Five for Friday... late.

i'm linking up with doodlebugsteaching for a fun week week review!

{one}

Looping is the bomb. I got the incredible opportunity to promote to 3rd grade with my 2nd graders this year and I am 5 weeks in and it has just been amazing. I love teaching this little group of nuggets so much and I am already devastated that I won't get to be their teacher next year. We are just chugalugging right along with small groups and Daily 5 and all that is good and wonderful and the students are continuing to make leaps and bounds academically and socially. I started my 2nd grade class with about 70% of students at a Tier 3 reading level and this year? 14%. Partaaaay, we are going to be doing book clubs all day erryday!

{two}

If you follow me on insta, you know that my Yeti cup is my new little boo boo. I am drinking at least 5 cups of ice cold water a day now and I am probably the healthiest teacher ever ever ever (because the water obviously counters the insane amounts of Smarties I'm consuming  from my candy jar because my lil smarties aren't earning them often enough... but that's a story for another time). However, then I have to pee during class, and ain't nobody got time for that. 

Ryan, you swing by anytime, boo. Actually if you are a moderately functional adult and it's about 2pm COME ON DOWN. SERIOUSLY.

{three}

Speaking of smarties, I pinned this little game and then a sweet friend of mine from college said she was using it and it actually worked, so I've been trying it with my little dahhhlings in the class that rotates in for 2 hours of reading and writing. My looped homeroom has their behavior on lock (and they are teaching me sassy phrases like that so I sound hip), but the other class apparently doesn't know how much I love them and want them to succeed and dream the biggest dreams they can and be authors and readers and extraordinary even though you best believe I am trying to tell them. Currently, all they seem to know is if their little mouths are not talking and their little behinds are in their chairs by the time I get to zero after counting down from 10, they get a point and are one step closer to some candy at the end of their block with me. I did read this sassy article about why not to do it and while I feel it had some good points, I am seeing success in being able to limit excessive chitchat and increase time on task. I definitely DO NOT celebrate "my" points, I just slap them on the board and move right along. And the only thing that gets us points is when the students are quiet and seated for a countdown from 10. I'm hoping to phase it out, ok?!

read about her version here!

{four}

My new favorite cardigans: JCrew factory Clare. They are not totally cheapo but they last a long time and are the perfect 3/4 sleeve length and hip length if you are the height of your average 5th grader like me. I own them in four colors currently. If you click on the link, you're probably going to think I am an old lady, but they are super cute on. Promise! I would add a cute little picture of me wearing one right underneath this buttttt I am an absolute failure at selfies and I think we would just all be embarrassed.

{five}

I have successfully been working out three times a week for the last couple of months. I recently added ten minutes of running to that and I am daaaaaang proud that I can run 10 minutes without stopping. However, I am also slightly embarrassed because hello, I was a collegiate athlete not that long ago. I'm thinking of trying to work up to a 5k. Is that ridiculous? Too low of a goal? Are you a runner and if so can you please tell me how to run without feeling like I am going to hyperventilate?

What if Everybody Did That?!

In my classroom, we have 5 simple rules, inspired by whole brain teaching. 

1. Follow directions quickly.

2. Raise my hand if I have something to ask or share.

3. Treat my teachers and classmates with respect.

4.Make smart choices.

5. Always keep your dear teacher happy.

Though number 5 probably sounds a little narcissistic, any one of my 22 students could very clearly explain that keeping me happy only requires two things- that they stay safe and learn. No need to bring my gifts or tell me I'm pretty or perform any other brown nosing action... Just stay safe, and learn!

Earlier in the year (October-ish), my sweet students' behavior began backsliding a tad... I was becoming frustrated, and our Daily 5 and intervention time were becoming increasingly less effective because it seemed as though every 5 minutes I was having to redirect behavior of yet another student. Finally, in desperation, I pulled back out the book I used at the beginning of the year to introduce our five simple rules. It is a little beauty called What If Everybody Did That? We read it again and chatted a little and then I had a streak of inspiration. I scrapped my afternoon plans and we made our own class version of the book!

We began by brainstorming some of the issues we were having in the class. I was surprised to hear that almost all of the troubling things I was noticing, they were too! We made a bubble map and did a class example with "I just followed Mrs. B around to ask her a question instead of raising my hand one time. Mrs. B fell on me and smooshed me to bits, then turned around and said, 'What if everybody did that?!'"

Pairs of students got together and followed the pattern of the book to write their own set of two pages based on one of the bubbles off our map. They pre-wrote the text, then revised and edited it with another pair. After that, they copied it onto nice white paper, and used the illustration style of the book as well to draw some pretty hilarious pictures.

I bound all the pages with one of those old school punch-and-bind machines and put the book in our classroom library.

The little novel is super popular during Read-to-Self for Daily 5. We also pull that bad boy out whenever we are on the struggle bus and read it together. It is an awesome reminder because THEY wrote it. It's not me trying to lay down the law once again, it's THEIR words and ideas and illustration. My sweet students tend to remind each other and even remind me of the things that are truly important to keep our classroom functioning successfully. 

knocking out bullying in october!

October is National Bullying Prevention Month. My very first ever See Bean Teach post was about that very topic, so I thought it would be a nice throw-back to look at some more anti-bullying ideas! Here, I've listed three lessons I've taught so far this month and two more I plan to teach. I like to be able to to link our content with talking about social skills type topics (just so we can make connections between what we learn and the real world)...  I also feel like lessons that help build our classroom community are a tool to help prevent bullying because I've notice that it is much easier for students to pick on those they know very little about... but when they know another's story and where they come from and who they really are, they find it easier to choose to say and do uplifting things. Pacer.org is a great online resource for some facts, along with Stomp Out Bullying.

(1)

As mentioned, my very first post, many moons ago was about a lesson I did with a kindergarten class during my senior year of college. It all focused around The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin and how to avoid bullying. It went over really well, so this year I decided to whip that baby back out! My class had a bunch of fun listening to the story on YouTube and then making their own unique pumpkins a couple weeks ago. Of course, I added in an attempt at some academic content and had them make a verbal text-self connection before they could craft their own Spookly, but it was a much needed afternoon of creative thinking and fun after a week of 6 weeks tests (BOO ON THAT.)

(2)

We learned about adjectives in language arts this week, so we combined that with a lesson I saw on good ol' Farley's blog a while back. We described my "friend" that I'd drawn on chart paper using adjectives. When the children slung out unkind words, I crumpled it up. When they said kind things, I uncrumpled the paper. We noticed that the wrinkles were still there, and even after we tried to smooth the paper out by saying nice things, the wrinkles didn't totally go away. I think it made a bit of an impact, because after the lesson we did a full on "share you feelings circle" for about 10 minutes. I made sure to end it by asking all of the students to share something that has been a positive interaction with another person in their life so that we could have some emotional closure and a way to bring our thoughts back to a happy place if they'd traveled a little away from there.

(3)

We also drew portraits of a classmate (they had to draw out of a jar so it was random!) and described them using 10 adjectives. I was so pleasantly surprised that no one had unkind things to say on their drawings AND they were all excited about who they got (even when it wasn't there bestfriendevereverever). I am proud of how close-knit and sweet my students are. We even had a "special visitor" from another class in another grade our room that day (yep, I get to be that teacher) so I threw his name in the bucket too and my sweet little nuggets just acted like that was totally normal and drew him a beautiful portrait as well!

(4)

We watched the BrainPop Jr. video on bullying and then did a class sort to clarified the difference between true bullying and teasing someone of having a "mean moment" using the phrases I cut from a chart that I found on Ms. Sepp's Counselor Corner. It sparked a lot of great discussion about what kinds of things we could problem solve on our own or by talking with the person who offended us, versus what kinds of things we couldn't solve unless we got help from an adult.

(5)

We read The Recess Queen, Chrysanthemum, Giraffes Can't Dance. Then we practiced making Text-Self connections. We talked about how we felt and how the characters felt, and experiences that we had that we similar to experiences the characters. We used Venn diagrams to compare both our life experiences and that of the characters AND the characters in the books. There's a freebie in my TPT store- it's not fancy by any stretch of the imagination, but it works! (:

I linked up with Doodle Bugs Teaching to share these five ideas! You should participate, too!

P.S. Real talk- this post contains Amazon Affiliate links. Check out my About Mrs. B page for more info on that!

Monday Made It: Class Synergy Board

Class Synergy Board:

Pinspired by: this, but the link didn't take me to the printable ):

Hundreds Chart from here

Cutie Frame on the bottom right from here

{Check back in August to see how I'm really using this bad boy in my classroom!}