April 2018 – It's all good, really!

i’m just a level 2

With all the testing pressure we teachers have all felt, our students, themselves, feel that pressure even more, and too often their self-worth becomes tied to their test results…”I’m a Level 2″; “I’m not a Level 5”; and so on. It REALLY bothered me when I heard my students talk like that! I couldn’t seem to change their minds, so I started looking for a way to share with my students inspiring words from other people and then have my students apply those encouraging words to their own life.

inspiration

I decided to create a collection of inspiring quotes from many different people. I also decided my students needed to know a little about the person, especially if the person was not familiar to students. So each person’s page has their quote and a short bio about the person. I also decided that my students needed to do more than just look at the quote and read the biography.

Here’s one of my students responding to Henry Ford’s quote!

This became our Wednesday morning meeting! Here’s what I did…first I had my students copy the quote into their writing journals. Then my students read the biography. Each page also had questions for my students to record their answers to go along with the person’s quote. I didn’t leave it right there. Once, everyone had finished writing their answers, the class then discussed both the quote and their answers to the questions on the page.

It really amazed me how so many of my students took the quotes to heart…it was what I had hoped for! It’s Growth Mindset . Check it out!

Two for the Price of One!

With Earth Day right around the corner, those pesky end of the year tests are also beginning to show on the horizon, too. As a public school teacher, I was ALWAYS looking for thematic activities that would also help my students sharpen their tested skills. Sort of a twofer! I think my Earth Day Activities will do both for you!

earth day 1970

Earth Day itself began in 1970 and was the brainchild of U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson. He was very concerned that the Earth’s environment did not seem to be an important political issue and his first Earth Day drew millions of people to his cause. Later that year President Nixon and Congress created the Environmental Protection Agency as a result along with legislation concerning both water and Endangered Species Act.

Earth day today!

In the 48 years since that first Earth Day, there has been a lot more awareness of our need to recycle, reuse, and reduce. I decided to combine facts about cleaning our environment with my students need to practice their math skills. As a result, I created 24 word problems that will help my students learn how recycling can help improve our environment AND work on their problem solving skills at the same time! I love being able to combine two school subjects; in this case, science and math within a single lesson!!

I also added a fun activity using Earth Day vocabulary. My kids love, love word searches and so my Earth Day Activities also include a word search AND a writing activity! I also included answer keys for both the 24 math problems and the word search. Take a look and let me make your Earth Day lesson a snap!