Every teacher wants to keep kids engaged and help to build a growth mindset in their students. Today’s post is all about ways to do that. Here are 7 of my favorites plus a few more I want to try this year

7 FAVORITE ACTIVITIES

1 – Morning meeting or morning rituals are a great way to start the day off on a positive note.

One of my favorites is to use Wonderopolis one or two days a week. While each Wonder has an entire lesson plan built around it, you can do as much or as little as you choose, based on the time you have available. This is a great way to engage kids with science and informational text.

For more about starting morning meetings (or class circles), see my post HERE.

2 – You may have heard about Kagan cooperative learning strategies. These strategies have been around for a long time and are proven to work.

Some benefits of cooperative learning strategies:

~kids develop better social skills and a spirit of cooperation
~improved self-esteem in students at all levels of achievement
~improved engagement with learning
~improved classroom community
~fewer discipline problems
~better empathy for others

THIS book is the “Bible” for all of the strategies. But if you are looking for just a few of the best strategies to try, here is “The Essential 5: A Starting Point for Kagan Cooperative Learning.”

3 – I created a list of 20 strategies for active learning. I keep it in my plan book so that I can remember to incorporate them whenever possible. Click below to download my list!

20 Strategies for Active Learning

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4 – Growth mindset is such an empowering concept for our kids. For one thing, learning about how the brain grows and changes is fascinating. Changing our “self-talk” from “I’m just no good at this” to “I’ll try something else and I WILL learn how to do this” is a game-changer for many students (and teachers!).

There are lots of great resources out there for growth mindset, but one of my favorites is Angela Watson’s resource on Teachers Pay Teachers HERE. It has detailed lesson plans, great videos to watch with your class, and a student booklet for writing and reflection. I use this resource at the beginning of the year. Then we refer back to what we learned throughout the year.

I have used some of the growth mindset TED Talk videos from THIS SITE and plan to check out the rest of them this year!

5 – Growth mindset is empowering for students and teachers. So is goal setting. You can have students set goals for themselves in any academic area, set goals for improving work habits, and set goals for social skills. You might try brainstorming some lists of goals in different areas so your students get some ideas.

As you brainstorm goals lists, think about trying to make the goals small enough to be achievable in a short time frame.

For instance, if a student suggests “get better at reading” for a reading goal, what could they do this week to get better at reading? Read for 20 minutes at school and 20 minutes at home? Make a list of books they want to read when they finish this one? Stop and figure out words instead of just skipping over them? Reread when something is confusing?

Once goals are set, it’s important to take a few minutes to review progress. Some teachers do this daily at the end of the day as part of their routine. I try to do it on Friday afternoons, but I have also found Monday mornings to be a good time. Figure out a time that works best for you and your class.

6 – Use music for transitions! This is something I have done sporadically, but really want to do more of it this year.

I’ve seen some teachers use specific songs for certain transitions (coming to the meeting area in the morning, transitioning from one subject to another, cleaning up at the end of the day, etc.). This way, when students hear the song, they know what they are supposed to be doing.

Other teachers use songs of a certain length and students are supposed to be “finished” with the transition by the end of the song.

I love using these playlists from Josie Bensko of Maniacs in the Middle!

7 – Use Twitter & Instagram with your classes. We have a fifth grade Twitter account, which is public, and a fifth grade Instagram account, which is private. We notify families about both accounts and encourage them to follow us. It takes a moment to “approve” the followers on Instagram, but it reassures families that their children’s photos are not just out there for everyone to see.

I especially like using student quotes about classroom learning on Twitter. We post their quote using student first names only. So if we are tweeting about how some math concept is helpful, or what we think about a character in a class read-aloud, I’ll ask students to think about what they might want to say. Then I will often draw a name or use a student checklist and choose someone to give us their thoughts for a tweet. Sometimes we combine two students’ thoughts into one tweet and use both names. Kids love seeing their ideas being shared with the “world” and families love seeing what the kids have to say.

With Instagram, we take pictures on field trips and at big school events, but families also love seeing pictures of kids during independent reading or participating in a science experiment or working on math problems.

Another good “side effect” of this practice is that you are modeling positive social media use with your students. You get some opportunities to sneak in a few more reminders about digital citizenship in the process of using social media in a fun way.

6 ACTIVITIES I AM GOING TO TRY THIS YEAR!

1 – I love the Curriculum Corner website and use it all the time. I recently found August daily welcome messages on their site and want to try that out this year.

Basically, it’s a welcome message to be posted on the board when students enter your classroom in the morning. (You may be familiar with morning message for lower elementary grades – this is similar.)

It starts with a quote of the day, which you could then discuss during class circle or morning meeting. Then there is a direction for “greeting a friend” (with a talk topic) and “get moving” with a stretch and quick exercise. You could brainstorm and make a chart of stretches and exercises that would be most appropriate for your class.

Source: The Curriculum Corner

The next part is an editable language arts warmup and editable math warmup.

They have a set for August posted already and they will post new sets each month.

Here is the set for grades 4-6.

Here is the set for grades 1-3.

And here is the set for Kindergarten.

2 – If you are not a part of Facebook teacher groups, you’re missing out! I participate in several groups and get such great ideas from amazing teachers. I keep hearing about using podcasts with students and I want to try that out this year.

The 6 Minute Podcast sounds interesting. I am planning to use this at the end of the day as “incentive” to get cleaned up and packed up quickly.

I would love to hear how you use podcasts and which ones you like!

3 – I have also heard good things about using CNN 10 to discuss current events.

If you use this, please tell me how you use it. I’m looking for ideas for the best ways to incorporate it in our busy day!

4 – Another great website for all kinds of life advice is Lifehack. I noticed this post about the 17 best TED talks for kids!

The criteria for making this list included the following:
~they’re short enough to keep kids engaged (shorter than 15 minutes – some are only three minutes);
~they include life lessons that are important for kids today;
~they’re kid-friendly;
~they’re interesting.

I’m going to have one of these ready to go each week and fit it in whenever we have a few minutes.

5 – I am a big fan of Brene Brown and her work. If you are not familiar with her books, check them out HERE.

I recently heard about her resource for teachers called “Daring Classrooms” in a Facebook teacher group.

I haven’t explored all the resources yet, but I want to try some this year. The first thing I plan to do is download some of the posters HERE and get them made for my classroom.

Here’s an example from the site:

Do you use this or have ideas for it? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

6 – Larry Ferlazzo is a very helpful teacher blogger. You can read his work HERE. He also posts “Classroom Q & A with Larry Ferlazzo” on Education Week.

I came across an old post of his HERE in which he talks about engaging all students in a lesson. He shares some tips from his vice principal:

In order to elicit whole-class engagement, we need to ensure that we are implementing a series of factors that elevate our students’ focus and level of concern. We’ll refer to this series as “TAPN”. After all, our goal is to get all of our students to “tap in” to the lesson. “TAPN” refers to the words time, amount, public, and novelty.

Time: tell students how much time they have to complete a task. (This can be tricky because you want to give them a “do-able” amount of work in a fairly short amount of time. You’ll have to play around with this.) Students should feel a sense of urgency. (In other words: they don’t have all day to get it done!)

Amount: tell students how much they need to complete. For example: read one paragraph, solve two problems, write one sentence, etc.

Public: students need to know that they will be asked to share their work with peers somehow (as partners, with a small group, in front of the class, etc.)

Novelty: change up the ways that students respond. This keeps the energy up in your classroom.

He explains:

The first time you ask them to turn to a partner and share, you’ll feel a fresh energy in the room. The sixth, seventh and eighth time in a row that you ask them to do so, however, you’ll likely hear a growing sigh. You can mix it up by having them write their answer down and be prepared to share it with the group, write it on a mini white board and be ready to hold it up or just think to themselves for a few moments before they share out. Small changes of routine increase the motivation to attend to the task at hand.

When I find new ideas to try, it gives me energy and gets me excited about the upcoming year. I hope these ideas have done the same for you!

What are you going to try this year?

Take a look at my Back to School Planning Guide here!

In my last post, I shared ten of my favorite back-to-school activities. In this post, I’ll share ten more. You might also want to check out THIS post about building classroom community.

I know that seeing lists of tons of ideas can be overwhelming. Just pick and choose what sounds like a good fit for you and your class this year and ignore the rest!

ACTIVITIES FOR THE FIRST TWO DAYS OF SCHOOL:

1 – First (or second) day jitters activity – you might use the picture book First Day Jitters to introduce this activity. Give your students an index card or a small piece of paper. Then have your students write down something that makes them nervous about starting school, but do NOT put their name on it. Collect the papers. As time allows, pull out one “jitter” at a time and read it to the class. Talk about how to overcome that particular jitter. This activity is great for kids seeing how similar their worries tend to be!

2 – Decorate some kind of door decoration with student names. For example, our school mascot is a gecko, so we decorate cut-outs of geckos to put on the door. This is such a simple activity but getting student names and student work (even simple artwork) displayed makes the room more personal for them.

3 – If you had last year’s students write letters of advice and encouragement for this year’s class, it’s fun to read those at the very beginning of the year!

4 – Create a time capsule! I saw this idea from Bianca on B Like Bianca and I’m going to do it this year. First Bianca explains a “time capsule” to her middle school students. Then she has her students use index cards to write about the following prompts:

~What is one academic area you would like to improve in?
~What is something new that you would like to do socially this year?
~What makes you unique?

She suggests that you use whatever prompts work best for you. Her prompts relate to academic, personal, and mindset goals. She also gives some examples to get kids thinking.

After collecting students’ index cards, she puts them in an envelope. Students have one week to revise their cards if they want to do that. Then the time capsule goes “live”. Label the envelope “Do Not Open Until (Date of Last Day of School)”. She then posts the envelope on a board at the front of the room.

Source: B Like Bianca

Another point Bianca makes is that this is a good activity to repeat at certain points during the school year, such as at the beginning of a new quarter or semester, or after a break.

Students really do enjoy rereading these at the end of the year!

ACTIVITIES FOR THE FIRST TWO WEEKS OF SCHOOL:

5 – Begin classroom community circles. See my post HERE about how I implement circles. These have been game-changing in my classroom. My post gives you a step-by-step guide to getting started.

6 – Use a slides presentation to tell students more about yourself! I call mine “The Care and Feeding of Mrs. Smith”. Tell your students more about you, what you love, what you hate, what you expect from them. Create a Google slides presentation of facts about you. To keep this activity (or any activity) from becoming too long and boring, just share a few facts each day.

Here is a great resource from Teachers Pay Teachers.

7 – Something I have done for the past two years with great success is to talk with students about all the things I do on their behalf (“my job”) and all the things they need to do for themselves (“your job”). This makes for a great T-chart that can be displayed all year long and referred to whenever needed! I saw a great sample chart on The Hawk Nest blog:

Source: The Hawk Nest

8 – A great way to decorate your classroom is to have charts or posters with information from or about your students. This truly makes the classroom “ours” instead of “mine.” These “We Like . . .” posters make a great decoration to keep up all year.

~First, brainstorm a list of topics that kids in your class love (might be sports, books, some kind of activity, food).

~Go through the list and have kids raise hands for each topic they like. (They can “vote” as many times as they want.)

~Narrow your list down to the top five to seven topics that got the most votes. (I usually choose the number of topics by the number of tables of student groups in my classroom.)

~Give each table group a large piece of white paper (or chart paper) and a topic.

~As table groups, have them create a poster that says, “We like _____” in the center of the paper, then illustrate the poster.

~When all posters are complete, allow everyone in the class to walk from table to table (a gallery walk) and sign their names to the posters that match their interests. (They don’t have to sign every poster.)

~Display these in the classroom! The best part: they can be kept displayed all year.

9 – Begin whiteboard messages. This is where you post a prompt on a whiteboard and allow students to write their response on a sticky note and attach it to the board. Take a few minutes during the day to read some of these aloud.

Another option is to post these messages on a Padlet wall and allow students to post on the Padlet. See my Pinterest board HERE for some ideas to get started!

There are also lots of good resources for this on Teachers Pay Teachers.

10 – Assign homework that allows students to share more about themselves. A very popular activity is to give students a brown paper lunch bag with a list of topics or ideas for things they might share. The trick is that everything that they share must fit inside the brown bag. (They can’t fit their dog inside, for instance, but they could include a picture of their dog!).

Then have a few students share each day until everyone has had a chance. These are great for kids to see what they have in common with each other. As students share, I jot down notes for myself about each student. This allows me to look for ways to incorporate student interests in academic work throughout the year.

Here’s a ready-to-use version of this activity on Teachers Pay Teachers!

I hope these ideas have helped! In the next few days, I will post more ideas for starting academic subjects while still building classroom community.

Take a look at my Back to School Planning Guide here!

It’s back to school time and time to think about meaningful but fun back to school activities! In this post, I will share ten of my favorites. Watch for future posts because I’ve got lots more!

1 – TEACH CLASSROOM PROCEDURES

Veteran teachers know that procedures can be taught on the first day, but need to be reviewed and practiced every day for a few weeks. This intentional time to learn/practice procedures pays off throughout the year with more time for learning.

The problem is that you want kids to actively learn and practice these procedures, not just listen to you sound like Charlie Brown’s teacher while you explain them and review them.

Here is a great way to teach classroom procedures from Teacher Thrive:

~Write common questions that students might have about classroom procedures (for example: when can we go to the bathroom? Where do we turn in work?).

Try to have one for every student. Create questions that will touch on every procedure that you want to teach.

~Number each question, type them in a document, print, and cut them out. Give each student one question at the beginning of the day. (As you number the questions, start with the procedure questions that HAVE to be discussed early in the day or at least discussed on the first day.)

~At different points throughout the day, call on the numbers in order: “Who has number 1? Could you please read your question?” The student will read their question and then you discuss the procedure.

~Maybe do a few questions at a time (no more than five) so that it doesn’t become a marathon session and your students’ eyes glaze over with boredom.

Need a list of classroom procedures?

2 – USE A SCAVENGER HUNT FOR STUDENTS TO GET TO KNOW EACH OTHER
Scavenger hunts are a great way to get kids up and moving and talking to each other. There are a ton of great inexpensive resources for this on Teachers Pay Teachers HERE.

3 – TRY OTHER GET-ACQUAINTED GAMES
If scavenger hunts aren’t your thing OR if you want to do more get-acquainted activities on the second day of school, you could try some other fun games like the Cupcake Game or the M & M game (grades 5+ version HERE and one for all grades HERE.

4 – USE A SCAVENGER HUNT TO LEARN ABOUT THE CLASSROOM
Scavenger hunts are another great way for students to locate areas of your classroom and learn their way around. HERE is a good editable template on Teachers Pay Teachers.

5 – CREATE NORMS FOR BEHAVIOR
Spend time discussing your class norms (or rules) for behavior and make some sort of display.

At our school, our PBIS acronym is CLIMB (Caring, Learning, Intelligent Choices, Motivation, Be Respectful). We make the letters for the word CLIMB out of poster board and give one letter to each group of students. Their job is to write and draw on the letter to illustrate/explain what our class will look like/sound like when we are following these expectations. We hang the letters up above the board so they are visible, front and center!

We also narrow down one norm for each letter and write that on a piece of chart paper. Then everyone, including the teacher, signs the chart and we keep it on display all year.

6 – CREATE A VISION FOR YOUR CLASSROOM
I love this idea from Mrs. Robinson’s Classroom Blog.

Here’s how to do it:

~Post six pieces of chart paper around your classroom with the following titles:

1 – What should kids in our class do to make sure our class runs as smoothly as possible?
2 – What do you hope to learn this year in ____ grade?
3 – What do YOU need to do in order to be successful this year?
4 – What will ______ (your name) need to do to help you this year?
5 – Our classroom should be _______ every day.
6 – School is important because ________.

NOTE: you could certainly change these topics to something else. The point is to get your students thinking about how to help themselves and the entire classroom to do their very best this year.

~Put students in groups of three. Allow each group to spend two minutes at each chart, collaborating and then responding to each question on a sticky note. (When I do things like this, I set a timer and then direct students to rotate to the next chart when the timer goes off.)

Here’s a photo from her blog:

Source: Mrs. Robinson’s Classroom

~After each group has visited each chart, hang all of the charts and gather the class to take a look and discuss each chart. Talk about what you notice (trends, good ideas, etc.).

~You might just leave these charts posted for a few days, reviewing them periodically. Another idea is to create a class pledge. To do this, take the big ideas from the charts and write a paragraph together (as a shared writing activity). Revise as needed, then make a final copy and post it in your classroom. I have seen some classes read their pledge together aloud every morning as part of their morning routine. Other classes read it one day a week, usually on Monday. Do what works for you!

Here’s an example of her class pledge:

Source: Mrs. Robinson’s Classroom

7 – DISPLAY BOOKS EVERYWHERE
Have plenty of books on display. This signals to your students that reading is important in this class. Even if you teach just math or just science, find books related to your subject and display them.

You can use inexpensive plate stands like THESE to display books, both picture books and books from your classroom library.

My post about great picture books to start off the year is HERE and an even more comprehensive list is in my Teachers Pay Teachers store HERE.

8 – SEND HOME A PARENT SURVEY AS “HOMEWORK” FOR PARENTS/CAREGIVERS
Consider sending some sort of family information form asking for information about the child. Parents/caregivers really appreciate this as it gives them an opportunity to share information with you and it shows your commitment to getting to know their child right away. You might include questions such as these:

~what does your child like to do for fun outside of school?
~what does your child like about school?
~what has your child not liked about school?
~what are your goals for their child this year?

For a printable list of questions that are ready to send home, here’s a link!

9 – REVIEW CLASSROOM PROCEDURES

Now that you have taught the procedures, you’ll have to review and practice them frequently during the first few weeks of school. (You’ll find that you have to review them after winter break and spring break too!)

Here are some fun ways to review from Kalena at Teaching Made Practical:

~use a “Find Somebody Who” to review procedures (she has a free sample of this on her site);

~take pictures of students following the procedures correctly and post in the classroom;

~create anchor charts of the most important procedures (or have your students do that in small groups) and post in the classroom;

~in small groups, have students act out the incorrect way to follow the procedure, then model the correct way;

~use Blabberize, a free online tool, where students can create talking pictures to explain a classroom procedure! This is a lot of fun. Kalena explains more about Blabberize HERE.

10 – AND REVIEW SOME MORE!
THIS is a great editable resource on Teachers Pay Teachers that uses memes to teach class rules and procedures!

I hope these activities give you some ideas for starting your school year in a fun and productive way!

Take a look at my Back to School Planning Guidebook here!