Question of the Day - Great Way to Promote Writing and Get to Know Your Students Better

Question of the Day is something both my students and I love doing in our class. Each day I post a question on my board. 

This is an "optional" question that students can answer if they want to. Sometimes the questions are silly, sometimes they're serious, sometimes they are about school, sometimes they are about home. I mix it up to keep it engaging and fun. Students are allowed to write their answers on sticky notes and then post their answers up on the board. I ask students to write their answers during any free time, Daily 5, or writing time. It is super fun to read their responses throughout the day. At the end of the day, we take 5 minutes right before we leave to read through all the answers. This gives the kiddos a chance to listen to their peers' responses and get to know each other better. I also learn a LOT about my students from doing this. Because this is an optional activity, I sweeten the pot a little bit by offering a fake penny to each student who writes an answer (we use a coin system to buy non-tangible rewards in my class). Then, I place all the answers in a cup or bucket and have my helper of the day draw 1 name out. That person gets a fake nickel as a "reward." This also gives me a chance to embed good sportsmanship opportunities. :-) 

I've discovered that this is a really great way to build classroom community and climate. I learn a lot about my students, and I will often write my own answers too, and the students love learning about me. I invite visitors coming through to write responses also - the students get a kick out of that (i.e. other teachers, the principal, etc...)! This is one quick and easy way to integrate writing, speaking, and listening easily and quickly into the classroom, and it helps me to build relationships and positive classroom while only taking about 5 minutes of class time. 

The possibilities for how to use these questions are really quite endless. While I do mine on the board, you could make a bulletin board, you could have students write responses in notebooks or on iPads, you could have students share with partners by doing Mix n' Match or another cooperative learning strategy, you could use these as journal prompts, etc... 

Thinking of the questions is always the hardest part about these. For a no-prep option, please see my TPT store to download a whole set of questions (220 questions to choose from) already typed and prepped. All you have to do is print and cut in half! I've also included two different versions of the QOTD (question of the day) pennant banners I created to go with the questions. I will be throwing a sale on this item for 20% off now through Friday! Click HERE or click the picture below:

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Find Someone Who - Back to School Edition

Wow, the summer blew by. What a busy summer it's been! I had all these grandiose plans for working on some TpT units, and alas, it just didn't happen. Oh well! I'm now starting to think about school again, *gasp*! Anyway, I'm hoping to get some school stuff done for the beginning of the year, and I will hopefully be posting more regularly again soon!

Awhile back I posted a Find Someone Who activity for the end of the year, just before summer break. Today I created one for the beginning of the year! Anyone who knows me knows I love using this cooperative learning structure, as you can use it for just about everything, and it keeps students accountable and gets them talking and interacting with each other (very important for any class, but especially when I have such a high ELL population). 

For this activity, simply download and print a copy for every student in the class. This is a great (and simple) back to school activity for team building and breaking the ice for the students. Students will walk around the room, meet their fellow classmates, and talk to them to find out if they fit any of the categories or boxes. Then, if a student finds another student who fits, he/she will have the other student sign his/her name or initials in the box. The goal is to fill the sheet with names. When done, the teacher can go over them all together. this could then lead into a graphing activity or further discussion. Enjoy this free download by clicking HERE or clicking the picture below. Have a great start to your school year! :-) 

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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.


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Class Agreement

First of all, Happy New School Year! The kids have officially started, and we are already just about in full swing. I'm in 2nd grade this year (love teaching 2nd grade), because I looped with my class. We've been 1st/2nd grade loopers for 6 years now at my school, and I've really enjoyed it. There are so many positives about looping, especially that you already know most (if not all) of your kiddos and parents. The beginning of the second year is so smooth, and it's nice to be able to jump right into things. However, this may be my last year of looping for a while. We may take a temporary leave so that we can focus our attention and energy on Common Core and MTSS (RTI in other states). That way, we can become really knowledgable and comfortable with the new curriculum. :-) I'm very excited about all of the changes and I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to become familiar with Common Core in both 1st and 2nd grade, and I'm ready to now delve deeper into it!

I always make a Class Agreement with my students (consistent with Positive Classroom). We usually talk about and brainstorm the agreement together, and then I write it on chart paper to make our own little Anchor Chart and have the students sign it. However, thanks to Pinterest, one of my coworkers found this SUPER cute idea, to have the kids brainstorm things we will do as a class this year and then mount it and hang it from ribbon. So while it was the same concept of having the students come up with the agreement, we typed it up instead, and we are displaying our class agreements on all of our doors (all 2nd grades at my school). Here is the finished product for our class:

I think it turned out pretty cute, and the kids love it. We can now refer to it throughout the day, and other people entering our room (we keep our door open a lot) can also see what we're "all about." :-)



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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! :-)

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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.

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