Something I LOVE: Growth Mindset Video Series

Happy Valentine's Day!  I know it's Sunday funday, and Valentine's day, and really the last thing we are thinking about is school.  Right?  RIGHT?  

I thought I'd share something my students and I are LOVING lately with you this day of love + kindness.  If you want to start your week on an easy breezy note tomorrow, Class Dojo has released a new series of 5 videos about the Growth Mindset and my class is l-o-v-i-n-g them!  So if you don't use Class Dojo on the daily, I thought I'd give you a little heads up.  These are great mini-lessons in the classroom and each video is only 2-3 minutes long (my favorite one so far has been about using the word "yet"- I don't get this "yet"... LOVE!).

Even if you don't use Class Dojo in your room, these videos are pretty great.  This year I have been using it, and my students like to look for their character in the videos.  The videos are posted on YouTube, so you don't even need a Dojo account to check them out.  The last episode was just released today.  

Here's the first of the series for you to check out.  

I've added the link to the first video over on the Classroom Management resources as well!  {below or click the "Websites and Resources" page up top- bookmark it for the future!}

I hope you enjoy a wonderful and relaxing Valentine's Day Sunday!  I'm planning to eat some chocolate and run a few miles...it all evens out, right?? 

 + 

LOVE,

            

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From Drab to Flocab {we rap in class}

I've been living in this black hole that is National Boards (I'm telling you, if I don't pass this, I will cry TEARS for YEARS).  

Also, I've been teaching.  And managing.  A lot of classroom management makes for one tired teacher.

One of my saving graces with my charming active and interactive group this year is my Flocabulary subscription.  I'll be honest... when my subscription was up, I really thought about whether it was going to be worthwhile for another year.  I'm usually a big fan of free online resources, but my students last year LOVED using Flocab for vocabulary.  I stuck mainly to using it only for our vocabulary instruction last year in 4th grade.  

So this fall when the time came, I did stop and think.  I tried it a couple times with my 3rd grade class to see if I had the same buy-in...and I did.  Then I spent a little while hopping around and discovered a lot of the videos matched my curriculum, so I forked over the cash yet again. 

WORTH IT.  My class LOVES it!  This year I branched out and we've been using videos for...

...Social Skills

...Digital Citizenship (hey this helps out with that required lesson for my district, yay!)

...Writing

...Reading

...Science (rocks & minerals is coming out soon and we are super psyched about it in 3rd grade)

...Math (multiplication facts, they love it)

So basically I just use it completely the opposite from last year.  Last year I used it strictly for vocabulary instruction, and this year I haven't used the vocabulary component but I've used everything else.  Isn't it weird how different classes require different instruction?  

We watch the same video MULTIPLE times.  I do this because once just isn't enough for students to really get the concept.  Particularly with content specific songs, I do a lot of teaching the content prior to showing the video.  The video is really helpful for reinforcing a topic or important words, as well as helping students to remember it.  

Here's one of our favorites for reading/writing this year:

This year I have even used the quizzes that go with the videos (some of them are pretty helpful if I'm teaching an entire unit).  

Flocabulary has a convenient little special happening right now.  If you sign up for a free 75 day trial (it's 15 more days than any other time of year...so this takes you to mid-late April depending on when you start, of course) and you can sign up your whole school for the trial.  That way you can check it out for FREE for a bit!  Last day for the trial is Feb. 29th, so you can even bookmark it and think about it until then if you want.  

We sing.  We dance.  Students feel like pretty hard core rappers.  It's hilarious for me.  So it's pretty good all around.

Disclosure: This has been written in partnership with Flocabulary; opinions, classroom uses, & money I paid for my own classroom subscription are my own.  

            

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Worry Stones | Science+Stress Free Students

Winter break is so close I can almost taste it.  I finally feel like I'm to the point this year where I can work ahead, so I've been prepping my January materials for a stress-free return.

This time of year can be anything but stress-free for teachers and students.  I'm trying to wrap up our units and possibly squeeze in a few final assessments, while my students are counting down the days to ripping open their presents.  It can be stressful.  For all of us.

During our matter unit this year, I decided to incorporate a little science/art/social-emotional lesson and create worry stones as a class.  I'm always on the look out for new approaches to use with my high anxiety kiddos, and so I thought we'd try this activity this year.  {Shout out to this post at Creative Elementary School Counselor for inspiring this concept for my classroom!}

Our science lessons are always guided by a "big question".  Our big question of the day was:

"Does the shape of a solid change it's mass?"

First we had to figure out if clay was a solid.  Because we had done so much work on classifying matter, this was a pretty short discussion.

We drew our table in our science journals, and included shapes such as "ball #1", "log", "pancake", and "ball #2".  Each group started with a ball of clay, which they weighed and recorded the initial weight ("ball #1").   After they had the weight recorded, they estimated the weight in grams of each clay shape.  Then they proceeded to make each shape and weigh it to see the exact weight.

Imagine their surprise when all the weights were the same!  Once our measurements were completed, we wrote a reflection journal entry answering our "big question".

The next day, I brought in colored clay for us to mold into little worry stones.  We reviewed what we know about the properties of a solid, and how clay fits those properties.  We made our stones {check out this post for instructions}, and I told students I was going to add heat to them by baking them at home.  We made predictions in our science journals about what would happen.  From what we knew, adding heat would melt a solid.

I baked our stones that evening and brought them in the next day, and we wrote our observations in out notebook.  Our observations led to a new discussion- why didn't the clay melt like an ice cube would melt?  I absolutely loved how these activities guided us to authentic conversations and questions about the states of matter.

Now my students and I have our worry stone at our desk every day.  Sometimes they float into our hand when we are talking or working on something.  I love how easy they are to keep in our desk and incorporate as one way to keep our hands busy and help relieve stress.  Plus, if anyone asks about it, my students make me proud and start teaching about solids.

Don't let the stress get to you these last few days before break!  Power through!

            

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The Art of Apologizing

We've had a rough couple weeks as a class.  It's April, and things that didn't bother us before are now getting on our nerves.  We are losing our patience with each other.  We're frustrated easily.  We feel like we've sat next to the same person all year even though this is a different seating arrangement.  Spring has sprung.

Please tell me I'm not the only teacher going through this with her/his students.  This. is. painful.  It's not their fault....it's just that time of year.

It's like starting over.  How to show patience.  How to use manners.  How to ask a friend to please stop doing something.  How to take turns.  How to not yell when you are frustrated.  We've had to reflect on why we were wrong, fill out a few "think sheets", and we've had to say a lot of apologies.

It's just.....so hard to say I'm sorry.

I probably won't show that one in class.  But it is one of the hardest parts of being a kid...or an adult for that matter.  I would also say it's one of the most important lessons to learn, and the sooner the better.  A great apology makes a world of difference.  Not only can it make a situation better, but it can also rebuild trust between two people.  That's a big thing in a classroom.

My sister sent me the post "A Better Way to Say I'm Sorry" from cupacocoa.  I love how she breaks it down and gives great examples.  I am going to go over it with my students this week.  There's also a great description over at Kid's Health about how to say I'm sorry.

Sometimes the right thing to do is just say "I was wrong. (or, what I did was wrong.)  How can I fix it?".

After these last few weeks, I've been trying to figure out how I can approach my students with this concept and help them see the importance of acknowledging our mistakes and presenting a more heartfelt apology than "I'm sorrrryyyyyy."  If there's one thing I've seen these past few weeks more than ever, it's that parents are going through the exact same thing.  They want to help their child make good choices, but sometimes it's overwhelming given the circumstances.  Sometimes we're so overwhelmed by the action that we forget it's a lesson to be learned.

I decided to revamp the "think sheets" I was sending home.  Sometimes I don't even send it home, I just make sure we walk through it together and I keep it on file.  Obviously, if it's a big enough behavior issue, it will get sent home for a signature.

I decided to tweak the original page I sent home for parents to sign, but also include a section on "I'm Sorries" (spellcheck has just informed me that "sorries" is not a word) and the art of a great apology to add to the back as information for students, but also a teaching tool for parents to use with their students.  Here's what I came up with.

The Art of Apologizing- which includes these two pages, plus four "mini-posters" to hang in a small space in your room that tell the three main steps to saying you're sorry: 1. Taking responsibility (I'm sorry), 2. Saying what you are sorry for, and 3. Telling how you will "fix it" next time.  You can get these pages and mini-posters at my TpT store for $1.25...and considering it's something you use all year long, it's not a bad deal!

Hopefully we will survive the rest of this school year (and our field trip on Monday!) without any huge disasters.  We will keep working on this, though.  It will stick at some point, right?  

            

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This One's for the Nerds

My nerdy self laughed out loud when I read this.

Ok, so this isn't about invertebrates like I had previously mentioned (well...that picture is, haha, but not this post), but this was just too good to pass up.  I've written about empathy and teaching students social skills before and I continue to think it's one of the most important parts of our classrooms.

I was just having lunch with an education friend the other day, and she was talking about a study she found that showed that lack of student achievement is directly related to how a student feels s/he is perceived in the classroom.  If a student feels like they don't have friends or they don't fit in for whatever reason, they will not perform as well in school.  Do you find that in your classroom?  It made me think again about my tricky class this year.

This video has been floating around from last year's Comic Con in Denver showing Wil Wheaton responding to a child who asked him how to respond when someone calls you a nerd, and it is really fantastic.

I have my fair share of nerdiness, I say go ahead and geek out on whatever makes you happy.  I try really hard to show that to my students as well.  Hopefully if we keep working on it, we can redefine "cool".  

            

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