An Easy and Fun Way to Group Students

Hi, friends! It's Elsa from The Whole Wheat Class. The year is winding down and I know some of us have already begun that End of Year Countdown. How many of you think this time of year can be so hard? Your kiddos are stir crazy, you've got a million and one things on your to-do list, and yet there's still so many fun things left to accomplish before you say good bye!

I know I always love doing group work this time of year. My class seems so independent as we near the end of our time together, if I'm lucky! Pairing my kids on the daily can seem so tedious and sometimes...yes, sometimes...I hear groans from the peanut gallery. Sigh, the worst, right?  The two besties are already throwing each other side eye, trying to figure out how they can work together. Johnny-doesn't-think-anything-is-fun just rolled his eyes and mumbled, "hope I don't get paired with a girl!" (yes, every class has one!) and you've got 1:1 assessments to complete in a limited amount of time. Partner cards are the perfect trick. My kids beg for them! Let me tell you how I use them.

 Partner Cards, as we call them in my room, are just simple picture cards that I've cut in half. So easy, right? These particular cards have a fun Spring/Summer theme that my kids are currently swooning over. They get so excited when they get a new picture. I simply count out the amount of pairs I need, shuffle, and pass them out at random. The kids find their match, "pay" me their cards, and off they go to the centers I've already organized for them. 

You could do this with any type of card you have laying around. My math curriculum comes with a bunch of math game cards. My Mini-Wheats love to match numbers, addition problems, place value cards, etc. If you have phonics cards or center cards those could be used, too. 

BUT, Elsa, I don't have an even number of kids in my class! I know, me either! In this case I have an "odd man out". When I pass out the cards the person who doesn't end up with one is allowed to join any group they'd like. Works like a charm and no one feels left out. 

BUT, Elsa, I have a challenging group, I can't just pair my kids randomly! Then don't! I've definitely needed to get creative with groupings. With this trick no one needs to be the wiser. Organize or pass the cards out in advance. Sometimes I leave the cards at their tables after lunch. This gives me the chance to pass out the cards the way that I want my kids to be paired. They come back from recess and see Partner Cards and don't know the difference. Instant buy in from them and I get my kids paired how I want. 

 I hope you've enjoyed this quick and easy trick. If you don't have anything in your classroom that would already do the job here's the link to  FREE partner cards in my TpT store. Now, go get those assessments done and have a great End of the Year!!

We'd love you to post any fun grouping tricks you have in the comments below! Thanks for stopping by. -Elsa

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Read Alouds to Support Social Thinking

Hi Friends! It's Nicole here from Why Pencils Have Erasers and I'm pumped to be blogging at The Punchbowl today.

In the primary classroom, read aloud is such an important part of our day. It is a time for exploring possibilities, building connections between every area of our content instruction, reviewing, previewing, and so much more. Read alouds encourage even our youngest students to question, discuss, build on prior knowledge, and expand their thinking. One of my favorite ways to use our daily read aloud time is to explore social thinking themes with my kiddos. Read below to find my top three can't-live-without-em picks for creating a thoughtful classroom community!

Now picture this: due to our restrictive scheduling, the only time I could build read aloud into our schedule this year was during snack. The me of September felt that surely, this could never work. How could I expect my kiddos to munch their goldfish, peel their clementines, and heck, even remember to eat all while thoughtfully considering the pages in front of them? Would this valuable time be squashed into nothing more than a 15 minute filler? Turns out, I couldn't have been more wrong. Not only are my kids more focused and attentive than ever, they actually eat more without the distractions of talking with their table mates (cue: less nervous emails from parents worrying that Jack/Samantha/Liam/Elizabeth/Jonathan/Ellie's snack box didn't come home quite empty enough).

Now, their mouths might be full of seaweed when they ask me questions about certain characters, and occasionally someone spills their chocolate milk because, well, books are just so interesting, but our snack time conversations have become one of my favorite parts of the day. My first grade kiddos have proven that they really are quite skilled at multi-tasking, and I often watch in awe as they quickly take concepts from the books we read and apply them to classroom activities and interactions. So, proud teacher aside, here are my top three picks for building social thinking skills:


1. The Blanket Statement

I use Jo Ann Stover's book, If Everybody Did, each year to form our classroom rules. Not only is it hilarious, but it also gives my first graders a clear visual about why it actually is important to follow the rules. The best part? It provides an excellent point of reference for the ENTIRE YEAR in situations like:

"Isaac are you putting those legos in your mouth? Imagine if everybody did."
"Olivia, imagine if everybody used the markers like they were trying to stab them all the way through the table."
"Is that your snack trash on the floor, Naomi? Imagine if everybody did that!"

The possibilities are endless.

2. No More Interruptions
Julia Cook is essentially the Cesar Milan of social thinking. If you haven't yet purchased any of her books for your classroom, then I must insist you stop reading immediately and put that Amazon Prime account to good use. Though many of her titles play a key role in my social thinking instruction, I truly couldn't live without My Mouth Is A Volcano. 

Wouldn't it be amazing to have a way to thoughtfully, non-verbally, and without distraction remind students to raise their hands? This book provides the language for just that. I read this book during the first six weeks of school every year, then create the key principles into an anchor chart like this:

This hangs directly next to my easel in our class meeting area and for all those moments when someone calls out ("MRS. Z!" "THE ANSWER IS 12!" "I WENT ICE SKATING THIS WEEKEND!") I simply (and silently) point to the chart as a reminder. I don't have to stop instruction or publicly remind students to raise their hands. Students are assured that I always still want to hear what they have to say, and our lessons can continue on. Game. Set. Match.

3. Grow Your Brain

If my classroom had a slogan, it would be 'grow your brain'. Why do we work hard during math partners? To grow our brains. Why build our Read to Self stamina? To grow our brains. Why practice building, rebuilding, and otherwise reciting all those trickster words? (I'm looking at you, was.) You guessed it, brain growing.

JoAnn Deak's book, Your Fantastic Elastic Brain provides students with a scientific, but easy-to-follow explanation about why making mistakes, bring brave, working hard, and trying new things all help to stretch, strengthen, and grow your brain to help you be your best self. I find myself using this book as a tool to encourage students in almost every part of our school day as a way to provide positive reinforcement, motivation, or encouragement. In fact, many of my students report going home with a 'tight head' from all their brain growing. I always count that as a win.

What are your favorite read alouds to build social thinking skills? I can't wait to hear about them! My Amazon Prime account thanks you in advance…

Thanks for stopping by!

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Using Crayons To Teach Responsibility?

So, you're a teacher. I'm guessing in the primary grades. Though perhaps you are one of those incredibly brave souls that spends their days working with upper elementary or (gasp!) middle schoolers? (If so, you have my full and complete admiration.) Here’s my question for you today: have you ever spent too many precious minutes seconds of your day picking up pencils from the floor? Colored pencils? Crayons? Sharpening any of the aforementioned items? Well, my job today is to share my secret so that you never find yourself doing this again, while also teaching your kiddos responsibility at the same time.

I should probably start by introducing myself. I’m Nicole from Why Pencils HaveErasers and thrilled to be joining my favorite teacher-author-blogger-creators over here at The Punchbowl! 

Anyway, back to the good stuff. Let’s flash back a moment to August. Here I am at every teacher’s favorite place, Lakeshore Learning, excitedly dreaming of the year to begin. New students, grand ideas, the world was my oyster. I picked up some brand new supply caddies, color coordinated to my new classroom theme, without a second thought. Why give even think about the distribution of materials? I’d do what I’d always done – shared caddies at the center of our tables, common materials for all.

Let’s flash forward to the end of October. Here I am, nearly through my materials for the. whole. year. and at the end of my rope. Pencils and crayons lost to the wind, EATEN, or otherwise dismembered. And don't even get me started on the colored pencils and erasers. It was time for drastic action. Determined not to purchase a single new material for my students, and to teach them how to responsibly care for these tools, a new system was born. Move over sharing, it's time for individual materials. 

Now, I get it. Sharing is caring and certainly an important skill in any first grade classroom. But how could I possibly ask my kiddos to share these items responsibly if they couldn't manage them independently first? In any case, there's at least 2,346,789 times of the day when my 23 students are forced to share SOMETHING. I decided sharing could take the back burner on this one. 

If you walk into my classroom now, you'll see a small container of some kind at every seat. Larger tables of four or more have small sterelite drawers and smaller tables of two or three have individual baskets. All labeled with a velcro name tag so that we can easily move materials as we move table seats. And all looking something like this:

In each child's container you will find: a pencil, an eraser, a handheld sharpener, one box of 24 crayons, and 12 colored pencils. Everything that they could possibly need for the work that we do (I withhold markers for choice time only, and glue sticks and scissors are still shared). I drained my supplies to give everyone fresh, new, beautiful materials. When my students walked into our classroom to find this new set-up, plenty of oohs and aahs ensued. The excitement in the air was palpable, perhaps mine most of all. 

As we all sat down to morning meeting, I unveiled our new social experiment. I explained about the missing materials, running out of items to give them, and, of course, added dramatic flair where necessary. I showed the new containers of materials, meticulously went over what was inside, modeled how to count and organize to make sure nothing went missing, and explained that these were the last materials I would be giving for the year. That's it people. Sensing the excitement (and now shock) in the room, I asked my 23 six-and seven-year-olds if they were up for the challenge. Could they keep track of everything? Everyone agreed they could. Hooray! And so we began.  Can you believe I didn't find, pick up, or otherwise deal with a single dropped material for FOUR WHOLE WEEKS? I never answered one question about someone needing a blue-green crayon, or a black colored pencil, or a pencil sharpener. I didn't sharpen any pencils or colored pencils. It was heaven.

Until that one day when the first person lost their pencil. I quickly realized I am way too soft, and could not stand firm on my promise. I suddenly realized how unrealistic it was to expect my firsties to never lose anything for a casual... six months. Given the rate at which I lose my much beloved Flair pens, it also seemed highly hypocritical. But I was still determined for students to be responsible for managing the replacement of lost or damaged things. I wanted no part in this. They could do it I felt, if I could just give them the way. Enter replacement bins:

I already had the colored drawers, and I quickly grabbed two containers for pencils and erasers/sharpeners. Find a purple crayon on the floor? Put it in the purple drawer. Missing a red colored pencil? Go grab one from the red drawer. Ditto for pencils in the pencil cup and erasers/sharpeners in the other bin. Everyone seemed to breathe a little easier with this new found flexibility in our system, and I still haven't answered any questions, complaints, or tears about materials. 

The week before winter vacation, we had our first family breakfast celebration. I excitedly asked my students which piece of their learning they were most excited to share with their families: Your beautiful shadow artwork? Nope. The kind words in your reflection journals? Try again. Well, then the beautiful letters you wrote to our community members? Not a chance. MATERIALS. All they wanted to share was how they were responsible for having their own things, the care and thought they had put into keeping them safe, whole, and uneaten (sigh), and how they could independently problem solve in the face of a dilemma.  It was working! I was thrilled to see how excited my students were to have total control and responsibility of their things.  

Needless to say, during my summer stop at Lakeshore next year I will not be buying more supply caddies, because I am in love with our new system and am thrilled to see my students becoming more independent and responsible with everything in our classroom. After all, this leaves more room in the budget for cute borders, right?

Thanks for stopping by!

Nicole

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Five Little Pumpkins + A Freebie

 Hi everyone!  This is Sara from Sara J Creations and I have one of my favorite classroom activities for Halloween to share with you today.  I love using The Five Little Pumpkins with lower elementary students.  There are so many activities that you can do with this.  Each year, I would change it up a bit, depending on my students.

I would usually start with an anchor chart and the words written out like a poem.  I would also give them a copy that they could put in their poetry binders.  I team taught a first and second grade multiage class for four years.  We would usually just have the first graders read the poem, highlight sight words and practice reading it over and over.  We were trying to build their confidence as readers along with more text that they could read independently during reader's workshop.

For our second graders, we always tried to take it a step or two further.  We would usually work with them on punctuation (specifically dialogue punctuation) and contractions.  They loved to highlight the punctuation on the anchor chart.  They also loved learning how to add dialogue to their own writing and suddenly journal time and writer's workshop were filled with stories that attempted to include the correction punctuation so show when someone was talking.  We also connected dialogue to speech bubbles for our second graders.  We showed them how to take what was in quotation marks and move that to a speech bubble.      

 Both our first and second graders would get a book version of The Five Little Pumpkins.  The first graders would usually add illustrations to the book to make sure the words and the pictures matched.  Our second graders would often have to illustrate and then add speech bubbles to show what was being said.

The possibilities are endless.  You could work on retelling, create a felt board to tell the story, create a new version of the story, hunt for sight words, hunt for contractions, illustrate...Can you see why I tried to change it up each year?  There are so many different activities that you can do with this short poem.  

Do you want to try this with your students?  You are in luck because I have made this book into a freebie for you.  And because I know we each work with different levels and want to do different activities, I created 3 different books.  One has the words and illustrations and just needs to be colored.  The second one has the background and the words and needs the pumpkins added.  The third one just has the text and needs the illustrations added.  I've also included a set of speech bubbles that can be cut and glued onto each page.  Click HERE to download your freebie.  

Here is a little step by step guide for assembling the books.  They are super easy, but I know they can be confusing if you haven't assembled books like this before.  

Print out the pages you need.  They will look like this and you will think that those pages will go next to each other but they actually end up back to back.

Fold the pages in half so that the words and pictures are on the outside.  Crease in the middle.

The crease is now on the left for all the pages.

Flip the pages over and put in order so the creased part is now the right side/outside edge.  

Lay the pages inside the cover.  The creases should be facing the right and the open flaps from the pages are now in the middle at the spine.

Close the cover and staple on the left side.

I hope this helps and gives you an idea you can use this week with your students. Thanks for stopping by the punchbowl!

Sara

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