Low Prep Dinner for Busy Teachers

Spring-time can be a super-hectic time for teachers!  The fatigue of the school year can set in, leaving you with little energy or will to prepare a healthy meal.  I'm sharing one of my FAVORITE recipes for when I'm at my busiest and EVERYONE is excited to see this meal when the crew comes home!

Back in the day when I was shuffling between soccer games and watching my daughter cheer, a friend shared a recipe for roast beef that quickly became a staple in our household.

What made it so special?
I could come home from work, spend 15 minutes in the house prepping the meal, and LEAVE!  When I come home, it was done!  No watching the clock. Just done! Let me tell you, my family knows this aroma when they enter the house and are PUMPED!

Ingredients:

Eye Round Roast

Kitchen Bouquet Browning Sauce

1. Preheat your oven to 500 degree
2. Line your baking pan with foil
3. Completely cover your roast in a even layer of Kitchen Bouquet
4. Bake in the oven 5 minutes per pound.  (I usually try to find a roast that is pretty close to exactly 2 or 3 lbs )  This makes a perfectly rare roast.  Adjust time to suit your taste.
5. When your timer goes off.  Turn off the oven, but....DO NOT open.  The radiant heat will cook the roast.
6. Run your errands, take a nap...WHATEVER
7. Two hours later, your roast is ready!  

Add a simple salad.  In a new pan, drizzle potato wedges with olive oil and rosemary and bake until lightly crisp.

Later in the week, use the leftovers by thinly slicing the the roast to have French Dip sandwiches to bring to the soccer field or baseball park with a bag of chips & baby carrots with ranch dip.  

Hope you enjoy one less meal to fuss over and avoid running through the Drive-Thru!

Responding to Reading: 3 Ways to See Improvements Instantly!

Hey hey hey! It's Kelli from Tales of a Tenacious Teacher! I'm sitting here enjoying my Spring Break. If you are too- congrats! You've made it this far! If yours has already past or still coming... hang in there and keep working it! You've got this! 

I'm here to share 3 ways to improve your students' responses to their reading. As I tell my students, we respond to our reading for a few reasons. 1) I'm not in their brains! I don't know what they are thinking, what's easy for them, what's hard... so we need to take time to respond to our reading. We respond to our reading both with the speaking and the writing domain so both are included here today. 2) As we learn to become better readers, we need to stop and check our thinking often. I always tell them that they won't do this for the rest of their reading lives the way we do it right now in 3rd grade... but the things we practice now will help it become automatic for us later so we spend time writing and sharing about our thinking often to help it become automatic. 

Usually with that, I have them buy into the importance as to why we do this. It's also a good talking piece with parents who sometimes think that because their child can read fast and accurately, they don't always fully comprehend their reading. So how do I get students to think deeply and completely about their reading? I've got 3 tips!

If you've been around here for a little while, you'll know that I love rubrics and language. Both are in this post. I'm guilty though of not always using rubrics to help both me and my students know what to expect. I've found that a simple rubric for each skill/focus is easiest for me to see what students know what to do and what they are missing to get to the next step.

These rubrics are based off of specific skills and focuses. The top is a 3-point rubric that focuses on 2 things: the reading focus and the language focus. The reading focus targets "how" the student is able to respond to their reading on a particular focus (such as character motivation). The language focus is usually a grammar focus to help them  communicate their idea more clearly. The bottom rubric targets "what" their work tells you as a teacher on their thinking level when it comes to that focus. 

Two ways to use this: 

1. Cut them in half and just give students the top half. Have them glue it into their reading notebooks to reference so when they are completing a jotting on that focus, they now what you are expecting. You can keep the bottom half as a talking point if you need to pull a strategy group. 
2. Have them glue the whole page into their notebook so that students know clearly what to work towards and what their work tells you of their thinking while reading.

I'm a big proponent of graphic organizers. I've found the most success when I give a graphic organizer and have students fill it out. Later, students draw it themselves and modify to make it work for them. I've given my students a blank page in their reading notebooks and have told them to just jot during their reading... all I get usually is a mess of thoughts and I struggle to identify what my students are even thinking during their reading. So graphic organizers help both my students think completely and help me notice what they rock at and where they have some gaps for me to help fill.

For our character units (we have a series unit, mystery unit, and biography unit that we can use all these organizers for), we pay attention to our characters... a lot. We think about their problem, but not just their problem- we think about how they react to it and what that tells us about them. We think about their actions and choices and how they impact relationships and problems. We think about character motivations and what is pushing them to do things. All of this helps us develop strong ideas and traits for our characters. I've found simple box graphic organizers with question prompts to be very helpful to get students to think deeper.

The last tip to is help them communicate their thinking clearly through language. This is a great time and way to integrate grammar into meaningful instruction. I've made little mini-charts that students glue right into their notebook to reference often. Even better, if you change the printing settings and scale down a bit, they fit perfectly into a composition notebook. These mini-charts are meant to provide language supports and expand vocabulary to help students get to a deeper level. I've used an adjective chart to help students recommend books, adverbs to describe how their character reacts to something to give a better picture of their characters intent, question matrixes to help them formulate stronger questions, and sentence frames to initiate conversations about books in book clubs. 

 

Sometimes I add the language cues right to my graphic organizers to help it become even more accessible. 

I've found that by implementing these 3 tips, my students are producing more quality work and it allows me to see where I need to put my efforts. 

Want to give it a try? Click on the image below try using it. If you find it helpful, you can check out the whole set of rubrics, graphic organizers, and mini-charts in my TpT store!

Teacher Tips for After Spring Break

Returning from Spring Break can be the BEST time to add a spark to your classroom routines!  What's more...it is also the perfect time to try out some techniques and routines that you might have been a little nervous to try!  Who better to try them out with than with the students you have already established a trusting environment!

These are my top tips that you should try with your students!

If you aren't already using Class Dojo with your students, after Spring Break is the perfect time to start.  Focus as a classroom on the behaviors you want to see most often, add them to your Positive Behavior list, and start catching your students in the act.  A two-to-three month commitment late in the school year is the perfect time to try out this interactive app.  

• Set a weekly goal of positive behaviors and reward your class with extra recess, Stinky Feet day, or a simple snack & short video on Friday
• Choose the Random Pick option to watch a "Secret Friend" in the hallway to add to the class total.  My students always clap for the Secret Friend and thank them!

Class Dojo too much of a commitment for you?  No worries!  One of  my favorite ways to quietly recognize on-task behavior, good choices, or ANY act of "Awesomeness" are giving my kids tiny tokens while I'm teaching.  Trust me, kids NOTICE when you pull out these goodies and just lay them on desks and give a silent pat on the back.  Be super-generous and watch how contagious positive behavior spreads throughout your room!  I use a variety of things I have collected like:

• Read Tara at 4th Grade Frolic's post about using Smuddles.  
• Dollar Spot erasers from Target
• Reward Phrases from Creative Teaching Press

Your Guided Math and Reading groups are probably pretty established by now.  Add a little pizzazz to the routine and try out some Flexible Seating options for one of your rotations.  Who knows?  You may decide you want to do more in the fall when school starts!!

• Scoop rockers make a great option to get out of desks to do some reading or independent work in a quiet location in the room.  As a 3rd grade teacher, I've never had centers in a specific "place" in the room, so this leaves the extra room available perfect for some choices on the floor.  I found mine at Walmart, but I have been told you can find them at Aldi's as well!  
• Standing Work Zone: Raise the legs of an unused table or a collection of desks in the building to create a place to plop center games and word work.  Let your "standers" have a spot to work, wiggle, and lean to their heart's content during one of your rotations!

When Spring Fever hits, why fight the battle when you can channel the energy productively! If GoNoodle didn't save your sanity this winter with its Inside Recess options, then you need to head over to check out the movement activities that range from the ever-calming Maximo to the goofy Koo Koo Kanga boys!  Create your own list of favorites and let your kids do the choosing.  Start one of these during your transition times and just WATCH you kiddoes clean up and join in no NO TIME!

One my of kids' favorite activities to spend 5-10minutes is simply having the chance to get our markers, colored pencils, or crayons and draw.  I have a collection of great ideas on my Pinterest Board that are Low (to zero) Prep and High Interest!  You can see it HERE.  These are perfect activities to follow up a round of standardized testing, too!  Very stress relieving!

• Find a You Tube Channel will calming classical music.  You might like THIS one!
• Guide a directed drawing, demonstrate a doodling technique, or simply give them a Squiggle that you start for them.  

Enjoy the last few weeks with your precious friends!

8 Ways to Help Ease Your Students' Test Anxiety

My students and I are currently in Crunch Mode... unfortunately this does NOT mean that we spend the day doing stomach crunches or eating Crunch bars, although I wouldn't mind a Crunch bar marathon :0) Instead this is what we call the last few weeks before our high stakes testing begins. For most, this is also the time when anxiety levels are through the roof for teachers, students, and parents alike. Especially in my state (Florida) where student retention is determined based on test scores.

I've seen first hand how HORRIBLE anxiety can be. It can cause so many symptoms ranging from stomach aches, head aches, clammy hands, nausea, sleepless nights, anger, frustration, inability to think clearly and even hives! (Yes, I actually had a parent break out in hives one year due to stress) 

We can't change the fact that our students have to test, what we CAN do is help them deal with their testing anxiety. If you're unsure where to start, here are 8 ways you can help...

• Practice Breathing Exercises- In my school we call our relaxation technique S.B.G. or STOP, BREATHE, and GO. When students feel frustrated during a test, they stop and close their eyes, breathe in through their nose and out through their mouth (2 times), and then go on or continue with their test. We practice how to do this quietly at our seats so that others aren't disturbed. Click here for a FREE copy of my S.B.G. bookmark.

• Positive Self Talk- Teach your students to eliminate words such as "I can't" or "I don't get it" from their vocabulary. In order for them to succeed, they must first BELIEVE IN THEMSELVES! I'm a strong believer in the power of positive thinking, so I teach my students about affirmations. Instead of "I can't" students can say "I CAN do this, I just need some more practice". Have students brainstorm positive phrases such as "I WILL pass the test", "I WILL do my best", "I WILL succeed", etc... and have them post it up around the classroom or take them home to display on their bathroom mirror. This way they can read their affirmations when they brush their teeth, wash their face, style their hair... you get the picture!

• Test Taking Tips- Come up with a short list of testing tips you want your students to use and remember. Post them in the classroom, and review them frequently. You can even have your students draw an illustration of their favorite tip or as a group project have them make a colorful poster illustrating each tip. 
• Give Your Students a Sneak Peek- There's nothing worst then going into a test blind or not knowing what to expect. That uncertainty is enough to make anybody anxious. So prior to the Big Test, make sure your students know the format of the test, understand how long they have to complete it, and know how many days of testing they are going to have. It's best to go through testing simulations where students have to complete practice tests under the same conditions, time restraints, and testing format as the actual day of testing. Also, make sure that you explain to your students what is going to happen come test day and what they are allowed to do once they finish their test.  
• Be Positive- If students see YOU anxious, nervous, and a bundle of nerves, they are going to feed off of your energy and begin to feel the same emotions. So despite any reservations, hesitations, or even palpitations that you might be feeling, bundle them up and don't let your students see you sweat! Save the meltdown for when you are alone with your fellow 3rd grade teacher BFF's! Whenever you are in front of your students, tell them how WONDERFUL and SMART they are and how much you BELIEVE in them. Tell them that they have been working really hard all year long and this is simply their time to shine and show everyone how much they have learned and grown!
• Speak to Your Parents- Keep your parents informed. With ample time, send home a letter informing them which days their child will be testing so that they don't plan their trip to Orlando on that day (although some will do it anyways). Also, tell your Nervous Nellies NOT to share their concerns in front of their children. It always amazes me how some parents don't realize that they are actually causing their children's anxiety. 
• Motivational Messages- On testing day, share motivational messages with your students. This can be either in the form of a morning message that you write on the board for all to see when they walk into the classroom or inspirational messages written from their peers. For my motivational messages, I have a top secret project that I complete with my parents help. You can read more about it here and here. 
  
• Plan a Party- You read correctly... Plan a party. You and your students have been working tirelessly to prepare for the Big Test. So why not reward yourselves with a party, but I'm not talking about an ordinary party with pizza and cupcakes. Instead I'm talking about a celebration just like the one mentioned in the book The Big Test by Julie Danneberg. 

• Be creative and think of fun games such as Pin the Passing Score on the Big Test or Teacher Says (like Simon Says) where one student pretends they are the teacher and gives fellow students commands to follow such as write your name on the paper, or bubble in answer C three times on your test. What's important is that after spending the past few weeks in Crunch mode, you and your students deserve a moment to let loose and have fun. There's only so much prepping you can do at this point...so let go! 

I hope these tips were helpful... If so, then please share the love by pinning the image  below to Pinterest so that other teachers can benefit as well!  Here's to S-T-R-E-S-S  F-R-E-E testing!