I am really excited to share with you all something I have recently started doing in my classroom that my students LOVE!
Sometimes, I want a quick grade, something meaningful to put in stations, or an exit ticket...but.. I want my students to really enjoy doing it. I decided to create a few different social media sheets that my students can create to tell me what they have learned about.
This is a quick and easy way to informally assess their learning! They love everything about social media, and I really see their creative side come out while doing these activities. It requires them to really extend their learning, because they have to tell me about it in a variety of ways.
Here is a couple of examples of some Instagram sheets we did about the Solar System.
I also had my students blog about a hero they learned about in Social studies.
This week I am going to give them the "Tweet about it" sheet to tell me about Area and Perimeter!
You can grab the Instagram sheet for FREE here!! I promise your students will love it! If you are interested in all of the social media sheets, click here!
This is my first year teaching GATE kiddoes, and it has definitely been a learning process. Just because these kids can do most grade-specific tasks wonderfully, should they be praised just on their intelligence? Check out this eye-opening video:
I try to keep this in mind as I am praising my students. Even when they answer a question,
"wow, I can tell that you really thought about that answer".
For the most part, my gifted kids are doing something completely different in the classroom. They have their own little cohort and I check in on them throughout their projects. I've finally gotten into the swing of it, but I am learning with every day.
Why do I use project with these kids?
Well for the most part...
For the most part, I can teach a lesson to these types of kids once and then they're ready to move on to the next thing. By nature, we feel that the mini lesson is not the end all be all. We feel that for the most part of the class, we need to nurture their understanding of the material and drag it out elaborating on the summative assessments.
Oh, not these kids. They are bored after the lesson and when you make them complete tasks that they know they can excel at, you're not helping anybody. It's time to extend their learning with activities that can push them to showcase their skill set.
I am sure other GATE teachers structure their differentiation differently, but today I am focusing on the project side of it.
In Texas, we call them the TEKS. These are the "things" we are required to teach.
When I look at a lesson, I look at all the standards and think: How can I turn this into a project?
When these kids are in charge of their learning, can PICK a topic, it lights a fire under them.
For example:
I just finished reviewing nonfiction.
I looked at all the standards and created two types of projects.
Why two? Well, you'll have two types of learners: introverts and extroverts.
Here are the examples:
In both of these projects, students are researching using various non fiction resources. During their research, I question them with specific questioning stems. I also facilitate them through their project process. I don't over help them, but sometimes these friends needs a little guidance so these big ideas can become an actual project!
The brightest thinker in the world could care less what 'teacher deemed cool' project you created if if doesn't interest them. These students need a buy in with something they are passionate about.
I should probably do this every month, but I have managed to have my gifted kids complete this questionnaire every grading people. They tell me what they are interest in, what books they've read recently, and any questions they have. This helps me gauge an understanding about what they like, and I can tailor their projects to lean in that direction.
My class spent a week reviewing procedural text.
My gifted kids did NOT need to review, and making them sit through the class would only bore them to the point they hated school.
I utilized our wonderful library for examples of non-fiction text.
I created a checklist for the kids to write and demonstrate their own procedural text!
It was fabulous! That QR code in the picture above scanned to real-life examples of how-to demonstrations such as procedural text.
When I first started teaching, my coworkers told me to give every student a composition book for writing. I was a new teacher and just soaking up the advice of others- so I did exactly what they said. And it was a disaster!
Kids would start a story and then do an assigned writing prompt on the next page. The following day, they would want to finish their original story but have to put it in another area of their notebook. They skipped pages and couldn't find what they were working on. The unorganized notebooks were contributing (in part) to my students' unorganized writing.
As I prepared for my 2nd year of teaching, I new I had to make some big changes. Binders were the solution that I came up with! Every student had a binder with divider pages for the steps in the writing process. I slipped the divider pages into clear page protectors.
Students use a lose leaf paper. They move their paper from divider to divider as they work through the writing process. For example, when they are done drafting, they can move the entire story over to the editing and revising divider.
When we have to stop writing for the day, they put their piece behind the correct divider and it makes it easy to come back to the next day. The unintended benefit to this great organizational system is that it helped my students to thoroughly understand the writing process! Score!
My students don't have room for another binder in their desk. I bought a wire rack to hold the binders. Student numbers are placed on the spine to make it easy for them to find their binder.
You can grab my dividers and binder covers for FREE by clicking on the picture below!
I always said that I thought teaching social studies would be fun. Due to how our schedule was, I haven't been able to teach it for the last 3 years. Each person on my team was assigned a speciality content area (Science, Art, Social Studies, or Health- or what we call SASH time) and we taught the whole grade that content through a rotation. This school year though, things changed and now I was going to teach all the content areas just to my class alone. Yes, it was going to be a lot more work for me, but I was so excited to change things up! And social studies has been one of my favorite SASH content areas to teach!
This past rotation was all about the United States Government. We did a lot of background learning about what government is, why we have it, and how it is structured. We watched a lot of short videos I found on-line and used our text book to learn some vocabulary. After we learned about the U.S. Constitution and the 3 Branches of Government, we began to talk about how a bill becomes a law.
If you want more information how I taught this first part described above (which I found to be super helpful to prepare us for this next part), head over to my personal blog, Tales of a Tenacious Teacher, to find the resources I used and created. But this post is going to explain how we created our own Classroom Congress to really make our learning come alive!
Step 1: Discussing the Process
We first learned how a bill became a law by watching the School of Rock video. Then, students worked together to fill in the blanks to this mini-poster I made. We discussed how the process is long and not ever bill even gets that far in the process. Of course I left out some parts for the sake of not overwhelming my 8 and 9 year olds. But once they knew the general process, it was time to apply it!
Step 2: Creating Your Constitution
The next day, we created the preamble to our own classroom constitution. We brainstormed different adjectives we wanted to use to describe our classroom. We voted, and you can see the word they chose. This was actually a very important step that I'll explain next.
We just did this on our SMARTboard- hence the messy writing.
Step 3: Writing Our Own Bills
After we had our constitution, it was time to start the bill and law creating process! I had students write bills that would help us reach this goal in our preamble. This limited students from getting too silly (as many said we should play games all day long or eat ice cream at every meal). We kept going back to, "Will this law help us form a more intelligent classroom?"
Step 4: Congress Positions
Students got to write 2 different bills. I collected them then for the next day. We turned our room into the Capitol building with the Senate on one side and the House of Representatives on the other. Surprisingly, making our desks into circles was the most challenge part of this day! Then students had to figure out which part of Congress they would be serving. I had these little slips printed and students just picked one out of a bucket. It was an easy way to sort them out into the houses. One senator slip said "Vice President" and one representative slip said "Speaker of the House." These would be the leaders of each group. There roles included:
Reading the bill to their group
Calling on people to share if more than one person was talking at once
Getting "order" by knocking 3 times on their desk to quiet their group
Completing the voting process
Circling on the bill if it passed their house
Once they were in their groups, it was time for the debating! I gave each side of Congress one bill each. They were to discuss if they think this bill should be turned into a law for our classroom. They had to defend their reasons and listen to one another, not to mention make sure it would follow our preamble of our Constitution. This was great to practice our accountable talk!
To protect my kiddos, I covered up their faces with adorable Melonheadz Clipart :)
After some back and forth, the leader of each group would ask for a vote. They would say, "All in favor" and if people agreed, they would raise their hand. If more people had their hand up than down, it would pass and go onto the other house. If more people had their hands down than up, it would be eliminated.
To protect my kiddos, I covered up their faces with adorable Melonheadz Clipart :)
Step 5: Debating and Voting Time
The first round, both houses did not pass the bill. So I gave each one another bill for them to repeat the process. They were going CRAZY! But in a good way! They were so engaged and passionate! I simply stood back and listened to the conversations- they were running the show all on their own. This time, both bills passed the house they were introduced in. The House of Representatives even changed one slightly before passing it on. We switched bills then to see if it could pass in the other house and sure enough- both did. They were so proud and realized that they had to work together not just with their own house but by thinking of the other house and what they might be thinking. And they kept our goal in mind the whole time. Perhaps I should invite real members of Congress into our classroom to see how it is done ;).
They begged for us to do it more, so we left our desks like this over the weekend and will resume our session on Tuesday. I'll be either signing these into laws or vetoing them on Wednesday before we wrap up this unit and move onto our next content area.
Do you teach government? How do you help students apply this tricky concept?
Looking for a great way to boost your students confidence and get them to practice those important leadership skills beyond the walls of your classroom? Connecting with a buddy class could be just the answer! Ideally, you should aim to connect with a teacher who has students at least two grade levels below yours, with a goal to meet 30-40 minutes at least once a month. So, if you haven't already, get out there and find a kinder or first grade teacher and get the fun started with these 5 low-prep ideas for making the most of your Buddy Time.
Photo Credit: DepositPhoto 2016
Reading Together. There is literally no prep required for this one (plus it is a great way to get your struggling older readers to be reading the just-right books they try to avoid). The only thing you will want to consider is some purposeful pairing to let all students get the most from the experience. Have your students sit and take turns reading aloud with their buddy from the younger buddy's book bin. Be sure to partner your high students with the high students from the partner class. For an added bonus, you can let your students bring a special story they've written in class to read to their little buddy.
Tech Time. My class has had both first grade and kinder buddies across the years, and one of the best things we've done together has been computer time. Although I usually plan this for late September or early October so my big buddies can teacher their partner how to log on to our school laptops, it can be helpful any time of year because the younger students often need more support when logging on and getting into the computer programs. What kindergarten or first grade teacher wouldn't want every student to have a one-on-one helper when it came time for pulling out the technology? None that I know of! Big buddies can help their little buddies play learning games, practice typing skills, read and research, and more. Plus it makes computer time way less stressful for everyone!
STEM Activities. Give buddies a challenge to complete. Whether it is building a tower out of index cards, building marshmallow shooters, or something completely different, students love working with their buddies doing hands-on activities. While these take a little more prep for gathering supplies, once the students are working you'll be amazed at how little support they need from you and how much they'll learn. (I always have my students come back and write a short reflection in their Buddy Journal after our sessions, and it is amazing how excited they are to write and the insights they gain from their time with their little buddies. Get a free copy at the end of this post.)
Learning Games. This is a great low-prep way to give your students practice with those essential social skills. The younger buddies love having one-on-one or small group time with older students they look up to, and the older buddies are a great support for keeping the younger students on task and learning. This is a great option for all those indoor recess days during the cold, wet winter and spring months, too!
Community Outreach. Although you can do projects that give back all year, February is a great time for a community outreach project. One of my favorite activities is making valentine cards for a nearby children's hospital or retirement community. Bust out the art supplies and let the kids get busy. Some years I've even had classes go on a walking field trip to deliver them (since we were lucky enough to be down the street from a nursing home). However, even if that isn't a possibility, you can't imagine how much fun you'll have and the joy you'll bring by just letting your kids get creative!
Although it is great to have a buddy class all year, it is never too late to get started! With these simple, low-prep ideas starting your partnership for classroom buddies can be an easy, no stress way to support your students' academic and social emotional development.
P.S. Don't worry! I didn't forget your freebie. Click the image below to get it now!
