Question Connection

When I first started teaching I was full of questions, and I've been asking questions ever since. My mentors and colleagues at school were always gracious and offered plenty of advice, but my teaching style is a bit unique and sometimes their answers weren't what I needed. Luckily, times have changed, and with the internet, its easy to ask hundreds or even thousands of teachers for help or advice! Better yet, I'll often get responses from teachers all over the world!

Facebook has been a key player in the game of collaboration. Lately teachers have been posting questions on my Facebook Wall, and I've been trying to repost them to all 50,000+ fans and open the Wall for discussion. I'm always amazed at the spirit of collaboration when others jump in to help.

The Question Connection
To make it even easier to ask your questions, I'm starting a regular feature called the Question Connection. You can post your questions at any time, but from time to time I'll sharing the logo above and issue a call for questions on Facebook. Just post your question as a comment on my Facebook post or directly on my Facebook Wall. I'll send your questions out, one at a time, over the next few days to get feedback and ideas. Follow me on Facebook and be sure to watch for your question to be shared!

Feel free to ask about anything related to teaching or the education profession. Here are a few ideas to get  you started:

• Share an upcoming lesson topic and ask for links to great resources and teaching ideas
• Ask for advice about classroom management, parent communication, dealing with difficult situations at school, etc.
• Ask how other teachers are using technology or specific websites

Questions are only one half of the Question Connection! We also need educators who are willing to answer questions and share ideas. Don't be shy about responding! Even if you have only been teaching a few weeks, you have learned valuable information that can benefit others. Share your successful teaching strategies, links to free resources on the internet, book recommendations, helpful advice, or best classroom practices. The only thing I ask is to refrain from self-promotion or providing links to your own teaching products.

If you ever feel hesitant to ask a question or respond with a suggestion, remember that your collaborative efforts benefit many, many other educators. Your question may spark a great discussion that leads to someone else learning a new strategy or discovering an amazing resource!

Great Questions + Advice from the Heart = The Question Connection! Enjoy!

End of the Year Fun!

The end of the school year can be a grueling time when you fight your students every step of the way, or it can be a fun time when you create special memories together. The traditional advice is to keep following your regular routines, but I always found myself to be fighting a losing battle when I did that. My only hope was to engage them in activities that were a little different from the norm and make the last few days enjoyable for us all.

Last year on Teaching Resources, I outlined a dozen ways to keep kids active and engaged at the end of the year. Here they are in no particular order:  

• Learning Centers
• Cooperative Learning
• Classroom Book Clubs
• Welcome and Advice Letters
• Class Scrapbooks
• Class Newsletters
• Fun Friday
• Scrabble Tournaments
• Outside Learning
• Team Challenges
• Ed Tech and Online Learning Games
• Multimedia Projects

For more details about how to implement these strategies, read the full article, "Easy and Fun Activities to Wrap Up the School Year."

End of the Year Classroom Management Strategy
It goes without saying that if you plan to have your students do special activities at the end of the year, you need a great classroom management system in place. It's important to have a back-up plan, too. I highly recommend the Erase-a-Letter Strategy. In a nutshell, you write the word STOP on the board and cross off a letter each time you have to warn the class about their behavior. When they run out of letters, you stop the activity and switch to a back-up plan. You can read a full description of the Erase-a-Letter Strategy on Teaching Resources.

If you aren't out of school yet, I hope you find something here to make your last days less grueling and more fun. For those of you lucky enough to be out already, just pin this blog post to your End of the Year board on Pinterest to save it for next year!

Time for School Year Reflections

During the last week of school, I think it's important for students to reflect on what they've learned and how they've grown during the school year. I created this School Year Reflections printable as a convenient and fun way to have students think about the school year. It asks them to reflect on what they learned, tell what they thought was the best part of the year, describe an accomplishment that makes them proud, and so on.

I always loved reading these forms at the end of the year, and I used some of the information on them to create my end-of-the-year PowerPoint presentation or movie. If you do the Classroom Yearbook project, you could also have them glue these forms to the backs of their pages instead of writing letters.

Coincidentally, a few days after I posted this page on my site, I discovered that earlier this month, Rachel Lynette of Minds in Bloom had posted a great list of 20 End of the Year Reflection Questions. I thought you might like to customize my School Year Reflections form by using some of her questions, so I created a blank copy of the form for that purpose. When you click on the School Year Reflections printable above, scroll to the second page to see the blank version. Print it and write in your own questions.

What are your favorite reflection questions to use with your students? Have you used any that are not listed here?

Host a Classroom Scrabble Tournament!

Do you like to play Scrabble? If so, imagine how much fun you'll have teaching your students how to play! Scrabble is a classic word game, but it's become popular again in part because of iPad and computer apps that allow you to play with friends around the world. It's fairly easy to set up a classroom tournament, an event that will keep your students completely engaged during the last days of school. You can find all the files I reference below on my Odds N Ends page on Teaching Resources. Even if you don't want to set up a tournament, you can still teach Scrabble to your class as an educational game and a fun way to wrap up the year. To use the game in the classroom, you'll need one Scrabble game for every four students. You can purchase 6 games together as a School Scrabble kit, but usually you can ask kids to bring in games from home and that works fine.

Introducing the Game
Before you actually start the tournament or allow students to play on their own, be sure to teach the rules of the game. Don't assume that kids know how to play, even if they own a game board. Most kids today don't seem to know the basic rules of the game, let alone the finer points. Oh, they'll tell you they know how to play, but, trust me, they don't! You can introduce the game by displaying the Scrabble Practice grid on a whiteboard or showing a real Scrabble board with a document camera. It’s not exactly like the real board, but it’s close enough for an introduction.

Draw out 7 letters for yourself and 7 letters for the class. Write the class letters in huge blocks on the board with the number values clearly shown. Play against the class play and write the words for each round directly on the board. Use this as an opportunity to clarify the rules of the game. On the first day that you introduce the game, don’t worry about calculating the scores properly. However, before starting your tournament or letting them play alone, be sure to teach students how to keep score using the proper point values for each letter and the values on the board. If you have the computer version of Scrabble, set up a projector and let your class play against the computer by working in cooperative learning teams. Students in teams can put their heads together to come up with a word to beat the computer. Call on each team to share their word and let the team with the best word come to the computer and play it. If you don’t have the computer game, plan for them to play a practice round before starting the actual tournament.

Hosting a Scrabble Tournament
When setting up my Scrabble tournament, I found it best to divide my class into pairs of students who competed against each other. I always paired students who had excellent word-building skills with students who needed some help. They were allowed to whisper and discuss their word choices together when playing. Here are two of my boys consulting about their Scrabble strategies! I have to say that looking at that picture brings back some great memories!

The way I set up my tournament was to have students rotate to a different table each day for three days. I created a Scrabble Board Assignments seating chart to help me keep track of who went where each day. They earned points based on whether their team won the round, lost the round, or tied (had scores within 10 points of each other.) On the 4th day, the top two teams played off to determine who was first place and second place, the next two teams played to determine third and fourth, and so on. You can find the complete directions for setting up the tournament on my Odds N Ends page on Teaching Resources.

Be sure to allow plenty of time to introduce the game, and at 4 days for the actual tournament. My students loved learning to play Scrabble, and the tournament was a hit every year that I hosted one! I hope your students enjoy it as much as mine did!

How to Create a Classroom Yearbook

One of my very favorite projects at the end of the school year was to have my students create a classroom yearbook, which was essentially a giant scrapbook. The project was easy and fun, and my kids really enjoyed looking through all of the scrapbooks from years past. Each student created one page in the scrapbook, and we had a design contest for the front cover of the book. In addition, each scrapbook contained about 10 pages of collages of pictures I had taken throughout the year.

I have a whole box of class scrapbooks like the one shown on the right, and I love taking them out and remembering the students I taught years ago. Each student wrote me a special letter that was glued on the back of his or her page, and it's a joy to reread them!

If you haven't done this project with your students before, give it a try! I think you'll find it to be a great way to wrap up the year. Here are my step-by-step directions and tips for guiding your students through this project. You can download the basic directions from my Teaching Resources website along with the Letter to My Teacher template.

Materials Needed:

• 12” x 12” heavy white drawing paper or scrapbook paper
• an assortment of colorful and/or patterned scrapbook paper
• lined paper or "Letter to My Teacher" template
• rubber cement or scrapbook adhesive
• photos of students and class activities
• markers, crayons, and colored pencils
• scissors (scrapbook scissors are fun!)

Suggested Procedure:

1. If possible, show students an example of a family scrapbook. Point out details about the arrangement of pictures and elements on the page. If you have scrapbooks from previous years, let students look at those to see examples of how the pages look.
2. Tell students they will be designing their own scrapbook page, front and back. The front will include their name in fancy letters and a photo of themselves. On the back they will write a letter to you telling you their feelings about the school year. 
3. Give each student piece of scrapbook paper on which to create their page. You may also want to give them a practice page to test out lettering methods, scissors, colors, etc. 
4. Allow students to choose one or two piece of scrapbook paper for creating borders and other elements. They should only need 1/2 sheet of each. 
5. Help students cut their borders, photos, and other elements as needed. Make sure they have their first name in large letters somewhere on the page along with a photograph. The example shown above is the one my daughter Wendy did the year she was in my class. I love how she cut out her picture and put herself on the back of a horse! 
6. Ask students not to glue anything down until they have cut out all elements and arranged them on the page. Remind them to leave about an inch margin on the left side that's free of words and images to allow for binding. You may want to do the gluing yourself to be sure everything is in place properly.
7. Have students write their letters to you on lined paper or on one of the pages of the Letter to My Teacher template. There are several variations with different line spacing and in different sizes. Allow students to choose partners who can proofread and help edit their letters. Glue each student's letter on the back of his or her page.
8. Let your class decide on a name for the yearbook. It might be “Mrs. Candler’s Class Yearbook,” “Candler’s Crazy Kids,” or something similar. 
9. After you have selected a name for the yearbook, have a cover design contest. Give any student who wants to enter the contest a sheet of 12 x 12 paper and time to work on their designs. Remind them to include the name of the scrapbook and the school year. When all designs are complete, have a secret ballot vote to select the winning design. 
10. Select a small group of students to create pages with your photos of classroom activities. I often have them work on this part while others are working on cover designs.
11. When all pages are complete, laminate them and bind them with a strip of large plastic comb binding. If your school doesn't have a binding machine, you may have to take it to an office supply store to have this done. 
12. Be sure to allow plenty of time for students to look through their class scrapbook. It's best to have them sit on the floor and open in it their laps or open it flat on a large table. I know from experience that if it's handled roughly, it will fall apart. 

Creating a class scrapbook is a great project to end the school year. Best of all, you'll have a wonderful book of memories to remind you of your special time together! Have you ever had your class create a yearbook or scrapbook? How was your project different from this one?