Creating a Caring Classroom Family

Guest blog post by Barbara Gruener

Now that it's time for a new school year to begin, life finds me increasingly eager for the first day to arrive. My students and I will be blessed with approximately nine months together; how do we want to spend that dash between August of this year and May of next year? Since we'll be spending so much time together, I believe it's important to take time to create a caring classroom community that works together like a family. Taking a look at the word "family" gives us insight into what's needed to create that kind of caring and supportive environment.

F is for Feelings 
Children need to be allowed to feel. They need to feel safe. They need to feel connected. They need to feel heard and understood. And they need permission to express those feelings. Let students know that feelings choose us and are neither right nor wrong. Our job is to learn to process feelings appropriately. Encourage students to keep a feelings journal. Chart their feelings whenever you can. Talk about feelings in morning meetings. Connect them to characters in literature and heroes in history. Practice “I statements” with your students for healthy feelings expression:  I feel _____ when you _____. I need _____.


A is for Appreciation
Gratitude and thankfulness aren’t inherited, they are learned. Author Ann Voskamp says our lives are richer when we’re thankful in all things and that “gratitude always precedes the miracle.” Keep blank thank-you note cards available in a writing center to encourage students to share their appreciations. How do you teach students to not only accept, but appreciate differences in each other? Use books like Unique Monique by Maria Rousaki to celebrate differences. Then discuss appreciation ritually. A morning meeting discussion might start like this, "I appreciate Laura for her willingness to share her resources and help people." Encourage your students to be on the look out for daily opportunities to appreciate classroom family members. Ms. Voskamp also suggests we make sure students write their appreciations down since naming something tends to authenticate it.

M is for Music 

Music is a unifying activity. We can’t all talk at the same time, but we can all sing at the same time. Music also tends to seal the deal because rhythms and lyrics stick with students. A study published in the Journal of Neuroscience (Jan. 2013) from student research out of Concordia Universite in Canada suggests that early musical training has a significant effect on brain development, in particular creating stronger connections with gross and fine motor movement. According to John Ratey, author of the bestseller Spark, exercise is “miracle gro for the brain,” so combine meaningful movement with music and give students frequent brain breaks to grow their grey matter. Pick a theme song with uplifting lyrics for the year {Home by Phillip Phillips} then get up and dance. You know what they say; the family that plays together stays together!

I is for Integrity 

Integrity is all about being in the right place at the right time doing the right thing. But when students come to our school families with all different backgrounds, how will they know what the “right thing” is? It’s crucial to your caring classroom climate that you and your students work together to create a class family promise, or social contract, delineating the values that you all promise to practice. Connect specific behaviors to these abstract virtues so that students can better understand how the values you’ve agreed upon look, sound, and feel. Seize teachable moments, like when there’s a conflict, to have sensitivity circle time and talk through how they want to treat one another and what might need to happen before moving forward. Your family classroom will be an excellent training ground for lifelong social skills that your students will use for years and years to come. Make sure that the values aren’t simply posted on a cute contract that everyone has signed, but that they serve as the classroom code that you refer to over and over again as you travel through the days, months, and year.

L is for Love 
This one might seem way too obvious, but to use the words from an old Beatles ballad:  All We Need Is Love. When children feel loved, when they truly belong, when what matters to them is important to you, the world is their oyster. And as you read, that may sound cliché and way too simplistic, but it is, indeed, oh so true. Here’s the glitch; there are always going to be students that are {gasp!} hard to love. You know it’s true. So the challenge is to find a way to make each one of them your favorite. We know that what we focus on, we get more of, so we must love them where they are for who they can become.

 Y is for Yearning
One of your biggest tasks is to create life-long learners who hunger for knowledge and thirst for wisdom. How will you inspire passion in your little sponges? One way to do that is by giving them voice and choice, every day. When we give children choice in their learning, we step out of lecture mode and into the role of a coach. And guess what happens? Choices trigger the release of endorphins, the brain's optimal thinking chemical. Once ignited, these chemicals fire up motivation, create feelings of positivity, and foster an optimistic attitude. (Ornstein, 1991) Optimism might very well be our greatest renewable natural resource; who wouldn’t want that level of confidence and well-being in our future leaders?

While this list is by no means exhaustive, let it serve as a good starting block as you dash into another year and work at creating that all-important, family-like atmosphere where children feel safe, appreciated, respected, and loved. Here’s to a terrific time connecting in your character building.
  

Though she started her education career as a high school English and Spanish teacher almost 30 years ago, Barbara Gruener now serves a counselor and character coach at a PreK-3rd grade National School of Character in Friendswood, Texas. When she's not blogging at The Corner On Character, she enjoys public speaking opportunities, reading, journaling, knitting, and baking. 

Solving Unknown Perimeter Mysteries

Mystery Perimeters Freebie Lesson

Perimeter is a pretty simple concept to grasp, but finding unknown sides of irregular polygons can be challenging for kids. Solving these types of problems requires the ability to think logically and somewhat abstractly. Fortunately, we can help students make the transition from concrete to abstract with a hands-on lesson that allows them to make those connections.

Earlier this week I finished writing Exploring Perimeter, a CCSS aligned, comprehensive resource for teaching perimeter. When I finish a new book, I like to offer a free sample lesson, and I selected Mystery Perimeters to share as a freebie. This lesson presents the unknown side problems as “perimeter mysteries,” a fun twist on a traditional assignment. You can download the lesson from my TeachersPayTeachers store, but be sure to return to this blog post to pick up some valuable tips for using this activity. The free version of Mystery Perimeters uses inches, but the one you’ll find in Exploring Perimeter also includes a variation that uses centimeters.

Tips for Teaching Mystery Perimeters
When I was almost finished with Exploring Perimeter, I recruited some field testers and reviewers to ensure that the book was rock solid. Joy Darden, an upper elementary teacher in NC, shared some really useful tips for teaching the Mystery Perimeters lesson, and I want to pass them along to you.

When Joy introduces this lesson, she shows her students how to identify the pairs of opposite parallel sides by coloring them the same color. All horizontal sides are colored one color and vertical sides are colored a different color. In the illustration on the right, all vertical lines are outlined in green and the horizontal lines are in blue. If you project the demo page onto an interactive whiteboard, you can use your colored drawing tools to demonstrate. You can also give students their own copies of this page and colored pencils to follow along and practice with you.

Next, Joy shows her students how they can use addition and subtraction to find the missing sides. Having the lines color coded helps them to decide which ones are needed to determine the lengths of each missing side. For example, in the top polygon, you can find the length of the missing horizontal line by subtracting 3 inches from the total length of the opposite side, which is 5 inches, to arrive at a length of 2 inches. In the bottom polygon, you can add the lengths of the known vertical sides on the left, 2 inches plus 1 inch, to arrive at a length of 3 inches for the missing side. After students figure out the missing sides, they add to find the total perimeter as usual.

Another way to solve missing side perimeter problems is to divide the polygon into rectangles as shown on the Mystery Perimeters Demo Hints page shown on the right. By dividing the polygon into rectangles, you can infer the lengths of the missing sides. You can also combine the color-coding strategy with this method.

Another reviewer, Ann Sullivan, pointed out that with some of the more complex shapes, you may have to divide the shape into more than three rectangles. Yet the basic concept is still the same.

If this kind of reasoning is too difficult for your students, you can display the demo page that shows the figures on a 1-inch grid. Because the polygons are drawn to scale, you can also have your students measure the sides with a ruler to find the missing lengths. (Note: When you print the pages, make sure the printer settings are set to "Actual" and not "Fit to Page." If your printer shrinks the pages, the polygons will not be accurately drawn to scale.)

Remember that you can download this Mystery Perimeters lesson, absolutely free, from my TeachersPayTeachers store.

Exploring Perimeters – Step by Step

If you like Mystery Perimeters, why not preview Exploring Perimeter to see what the entire book has to offer? All thirteen lessons include a teacher direction page with Common Core Standards, printables, and answers.

Exploring Perimeter is organized in sequential order according to skill level to make it easy to teach perimeter for deep understanding. When you develop these concepts in a step-by-step manner, students are far more likely to grasp those concepts and retain them. As one student who tested the materials said, "Last year I got every one wrong when you had to find the missing number. This is much easier to figure out because it goes one part at a time."  Now that’s high praise indeed!

Gearing Up for Next Generation Science

Guest blog post by Wendy Goldfein and Cheryl Nelson

As part of the Next Generation Science Standards, elementary teachers will teach engineering.

Really??? I’m not an engineer!

The problem solving skills, communication, perseverance and teamwork that students will learn while participating in these lessons have been identified as necessary skills for the 21st century worker.

I'll just let someone else handle it. Our Advanced Academic teacher does some of those lessons with our advanced students.

By applying the math and science skills they are learning in the classroom to solve real life engineering problems, all students will see why it is necessary to learn these subjects.

Are you kidding me? I have trouble getting my students to read on grade level and perform basic computation. My plate is full!! Just when am I supposed to fit this into my day?

Sound familiar? Many elementary teachers across the country, faced with new mandates to include engineering in their curriculum, are experiencing the same anxiety. However, it is entirely possible to integrate engineering into your classroom, even if you have an inclusive classroom with special populations. Engineering does not have to be an “add-on” to what you are already teaching. Rather, it requires you to look at what you are already teaching through a STEM lens and find the opportunity for an engineering experience.

How to Integrate Engineering Lessons into the Curriculum
Integration into science lessons are the obvious first choices, but you will be amazed at the number of engineering concepts that can easily be integrated into history, literature, and math.

In literature, students could be challenged to:

• Design a house that can’t be knocked down by a tornado for the Wizard of OZ.
• Create a zip line for Peter Pan.
• Plan a prototype for a new castle for Cinderella.

All can be accomplished using every day materials such as cardboard, hair dryers, fishing line, and recycled paper towels rolls in an elementary classroom.

In math, assign students to:

• Produce an index card roller coaster that requires right angles.
• Build a spaghetti tower that must reach a certain height.
• Develop a catapult made out of paint stirrers that launches “angry peeps” to a specified distance.

Engineering provides an opportunity for students to apply their mathematical concepts in an engaging project for even the most reluctant student.

And in social studies:

• Construct a suitcase for colonists to Jamestown out of recycled cardboard that will meet certain dimensions and hold a specific weight.
• Build a shelter outside for a small animal using only those materials that you find on the playground such as grass, rocks, and twigs in order to replicate an early settler’s choices.

Engineering adds a new dynamic to a history lesson and enables students to comprehend the challenges faced by people from another time period.

Ok, I follow the logic and that sounds great. But I still don’t have time to redo all of my lesson plans to include engineering. 

Engineering Resources for Elementary Teachers
Luckily, you don’t have to recreate the wheel and invent your own design briefs and materials. There are plenty of resources available to bring engineering into all of your subjects and new ones are being added daily.

• Engineering is Elementary by the Museum of Science in Boston offers a comprehensive program with teacher guides and kits of materials. 
• Design Squad at PBS has a wide variety of STEM lessons for grades 4-8
• eGFI – For Teachers maintains a comprehensive list of lessons for grades k-12
• CEE – Children’s Engineering Educators LLC has free design briefs and activities

Engineering in the elementary classroom is here to stay as a crucial part of the STEM equation. Obviously not every child exposed to engineering will become an engineer. However, the skills of collaboration, communication, and problem solving obtained from these real life lessons will eventually allow students to take their place in the 21st century workplace. Fueled by a business world concerned that they won’t be able to meet the future demand for such workers, this initiative has the support of the White House, state legislatures, and local school boards. It has become a national priority thought necessary to keep the United States competitive in the global market. Elementary teachers will play a crucial role in planting the seeds of enthusiasm for engineering concepts with children.

Wendy Goldfein and Cheryl Nelson teach 4th grade and have spent the past three years developing an engineering program at their school. They have presented their model for children’s engineering at the Atlantic City NSTA STEM Conference, the San Antonio NSTA Science Conference, and many other state and national conferences. They recently launched Get Caught Engineering, a website and blog that provides ideas, lessons, and resources for elementary teachers. Click to read their article, "Family Style Engineering," which appeared in Science and Children magazine. You can reach Wendy and Cheryl at getcaughtengineering@gmail.com or via their Get Caught Engineering Facebook page. Be sure to leave them a comment here to tell them what you think about their engineering ideas!

Multiple Intelligence Theory for Kids

You're probably familiar with Dr. Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence Theory, but have you thought about teaching your students about these concepts? You might wonder why anyone would attempt to fit this into an already packed curriculum, but after you read this blog post, I’m hoping you’ll decide to give it a try.

Multiple Intelligence Theory suggests that IQ is not one-dimensional and can't be described by a single number. Dr. Gardner proposed that there are at least eight different types of intelligence, each one with a corresponding area in the brain. He used terms like “mathematical-logical,” “bodily-kinesthetic,” and “visual-spatial” to describe these intelligences, but many educators have adopted more kid-friendly terms like "Music Smart," "Body Smart," and "Math Smart." My students really enjoyed learning about the “eight kinds of smart,” and this knowledge helped everyone appreciate each other’s strengths, especially when working in cooperative learning teams. If you'd like to download a free mini poster with all 8 kinds of smart, head over to the Multiple Intelligence Theory and Growth Mindset page on my Teaching Resources website.

Free MI Survey and Video Tutorial
When I set out to teach my students the basics of MI theory, I faced a problem. Most Multiple Intelligence Surveys were long and difficult to read, especially for elementary students. I looked for a survey that was short and included common activities that kids do, but I couldn’t find one anywhere. So - you guessed it – I created my own MI Survey for Kids! It’s not research-based, but enough kids have used it over the years for me to feel confident in saying that it’s an effective tool when presented as a fun activity rather than as a scientific assessment. The survey is pretty easy to administer, but because it appears complicated, I created a video that explains exactly what to do and where to find additional resources on this topic. You can request a copy of this free multiple intelligences survey for kids and watch the video from the Multiple Intelligences page on my website.

Step-by-Step MI Lessons
In addition to the survey, I developed a series of interactive lessons to help my students understand each of the eight kinds of smart. A few years ago, I decided to write a book to share these lessons with others. Multiple Intelligence Theory for Kids: Step-by-Step Lessons and Ready-to-Use Printables includes engaging, cooperative learning activities for students to help them learn about all the ways they are smart.

MI Theory and Growth Mindset
Some educators believe that the recent research about growth mindset means that MI theory is no longer relevant, but I disagree. However, I do understand concerns about praising kids for being smart, so I think it's important to have a full grasp of both theories to avoid fostering a fixed mindset in your students. I updated Multiple Intelligence Theory for Kids to provide information about how to use MI theory and growth mindset research together to empower students. I also developed a two-part webinar during which I shared step-by-step strategies for implementing both MI theory and growth mindset research. Interested? Click over to my TpT store to check out the professional development webinar pack for MI Theory, Mindset, and Motivation.

If you still have a few weeks of school left with your students, this would be a great time to test out the MI Survey for Kids and some of the activities. If you are already out, you'll find this kid-friendly Multiple Intelligences survey to be an excellent way to start off the new school year. It will help your new students identify their own strengths and it will help you get to know them better. Teaching your students how people are smart in many ways can be very empowering, and most students enjoy the process of discovering how they learn best.

Laura Candler

3 Easy Ways to Wrap up the School Year

Guest Blog post by Krystal Mills

I know that some of you lucky-ducky teachers have finished for the year already, or are close to it. I, myself, have a solid month left in the classroom. Don't feel too bad for me - we don't go back to class until September! Regardless, if you're like me, it's time to reflect back on the year that was, and maybe even look ahead a little toward next year.

So much has happened this year and my students have grown in so many ways, as I'm sure yours have. I encourage you to make time for a discussion with your students about what each of them has learned this year. What do they know now that they didn't know before? It'll make for an interesting conversation at the very least, and will provide the platform needed for you to try any of the three ideas I have for you below.

Three easy (and low prep) ideas to incorporate into your class as you wrap up your school year!

1) "Our Quilt of Knowledge"

Give each of your students a square of paper and have them write one or more things on the square that they are glad to have learned this year. It doesn't have to be academic! It could be sports related, extracurricular, social, behavioral or a life lesson. Students could also draw a little something on their square, color it with markers and/or make a border around their square to make it a little special.

Then, take the squares and arrange them to create a "Quilt of Knowledge". Laminate, if possible, and make sure to show next year's group at "Back to School Time" all of the exciting things that they will learn in their new grade. This would be a perfect "Back to School" bulletin board idea!

2) "A Little Advice for Surviving Grade ___..."
After reflecting back on the year that was, have your students write a short "advice column" to next year's class. Advice should be practical things for the new students - things that your current students wish that they would have been told.

Be sure to take the best "advice columns" and share them with your new class in the fall as a bit of an ice breaker activity. Again, this could make a great display for your new students next year. Two birds - one stone!

3) "A Simple Simile"
After students have had a chance to talk about their year, have them create a simile comparing their school year to something either positive or negative (it's more entertaining to have a mixture of both). Of course, you may have to review what similes are, but it's always fun to see how students have viewed their year. There are always a few sourpusses - that's to be expected. Most students, however, will remember the fun times, the many things that they have learned and compare their year to something positive.

Examples:
"Grade five was like a roller coaster ride - ups and downs, but mostly just fun!"
"Grade six was like making a really hard jigsaw puzzle, it took a whole year and it wasn't easy, but I finally got all of the pieces in the right places."

Similes could be written on to poster board and laminated, again, looking toward next year's students.

I hope that you have had a fabulous year with your students and that you've learned as much as you've taught! I know I have, as I always do. To those of you still finishing up the year (like me) hang in there - I can see the light!

Krystal Mills is a Grade 7 teacher in Prince Edward Island. She is the author of the Lessons From The Middle blog where she shares lessons from the classroom, and occasionally from her life as a mom of two young boys. The goal of this Canadian teacher blog is to share middle school lessons, activities and ideas from her classroom and to collaborate with the wonderful online community of teachers out there as well!