Backdrops of My Life

Hello, 

My name is Emily.  I have realized I can't say no to a good deal, or a good sale, or a good backdrop. I also have a very supportive family that goes along with my crazy ideas.  

I wanted to share the backdrops that have made their appearance into my corner cabinet... you know the one in the classroom where things go to hide...  And by hide, I mean put away until I decorate for a mini room transformation.  

Oh no, you say, this is all about Room Transformations?  Why yes, I say... 

A couple of years ago I read The Wild Card by Wade and Hope King and it totally opened my eyes to the impact of the little things.  How it's so easy to throw a backdrop/banner up and create a new-ish environment and transport my class to somewhere new. I want to be known as Miss Frizzle, and take my kids on crazy field trips, without having to pay the bus fee.  So that's been my purpose over the last 3ish years.  To add to my menu of different ideas to spice up my teaching. 

Disclaimer - these are not ads, I don't get anything for sharing.  I just like to share.

The first backdrop that kids see during the year is this slide from Head Over Heels for Teaching.  I project this slide for our Book Tasting that Friday of the first week of school.  It's a way to celebrate the 5th day of 5th grade.  Projecting images onto the screen is so easy. We've also used the Olympic Medals and the NASA logo as well over the years.  

The next one is my global travel banner.  I use this when we go galavanting around the world on a Context Clues adventure by Teaching with a Mountain View. I also have the different flags of the world in a bunting that hangs around the classroom, and each country station also has some pictures of the location that I have printed for kids to feel like they are there.  I use this at the end of August/beginning of September when we are wrapping up our unit.

Another banner is the ocean/deserted beach one.  In October for Talk like a Pirate Day, we are also knee deep in our Explorer unit.  I use this for both. Pirate day and our Explorer Simulation.  

Then I have some other pirate, sailing, explorer items that I put on tables to decorate, and we listen to the theme song of Pirates of the Caribbean Disneyland ride over and over as background music.  

For reviewing roots, I have decorated the room as a hospital.  I hung plastic tablecloths on our hanging lights for the different operation rooms.  Kids wore masks (before they were cool), gloves, and I picked up syringe pens for them to use. They had paper people that they had to operate on to attach the roots to the prefixes and suffixes. I use this Affixes resource by Your Thrify Co-teacher. I play a heart beat over our sound to start us out.  It was so fun.  

Another one is a Minecraft one that I use for Volume.  Teaching volume makes me think of building blocks, and since the kids are Minecraft obsessed, it totally works.  We make a gallery of our volume designs.

I have a Game On banner that I use as the center of a bulletin board.  When the kids come back from winter break, we always have a talk about New Years resolutions and what they can do to step it up a notch.  This year I put it up when we moved from distance learning to hybrid. It's the final push for the new trimester.  Our goals usually hang around it as a reminder of what we want to accomplish. And yes, I know it says Leve Up, instead of Level Up.  It might be why it was such a good deal. :) The kids get a kick of telling me, as if I don't know, but it's so much fun that I don't really care.  

 

For review I love to make special days to spice it up a bit.  I have all the materials for a Glow Day.  I was gifted it from Donors Choose.  I use a banner to help cover my big window.  It blocks out a lot of light. I also was given black lights, reflective tape, glow sticks, and some cool pens that glow. This year my skylights have decided not to completely close, so it doesn't get dark enough to use it.  I'm super bummed... at least my neighbor can use them though.  :)  

My newest addition is a concert themed one for our Rock the Test review.  I picked up some inflatable instruments as well (that can easily be sprayed down). My son had a music inspired birthday a while back, and I kept his record decorations to hang on the lights.  It just makes it fun.  

I'm sure by now you are thinking that I have issues.  But it's fun and it's memorable. :)  Kids remember what they were doing and learning on these special days.  You know, when something is a little different than the ordinary. We have plenty of ordinary days too. Right now I have a bunch of these banners hanging back up in the classroom, to cover my boards for state testing.  All banners are found over on Amazon.  

Do you do theme days too? Hope you had a great day!

Jenga to Review Math

In a normal year I use Jenga blocks to review for tests all year long. I have 8 sets of blocks, enough for each group to have one as we review. 

It’s a pretty basic set up. I print off task cards, or some activity. The kids work independently to solve the problem, then have a discussion about their answers. 

Did they get the same answer? Then they discuss the different strategies they used. 

Did they get different answers? Then they work together to figure out where the error was and discuss strategies. 

By their discussions they are showing their understanding.

After they have a discussion they all take a turn to play a block in Jenga. 

Then they move onto the next problem. 

Solve

Discuss

Learn

Play 

It’s the same kind of thing with a lot of games. 

With distance learning the kids have missed out on that kind of fun, so now that kids are back in the classroom I figured that we could do the same kind of thing in breakout sessions. We tackled this today for our math review and tomorrow we will do it again with the other set of kids.... a different review with the other half of the blocks.  I split each set of blocks so that the stacks were shorter and stacking didn't take as long.

The kids in the classroom are once again the leaders. They have the jenga sets. I stuck the problems in their team channel. The teammates at home cheer on their in class group member, but they also have to help solve the problems.  

I wanted to make sure that only one in class kid is in a group, so I hand picked groups and started the meetings myself, instead of the random assortment we usually do. Each group has one person from group A, one from B, and one from our DL kids. Thankfully my class is split pretty equally.

Hope you had a great day! 

Mindware is Awesome!

Mindware is AWESOME!  They contacted me about trying out a set of KEVA blocks in my classroom, and I jumped at the chance.  I am always looking for ways to bring more STEM activities to my students, and these require NO PREP! 

I wanted to show off some of the creations my students have built. 

Some of the creations were built using their imaginations, others were built using the cards provided. Yep, the Brain Builders sets have engineering cards that give challenges!

I love these wooden blocks! They remind me of the Lincoln logs that I used growing up.  

I can't say enough wonderful things about this system!  I appreciate Mindware's generosity in providing these resources for my students in exchange for a blog post.  :)  

My Students LOVE our Bouncy Bands!

Over Winter Break I had two Bouncy Bands delivered to my doorstep.  Since my own son was diagnosed with ADHD, I've been on the look out for tools that would help my students as well...  I was so excited to try the bands too!  Anyhow, the two bands were delivered and then I realized I had a huge problem! Every single person in my class wanted to be the first one to use them.  I couldn't just give them to the kids that have ADHD (and there are many in my class), I needed to let everyone try them.  So I started a rotation... and now all 32 of my students have had a chance.  

They LOVE them.  They say they are comfortable, my fidgeters aren't fidgeting as much, and we are able to tackle our standards.  The kids that tend to get up a lot (to get a tissue, sharpen their pencil, throw away trash, etc) are able to sit longer when it was their turn to use the bands.  I'm impressed. 

The bands come with 2 heavy plastic tubes that slip onto the front desk legs.  Before you slip them on, you loop the extra thick rubber band onto the tubes (there's an indentation to keep the band in the perfect place).  Sliding the tubes onto the desk wasn't hard, what was difficult was having to lay down the students' full desks (without tipping all their supplies out).   That first switch the kids tried to "help" by tipping their desks forward thinking that I could easily slide them on and off, which made all their supplies go flying.  It was a lesson on common sense.  :)   That's only an issue because I only have two of these beauties and wanted to be fair.  

Of course I got the brainstorm (after the fact) that I should have created 2 VIP desks where the bands stay put and the kids have the special throne for the day.  That's what I'm trying this next round.  Two extra desks that are equipped with the bouncy bands and a tub of supplies that they won't have to share for their special day.   I really want to also create a Donors Choose project to get more of these into my classroom (a class set would be ideal).   

I checked out the Bouncy Bands website and found they have a Donors Choose Sample Page that will make it really easy & fast to upload the project.  That's on my to do list.

On their website I also found this data, which confirmed what I found in my own classroom.  

It's an absolutely wonderful product, and I'm so glad that I learned about them.  Anyone have a class set?  You know what I'm talking about!

   

Hope you have a wonderful day!

My Students Love Flocabulary!

A couple of months ago my school had these mini workshops where teachers could share what was working great in their classrooms.  We were given the opportunity to visit classrooms, and choose what we wanted to learn more about.  It was awesome and productive!  My fifth grade colleague shared about Flocabulary.  It was the first time I'd ever heard about it and I got so excited about the options available.  I signed up for a short term membership and emailed my administration that I was interested in a school membership. 

Let me back up... What is Flocabulary?  It is a collection of lesson resources with TONS of Songs and Videos.  It is perfect for my upper elementary kids.  They have raps and songs for everything under the sun, and they are adding more every day.  At first being on Flocabulary was like a treasure hunt.  I kept finding more and more things for my list of favorite videos.  

I kept writing them down so I would remember where to go back to... and then I found this:

Yep, that little gold star is my collection of Favorites.  I was able to make a menu so it really is easy to pull up exactly what rap I want the kids to hear.  

Just a little snapshot of my favorites... My kids beg to listen to the Challenge Raps before
taking their Thursday Math Fact tests.  It's a win when kids are excited to practice their facts!

Here's a short clip of the kids watching the challenge rap.  It's interactive!  The kids love to sing along to the raps on all the songs - the words are on the screen.  

The last few weeks I've been using the grammar raps on a daily basis.  We focus on a certain part of speech per week, so it is a daily thing - I want these songs to get stuck in their heads, especially with testing coming up!  Last week was prepositions!  I use the raps as a transition to start our lesson - that engage piece.  Next week we are going back to review adverbs.  :)    

Something that I didn't know about right away was the Week in Rap, Week in Rap Junior, and the New Video portion located at the bottom of the home screen.  I get so focused on my favorite list that I sometimes forget to scroll down to the bottom of the page.  Thankfully, Flocabulary sends me email updates with the highlights.  This last week there was a fun groundhog video that was perfect on Groundhog Day.  

I just wanted to share how awesome this resource is!  Flocabulary found out that I am a teacher blogger, so they offered to give YOU an extended 75 day trial so you can also see how great it is.    Click the link below to see for yourself.  Sign up between now and the end of February!  

Want to try Flocabulary for 75 days?  Here's the link:  https://www.flocabulary.com/promo/WTB2016/ 

I hope you have a great day!