Every year students in elementary school face bullying. Whether it is on the playground, in the hallways, on the bus, or even in the classroom, bullying is always an issue. We have created a quick Bully Busting 101 session that you can use in your classroom to help start the conversation about what to do when a classmate is bullied. We hope that you can follow the below steps to help bust bullying in your school. Recognize Bullying In order to stop bullying, students have to understand what bullying is. Brainstorm with the class what their perceptions are about bullying. This can be done with chart paper or on a white board. Elicit responses from students and write them down. After the list is compiled, try to separate the incidents that wouldn't be considered bullying and discuss why. Then point to the examples where someone is repeatedly harassing a student. These are the incidents you want to focus on. Be a Bully Buster Once your students have recognized wh...
During the holidays it can be easy for you and your students to get burnt out on math. After a few years of almost drowning during the holiday season, I started incorporating real-life math related to the holidays and had a lot of success with it! Here are 5 [of many] ways to incorporate real-life math into your classroom in November & December! My students go nuts for catalogs and ads. It's a little scary how into shopping they are! Give your students a shopping budget and they can subtract decimals for hours! Have them calculate percentages using their devices to look up the regular price (if it's not listed) to determine exactly how much they'll pay and how much they'll save. You can use catalogs to compare prices as well. Students can use critical thinking skills to determine which stores are more expensive overall and write justification paragraphs explaining how they figured it out. Holiday Cookie Exchange Project-based Learni...
Over the years I have come to the realization that I am a visual learner. Actually, I think I am a mix of visual and kinesthetic. When learning something new, it really helps when I can see and do it. Is there anybody else out there that can relate? So, I am sure that you have kids in your classroom that are the same. Using visuals when teaching can greatly help with increasing understanding. And I am sure that many of you use visualization strategies in reading, but I am here to tell you that you can use the same types of strategies during your math lessons. I hear you asking "How?" Let’s get to the math! One way is to use graphic organizers. They are great for organizing content and ideas. There are many different types that you can use to help students internalize what they are learning. It was a hard decision, but here are my TOP 5 graphic organizers that are great to use during math class . Number ...
We have been talking about nonfiction text features and structure since the first week of school. Still, some students haven't made a strong connection between all the fancy words and what they mean. This week I have a great motivator for them :) We will be reviewing nonfiction text features and structures using the book " Owls " by Gail Gibbons and my own nonfiction text flip book . What's the great motivator? After learning about owls through the wonderful book by Gail Gibbons, we will dissect owl pellets on Friday! My students are all super excited and eager to learn everything they can about owls. After our first lesson, I've had students come up to me and show me the non-fiction text features they've noticed in the books they're reading. Score! How I set up my Reading Stations this week I have 3 reading station this week: Teacher, Reading, Computer. Each station is about 20 minutes long. During the teacher station , we are working on the non...
Teachers often struggle to decide how to handle the winter holidays in public schools. This blog post will help you plan for a holiday season in your classroom that is both inclusive and educational. You know your students learn best when they are engaged and motivated. You also know that many children are excited by the holidays season. Their energy finds a way of presenting itself in the classroom so you want to capitalize on using it in a positive way. But, due to time constraints or directives from administration to avoid controversial topics and religious holidays, you may find yourself struggling to figure out how to offer seasonal, academic, and meaningful learning opportunities in a public school setting. During my first few years of teaching, December was always a crazy month in my classroom. As a new teacher I had not yet perfected my classroom management strategies . As a result I saw an increase in student behavior issues . Frequent changes to our schedule bec...
How does your classroom look after the bell rings, first thing in the morning? Do your students know exactly what to do each morning and the classroom has a calm, orderly feeling, or is it somewhat chaotic, leaving you and your kids with a feeling of stress? If your morning routine could use a bit of improvement, here are five tips to create an effective morning routine. 1. Set Up Easy to Follow Procedures Kids need to know exactly what you expect them to do in the morning and it needs to be explicitly taught, practiced, and reviewed. Just like any procedure, you'll need to think through the step by step process of what kids should be doing, before explaining it to them. Things like where to put coats/backpacks/snacks/lunches/notes and what to do first or what to do if they're done early. If you don't explicitly train your kids to follow your procedures, being the wonderfully smart kids that they are, they will come up with their own pro...
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