The Sweet Arrival of Summer...

Hello again, friends! Well, I just finished up the school year, and I am rejoicing that summer vacation is finally here! I know there are some friends reading who still have a few more days, so I wanted to share an idea that my students always enjoy which kind of has a summer vibe to it. I say that because you'll need some fly swatters, and summer seems to be the time to buy them!

I am not sure if this game has some other name to it, but I call it SWAT. I just don't feel comfortable using clip art of living creatures of any kind (like flies) on my SWAT games, so I use things like apples, books, etc. 

I use this game when I am reviewing vocabulary, key terms, etc. It could even work well for a trivia game or end of year review. Basically, all you need to do is create a sheet or board that has all of the key words or answers. Divide the class into two teams and use different color fly swatters for each team. That makes it much easier to see who swats first. You could do this on a large piece of poster board, but I just put a sheet on my screen with the document camera so that my whole class can see it. 

A member from each team (students take turns) stands in front of the board...fly swatters ready. I read the question, and the first person to "swat" the correct answer earns a point for his/her team. My students know to swat gently and to leave the swatters on the answer until I tell them to remove them. The students really enjoy it!

If you are concerned about the active engagement of the students not at the board for each question, you can creatively plan your SWAT game so that all kiddos are engaged. Here are two ideas that I like to use:

1. Give all students on each team a photocopy of the board and have them SWAT (with their pencils or fingers) along with the two students at the board. They then check to see if they answered correctly. Many swats are followed by questions from students who were not at the board but need clarification of the answers. This lends itself to a great test review!

2. Call on students from the team at random to repeat the definition or question. For example, I state the definition. Students at the board swat the answer. We confirm whether or not the answer is correct. Students remove the swatters. I call on a team member from the team who scored the point to repeat the question or definition I stated. They can earn bonus points for their teams. I also allow team members to answer if both teams swatted the incorrect answer. Let me tell you, they ALL pay attention (and the repetition helps retention of material).

I also want to share some summer theme FREEBIES with you! Maybe my Summer Word Search freebie might help fill a few moments these last few days for anyone who may still be in school.

It's not like a regular word search because the words are not provided. Just the first letter of each word is given. If you are already out of school for the summer, perhaps you can file it away for next year. You can download it for FREE at my TpT shop by just clicking the link below.

Summer Freebie 1

Another summer theme freebie that might come in handy during these last few days is my Flip Flop Fragments: Changing Fragments into Sentences. Students first must identify 15 groups of words as either sentences or fragments. They then must change the fragments into complete sentences in order to write a summer story. You can also download this activity for FREE at my TpT shop by clicking the link below.

Summer Freebie 2

There are some new summer blog features and an anniversary giveaway 

(thanks to my ATUE friends for your very kind donations!) 

over at The Peanut Gallery Blog, 

so I hope you will stop by and say hello!

Until next time, happy summer, friends!

You can find me here:

The Peanut Gallery Blog

The Peanut Gallery TpT Shop

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Working together for the benefit of the students: Collaboration in the classroom from a special educator’s point of view

Fonts by Kimberly Geswain, Background by Lovin Lit

As educators, we have chosen the career path in which we are constantly working with other individuals – students, parents, administrators, fellow teachers, among others. Our days are faced with challenges that we may not have faced if we had chosen a different path. Working with so many different types of people and students can be tiresome, but it is a necessity, and sometimes legality when concerning special education.

Throughout my years teaching special education, I have learned a few things about working with the general education teachers that makes the co-teaching process go more smoothly for both parties involved.  

Here are 5 things to consider when you are collaborating with a special educator:

{one} 

Communication is the key to Collaboration.

First things first, if you know you are going to be working with someone for the entire the year, COMMUNICATE with them. Introduce yourself and your classroom. Take the time to grab a cup of coffee or eat lunch with your special education teacher. Go over your usual classroom routine, give him or her a copy of your classroom schedule {& stick to it!}, and discuss your teaching styles together. Find out what type of teaching will work best for both of you and don’t just assume the special educator will be okay with being your “assistant.” There are so many different options when co-teaching, so have fun with it! My favorites are parallel teaching {splitting the class in half and taking my half to my room} or station teaching {smaller groups, both teachers lead a station while the other groups are at independent stations}.

For a good website explaining all the different styles of co-teaching, click here.

This is also a good website that outlines things you and your special educator should do before the students walk in the door on that first day!

{two}

Lead by example.

Treat that person with respect from day one and ensure you student’s view him or her as their other classroom teacher, not your aide.  Introduce him or her to your students at the very beginning of the school year. Again, make sure you keep them informed on your classroom policies and routines so they can ensure students are following these as well. Setting this standard from the first day of school with your students will eliminate a lot of confusion in the long run. Also, try not to always have them do your dirty work while you teach. Share the duties of making copies, grading papers, classroom management and such.

I love this article from Education Week: The Power of Two: Co-Teaching in the Classroom

{three}

Set aside time for planning together.

This one can be super tricky to do because you and your special educator might have different planning periods, but you should try to get together to plan at least one day per week, even if it has to be before or after school starts. During this time, discuss upcoming goals, any tests that might be given, standards you hope to teach, any student concerns, and bounce ideas back and forth about upcoming lesson plans. If you have grade level team planning and the special educator cannot make it, create a simple form or jot down a few basic notes to place in their mailbox so they stay in the loop. A little goes a long way!

Below is the form I provide my general educators when I know I can't make it to a team planning.

Click here to download this free form

{four}

Create and stick to a daily routine.

Try to set a routine schedule for the time they are working in your classroom so they have a set purpose and aren’t just walking around watching you teach. This way, you are utilizing them in the most effective way possible! Inevitably, your schedule will change sometimes because of unforeseen circumstances. When you work with a special educator that is depending on your schedule, try to forewarn them of any changes to the day’s routine schedule so they can plan accordingly. 

{five}

Keep organized.

As a general educator, if you have a student with an IEP in your classroom, you are just as responsible for that student as the special educator is. You are expected to be providing all the accommodations listed in their IEP and making any modifications necessary to your daily lesson plans as well as keeping data for all of these things. Here are a few things I give my general educator’s at the beginning of the year to help them stay organized with data.

Cheat Sheet Rings:  I know that “IEP cheat sheets” have been floating around Pinterest for quite some time and I cannot stress how much this can help during the year. These can be as fancy as you want, but I prefer a simple notecard size with the basic info I need to start off the year. I keep the template saved and just fill in the info as I get it, print on cardstock, and I keep all of them on a metal ring and in my clipboard that goes with me everywhere I go. This way I can add to it as the school year progresses and students come and go.

My cheat sheet ring that I keep in my clipboard

Blank Cheat Sheet

Example of a Completed Cheat Sheet {not a real student}

Accommodation Checklists: It takes one parent to accuse you of not providing a service to a student to ruin your credibility. When you are distributed your student’s IEP’s , create an accommodation checklist for yourself to complete on a daily or weekly basis. Check off and date any service you had to provide on any given day to protect yourself. Below is a snapshot of the table I create for my general educators using Publisher to complete for each student and I have them turn them in to me on a monthly basis. I make copies for them and keep the original in the students file.

Google Docs: If you are familiar with Google Docs, you know about the beauty it beholds when collecting data. You can literally create any type of form you want and have it at your fingertips at all times through the use of an Ipad or a laptop. I have introduced this form of data collection to a lot of my general educators to lighten their load with data collection on not only my students, but all the students in their classroom. For more information on how to use Google Docs to collect data, read my post on it here or click the picture below.

File Folders for Tests/Assignments: Most of your students with special needs will have accommodations on how they must take a test and modifications for how the test format must be given. These can be super tricky to keep track of because they are all so different, so to help keep my general ed teacher’s organized, I create a file folder for each student in the class that lists their testing accommodations inside so the teacher can make any changes to the test before the student takes it.

Classroom Teacher Report Sheets: I give these to my teachers so they can give their own input at IEP meetings because it is important and should always be included! :)

Click here to download the Classroom Teacher Report Sheets

As a special educator, I have had the chance to work together with various educators, all with differing teaching styles. Sometimes, general educators have not had to work jointly with the special education teacher, let alone have them in the classroom co-teaching. Some teachers become threatened by the fact that another person is invading their territory, and some welcome another adult into their classroom with open arms. Obviously, the latter is the better, and embracing the opportunity will only open doors for you and your students. Try to look at co-teaching as a blessing, not an inconvenience, and wonderful things can happen in your classroom!

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Taking Time for Interactive Notebooks in the Classroom

Whew, time sure does fly at the end of the school year when you are literally cramming in all the last minute activities to make sure you reach all of the necessary standards, completing paperwork (my nemesis), attending last minute activities and meetings, etc.

Last month I brought up planning as what I think is the most important factor in implementing Interactive Notebooks into your classroom. After that blog post I received numerous questions and comments asking, "How do you fit everything in during each class time?" What a great question! After giving a few quick responses, I decided that I had to share with all of my friends here at All Things Upper Elementary just how I fit it all in.

What is your time frame?

Do you have a 45 minutes class? a 90 minute class? a rotating schedule? a self-contained class that has rough timelines? As soon as I saw on my schedule of classes last summer that each were between 48 and 52 minutes long, 5 days a week I knew that my time frame for fitting in all the necessary components of my lessons was a magical 48 minutes.

How do you plan for your time frame?

From day one in my classroom I was notorious for being a "Structure Sergeant"; yep, that's a nice way of putting it.

When students walking into my classroom they quickly gather all materials needed for the daily lesson. Once they are at their desk they spend NO MORE THAN 3-5 minutes prepping their Interactive Notebook for that day's activities. This includes updating the Table of Contents, writing the date on the page, and cutting out anything and everything and gluing down the bones of the lesson.

I always post a skeleton copy (bare bones, nothing completed) as a picture on my computer to project for all students to see as this gives me the necessary time to complete those teacher tasks such as attendance, etc. before getting stated.

Once the prep time is complete, we move right into our intro of our lesson. This is when I have a student read the "I Can Statement" for the day and we talk about what we will be doing as a component of that statement and break down some key vocabulary that might be in it and if one of those words happens to be a vocabulary word, we complete our Frayer model at that time. We are now roughly 7-10 minutes into class.

Rocking right on it's time to get into the "meat" of the lesson for the day. Typically I did a flippable version of notes so that I could have something interactive to draw my students in for the lesson by keeping them on their toes. There are different ways to do this such a cloze notes, sort and stick (gluing notes that were already typed), or even having groups break into parts of the lesson and report back.

The most important part of this is to keep things flowing so that students are engaged. Doing this in my classroom made my off task behaviors virtually non-existent. Once I had done significant modeling with each individual class of students, I began picking a teacher helper during each class. This teacher helper was my INB Vanna during lessons and uncovered areas or completed their lesson under my document camera while I was monitoring and assisting while also teaching around the room.

There were days that I picked a student who was on the more active side and they were typically the BEST at modeling how a "Structure Sergeant" models a lesson. It's amazing what they had picked up non-verbally from me over time.

After roughly a 15-20 minute mini-lesson it was time for practice and application of skills. I am a huge proponent of not drilling and killing my students but rather relating it to a real-life problem that they may face sometime in life as well as making it interesting to them in some way. This lends to word problems so well. There were days where we only completed 2-3 problems and that was perfectly fine because then there were other days where we were able to complete a lot more through whole group practice, workstations, small group work, etc.

By this time we are ready to wrap things up. This is when I would pull in an Exit Ticket or my favorite, a "Post It, Prove It." These two strategies give me immediate feedback on what each student has internalized and connected with in the lesson for the day which in turn allows me to determine students who need extra support, are on target and even those that are ready to move on to the next step.

So, until next time...

Mathematically Yours,

Jennifer Smith-Sloane

aka 4mulaFun

@4mulaFun

4mulaFun on Facebook

4mulaFun on Pinterest

P.S. The Interactive Notebook Linky returns on June 28th! Get your posts ready!

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Where in the World is......? Geography Project

There are some projects that I will definitely miss doing not being in the classroom next year. One of the ones at the very tippity-top is my "Where is Sammy Seagull?" project. Oh man, I just loved this project and I think it was almost all of my students' and parents' favs, too. You do have to have help from parents at home, but it is stretched out over the course of the year, and once parents begin to have fun with it, it really takes off!

Geography is one of those standards that can be difficult to teach. I don't like having my students just memorize facts, but with geography, well, you kind of have to. I always try to figure out how to make the standards interactive, and when I first started teaching, I had my students color in the states, countries, or continents on their own maps as we learned where they were. Yeah, they like coloring, but over the years I realized that if kids don't have something to velcro their new learning to, they will just forget it once you stop talking about it. Hence, I came up with Sammy to be the "sticky" to which they could stick their new geographical knowledge :)

When I taught 3rd grade, continents are really the only geography that is required, and the only states required are where our "famous people" are from, but I feel that it is important for students to learn about US geography at an early age because anything you talk about landforms, you mention the states, anytime you talk about habitats, they have to know WHERE you are talking about when you mention states. I have a huge US and world map hanging up, but I really wanted my students to be interested in geography and remember without always having to walk up to the maps.

Over the years I have used Sammy Seagull and Buzz Bee depending on my classroom theme. I had an ocean theme one year, so I chose Sammy Seagull to be our mascot. You can choose any mascot, though. When I taught 2nd grade, most of our team participated, so one teacher had a space theme and used Arnold Astronaut, and another teacher had a rainforest theme so she used Molly Macaw.

I tell the students that Sammy (or whoever your mascot is) will be flying around the US and hopefully he will make it to other countries during the course of the year. Each place he flies to he will send us a postcard telling us about where he was and what he saw/did. Or friends and family who see Sammy will write us a postcard telling us where they saw Sammy and what he was doing, along with some information about where they live. When Sammy mails these postcards to us, they will be taped up to the maps using a thread to tie the postcard to where it was from. We send off Sammy using a helium filled balloon with a picture of him attached along with our school address with my name, and watch him fly off until we can't see him anymore.

A pretty simple project, but parent help is needed. I send my parents a letter home (or email) explaining the project and how it will only work with their help. They in turn can tell their family and friends who can tell their family and friends, and before long, MANY people are ready to see or pretend to be Sammy. We have received so many postcards during the year. The last few years I did this, we received well over 100 postcards, and one year we received almost 200! And we received postcards from several different countries. The kids love it! You may think that 3rd graders would know that Sammy couldn't do this, but when they postcards start pouring in from friends or relatives who have "seen" Sammy, they become believers :)

I ask the parents to let their family and friends know that when they send in a postcard, either pretending to be Sammy or just saw Sammy, to include the student's name they know in our class on the postcard. This REALLY gets the students excited! They just put the child's first name (and last initial if we have more than one). Every time a postcard comes in, they are all chomping at the bit to see who is mentioned. Now, not every student will get his/her name on a postcard, but I have never had anyone upset about that. For the majority it is just seeing where the postcard is from. At the end of the year, we welcome back Sammy, and the students then choose a place where he visited to complete a little research project on. They can work alone or with a partner. I let them choose how they want to present the information. And then I let the students take the postcards home. If they have their name on a postcard, they get that postcard. All the cards without student names, I pass out to make sure every one receives at least one postcard.

It can be overwhelming because sometimes the postcards come in droves, and sometimes they trickle in. I try to share the postcards every other day. I would only share 3 at the most at a time. If you share too many the students don't really focus on where they are from, and I would type up the postcards and put them on our class homepage that Friday afternoon. That way when friends and family can "see" their postcard on our website, it encourages them to send more and tell more people about it. I think including the postcards on our homepage really helped us to receive lots of postcards.

Examples of Postcards
This is what was written on the back of a postcard from Paris. I then typed it up to put on our class homepage. The person who wrote it had written it in 1st person pretending to have seen Sammy, so I did change the point of view when typing it for our class homepage:

Paris, France- While flying around Paris taking in all the sights, Sammy flew into Sadee’s mom’s boss, Ms. Barbara. She was having dinner at the Eiffel Tower. It was a cool evening, and Sammy thought that it may end up snowing. Sammy loved this beautiful city with all its wonderful food! Sammy also met up with Ms. Barbara again at the Sacre Coeur Basilica. This cathedral is very old. It is also the highest point in Paris. Below the cathedral is a courtyard where local artists paint tourists. Tourists and locals enjoy the cafes and watching the artists paint. Sammy loved his time in Paris!

This was written by someone who was pretending to be Sammy.

Illinois- I decided to fly along some of the famous Route 66. When established, it ran all the way from Chicago, Illinois, to Los Angeles, California. It was a total length of 2,448 miles! In 1985 it was officially decommissioned, and now a section of it has been declared a National Scenic Byway and is called “Historic Route 66”. I ran into someone who said to tell Matthew, “Hey!”

If you are interested in trying out this, we have our parent letter that we use in our TpT store as a freebie. It also includes a few more examples of postcards and a few helpful tips.

We hope you will try this project out and let us know how it goes! Do you do a similar project? If so, we would love to hear about it. 

As always, thanks for listening to us!

2 Brainy Apples

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Fourth Grade Weather Unit

I wonder how soon schools will stop buying textbooks in favor of all the great information online.  I've never felt married to my science text before, but this year I have found so much great online content for teaching weather to my fourth graders that I just had to share!

My "segue" to my weather unit always starts with a review of solid liquid and gas.  Then we talk about the water cycle.  Although science books tend to have nice diagrams, I feel like they can't compete with an animation.  This year I showed my students this short video on the water cycleas a whole class.  Then I had them each go view this water cycle animation to learn at their own pace.  Since there is no sound, it was fine for a whole class to go on at the same time on individual computers (we don't have enough headphones to go around).  And they can take their time reading the labeled parts and watching the arrows move.  

 

Next we always focus on clouds for a lesson.  I give the kids a drawing lesson using clouds and smart background color choices for paper, and they represent three cloud types:  Stratus, cumulus and cirrus.  It's no accident that I placed the stratus lowest and cirrus up high on the display, since their actual elevation is relative in nature.  This year, along with notes on all three, I also had the kids write a short note (it almost could have been a text) to a friend asking them on a play date in two days, and it had to be conducive to the type of weather they were expecting, based on the cloud types.  This was a big hit!  It was a very short, to the point writing assignment, and it was very relevant to their lives. 

I let the kids know, "These are not the only 3 cloud types that exist, so if you look in the sky and can't tell what they are one day, don't feel bad.  For that matter, after learning the fourth grade unit on weather, please don't expect that you'll be able to accurately predict the weather 100% of the time.  Even the meteorologists can't do that."  They laugh, and I feel like they do feel invested in learning what causes weather events, even though they know they don't have the WHOLE story yet.

Next came a discussion on precipitation.  I made a new anchor chart this year:

  

And last but not least, we talk about air masses that create fronts. 

Instead of doing a demonstration on warm air rising and cold air sinking, I showed them this very short video involving the movement of hot and cold liquid, differentiated by colored food dye.  Free, and no mess!  Easy enough for kids to try at home.

Next we watched a fun little cartoon about fronts, a more realistic animation of cold and warm fronts, and our FAVORITE...BY FAR, was a parody of "Keep Your Head Up" by Andy Grammer, which is all about air masses and fronts.  Most of it is way too advanced for fourth grade, (it was written and performed by a 6th grade science teacher) but it was great for my gifted student, piqued the interest of my more curious students, and entertained my musical students!  To keep it relevant I just encouraged them to remember the bridge and they were happily singing along.   

I knew the unit struck a chord when one of my students told me last week, "Mrs. Thomas, look, it rained, so now the stratus clouds are going away.  We're going to have good weather.  It will probably cool down, too."  

Score!

Want more ideas?

Amber Thomas's Classroom Favorites (TPT Store)

Shut the Door and Teach:  This week is all about how to NOT correct homework!

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