Category: Helping students

Are you ready to start a new adventure this school year ?

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Are you looking for a new kind of behavior plan that doesn’t sound like a plan? It didn’t start out to be a behavior plan, but a way to welcome back my new students after our school resumed face-to-face teaching with everyone wearing masks.

The word “ADVENTURE” become a part of my classroom that year. It began as a part of helping my students cope with the craziness of COVID-19 as my school made the decision to bring students back to the classroom. I wanted my students to see being back in school as an opportunity to do wonderful things, in other words, an adventure for the year. Let me tell you about it!

I explained to my students that they would be earning the letters that spelled ADVENTURE by their actions at school. Once a letter was earned, it could not be taken away. Letters could NOT be earned by only one or two students; it had to be a group effort. If students asked for a letter reward, the answer would be, “No.” I wanted their actions to happen naturally, not driven by rewards.

So what kinds of actions were students rewarded for? The first time our Science teacher shared with me, in front of the class, how the class had worked so diligently, using their time wisely, the letter A was earned. I watched as my class welcomed a new student and made her feel a part of the class, another letter was earned. I was late to class, coming from a meeting, and everyone was seated at their desk working on the math warm-up, a letter was earned.

So what happens when the class spells “ADVENTURE”? The reward was decided by the class. We had extra recess, no shoes in class for the day, a movie watched over the course of a week were just of the few the rewards that my students chose. I do reserve the right to veto an idea and the students know that right from the front.

It worked so well that year that I have continued to use “ADVENTURE” ever since! If you are struggling with what kind of behavior plan to use this year, why not give it a shot!! Let me know if it works for you!

Have a great year!

Sue Mescall

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Here’s My Secret to Building Student Relationships!!

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As teachers, we are encouraged to build relationships with our students. Great idea, but how do you do that on a daily basis? How do you make sure you connect to all your students? Good questions AND I may have the answer for you!!

A few years ago, my schedule had an open 30 minute block between two specials. What to do? Not really enough time to start a new activity and I make sure students have plenty of time to work and practice during scheduled lessons.

Most of my students have busy schedules when they leave school each day; sports, piano lessons, dance lessons, to name only a few. There is rarely time for them to read outside of school. I decided to use the 30 minutes for independent reading!!

As the students began their first day of independent reading, I was left sitting at my desk. That’s when I hit on the ideas to meet with 4 or 5 students daily, one-on-one! I called my first student and with their chair they came to my desk. I simply asked, “What’s going on and it doesn’t have to be about school?” To my surprise and delight, my student began to tell me about the soccer tournament he was going to be playing in on Saturday! My next students told me about her hip-hop dance class and it just went from there!

Such information made it easy for me to talk to my students about “stuff” that had nothing to do with school. That was my one rule for talking to my students; no school talk. These conversations take place each day with different students and the conversations don’t take more than about 4-5 minutes, so I am able to talk to 5 or 6 students each day.

I have done this for the past two years and it has had a really positive affect with the each class. Some of my students were a bit shy at first, but soon were telling me about such things as their passion for dinosaurs, their remote control cars, their judo class. I also have had students send me picture of their successes: earning a black belt, riding their dirt bike for the first time, and even a dance rehearsal video. The students love sharing their experiences with the class too!

If you can find find a block of time each day, give each student 4-5 minutes of your complete attention and you’ll be surprised at how students will WANT to talk to you.

Let me know how you build relationships with your students! I love hearing from other teachers!!

Sue

Are You Looking for Engaging U.S. History Activities?

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Does the idea of trying to find time to teach Social Studies give you a pain as you are trying to plan your school schedule?  With all the emphasis on the testing of math, science, and reading in my state, it was really hard to find activities that would help my students learn about our country’s history AND engage my students attention. Since social studies and history are not  state tested subjects in elementary school in my state, too often I had to leave the subject as an afterthought…a subject to visit AFTER end of grade testing was finished.

Let me help you make U.S. History a part of your reading lessons with a great book AND a variety of engaging activities for both reading and social studies lessons.  I found Blood on the River  by Elise Carbone!  A great novel about the founding of James Town as seen through the eyes of a young boy who is servant to Captain John Smith.  My students love this book and I am able to slip social studies lessons into my reading lessons!  WALLAH!

Blood on the River  allowed me to introduce vocabulary of the times, explore primary sources, compare characters and discussion questions along with meeting historical figures such as John Smith and Pocahontas.  All this and more is included in my TpT store product  Blood on the River Activities  Just clink on the link to check out my Blood on the River products!

If you aren’t able to choose your reading materials, don’t despair!  I have a bundle of activities that you can use to add hands-on, rigorous, yet engaging activities to go along with your studies of America from the early explorers to the American Revolution.  You can find this fabulous bundle in my TpT store American Social Studies Activities

Check out some really fun activities…my students really like the United States Branches activities. Make history come alive with the I Have, Who Has of the American Revolution!

I hope these activities will help your students develop an interest in the history of our country!!

Fraction Lessons Have You Tearing Out Your Hair?

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Trying to make teaching fraction more interesting?   Tearing out your hair? It was that frustration that had me looking for a way to give my students information they could understand and more opportunities to practice those skills.   The math book just didn’t seem to meet the needs of my students.  I was reminded by my mentor that textbooks should be a supplemental tool and not the curriculum.

Let me help you by showing you what I did to make multiplying and dividing fractions less frustrating!

I decided to take the textbook information and put  it into kid-friendly words.  

I had the kids glue the notes into their journals so the information would be at their fingertips!

And because the dreaded “End of Grade” test looms all year…I decided to create word problems to go along with the note students put into their journals.  That would give my students more practice than what was in our math textbook.

I also used the word problems as a review game.  I put one word problem on each student’s desk, in no particular order.  Students stand behind their chairs and the game begins as each student solves the problem on their desk.  As they finish, students put their hands on their shoulders.  When everyone has solved the problem on their desk, students move to the next desk.  When all the students have moved around the room and are back at their own desk, we go over the answers and students share how they solved the problems.

The word problems can be used in a lot of different ways in your classroom, beyond just a review game!  The word problems can be used as bell ringers to get students thinking.  You could put the word problems in your math center for independent work.

If you want to check out my word problems, just click on my picture.

How To Begin The Year Positive

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Every teacher enters the classroom on the first day of school with high hopes and expectations.  I sure do!  Well, this year, instead of hoping the year stays positive, I decided take direct  steps to keep my students on the positive path and off the side  paths of negativity.  So what am I doing?  I’m so glad you asked!!!

*THE WRINKLED HEART activity :  A few years ago I saw this on  Pinterest and  “grabbed” this activity with both hands!!!  I wish I could find the person who first posted this idea because I’d hug them!!  This activity is a winner!

Give each student a sheet of red construction paper.  Have your students fold their paper and then cut out a heart.  Size doesn’t matter.  After their heart is cut out, ask your students to wad up their heart and WHISPER insults to the heart….just a short time!  Don’t want the students to get carried away.  After a minute or two of whispers, I ask the students to smooth out their heart and tell it , “I was just playing” or “I was just kidding”.   Have them continue to smooth out their heart.  Then ask the students if the marks on the heart disappeared after telling the heart they were “just kidding” or “just playing”.    Of course the marks are still there.  I remind the students that their hearts are just like the hearts they insulted.  While the words may be gone, the heart still shows the scars…just like our hearts can be scarred by careless or negative words.    It really got to my students…as I had hoped.  Words have power to scar and we resolved to make sure our words didn’t leave scars on anyone’s heart this year.

 

Let me know how you build community in your own classroom.

Thanks!

Growing Thinkers One Inspiring Quote At A Time

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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!

 

 

 

 

 

How I Improved My Grammar Lessons By Not Teaching!

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when students talk, i listen

A few weeks ago, in the midst of coming in from recess, I was given the word by several students that my English lessons were boring  less engaging than some of my other subject lessons.  Now I could have gotten angry, or bent out of shape, or any other teacher emotion that comes to mind when told a lesson was not all that it could be.  Truth be told, my lessons had gotten stale…that after holidays, after January, waiting for Presidents’ Day time of year.  I won’t lie, grammar often got the short end of the stick in the day as I tried to fit everything in, as I am a self-contained fifth grade teacher!

Students step up!

While I’ve been teaching for more than 20 years, I’m pretty open to new ideas to improve the learning in my classroom.  Trust me, I’ve known a few  “done it this way for years so why change?.” teachers.  That’s not me, so I tuned in with all ears as I entered the conversation.  “How could I fix the lessons?, ” was what I asked.  Imagine my surprise when one of my best students asked if she could teach the next lesson!  We were both surprised when the words, “Sure, let’s do this!,” came out of my mouth.  Next thing I knew, several more students volunteered to teach lessons.

How do I do this, Teacher?

I sat down with my first volunteer and together we chose the lesson…Object Pronouns!  We chose a date…three days in the future and I gave her my teacher edition.  “I’ve got this, Mrs. Mescall” was what I heard until the day of the lesson.

D-Day or should I say T-Day (teach)!  My student did an amazing job…she taught us with a fun game using large dice.  The students rolled the two dice of different colors.  Each number on one of the dice corresponded to a specific object pronoun.  The second dice numbers corresponded to a specific subject pronoun.  Students then took those two pronouns and created a sentence with both pronouns used correctly.  The students loved the game and my teacher student then walked around checking sentences and having the class read their sentences!    SCORE!!  It was a good lesson and I will totally be stealing her game for another time!!!

Lining Up!

Our second student-led  lesson was about possessive pronouns.  I again shared my teacher edition and  that Brainpop had a good videos and activities.  My second student-led class was also a success! My second student’s lesson was more digital and the class really enjoyed it.   We did so well as a class that we were rewarded with “thin mints” as we were “smart cookies”!

Have I totally given up teaching grammar and English…not really.  I do still teach them both, but I have continued to offer the opportunity to teach the class.  Several more students are eager to teach and I will certainly be letting them try out their teaching skills!

Thanks,

 

 

I do have some games and activities you might want to try to add some fun and spice to your English lessons!  Check out the links below!

A fun game with verb tenses!

Here are activities to help master there, their, and they’re!

Here are 3 levels of antonyms to meet the needs of all!

Do You Really Know George & Abraham?

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Fact or Fib?

George Washington never told a lie.  Abraham Lincoln walked ten miles to return a nickel.  Theses are some of the “facts” I was taught about these two most beloved and celebrated presidents.  What’s the truth?
                                                      

I went on a hunt for facts about both of these presidents, each of whom have wonderful, but not necessarily true stories about their lives.

sharing is caring!

As I accumulated the facts about George and Abraham, I began to think about how to share these facts with my students.  It was an easy decision to make a game of it all.  Part of why I create products is to make learning fun for my students while also making life easier for my teacher friends. Here was a perfect opportunity to share what I had learned with both my students AND friends!

Celebrate With George and Abraham

I created a “FACT” or “FIB” sort to have students read statements about each of the presidents,  and after discussion, decide whether it’s a fact or a fib.  I have included the answers for teachers.  I also thought it would be fun for students to then take their newly acquired facts and create an acrostic about either president or both!  I’ve included a short assessment or pre/post worksheet and also a Venn diagram to compare the two presidents.

 

Celebrate Presidents’ Day with George and Abraham!

 

What are some and engaging ways you celebrate Presidents’ Day?  Let me know!

Thanks!

 

 

How I Make Fractions and Valentines Fun !

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The most dreaded fifth grade math skill…fractions!!!

After 27 years in teaching and 22years of teaching fifth graders, both departmental and self-contained, the most dreaded standard faced by teachers and fifth grade2rs alike is the dreaded FRACTIONS unit!

Fractions seem to be the “boogie man” of math and so I was looking for a way to combine the practicing of fraction skills  and the upcoming Valentine’s Day with a fun activity.  While we do have a small party and exchanging of Valentine’s cards, there is still an expectation of staying the course with lessons!

Awkward age…Fifth Grade

Fifth graders are looking forward to middle school at this time of year…more freedom, less teacher monitoring.  At the same time, they still enjoy Valentine’s parties and the exchanging of cards.  I wanted to make an activity that my kids didn’t see as “baby-ish” and would also challenge their math skills…always an area that needs practice!

The best of both Fractions and Valentine’s day!

The result was “Fraction Operations Valentines Mystery!”  My students love to break codes and solve puzzles, so  combining that with fractions, which we are studying and reviewing, seemed a natural.

Cupid has had his bow stolen by one of his holiday symbol friends and in order to identify the thief, students have to solve 4 different coded messages by solving fractions problems using all four operations.  

I have also included a “How To Use” for teachers!  Let me help you with your lesson planning!

Last, but certainly not least, each fraction worksheet has an answer sheet to help teachers help their students solve the mystery!

You can find this newest of my store products in my store by simply clicking on any of the pictures in my blog!

What do you think?  How do you make fractions fun for your students?  Let me know…I’d love to hear from you!

Thanks,

Sue

A Teacher Gift Your Students Will Treasure All Year!

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In years past, I have struggled with what to give my students for gifts.  I usually defaulted to candy and pencils.  Such gifts didn’t break the bank of a first year teacher, but it wasn’t really what my students wanted. However, they took the bags with a smile. Flash forward to my first year at a new school and my usual teacher gift of candy and pencils just weren’t going to do the trick as many of my students weren’t all that crazy about sweets or needed extra pencils. What to do, what to do? Continue reading →