?  I have written quite a few posts with ideas and freebies for my readers.  Click on the bag below to check out my bag of tricks.

Sources to make my blog post graphics can be found HERE.

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Versus {A Fun, FREE Game for your Classroom}

Happy {Almost} Thanksgiving!!

It's Halle from Across the Hall in 2nd Grade!

Whether you're already on break or just getting through the rest of your short week, I have a fun, free game you can use in your class to fill a few extra minutes AND get to know your students.

The game is called Versus, and I've been playing it with my students since my student teaching experience 8 years ago!

The concept of the game is simple. You have your students stand in a group in the middle of your classroom, or designated area. Then you give them two topics, things. foods, etc to choose from. These are the versus.

For example, I say, "sweatpants vs. jeans" while I point to either side of my classroom. Students who prefer sweatpants go to the side I pointed to for sweatpants, and those who prefer jeans go to the jeans side.

I love this game because it takes no prep time, the students LOVE it, and it helps me get to know my students in an easy way.

You can play this game with any topic but I have provided a list of ideas below. Just click on the picture to download the list to keep handy in your classroom. There is a color and black and white version.

Enjoy this Thanksgiving with your family and friends. I hope you have so much to be thankful for! I know I do!


~Halle

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Fun Writing Friday

Hey everyone!

Now that I've settled into my school routine, things are a little less stressful and I can just go with the flow. My school has us use Lucy Calkins' writing series. I stick to it pretty much since it is mandated, but sometimes, I have to deviate. Especially after my kids did a math graphing activity and writing and reading got few votes. I knew that I had to do something.

I now have fun writing Friday every other week in my class and they love it! I allow them to write collaborative stories or write letters to someone. They are actually looking forward to it and not dreading writing as much. But they're still getting those skills!  I love reading their letters to each other, a lot of them are such bucket fillers!

I have a writing center with different papers to choose from. Some kids cash in their tickets to "buy" special paper and use gel pens.

What do you do for writing in your class? How do you make writing fun?

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Wonderopolis - Have you heard of it?

We all have wondered a lot of crazy things in our life time and our students are the same way. They wonder how things work, why the grass is green, why we have different colored hair and why dogs bark!

The media specialist at my school introduced my students to an amazing webpage: wonderopolis.org ! It's perfect! Your students can head to webpage, click 'explore wonders' and off they go. They get to listen to reading (or just read), watch an engaging video and extend on their new learning.

The media specialist introduced this webpage to students in a whole group setting before they set off to explore their wonders independently.

Students wrote down their wonder and then after they watched the video and read about their wonder they wrote about what they learned. The amazing thing though was that the kids wondering's' did not stop there... they began asking more questions and looking for information in books and on the internet! 

Students worked in pairs to learn about a wonder together.

They filled out information on a recording form that allowed them to track their wonders and their new learning. You can grab a similar form below:

Have fun with your wonders!

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Spin for Tens (a freebie)

Hi everyone!  It's Angelia from Extra Special Teaching stopping by to share a quick freebie with you guys.  

I don't know about you, but sometimes I feel like I have to pull out ALL the tricks to keep my students engaged and on task.  We have recently been working on understanding a bundle of ten tens makes a hundred.  We've also worked on counting tens past one hundred.

Well, let me tell you.....it's been some rough going!  I've been redirecting and practicing and redirecting and practicing.  I finally decided that I needed to try something new.  For some reason adding a spinner or a pair of dice suddenly increases my students' engagement.  It's amazing how that happens!

My kids were spinning away and practicing like I wish they had been doing all along!  I haven't given my final assessment yet, but they all showed a lot more understanding after this activity.

If you could use this center in your class, just click on the picture below to download your freebie.  There's two versions included in this file.

Happy spinning!

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Thanksgiving Fun and Freebies for Your Classroom!

Hello there, I'm Fern from Fern Smith's Classroom Ideas!

Today I want to share a couple of Thanksgiving FREEBIES I have for you, click on the pictures or titles to download them now for your files!

FREE Thanksgiving Fun! Basic Subtraction Facts - Color Your Answers Printable

 

Thanksgiving Card Free Printable

Thanksgiving Fun! Color For Fun Printable Coloring Pages

FREE Thanksgiving Subtraction Doubles Center Game and Interactive Notebook Activity

Free Owl Color For Fun Printables

 Also, I invite you to my blog to see over 250 freebies I now have from blogging for 3 1/2 years!

Click Here!

Happy Thanksgiving Friends! 

I'm Fern from Fern Smith's Classroom Ideas, stop by my blog anytime for tips, tricks, resources and freebies for your classroom!

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Snow Much Fun {with Multi-Digit Addition}

Hi friends!  It's Amanda from

I've been MIA lately, mostly due to the fact that my student teacher has been teaching for the past six weeks.  However, I'm excited to say that I will be teaching again on Monday!  Just in time to implement one of my favorite activities in math....Snowball Fights!

My students would practice mutli-digit addition and subtraction ALL DAY LONG with this activity!  I've blogged about it before, but I've created a new, quick file that will make it even easier and I thought I would share it with you today.

Basically, in the past this is how it has worked...

I let each student write a number in LARGE, NEAT print on a piece of white paper.  Then, we crumpled the papers up to look like paper snowballs.  Students were divided into two teams.  Each student was given a partner on the opposing team.  One team was placed on each side of the classroom and threw their snowballs at a given signal.  Then, students scrambled to pick up a snowball and headed back to meet with their partner.  (I always toss in a few extra snowballs because there are always a few "lost" during the game.)  Partners opened up their snowballs to reveal numbers and independently created and solved addition problems.  Partners compared answers.  If their answers matched, they took their snowballs back to their sides, ready for the next throw.  If answers did not match, students worked together to figure out the correct answer.  I also walked around and monitored to help in the rare case that partners' answers matched, but incorrectly.

Seriously, they could do this on repeat ALL DAY LONG!

A couple of minor problems I've had with this in the past is that sometimes student numbers were hard to read by classmates (imagine that?!  sloppy second grade writing), students would turn some numbers upside down (is that 81 or 18?), and there was no way for me to ensure numbers that required "no regrouping" or "regrouping".

So, I created a very simple file of print-friendly numbers to use for this game.  There's a set for "no regrouping" and a set for "regrouping".  Just print, pass out, and you're ready to go!  You could also collect them at the end for reuse.

I hope you'll be able to use this file and bring a little snow fun to your math class!

**OPTIONAL DROPBOX LINK, IN CASE THE GOOGLE DRIVE LINK HAS MAXED ITS DOWNLOAD LIMIT IN THE GIVEN TIME FRAME - https://www.dropbox.com/s/67pubu3wlh6xjfc/SnowMuchFun.pdf?dl=0 **

If you're looking for more practice with mutli-digit addition and subtraction, you might like my new "Start Your Engines" centers.  I realized that I didn't have very many centers for this concept AT ALL.  So, I created a set of 10 "any time" centers revolving around just these concepts.

If you're not familiar with our "any time" center sets, they include 10 centers all revolving around one unit with a theme that can be used any time of the year!  What more could you need?  Click below for a closer look.

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Pilgrim Proper Nouns

Hello teacher friends!  Linda from Around the Kampfire here to give you a peek into the what we've been up to these days.  It's all things Pilgrims and Plymouth in my classroom and we've already met some new friends.  Meet Constance common noun and Prudence proper noun!  They've been helping us learn more about nouns!

After introducing our new friends we talked about the difference between  common and proper nouns.  

My kiddos gave lots of examples then I passed out sticky notes with both noun types prewritten and had my students sort and add them to our chart.  Next, we went through each column and wrote examples on our whiteboards.

For a little added practice I made this activity page 

to add to our literacy centers. 

You can find this free download {HERE}

I hope you're all enjoying some fall weather where you are, we actually dipped into the 60's last night!  With only two seasons in my area (hot and hotter) you can see how I make my own Fall {HERE} and grab another freebie while you're there!

I hope you're all having a great week!

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Celebrate Your Super Students!

Denise here from Sunny Days!

Our district has chosen 9 specific character traits that we focus on and then we select one student who exemplifies that trait to be recognized each month. I like the system. Imagine your squirmiest kid who can't seem to stop chit-chatting and knows exactly what button to push when you're thisclose to the edge. Is he the kid who is going to pop into your mind when you chose your student of the month? Probably not. But if you have to focus on one kid who shows tolerance, you might remember how the same squirmy, button-pushing chatterbox really is friends with everyone. How he offers to share without being prompted. How he welcomes the chance to work with anyone and never pouts when you put him in a group. Now he has a shot. Now he can be a Student of the Month even though he's not your typical shining star. Maybe it's just me. I have a history of rooting for the underdog!

Each teacher then celebrates the student of the moth however they choose. I started something new this year and it's working out great. I give them a poster to color at home and when they bring it back, I hang it up outside our classroom door. We have really hard cement walls, so stapling right to the wall is a little difficult. Instead I hung a command hook and use a pants hanger to display it!

I just laminated the little strip and glued it to the front of the hanger, tied a bow and that's it! Simple, easy, and cute.

Helpful links:
Find the posters here and hangers here
Download the Student of the Month strip for the hanger here

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Beginning Sounds Supplemental Freebie!

If your firsties are anything like mine, you have a wide range of kiddos.  I have some kids that are reading on levels H and I, while my ELL's are struggling with letter sounds.

I've had to do a little extra work to help out my ELL's, but have thoroughly enjoyed watching their progress so far!  I started ABC notebooks for some of my kiddos.

We created a page for each letter of the alphabet.  Then we cut out words and pictures that begin with each letter.  There are sorts and sentences that we've been completing as well.  They've been a HUGE help!

I wanted to provide them with more opportunities to practice beginning sounds, hence the reason for the supplemental activity!

There are three pages of word-picture cards.  

That's a total of 75 cards!

The students will cut out the pictures:

(I had them do one page per day)

and then glue them in their ABC notebooks:

This has really boosted the confidence of my ELL's as well as their vocabulary!  They also use their ABC notebooks while reading and writing.  They know they can use the notebook as a reference at any time!

If you think this sorting activity would be helpful to your 

kiddos, click on the picture below to snag it for free!

I hope this activity helps your kids just as much as it did mine!

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