4 Great Ways to Start Your Day in the Classroom

  It is crucial to set the tone for the day, as soon as your students walk into the room! There are so many fun things you can do in your classroom to create a wonderful start to the day.  You can do the same thing each day, or you can do a mixture of activities throughout your week. Each teacher has their own style of what they like to do, but you can use the following tips to create your perfect start to your day!  

     The first activity that I love to incorporate in our morning routine is writing. Sometimes I will have students work on their writers workshop pieces, or I have them work on journal prompts. Writing is a great way to start the day because it is very independent and students are able to get started as soon as they have all their things put away. Writing is also a great activity that you can make digital with students working on computers or iPads, or you can have students work with paper and pencil. Writing in Journals is a great activity for Monday mornings because students can write about their weekends, and then they can share their thoughts with their classmates during the morning meeting. 

     The next activity that works well for the start of the day is a math or ELA review page. It works well to have a worksheet that is a review from earlier in the year or from a couple of weeks before. At the beginning of the year you can even use worksheets of skills from the previous year. You can also use pages that review a skill needed to build on a new skill that is going to be taught that day, or in the next couple days. This allows students to continue to practice skills that they have been working on. This is another great activity that works for students to do independently. Because it is a worksheet of a skill that has been worked on previously, students are able to come into the classroom and get started right away. Using worksheets of review skills is an excellent way to help students stay on top of skills that they have already learned. 

    Another perfect way to start your day is with mixed review pages. These are another great activity that students can do independently and help them practice skills that they’ve previously worked on. These are perfect for the start of the day because they work on math and ELA skills. Another great idea is to do math review on one side of the page, and ELA on the other side of the page. Your morning meeting is an excellent time to review the pages and make sure that every student understands what was covered on the page. 

     The final way that I love to start our day is with STEM bins. I put lots of different building blocks in boxes and students can grab a box and use that box to build. Students can work alone with a box of materials, or they can work with a partner. This works perfectly for a slow start morning where students are not all arriving at the same time. I have students work on their worksheet for the day and then when they finish, they can build with a STEM bin. Younger students can just build things that they want, and older students could be given a challenge that they have to try to build, like a bridge or the tallest tower. STEM bins are also a great activity for students to work on when they are finished with their work. These bins are always some of my students’ favorite activities! 

     There are so many great ways to start your day! You can have your students do a worksheet that reviews skills, you can have them write in their journals, or you can have them do a slow start with STEM bins. I love doing a mixture of all of these activities, but you can create whatever routine you like. What are your favorite ways to start your day? Tell me in the comments what you are going to try in your classroom. I can’t wait to hear your ideas! 

My Top 4 Tips To Create An Efficient Morning Routine For Your Students

  Do you have a routine for your mornings? Do your students come into the classroom crazy? I have found that creating a morning routine has really helped to get our day off to a great start. There are a few tips that I have for you to create a perfect morning routine for your students and classroom. 

     The first thing that I do every day is have calm music playing. I love using classical music that the students don’t know and recognize. It is important that the music you choose is not songs that the students recognize. When the students recognize the songs that are playing, they are more likely to come into the classroom wild and a little too excited. There are plenty of other opportunities throughout the day that allow you to play music that the students know. But at the start of the day, you want to set the stage for a calm day. I like to start the music before the students walk into the classroom. This helps to set the mood for the day from the minute they walk into the room. 

     Next on the list is to have a place for the students to see exactly what they need to do when they walk in. I like to use a procedure slide for the start of the day. I type on the slide everything that the children need to do from the minute they step into the classroom. I include everything from putting things away, to getting things out for the day, to getting started on an assignment. Having a place for the students to see what they need to do takes the morning responsibilities off of you as the teacher and puts it on the students. When a student comes up to you and asks what they're supposed to do, you are able to tell them to look at the morning procedures on the board. This also allows you to get the things done that need to get done in the morning, like attendance, and reading any notes from parents.  

     The next thing I do to help with our morning routine is to have some type of assignment. This gives the students something to do after they have unpacked and put all their things away. Some different ideas for assignments could be a writing page or journal entry or some type of math or language arts review. I love to have my students work on a review page that reviews skills from the weeks before. When students are done with the assignment, they get to use a STEM Bin to build different objects. STEM bins are a great idea from Brooke Brown. You can find these resources on teachers pay teachers or even at Lakeshore or Amazon. STEM bins are small boxes with different building toys like legos, blocks, or magnetic tiles for students to build with. You can create these boxes yourself or you can use resources available through Brooke. STEM bins were my students' favorite activities, and it made them work diligently to get their work done because they were so excited to use the bins. 

     The last thing that I do every day to have a smooth morning routine is a morning meeting. This is a time that my students always look forward to. At the start of the year, I lead the meeting so my students can learn the routine. Then after the first couple weeks of school, I hand the meeting over to my students. It becomes one of our classroom jobs to be the morning meeting leader. Each week, the leader plans out the meeting. They choose what question they want to ask and what greeting they want for the meeting. We use our morning meeting slide to help us with the flow of the meeting. This helps the students stay on track. 

     Having a morning routine really helps you create a wonderful environment for your students. Morning routines will help your students come into the classroom and know exactly what is expected of them. I love to see my students come in and know what they need to do. They get started as soon as they walk into the classroom. The morning routine helps to create a calm, smooth morning for your students. What part of the morning routine are you going to try first? 

My 5 Favorite Picture Books to Celebrate Spring in the Classroom

Picture books are a great way to teach students about many different topics, and Spring is one of my favorite times to share picture books with my class. There are so many fun stories for the spring season that teach great concepts. Today I am going to share some of my favorite stories for Spring! 

     The first book on the list is We Are The Gardeners by Joanna Gaines. This is a fun book all about gardening and the steps it takes to grow a garden. This is a great book to start a plant unit with. The message of this book is also fantastic because it helps teach the message that trying something new isn’t always easy, but the reward can be amazing. 

     The next book on the list is Goodbye Winter, Hello Spring by Kenard Pak. In this story, a little boy says goodbye to the things of Winter and welcomes in the things of Spring. This is a great book about all the changes that are coming with Spring and is always a favorite of my students! 

     The next book on the list is another perfect book for spring. It is Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert. This story follows a mother and daughter in their backyard garden as they plant new seeds and see how they grow. This story helps students learn how plants grow and might even inspire them to grow their own garden. I adore the bright colors of this story and how the illustrations are created. 

     The next book, And Then It’s Spring by Julie Fogliano, is another excellent book for Spring. This is another book that focuses on growing a garden. This book follows a little boy and his dog who are both tired of all the brown after a very long, snowy Winter so they decide to make a garden. The book goes through all the steps they take to make their garden. This is another outstanding book for the start of a plant or gardening unit. 

     The last book on the list is Spectacular Spring by Bruce Goldstone. This book talks about the fun things you can do in Spring and shares all the interesting things that make Spring spectacular. It is full of beautiful photographs, wonderful explanations, and creative craft ideas. Your students will love reading about the fun ideas shared and try them out in the classroom or at home. 

     Spring is such a wonderful time to share picture books. I always enjoy seeing what books are coming out for the upcoming Spring season. Reading picture books is always one of my students' treasured times of the day, and Spring is one of the perfect times of the year to do that. What picture books do you love to read in the Spring to your students? Tell me in the comments!

5 Fresh Spring Ideas to Keep Your Students Engaged

  Springtime is in the air and the end of the year is coming quickly. Are your students having a hard time staying engaged in their learning? Today I am going to talk about all things spring and helping to keep your students engaged during this challenging time of the year. 

    Spring is a great time to review skills that your students have been learning all year and one fun way to do that is with math crafts. Students love these activities and they don’t even realize they are reviewing skills they have learned. These types of crafts also make great decorations around the room. Teachers love having these projects for open house to help showcase all the skills their students have been learning. One of the favorite projects in my classroom is the flower telling time. Students love to create their flowers and show off what they have learned about telling time. This is also a great project for beginning telling time or it can even get more advanced with telling time to the minute. 

    Another activity that my students love is digital task cards. Task cards are low prep and allow students to practice the skills that they are working on. You can create digital task cards in google slides and then you can easily assign them through google classroom or whatever school management system you have. There are also a lot of different activities you can set up for your students with task cards. You can have them just straight answer the questions. You can set up the questions on google forms and make it like a digital escape room. You can have students scoot around the room to different questions and have them record their answers on their own papers. There are lots of different things that you can do with digital task cards. 

    Along the same lines as the math crafts, students love showcasing their writing with fun crafts. One project that is always a hit in my classroom is insect stories. Students create their own insect and create a story to go along with it. Another project that is always a big hit is the rainbow poems. April is National Poetry month, so this is a great project to celebrate this special month. Students love showing off what spring items are the different colors of the rainbow. 

My Nine Favorite Picture Books To Teach About Kindness

  Reading picture books to my class is always a highlight of our day. I try to find different times throughout our day when I am able to share a great picture book with my students. Books that teach about kindness are some of my favorites to share, and today I am going to share my list of top kindness picture books to share with your class. 

     The first book on the list is Be Kind by Pat Zietlow Miller. This book has such a sweet message about being kind. The main character puts together a list of ways to be kind to the people in her life. Then at the end of the story, she finds a way to show kindness to a new girl. This story has beautiful pictures with very sweet and simple words for students to understand. 

     The next book on the list is I Am Love: A Book of Compassion by Susan Verde. This is another great story with a sweet message. It is all about love and how we show love and kindness to the people around us. This book is full of wonderful examples of how we can show kindness, live with gratitude, and take care of our minds and bodies. An extra bonus with this book is the amazing artwork of Peter H. Reynolds. 

     Here is another favorite book on my list, I Walk With Vanessa by Kerascoet. This book is perfect for younger students because it is a wordless book. The detail in this book helps students to understand how to help students who are being bullied and how we can stand beside them and help them. This book shows how one simple act of kindness can help a whole community come together to help stop bullying. I love to use wordless picture books as writing prompts for my students. 

     The next book on the list is Do Unto Otters by Laurie Keller. In this book, Mr. Rabbit gets new neighbors who are otters, but he doesn’t know anything about otters. He learns from Mr.Owl to just treat them the way you would like to be treated. The author focuses on how to be a good neighbor and friend by simply using The Golden Rule. Children will even learn how to say different kind phrases in different languages. 

     The next book on the list is Have You Filled a Bucket Today? By Carol McCloud. This book talks about an imaginary bucket that gets emptied with unkindness and filled with kindness. The book teaches valuable lessons about giving, sharing and caring. The book challenges children to fill other people’s buckets by saying kind words or doing kind acts. This is always a favorite book to share and it really helps my students understand how to help other people feel good about themselves.

     Another favorite book of my class is Ordinary Mary’s Extraordinary Deed by Emily Pearson. This book is about an ordinary girl who picks some blueberries for her neighbor. Her neighbor makes blueberry muffins that she shares with friends. This creates a chain reaction of doing good deeds that help change the world. This story teaches random acts of kindness and shows how one person can help change the world. 

     The book Peace is an Offering by Annette LeBox is another great book about kindness. This book is written in rhyme, which is a fun way to present a book to your class. It’s about a group of neighborhood children who learn to find peace in everyday items that are all around them. This book helps children to find calm and happiness in their own community every day. 

     The next book on the list is Each Kindness by Jacqueline Woodson. Chloe and her friends are not nice to the new girl Maya. Maya eventually stops coming to school. The teacher did a lesson on kindness and how even a small act of kindness can change the world. Chloe realizes that she missed an opportunity to be a friend and show kindness to Maya. 

     The last book on the list is Tomorrow I’ll be Kind by Jessica Hische. This story encourages young people to promise that tomorrow they will be grateful, helpful, and kind. This story helps all people to realize that even the smallest gesture of kindness can help to change the world. Everyone needs to remember to be kind. 

     Kindness is a skill that students need to work on. What books do you like to use to about Kindness? Share them in the comments. I can’t wait to hear what books you like to use! 

My 5 Easy Steps To A Smooth Writers Workshop Block

Writing is an important skill that our students need to learn, and should be a part of our daily schedule each week. It is amazing to see the improvement of our students’ writing when we are including it as part of our daily schedule. You can have your students write daily with just a few simple steps and systems. 

     One of the most important parts of Writers Workshop is the mini-lesson. I like to use concepts that I see my students having a hard time with and then incorporate that into a mini-lesson. The mini-lesson can be a grammar skill you see a lot of your students struggling with, or it can be a writing skill like word choice or sentence types that your students have trouble with. The mini-lesson should not be more than 10 - 15 minutes. We don’t want to have our students sitting there for a long time, instead, we want to get them to their writing. 

     

     The next step in running an excellent Writers Workshop block is mentor texts. Bringing in books that focus on different skills as writers is a great way to help students understand what they should add to their own writing. I like to start each new unit with a couple books that fall in that genre of writing. There are so many great books out there that go along with each of the different genres of writing that we teach. I usually display the books on the smart board so all my students can see the pages as we are reading. This also makes for a great way to discuss the books and ideas to add to their writing because all of the students can see the pages. 

     I use lots of graphic organizers during our Writers Workshop block. Graphic organizers are great because you can reuse the same organizers for the whole writing unit. This allows your students to get used to the organizers that are being used. This also makes it so I can reuse the organizers year after year. Just make the tweaks you need to make for each new year. Graphic organizers make my life so much easier and after the first few weeks of school, the students know exactly what to do with each organizer and how to use them. When my students need to add more pages to their writing they just go and grab the organizer that they need. Some students will only use one or two organizers, and some will use a lot more. Using graphic organizers makes it easy for my students to transfer their work to regular paper. As they finish their writing, they meet with me for a conference to go over it and make sure they are ready for the next step.  I love the functionality of graphic organizers, and my students love them too!

    The next part of a smooth Writers Workshop block is publishing. Once the students are done with their writing and they have met with me to go over it, they are ready to publish. The publishing process can be done in a couple of different ways. Some teachers really like their students to hand write everything out on paper. Other teachers like to make everything digital. I like to do a hybrid of the two. After the conference with me, my students get a publishing paper and write their piece on the paper. Just like the graphic organizers, I always have plenty of extras out for my students so they can just grab what they need on their own. Once they have written out their published piece on paper, they then type it on the computer. I have them use Google Docs to do this. I create an assignment in Google classroom and then they are able to type their piece. I like to have them type it also because they need the practice with typing for state testing. The more opportunities we can give them to type, the better. Also, when they type their work, all of their published pieces are organized and in their Google Drive and this makes it easy to add work to their digital portfolios. 

     The last part of running a smooth Writers Workshop block is the organization. I like to keep these paper trays from Lakeshore Learning around the room. I have a spot in the classroom for all our writing materials. I l keep our graphic organizers, rough draft paper, and publishing paper in the boxes. Once the students learn how to use the different papers and where to find them, it makes our writing time run so smoothly. Students just get up, grab what they need, and then return to their seats. Having the supplies organized is so important. I love being able to help my students become independent learners. 

     With just a few simple steps you can have your students writing every day. Your Writers Workshop will be so organized that you can run your sessions in a snap. Your students will become better writers and be begging for writing time. What step in the Writers Workshop block are you most excited to try in your classroom? Tell me in the comments! 

My Top 5 Picture Books for Celebrating Christmas in the Classroom

Christmas is one of my favorite holidays and times of the year. At this time of year I love to share my favorite picture books with my students. Do you enjoy sharing picture books with your students? Take a look at my list of favorite books and let me know what you think!

The first book on my list is The Polar Express. This is a really fun book about the magic of Christmas and Santa. I love sharing this story with my students. Our favorite thing to do is come to school with our PJ’s on and enjoy this story with a cup of hot chocolate. This is a great book to enjoy on the last day of school before winter break!

     The next book on my list is Pick a Pine Tree. This is a great story about the traditions of decorating for the holidays. It focuses on picking your Christmas tree and decorating it. I love doing a writing activity to have my students describe decorating their tree and how they would do it. 

     The next story on my list of favorites is Dasher. This is a fun story about the life of Dasher the reindeer and how her life changed when she took the opportunity to work with Santa. This is always a favorite of my students. 

     The next book on the list is Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree. This is a really fun story about making Christmas special for a whole community. Mr. Willowby’s tree is too big for his house so the top of his tree gets passed around to many different houses to bring holiday cheer. This is a great story to help spread the holiday cheer in your classroom! 

     The last book on the list is Red and Lulu. This is a great story about two birds that make their nest in a beautiful tree. Once a year the people around the tree put lights up and decorate the tree. People come from all over the country to visit the tree. One day the two birds are separated and they don’t know if they will ever find each other again. (How does it end?!?)

     Picture books are such a fun way to celebrate the holidays. Tell me in the comments what your favorite picture books are to share with your students!