Building Teamwork and Community

Hey There! I've officially been back at school with the kids for 8 days now and we've just begun our first five day week....let's hope I'm still standing by Friday! 

While I'm still awake and functioning I figured I should update this little ole blog.  

At the beginning of the year, I love to focus on character education, effective communication, and building teamwork amongst my students.  

One of my all time favorite books to start off the year is Leo Lionni's Swimmy.  After I share this read aloud we talking about how Swimmy and his friends had to cooperate together to work as a team to defeat the big nasty tuna.  

Following our discussion I challenged my students to work as one large team.  The first challenge was the 'Ocean Waves' challenge.  Using one hula hoop, borrowed from our P.E. teacher, I demonstrated to my students how they each needed to climb in and out of the hula hoop until it has gone around the entire circle of 27 third graders.  The major challenge...NO ONE could let go of each others' hands.  

We had a lot of fun and a lot of giggles!

Next challenge was with our table groupings.  For this I again borrowed a hula hoop for each group, 5 in all.  Since I do a lot of table/group work, I wanted to start the year off right with my students practicing effective communication with one another.  

For this challenge each group had to lift their hula hoop off of the ground using only two fingers on each hand.  Except we had to use the tops of our fingers, that way we couldn't curl them underneath and around the hula hoop.  

Once the hula hoop was up, the teams had to spin the hula hoop around, so that the small piece of wash tape on it made it all the way around the circle.  

Fun, simple, effective. SCORE! 

When the teams returned back to their desks I asked them each to write their name on a little red fish, so that we could build our own team, just like the characters in Swimmy.

When it was all done, we added our thoughts about teams, I was so impressed with their thoughts.  Can you you see the giant fish we build out of our little fish?   I have plans on displaying this chart for a while. 

Our final touch was adding Swimmy onto our Cooperation Theme poster.  You can read more about these posters HERE. 

Wishing you all of the best in your own classrooms!!! 

XOXO

We Love Books Linky: Mustache Baby

I'm linking up with the famous and fabulous Deanna Jump for her new summertime linky party: We Love Books! As a third generation teacher I've spent my life surrounded by children's literature.  Sharing my love for these books, both classics and new fun stories is one of my favorite parts of my job!

Mustache Baby by Bridget Heos is a hysterical read aloud that has kids and adults giggling from beginning to end.  In the story Baby Billy is born with a mustache.  All is fine with his family, at first Billy uses his mustache for good. Keeping the peace as a police officer, taking care of animals as a cowboy, and leading a three-ring circus.  But then, Billy's mustache suspiciously begins to turn upwards and becomes a BAD GUY MUSTACHE.  He's a bank robber, a cat burglar, and train robber.  With hysterical pictures your kids will be rolling! 

After reading, my class had a bit of fun making mustache disguises and playing Pin the Mustache on the Baby.  I should warn you that this read aloud was a special reward and didn't link to any specific lesson. However, it would be easy to talk about figurative language OR a great way to connect internal vs. external character traits.

If you're a kindergarten teacher...sigh, my dream grade...and you teach a letter of the week, Mustache Baby would be perfect for M! When I worked with preschool aged children, I drew mustaches on my kiddies with a cheap eyeliner pencil for a Mustache Monday.  SO CUTE! 

BUT, if you just want to have fun, I've posted my mustaches on TPT as a freebie for you HERE.

Have fun playing/creating all sorts of activities with these!

I can't wait to check out some new fun books over at Deanna's blog, don't forget to check it out!

What Does the Shape Say!?!?

I don't know about you, but once I saw Linda Kamp's What Does the Shape Say product featured on TPT and Pinterest, I knew I HAD to own it!   

I always love to incorporate crafts and activities into my math lessons and this one was a big hit! You can purchase yours HERE.  In this post I'm including a few other activities we've done while exploring plane shapes in third grade. 

First up was Polygon vs. Not a Polygon.  I gave each student one pipe cleaner and would shout out, "polygon" or, "not a polygon." My students had to then create a shape that matched appropriately.  We then turn and talked to our math buddies and explained to them why our shape was or was not a polygon.   This was a fun and simple assessment at the end of the lesson! Score! 

The following day as a review we pulled out our iPads and opened ShowMe, you can read more about my love for this app HERE.  There is seriously a million and ten ways to use this app in your classroom, I LOVE it.  

I allowed my students time to go around the room snapping some pictures of polygons and items that were not polygons.  Gotta love an opportunity for some real world math!  They then sorted the photos in a ShowMe document, took a screenshot, and printed them.  Of course we could have shared them digitally, but I really wanted them to take these home as a guide for their homework. 

Linda Kamp's product also comes with pieces to create an anchor chart.  Don't mind that poor fox's funky eyes...they're trying to cover a whoopsie-daisy mistake.  #ThankGoodnessIdon'tTeachArt

I decided to create my anchor chart into a more interactive peek-a-boo poster.  

My kiddies couldn't wait to get their hands going to make their own foxy shapes! 

They had to choose their shape..we only used the quadrilaterals, then write out the attributes of the shape in the word bubble.  Once that was completed it was cut and paste time! 

This little love bug just loves to create projects! 

Here they are, hanging proudly and brightening up our classroom space!!!

Now,  I'm off to celebrate my Hawks' win agains LA Kings! Yea, Buddy!!!

Animal House!

Hello All! I've had so much fun exploring animals this year with my third graders! I've already shared some of our activities HERE.  Beware, these is a huge photo dump in this post.  I just loved everything we did and just have to share all of the cuteness! 

First up is the fabulous informational text, What if You Had Animal Teeth.  Short bursts of information and easy to read fast facts make this book and it's partner What if You Had Animal Hair favorites in my classroom.  I love how the book appeals to the natural inquisitiveness that my students possess...we've all heard the, "What if...." questions in our classroom! 

I placed a few students in charge of documenting information from the text onto sticky-notes for our chart. 

We then used these charts to help inspire our opinionated writing on what type of animal teeth we would like to have and why.  It's a proud teacher moment to see those kiddos of mine walking up to the chart and using their resources! 

We then made these adorable little faces of ourselves my partner found on TPT...so cute!

I loved how they all turned out! It makes for one silly looking bulletin board outside our classroom! 

The next idea came from Pinterest.  After reading Who Eats What we created our own food chains puzzles.

Each student got three to four styrofoam cups and a handful of permanent markers.

They then had to come up with their own food chain...I am always amazed by their creativity. 

After each student had a chance to finish their food chain we then played rotated around the room, trying to stack one another's food chains in the appropriate order.

As a culminating activity we created habitat murals in groups.   I let my kids create the classroom rubric for the project, which really helped with the buy-in.   I loved hearing their conversations relating to things we've learned throughout our animal chapter on animal needs and behaviors! 

They also had free reign of my extra craft supplies...which was a BIG deal.  This group was creating the coral reef and had declared the sparkly purple poms make the perfect sea urchins! 

The rainforest habitat group found some use for my leftover tissue paper squares.  

Check out the artwork! I love this jaguar scaling the tree! 

At the beginning of the year I made these flip charts for my Open House...I learned how from Kelly HERE! I loved how the flip chart allowed me to share important information at a glance..well, I thought  my students might like these for the same reason! 

I wish I had a template to share with you, but I made this the old fashioned way by cutting and pasting. I'll add it to my summer To Do list ;) 

My third graders loved to use the free WB Animals app for their research! 

To help keep track of students' research...and for me to keep track of their work habits, we used Doctopus through Google Drive.  This is my first time using Doctopus and I'm loving it so far! I can't wait to share more with it! 

Well...if you're still with me you earn a gold star in my book! We've got 17 days left of school...not that I'm counting down or anything ;) 

XOXO

Camo Critters

Hi Y'all!
I'm in an especially cheery mood because Chicagoland has finally decided to change seasons and become SPRING! Yahoo! Goodbye winter coats, boots, and sweaters...hopefully I won't be needing you until November!

I wanted to share a fun little activity we did today that goes along with our Animal Unit.  The idea actually comes from our ancient vintage Science textbook!  This activity was used as an introduction into the second portion of our chapter on animal behaviors and survival techniques.

First, my kiddies were given a quarter piece of computer paper and asked to draw an insect that could be camouflage with the surroundings of our classroom.

Next, my students cut out their little buggies trying not to leave any traces of the white paper.

Then, they each got a small pieces of tape and placed their bug around the room.  I love to see how creative they all get! 

I didn't even spot this one until the end of the day!!!

Finally, when all was said and done we played what we called 'Birds of Prey'.  My students were given one minute to 'fly' around the room to try and spot as many camo critters as they could find.

It's a simple and engaging activity that led us into a great discussion on camouflage and how animals use that to survive in the wild, which means that this teacher is happy, happy, happy! 

What are some of your favorite engaging (and simple) activities to incorporate in your classroom?? I'd love to know!

Real Life Direction Reading and Problem-Solving

As teachers we always are looking to give our kids real-world experiences. I try to stress to my students how what we're learning in class is important and influences our success in the real world.  School is SO much more than tests and quizzes. I know this, you know this, but sometimes our kiddies get so hung up on performing well on those assessments!  

That's why I was really impressed with this direction reading activity in our district's newly adopted ELA Program, Wonders!!!

The activity came in one of our guided reading books and included step-by-step directions on how to create a paper weaving project.  

My kids and I were eager to begin working! I sat with my camera and note pad to document my students' problem-solving skills and how well they read the directions.

This poor guy had a rough start! He started cutting his paper without reading the directions and had to start over immediately.  From then on he kept his book close at hand!

I really liked sitting back and watching a few of my kids at a time working through the process and they of course LOVED making a project! 

Win-Win!!!

What kind of real-life experiences do you try to give your students?

I'm off to WI for the Outdoor Education Trip! Wish me luck!!!