Cool Down Strategies Revisited

Remember how I posted that post at the end of last school year with the free anger management cards (I think end of April or beginning of May 2012)? Well, we went ahead and STARTED the year, this year, with having a whole lesson on anger management. If you missed that previous post, you can click HERE to go to the free download of those anger choice cards, or you can click the picture below.

After reading the book When Sophie Gets Angry, Really, Really Angry by Molly Bang, we talked about things that might make us angry. Students then discussed what they could do when they got to the point where they were angry. Next, we talked about how it is completely ok for students to feel frustrated, angry, upset, disappointed, etc... We are, after all, human, and humans have a range of emotions. However, we talked about the fact that even if we feel angry, frustrated, upset, etc..., we can't deal with those emotion in a way that will hurt or bother others or ourselves. The class brainstormed some ideas of how they deal with their anger "appropriately" (after discussing what appropriate would look and sound like), and we talked about how you might use different strategies at school and home. After sorting out which strategies might be good to use at school, we made an anchor chart.

 I then introduced the quiet spot, and went over my expectations for when a student feels they need to go to the quiet spot to calm down. I placed a laminated copy of the above discussed anger choice cards, and students will use a dry-erase marker or vis-a-vis pen to mark which choice they picked in order to calm themselves down. They will be expected to discuss this with me later when they return or when we have a break (which strategy they chose and how it helped them calm down). I also went over the calm down sensory box that our school counselor graciously put together for us (includes a glitter jar, marbles hidden in clay, buttons to sort, and letter beads to string onto string), and we discussed those expectations as well. All in all, this turned out to be a great reminder lesson for these kiddos, and I feel like students will not be intimidated or feel threatened or scared to express their frustrations in a calm and safe manner. Fingers crossed anyway! ;-)



Pin It

Back to School/Get to Know You Glyph

Well, I found out today that, apparently, when I speak in Spanish, I sound like Dora the Explorer.... :-/ My kids (I have quite a few Hispanic/Latino students) told me today that my Spanish sounds like Dora, but my English sounds normal. Haha! I was like, wow, I sound like a 7 year old, or however old she is! :-) Oh dear me...

Anyway, we all know that teachers do much more than teach academics. We teachers play many roles in the classroom, and one of those roles is to teach and reinforce life skills and social skills. I teach at a Title I school, and many of my sweet darlings need some practice on social skills at school. My teammates and I are spending the first couple weeks teaching basic social skills, based on the format described in the Boys Town social skill curriculum. I've made posters to go with each skill, and I have the posters hung up in my room to refer to all year long. Two of the very first skills we taught, were listening and following directions. After we taught, very specifically, the steps for how to listen and follow instructions, the students then got to practice those skills. For listening, the students played a Get to Know You Fan n' Pick game, and for following instructions, we thought it would be fun to have the students make a glyph. The students had to listen to the directions, and they had to follow the correct instructions for each part/detail of the glyph.

If you wanted to use these in your classroom, you could say the categories and directions out loud, or you could put the directions on the SmartBoard if you wanted.The learning statement goes out in the hallway with the glyphs! :-)

These glyphs turned out super cute, and the kids had a great time while practicing some social skills that they will need in just about every situation in school, home, and life! :-)

To get a free copy of the directions and the hallway learning statement, click HERE, or click on the picture below to download.


Pin It

Bucket Filler Slips

We are a Bucket Filling classroom! If you haven't read "Have You Filled a Bucket Today?" by Carol McCloud, you must! You can find the book at most bookstores, including the one below.

There are so many awesome Bucket Filling resources on the web and with fellow educators right now, and it is really neat to see how different people implement it in different ways. The key to bucket filling is that we all have a secret, invisible bucket (I teach that it is in our hearts). When you do kind things, you are filling people's buckets and your own. When you do things that are not kind, you are dipping into other people's buckets. We all want to be bucket fillers, not bucket dippers. I have seen some super cool classrooms that have actual buckets for each child. In our class (keeping things a little more simplified), we have a single bucket - the compliment jar (see my earlier post from last year). Students can write thank you notes to others for filling their bucket, or they can fill someone else's bucket by writing compliments. Then, at our class meeting or during sponge times, I will read a few of the slips aloud and then give it to the corresponding student to keep. We always talk about who maybe needs their bucket filled at our class meetings, and that way no one is left out. My students love filling our compliment jar, and really enjoy giving and receiving their slips. They are allowed to write during writer's workshop or during the writing portion of Daily 5. The bucket filler concept is one that I feel students can really understand and visualize. Here are some free slips for you to use in your classroom if you like! :-) Just click the link HERE or click on the picture below to download.

Pin It

Pick-a-Partner Cards for Random Student Pairing

I created some cards as a resource for letting student pick partners in class. These cards can be used much the same way as you would use cards in the Kagan cooperative learning structure, Mix-n-Match. There are 50 cards. Just laminate and cut apart. You can store them on a ring or keep them rubber banded in a safe spot for easy access. I am having a sale on these cards on TpT - you can get them for $1 until Wednesday 7/25/12 at 11:59pm. See the last paragraph of this post for some other ideas on how you could use this same idea with general classroom objects you might already have in your classroom! If you'd like to see these cards, click HERE to go to my TpT store and purchase them. You can also click the preview picture(s) below.

You could just pass these cards out to the students and have them find their match. However, I have students use these like they would in the Kagan cooperative learning structure “Mix-and-Match”. This allows students to not only choose a partner randomly, but it also allows them to get up and move around (very important in the primary classroom)! To use, pass one card to each student (if there is an uneven number, place the extra card in the “unmatched area”). Have the students spread out in the room. Then, play some music or say a chant or something as a class. While the music is playing, have students walk around and trade cards (I always go over my expectations when it comes to this – students are to be constantly moving and constantly trading). When the music stops, students freeze. When you say, “Go!”, the students will try to find their match. When students find their match, you can either have them sit knee-to-knee, hand up/pair up, or stand back to back. They can then go do whatever it is you want them to do as a pair! If you have an odd number of students, and a player’s match is in the “unmatched area”, you can then just have him/her join a group or be your helper/checker.

I created these cards just to have something fun for the kiddos, but you certainly do not have to have set cards. In the past, I've used a regular deck of playing cards (partners have to find a number or symbol matching their number or symbol), colored puff ball (partners find their same color), pattern blocks, regular number cards (like we use in math), unifix cubes, or even sight word cards (you just need a double set and students match the sight word). You could also use rhyming word cards, vowel cards, addition/subtraction flash cards (same sums or differences), etc... This activity can be fun, educational, or both, and it allows students to interact in a positive manner that makes finding a partner an easy thing.  I hope your kiddos have as much fun with this as mine do! :-)

Pin It

The Yellow Pages - Activity for the Beginning of the School Year to Identify Student Experts in the Primary Classroom

Have you ever heard the phrase, "Ask 3 Before Me"? Well, I for one teach little kids... Even though I loop with my students, it's always a shocker to go from end of the year 2nd graders down to beginning of the year 1st graders. I always think to myself, "They're such babies!!!" The 1 thing that really gets me, EVERY YEAR, is the shoe tying.... Boy howdy, that just really wears me down. So, I finally came up with a system for identifying students who are GREAT at shoe tying to relieve me of my duties. :-)

Here is a great way to organize and implement that philosophy. This document is called, "The Yellow Pages", and it is a free printable to help you organize the various student experts in your classroom (including Shoe Tying, Super Spellers, Roaring Readers, Math Minds, Good Listeners, Artists and Craftsmen, and Caring Friends).


After having a short class meeting or minilesson on how (and when) to ask other students for help, you would display these pages (first print the pages on yellow card stock and laminate) up front for the students to see. Start by discussing what a phone book is and how to use it. Show students pictures of phone books on the screen, or bring real phone books for students to see.


Talk about how each student in the class is an "expert" helper, and discuss what that word "expert" means. Talk about how every child is different, and that not all students will be an expert in the same area. Also discuss that even though you may think you are an expert in lots of areas, you could choose 1 or 2 areas to really excel.


Then, come up with a system for having students sign up on 1 or 2 expert pages. Read through the different expert areas first, and then discuss what each expert does. Have students decide where they would excel. You could even have them think-pair-share before deciding. You could also use your professional judgement as far as guiding students on what they might be experts in..... ;-) I have my students take an overhead or dry-erase marker and just come up a few at a time to sign their names. When they're done, they sit right back down. When everyone has signed up on the sheets, go over them together as a class so students can see who they can go to in each event.


This is not only a great activity to do for having students ask each other for help, but this activity lends itself so well to teambuilding at the beginning of the year. Students will get to know each other in a positive way, and it's really cute to see them encouraging each other, cheering for each other, and eventually, throughout the year, going to each other for help after "looking each other up" in the "phonebook." You could easily incorporate and introduce fun cheers after going over each expert area. In addition, this is a great activity for students to practice recognizing and reading each others' names.


After students have signed up, bind the pages together (you can put them together however you like, but if you are older, you could put them in abc order like the phonebook), and then post The Yellow Pages book somewhere in the room that is accessible to the students (hanging on a hook, posted on the white board, or perhaps bound and placed in the class library in the student-made book section). Have the students then refer to it whenever they need help with something in the classroom! Enjoy, and please let me know if you have any questions! Sorry I don't have any pictures of the students signing up, but here are some pictures below of the document (I don't know what happened to the Super Speller page, but when you download the document it looks fine). To download free from my TPT store, click HERE, or click on any of the pictures below.

Pin It

Anger Choice Cards for the Classroom

Wow, so apparently April and May are difficult months for bloggers. Being still fairly new to blogging, I guess I just had no idea how hectic it would be to try to stay up on blogging!! :-) I suppose after 7 years of teaching, I probably could have figured that out as the end of the year is always crazy, but I guess I just figured I'd be just fine, ha!

Anyway, a few posts ago I talked about how I had some students who struggled with expressing their anger and emotions appropriately. I finally made some anger choice cards, and I hope you can use them as well in your classroom. This is something I've needed all year, and I'm just so happy to finally have them. Hopefully they help over the next 3 and a half weeks of school!

These cards were created for use in the classroom for students to use when they are angry, frustrated, irritated, or upset. We teach students that it is ok to feel these emotions, but that they need to express them "appropriately." A lot of students don't have the social backgrounds or cultural understanding of what "expressing emotions appropriately" might look like. Hopefully these cards can provide your students an idea of some options that will help them calm down in a manner that will not disturb or affect others. I tried to include choices that would be easy to accommodate in a classroom and that would take light prep work. :-) Use these in conjunction with a mini-lesson on anger management. You can either cut apart these cards to put on a ring, or you can just laminate the whole sheet to make a choice board. Please let me know if you have any questions! As far as the quiet spot and cool down box options, I have a little rug that students can take to a quiet spot in order to calm down. I make sure they know that they are not in trouble (this is separate from a "safe seat"). My school counselor put together a little cool down box for my teaching partner and me, and it includes a squishy ball, a glitter jar, beads to string, buttons to sort, and a container of clay type stuff with marbles hidden inside that the kiddos have to find. Some other ideas for a cool down box might be: a puzzle to make, a braided string set to pull/untangle, a rubbing stone to rub, a stretchy toy to pull. Anyway, I think all of the other cards or pretty self-explanatory, but as I said, do let me know if you have any questions! Just click the picture below to download, or you can go to my TPT Store HERE to get it free!



Pin It

Busy Busy Teacher's Life :-)

Not that I'm assuming anyone out there in the blogging world is waiting with bated breath for my next post haha, but I did realize today that I haven't blogged since last Thursday, and I just wanted to assure everyone that I haven't forgotten about you all, but this week is just flying by somehow!! :-) Anyway, here is a confession. I have a couple of students with some serious behavioral and emotional issues, and some of the fits that they throw (never at the same time - it's like they tag team them) are very "trying." As in I "try" to stay calm and zen-like, and while I do succeed (98% of the time), I have been searching like a madlady for ideas to use to help them. One of the things I try to emphasize is that it is ok to be frustrated/mad/upset/etc..., but how you deal with that and express it is important. One of the kids gets upset over anything and everything, and it's like trying to play Minesweeper as far as guessing what will set him off. Anyway, while my school and district have provided support, I am still needing something more. Pinterest has been an awesome source of calm down ideas like the glitter jar and other sensory activities, but I need some just plain old strategies. That is where you all come in. I am going to try to make some "choice cards" for what to do/strategies for when he gets mad. For instance, "When I am mad, I can count to 10." So what do you all think? What are some good/appropriate strategies/choices for kiddos to choose when they are upset or angry? I will be happy to share the choice cards when I'm completed, but I'm just trying to get some ideas right now!!! :-)

Pin It