Brain Breaks

I ran across this video on YouTube and really liked this brain break activity. The purpose of the activity is in no way related to academics (although if streched one could say it falls under the "following instructions" standard which seems to fall into our reading/ELA standards). The purpose is to wake student brains up by doing something that requires a bit of thinking or moving.

Often times I go into a classroom and the kids are zombied out and it doesn't matter how great your lesson is they are not "with it" enough to pay attention. Having them do one of these brain breaks is a great wax to wake them up both physically and mentally.

There are several in the series and I have tried a few in classes. I definitely recommend giving them a look through to see what might work in your classroom. Just type in "brain break" in the YouTube search engine and they should come up.

How to Make a Paper Star

This is an activity that I did with my Girl Scouts. It is very easy to make and several of my teacher friends have used it in the days leading up to Christmas (it can easily be combined with a writing assignment. I have a friend in a second/third grade class who will be doing a winter unit in January and will be calling these stars "snowflakes" for the unit).

This is the last day of school for us before the holiday break and I had two fifth grade girls help me make a how to video.

Spelling Test Surprise

One of our fifth grade teachers changed up her spelling words the day of her weekly spelling test. The kids moaned and groaned but hunkered down to do their best with their new words.

The teacher ran the spelling test just like every week. She read the word and put it in a sentence.

1. Merry (Merry is not a name. It means happy.)
2. Christmas (Christmas is celebrated on December 25th each year)
3. You (You will be attending the winter dance tomorrow)
4. All (It is difficult to talk with you all talking)
5. Get (In the morning you get ready to go to school)
6. One (One is the number before two)
7. Hundred (I would love to have a hundred dollars in my wallet)
8. On (Jasmine sits on her chair.)
9. This (This test counts for a large percent of your grade)
10. Test (Every Thursday you have a vocabulary test)

By the end many of the kids have caught on but she allows no talking during the test so they all just are smiling at her and each other. At the end she has a child read the spelling words out loud to review from 1-10. The child catches on while she is reading the words back and then everyone gets it.

I thought it was a fun way to give students a surprise 100 on the test.

ELA - End of Unit Project

Most subscribers to this blog know that last year I accepted a position as a technology coach within our district. I work with two elementary schools and do a lot of integrated technology projects with teachers as well as model lessons using technology.

While this blog mainly focuses on elementary science I do post other ideas in other subject areas.

Today's blog post features an end of unit project I did with a fourth grade class in one of the two schools I teach at. I team taught with the teacher for a two week period focusing in on the parts of speech (she would teach one part of speech one day and I would do another the next day). At the end of the unit we put her children into groups and they were given a digital camera and allowed to take pictures or videos around the school that illustrated the eight parts of speech.

We got an adult volunteer to go with each group and they were given approximately 45 minutes (along with a check list, dry erase marker and pen). Ideally I would have had the students go to the computer lab and put together their video in Movie Maker Live but we ran out of time so I put together the video above using Movie Maker Live. The students loved the finished product although the boys thought my music choices were "too girly" :)

Thanksgiving Idea

Loved this idea! One of the school’s I go between is doing this project on the fourth and fifth grade hall. The idea came from Angie Peterson, one of the fifth grade teachers.

The teachers created and laminated a large turkey for the hall. They gave each student a feather to take home with the instruction that parents, or family members, were to use the feather to explain why they are thankful for their child. They (the parents) had the freedom to decorate anyway they saw fit. Students get to share their feathers with the class and then they get placed on the large hallway turkey.

They are precious to read and you can tell the children loved reading what their families wrote about them.

The two teachers heading up the project said that because November is such a short month for us (we have fall break at the beginning of the month, followed by veteran’s day off, followed by the Thanksgiving break) that they put a Santa hat and red nose on the turkey display and let the display ride through the month of December.

"I'm Finished Early" Students

In my experience there are three kinds of students - ones that finish an activity on time (yay!), ones that you have to push to finish an activity on time (boo!), and the ones that finish early (YIKES!).

I have been helping a friend who just started notebooking and teaching fourth grade science and those early finishers have been problematic (mainly because they start bugging everyone else who is still working :)

We recently devised the "poster project" for students who are done early. Basically we set aside a part of her wall for these posters (in this case her cabinets as pictured above). Students who are done their assignment early are asked to contribute a poster to the wall. It has to be subject specific (so no random pictures!). The other day she did weather tools and the kids who finished early had to draw and label a poster of their favorite weather tool (she uses regular paper and the kids have to mount it on colored construction paper and put it up on the wall....which they LOVE to do). She was working on weather safety the other day and if they were done their notebook assignment they had to make, mount and post a weather safety poster.

I've been grooving on this idea to the point I think we need to set up a poster supply area for these children so that crayons, markers, construction paper, glue, and tape for the wall are all in one "ready to go" to area. We only get at most five to seven children who might be done early (and they don't necessarily have time to finish their poster - if they are not finished we keep them in an "unfinished poster" file and if they are done something else early they can go back to it.)

If you are short of wall space you could always put the posters out in the hall under "What We Are Studying in Science" header.

Another reason why I like this idea is under our observation rubric we must have student work on display. This activity pretty much guarantees that we have met that objective (another YAY!).

Origami Tshirts

This class made origami t-shirts that they then decorated with items that represented themselves. They wrote about the decorations and how they fit into their lives in the computer lab (using Microsoft Word). The teacher took pictures of their heads and they were cut to fit the t-shirts.

I really liked this project. For this class it was a beginning of the year project but I could easily do it with a Social Studies or Science class. I would change the instructions to read: "Create t-shirt designs that match an event in history. Write about how your drawings match what we've studied in social studies."

The instructions for making the origami shirt can be followed from this Activity TV site.

Room Decorating Idea

I liked the wall decal and the fabric around the desk of this teachers room.

Hallway Display

I found out last week that I was assigned a bulletin board in the school for this month. I had seen a picture of a cute Facebook bulletin board that a teacher had done for her class and I essentially copied it :)

It was a huge hit in the school because of the interactive "status update". Parents, teachers, and students are encouraged to post updates throughout the week.

Pop Culture Points

A teacher in one of our district shared this YouTube video on letting children earn "Pop Culture Points" in the classroom. I love it! One of my favorite things about teaching is when a child comes in and has made a connection to what we are learning in class to what they are watching on TV, reading, or listening to.

We all know that making connections is powerful and helps students remember. This teacher now assigns points for it. I like what one of the interviewed children said, "It makes you think about learning when you aren't normally thinking about learning."

I saw this video a couple of days ago and really started looking for points of reference in the shows I watched. In this weeks Warehouse 13 the dangerous artifact was a pair of binoculars that were on the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan. On Eureka the entire town was focused on an upcoming launch to Titan, the largest moon on Saturn. I thought both worthy of Pop Culture Points and related to content we teach at the elementary school level :)

Unusual Spaces

This teacher has a very small room with not a lot of wall space. I loved that she thought out of the box and used her desk to have students make their lunch choices on. She put the students names on magnets and they move them over when they come in in the morning.

ELA - Beginning of Year Activity

This was an assignment I did when teaching one class of ELA in fourth grade. I stole the idea from a teacher friend of mine (thanks Jamey!). She used the book The Best Part of Me as the literacy tie in and had students write about the best part of them.



One of the third grade teachers in my school loved the assignment and had her kids do it the first week of school.



The first picture was a fourth grade example of this project and the second is a third grade example.