Summer!

Need I say more?  Enjoy it teachers!

The End of the Year

It's getting to be that time... Testing.  Good-byes.  Warm weather.  Antsy kiddos.  Squeezing in those last lessons.  Not enough instructional time.  Meetings about next year (when there is still so much to do this year).  The end is here.

The last month of school.  It's always crazy.  Every year I make a plan to ease into the end of the year, rather than crash and burn.  And every year it never actually happens.  It's the nature of the beast we call School.  So here we are again.  At the end.  Survival is the best word to describe it, I think.  But it's also every year at this time that I remember the advice of one of my past principals.  He always said, "Slowly glide to the end.  Don't crash-land."  So once again I take that advice and try to remember...  That last writing lesson will make no difference in the future life of a 9 year old.  Making sure they have an amazing final project will not be what my students remember.  So I'm throwing it out.  If we don't get to it, we just don't get to it.  We'll glide and enjoy the ride to the end, instead of flailing through the air like we're sky diving without a parachute.

So raise your glasses to making the landing smooth.  May we all glide to the end and give our kids a great finish!

(Bottoms up.  We'll need it!)

Times Table Success!

Third grade is the year you learn your Times Tables.  It's a big deal.  Some are excited about it and feel grown-up.  Others just hate math.  Parents drill it or dread it.  But this year, it was LOVED by all third graders at my school.  How did we do it?

My Canadian co-worker in true Canadian fashion taught us "Times Table Hockey", a six man on six man game that inspired our little sponges to learn those multiplication facts.  And let me tell you, kids loved it, parents raved about it, and teachers got a little competitive about it.  A two week tournament with brackets and a championship game set the stakes high for our 9 year olds.  When it came down to my class and Class 3K for 1st place, I gotta say that my palms were sweaty and my heart was racing.  The posters were flying and crowds were cheering.  Teachers from other classes wandered out of their rooms to see the commotion and join the chanting.  And multiplication facts were being shouted out, memorized, and learned.

Life-lessons came out of it too...  Lessons on good sportsmanship were easily integrated as well as the lesson that no one seems to teach anymore: NOT EVERYONE WINS.  There were losers and winners.  And we all still had fun.

Why did this work?  How did we get every 3rd grader to want to learn those facts?  Because it was a competition.  They wanted to win.  And they wanted to play the game.  Simply put, it was fun.

Here's how we play the game:
Six players on each team with three rows.  Last row is the goalie, middle row 2 defense men, and front row 3 offense men facing the same set-up from the other team.  Center (of the 3 offense) faces center of the other team to start the game.  Referee calls out a multiplication fact.  (We used playing cards in two stacks, pulling the top ones off the pile to give a random fact.)  The first kid to say the correct answer wins and moves across the other teams offense, answering facts from the referee.  It's one man on one man, giving the answer to the referee's fact through each teams offense and defense.  The first team to beat the opposing team's goalie wins that goal and earns a point.  Anytime the round gets down to only the goalies standing and facing off, we all shout "Goalie, goalie guacamole!"  (Just for fun.)  The team with the most points after several rounds wins.

Video Clip of 2013 Times Table Hockey Tournament

I highly recommend "Times Table Hockey" to any Grade 3 or 4 teacher who wants their students to memorize those facts.  Now when I join the game with the kids, they can beat me half the time.  It works, and it's highly motivating.

More than one parent said to me during conferences this year, "I don't know what you did, but my kid loved learning the times tables."

What I really want to tell THAT parent.

As with every job there are some things I don't like about teaching:
Grading papers,
Forms, forms forms,
Meetings that have nothing to do with my students,
And sometimes... parents.

This is the internet and any parent tracking me down can find that I wrote this.  But any teacher who has worked with kids long enough has had the parents who drive her crazy.  Teachers, you know what I'm talking about.  Parents, we love your kid, but you can sometimes make our lives miserable.  It isn't all parents by any means.  In fact, it's really only a small percentage every year.  The rest are great... appreciative, kind, give me gifts to the spa.  But those one or two (or sometimes more if you're cursed), can overshadow everything and make you rethink your career options.  And the poor kid... it's not his fault.  So you keep on loving him and teaching him regardless of his parent who you'd like to say a few choice words to.

Well, one principal did say it in a CNN article.  So if you are the parent who actually searched me out on-line and are reading this, read this article too.  Because I REALLY do have your child's best interest at heart.  ALWAYS.  And teachers, read this and be encouraged... you're not the only one who wants to say THAT to a parent.

What teachers really want to tell parents - CNN.com

Winter Bulletin Board

A display for those snowy months was my most recent success.  I'm really not a great bulletin board teacher, in all honesty.  Usually my displays are mostly student work without much "cute factor" or vocabulary words and posters the kids can use as references.  But I've been inspired lately with the blanket of snow outside Budapest where my school sits.  So with pinterest's help, I think I've been more creatively successful.  You be the judge.

The kids wrote winter poetry.  I used a really simple method for guiding them in creating these poems.  Giving them strips of paper, I asked them to write different ideas on each strip:

What do you see when you go outside in winter?
What does the snow look like?
What do you do outside in winter?
What does it feel like?
And so on...

After they had several strips of paper with descriptions of winter, they arranged them in an order that made sense and sounded beautiful as a poem.  They could add strips or take away strips of paper to make it more poetic.

We typed the poems, revised (we're really working on revision a lot), and printed them.  In addition to the poems, the kids each made a snowflake and pasted a wintery photo I had taken in the center of their snowflakes.  The result is what you see above.

It's December now, but this bulletin board can stay up through January too.  Maybe even February if I push it!

Angry Verbs Bulletin Board

You've probably seen this on pinterest.com.  This is how I used the idea in my classroom:

Angry Verbs Lesson Plan

Learning Objective: Students will be able to identify the verb in a written sentence.

1. Verb Sort

To review nouns and verbs I gave the kids a stack of flashcards, which they had to separate into piles of nouns and verbs at their table groups (4 kids in each group).  Next we did a "Museum Tour" of their piles, in which one child from each group shared their verb lists aloud and the class discussed any changes to the pile if needed.

2. Verb Lists

The whole class together made a list of Happy Verbs (danced, sang, shouted, etc), a list of Sad Verbs (cry, frown, slump, etc), and finally a list of Angry Verbs (yell, fight, run, etc).  These were written on the white board for future reference.

3. Angry Verbs

I showed a trailer of the Angry Birds video game to transition from the Angry Verbs list to the creation of Angry Verb sentences.  Then we discussed and shared ideas aloud of sentences you could say using an angry verb.

4. Angry Birds

Finally the kids were given their own Angry Bird to write an Angry Verb Sentence upon.  After writing the sentence and highlighting the angry verb in the sentence, students were asked to color their Angry Bird.

5. Display

We hung the birds up for display, as you see in the first photo.  This bulletin board attracted the attention of every student who passed in the hallway the next day.  Popular!

My kids LOVED this lesson.  It was simple.  They learned their verbs.  And it made a great (and easy) display board.

Click here for the printable template of Angry Birds.

Boggle Bulletin Board

A great idea from another teacher's blog:

My kids love this!  I keep one "boggle board" up for two weeks maximum and give awards for participants: the longest word and the most words.  It's a great spelling activity for those free-time moments.  I had one little girl this year, who struggles with spelling, get the Most Words Award one week.  The whole class cheered and the smile on her freckled face was priceless.

Click here get all the print-outs to make this board for your classroom.