Showing posts with label Featured. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Featured. Show all posts

Prefix Patients




Are you looking for a way engage students in content?! Why not let them be doctors?!

This is one of my favorite classroom transformations!  Prefix patients gives students a chance to communicate and practice the meaning of prefixes to make words with self checking patient charts!


FIRST - students work with partners and get a patient they must help.  One student is the doctor and one the assistant.  The doctor reads the first ailment - "broken jaw" (see above)


SECOND - the assistant goes to the injuries pages posted around the room. In light boxes if you want the "xray look"  He or she uses the clues under the broken jaw and goes to the prefix and root words below to figure out what word matches. 

The words for all the ailments fit in a paragraph on the patient chart that the student can check to see if they make sense and if they made the words properly.

Then they switch for the 2nd patient.  This could easily be one with 1 student at a time. I just only have enough gowns for half my class so we work together and switch. 




This is so easy to pull off: 

- sheet trays!
- gloves and masks from our school nurse (or ask a local doctor to donate)
- goggles (our science closet)
-gowns (donated from a doctor office that I use yearly)
- I bring in tweezers and sanitizer and stethoscope from school or my house

Check out what is included below: 

- patient chart covers
-doctor badges 
- diplomas!






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how Seesaw saved my Conferences



Have you heard of the Seesaw app? I just love what Seesaw does for my classroom and IT IS FREE! I'm in no way paid to promote it but the features and abilities for a classroom are endless.

Image result for seesaw app

Being a relatively new teacher (4th year!) I need things that are EASY and work in my classroom, for that purpose alone Seesaw was perfect! Essentially it is a digital portfolio of student work that is shared with parents.


The variety of inputs alone makes is worthwhile.  You can snap a photo, draw, write a note, video or even link.  Then you can annotate off of those options to talk, draw, or type over what you input.

Image result for seesaw app


There are 2 main reasons why I love Seesaw so much!!


 1.  The growth that it shows.



Sometimes as we see kids day to day we miss the growth over the year.  this year we used Seesaw for our beginning fluency checks and plan to look back and reflect at the end of the year with how far we have come.

While doing experiments, I walk around and ask questions that students answer with explanations about what we have been doing.

As a teacher this not only shows me but parents as well how their child does in a classroom setting even when they can't be there.  I pull up their "journal" at conferences and can easily scroll through work, examples, and reflections from students with parents and comment as well.  It makes conferences a breeze - which as a new teacher there could not be better music to my ears.




2. Parent Communication!



It could not be simpler to document student success and daily activity all while keeping parents involved!  Parents can link to just their student's journal - completely safe - and keep updated on daily activities and moments they might otherwise miss from our classroom.

The parent comments on this alone make it worthwhile - AGAIN (I know!)  They love getting messages that something was added to their journal and being able to start a dialogue with their student at home, "I saw you did such and such today....tell me more about it."

Another great *bonus* - I simply add a note and attach it to everyone's journal for a newsletter.  Easy Peasy!  Students sometimes even cover this for me.  Parents still stay updated all in one place.



What are you waiting for?! a FREE app??? - Run to the app store now!


Below is a link to a presentation I gave recently highlighting the benefits!




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Verbs in the News!


We quickly glossed over verbs before moving on to other parts of speech because verbs are once again something my students come to me knowing!

We started by watching the Flocabulary video - Verbs!  We love Flocabulary!!  We worked on an anchor chart the difference between action, linking, and helping verbs!






After a couple short review days I wanted to know we were ready to move on.  Since Noun Restaurants (creating menus and highlighting nouns) went so well I thought we could surely do something for verbs too!

Students received a "School News" template with a picture prompt.

Students also had to pull a "your story must contain" card. 

They then wrote about what happened in a news article format including the 3 different sections - which gave us a wide variety of verb types.

After writing we went back and highlighted verb types - action, linking, and helping verbs in the article in different colors. 


Students were begging for me even before we finished!  They loved how creative and a little silly it was!  

Below is an example of a picture prompt a student might receive. 






Below is the anchor chart we glued in our notebook for verbs.  Students referenced this throughout the week and was great to have for further in the year! It makes it handy to have all in one spot. 






If you liked the chart above - you can grab all the pictures by clicking on the picture below!













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Nonfiction "level up" day




Many of you have asked about my Nonfiction Video Game Level Up day - all the details I have to give are below.  This will review text features, nonfiction comprehension, context clues and text structure.  Students will have to complete each level before moving on.

I was mainly inspired by this Periscope by Hope King - a Mario room that she used for reading! I watched the video to get some great ideas!  The only room items I purchased were some wall clings since I already had some tablecloths to hang up - just didn't have the funds for any other purchases.


We are using this day to wrap up our study of nonfiction which started at the beginning of the year.




Students will need to complete 4 levels to save Princess Peach!  Student will work in pairs and have a recording sheet (above) that needs to be complete.


Level 1:

Students will use this link to play the "Scatter" game on text features 3 times - teacher will initial after each time.  This will review definitions of text features.  We will see and use text features in more articles coming up on different levels.




Level 2:



Students needed to complete a context clues  sheet and check their answers with "magic" markers - color changing markers.   Here is the worksheet we used and the answer key - these are not made by me but resources I found.






Level 3:

Students will pick out of a "tunnel" an article in which they will analyze the text structure and defend it with evidence.  They will have to choose the articles randomly for this.  I created an answer key for the ones I chose.

***I picked articles specific to my students' interests and searched EBSCOHost Primary Search - most are Scholastic, Boy's Life, or Girl's Life***


I'll list some I chose but can't give out links to them - if your school has access ask your librarian to help you search:

  1. Fast Friends - Animal Companion Story
  2. Crayon Maker Job
  3. The Girl Who Discovered Dinosaurs
  4. Extreme Hotels
  5. Go Pro with Legos
  6. Gymnastics
  7. Meet the Cyber Chefs - a kid's online video cooking show
  8. Treehouse Masters
  9. The Perfect Pitch - analyzing a pitch
  10. Meet the Stars - video game characters introduction




Level 4:


the first group to reach level 4 will reach up and "punch" out the bottom of our box like on Mario and this article from Newsela like Hope mentioned will be inside.   You can choose the level of complexity depending on your grade level or to help differentiate!




I coded the answers to have numbers instead of letters and the numbers from the answers (just nonfiction comprehension) will unlock our Breakout Box!




The Breakout box will contain our Mario flag that the first group will get to raise and the save Princess Peach sign.  It will also have some Mario tattoos for us to wear in celebration!  I did print out small flags to write our names on and put in the hallway as well.  I plan to play Mario music while they are working.




Let's pretend this is a great picture of our makeshift flag pole - right now it is in mystery mode:


Here is a link to some of the printables with levels and the recording sheets for each level for students and the flag and signs.

Mario had to have some chocolate on plan time after all the excitement :)



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Positive Notes - Building Classroom Community!

This year I knew I wanted to start focused morning meetings with my students.  Once I try them out I'll write more about ideas I plan to use but this one is something that can be done in any classroom and I know for SURE will be something I use this year to promote our classroom community!

Positive Notes in the Classroom!


These notes are B/W just printed on colored paper! The plan is to hand out about 5 a day in our morning meeting from either myself or other students.  

I used my sense of humor to keep these light but also focused to give my students a prompt versus their normal generic statements.  These fit perfectly in adhesive sleeves available in the Target dollar spot but you could keep them in many different ways in your classroom!

I have some for teachers to give to students: 























or I have some for students to give to each other:


I have them printed and ready to go for our classroom this year! You can see them up close in this video: 






Both the teacher and student versions can be bought together in a money saving bundle:







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Top 3 - A First Day of School Post for Upper Elementary






How to have the best first day and set the tone for the rest of the year!


Obviously setting clear expectations from the start is essential!  I have an awesome 3rd grade teacher (I jokingly call her my job security) because the students really are beautiful when they get to me. Yes I teach in a school with only 1 section per grade...

I want to set a fun but somewhat serious tone our first day. They were all pretty confused by our raft.  I had on a life jacket and went through a short presentation I prepared about how our class works which leads into our rules.
  
I had notes that went with each slide that related to this metaphor.  We can refer to this throughout the year and use our cheap (>$20 raft) as a great reading spot)








I also wanted to have clear signals and LESS downtime in between transitions! I have been stalking the Amazing Elizabeth Raff  and even used Whole Brain Teaching to model expectations for different parts of school! Really loving it so far!  If you click the videos at the top there are some great ones to watch! It only takes a little practice to get kids started!




I have some new awesome ways we are building our community from the start!

1.  We did a teamwork challenge which you can read the details about here - it involves hidden scratch off letters and solving a puzzle!!



We also already starting handing out Positive Notes at our Morning Meetings!!



You can find these in my store by clicking the picture below!



They fit perfectly in the adhesive pockets from Target and are already being displayed on student desk!!!! Makes my teacher heart happy!!

Because parents are an ESSENTIAL part of our community too. I made sure to start sending home positive emails from Day 2!  I've heard back from them all and it truly is one of the best things ever!  Credit: thehungryteacher5th (below!!!)



The third and maybe most important goal I have for the first day is to orient students with our classroom library. Some might not have read over summer and are anxious to get back in the swing of things.  I heard Colby Sharp talk this summer and made a big deal about how much I love to read just like he does the first day of school.

We had these packages awaiting us:

A photo posted by Amber Nicole (@sssteaching) on

We were too busy to take any pictures of opening but they were new books! I explained different genres (briefly) to students and split them into groups to help shelve books.  They used our color coded labels and we reorganized the library (to be honest - this took until day 2)

The thrill of NEW BOOKS and excitement really overwhelmed the room!!   I quickly previewed each one before they set to work.

They worked together, talking about books, discussing characteristics, ID'ing genres, and organizing.  The best part was the ownership! They knew where almost all the books were from day 1 - ones they want to read or want to find later.

EVERYONE went home with a book on day 1 - and they were so excited to read! I'll show more of how I'm keeping track of their reading with a new system later.





Reflecting back on the day - it truly was magical! 4th year in and this might be my best first day!


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