"The value of an idea lies in the using of it."
Thomas Edison
Have a good week,
For six weeks I filled in for the ELL teacher who was on a maternity leave. During that time we had a visit from the Mariner Moose--the mascot from our local baseball team. One of the paraprofessionals created a bulletin board to celebrate our local team and my small groups wanted to participate. It was an excellent use of our time.
Here are five reasons why I would take a break from the adopted curriculum to make crafts with my ELL students.
1. While having students follow the directions to make the craft, I can use vocabulary that they will need in their general education classes. For the very new to English, just using colors and shapes in context was good practice.
2. Crafts can easily be created for a variety of content. When teaching about a particular habitat, creating a model together and discussing it requires more involvement than simply looking at pictures.
3. I wanted my students to practice navigating social situations like asking appropriately for materials and sharing. Practicing in a small group gives them confidence in the larger classroom.
4. I found myself assessing students other skills besides language. I discovered one of my students struggled with cutting paper as well as writing with a pencil. Not all of his learning difficulties seem to be ELL.
5. Creating stuff is often more engaging than the highly scripted materials we have adopted. I truly believe art is an underutilized study skill.
"Circumstances do not make a man, they reveal him."
Wayne Dyer
Have a good week,
I was inspired by a group of highly capable fifth and sixth graders to write this particular poetry challenge. In previous years, the vocabulary was much simpler and the poetry forms were based on syllable count and word families. This year I was substitute teaching in a colleague's gifted classroom while she recovered from surgery. We were working on SAT prep vocabulary words, and I used this study to create this freebie.
April is National Write Poetry Month. I plan to post a poem a day on my poetry blog Poems of Silliness. I would love to have you and your class join me. To download the April 2016 Poetry Challenge, please visit my Teachers Pay Teachers store or my Teacher's Notebook store.
If you want to do a poetry challenge with younger students, the April 2015 Challenge and the April 2014 Challenge are still available.
Happy Friday!
Early in the history of this blog, I posted something about self-control. It wasn't a great post and the links are broken, but the original idea has lasted.
The quote above is one I have used in my classrooms. I often follow up with "Do you want self-discipline or teacher discipline?"
Students don't like it when someone tells them what to do--whether it's me or another student. I am trying to appeal to their intrinsic motivation instead of external rewards. I want them to see why someone may be redirecting their behavior.
Recently, I wrote this on the whiteboard in a class where I was the guest teacher. It was all the redirection most of the students needed. There's always an outlier.
"There is a difference between listening and waiting for your turn to speak."
Simon Sinek
Have a good week,
Some solutions arrive at a moment of desperation.
I have been giving the online ELL test this month. One of the first graders became so stressed he started sobbing and I couldn't convince him to finish. As anyone who has given the mandated state tests knows, this is not a valid excuse for not completing it. I wish it were.
We decided to test him alone in the counselor's office, and I brought a chart like the one pictured above. I put a star on each of the questions he had already answered and the counselor drew lines where he could stop to take a break. I crossed off the numbers at the bottom, because the test had 95 questions. Each time he answered a question, we checked off the remaining boxes. He had a visual of how he was progressing and so he finished.
No, I don't think that a 95 question test is developmentally appropriate for first graders. I wonder what we are doing to our students. Some days I advocate for my students by trying to change the system. Other days I advocate for my students, by getting them through it.
If you need a chart like this one, click here.
"Saying nothing sometimes says the most."
Emily Dickinson
Have a good week,
All week long I have been celebrating a milestone here at Artistry of Education. To celebrate its 1000th posts, I have been offering a week of digital swag. Here is today's freebie.
The prefix milli means 1000. I wrote a short worksheet with five words that start with milli: milliliter, milligram, milliliter, millisecond, and millipede.
To download this worksheet, click here.
On Wednesdays I usually do a book review, but to be honest I didn't find a book I loved that fit the theme of 1000.
For those of you just stopping by for this post, Artistry of Education has hit a milestone of 1000 posts. I am celebrating by giving away freebies each day for a week that are related to 1000.
What I did notice is that many books that have the word 1000 in the title are How-to books. This gives me an opportunity to introduce a new genre to my students. People create all kinds of things for their homes and gardens, then write up the directions for others to follow. (Caution: some of the how to books are not ones I want my students to read. Don't just send them off on a computer search.)
Before we had a district curriculum, I organized my literacy lessons by genre. I have published several of those lessons on Teachers Pay Teachers and Teacher's Notebook. Click here to see my Teaching Genre series.
While I don't expect students to write 1000 ways to do something, I do have a free writing lesson called Top Ten. You can download Top Ten from my Teachers Pay Teachers store. Top Ten is also available in my Teacher's Notebook store.
Come back tomorrow for the final piece of digital swag. On Friday, I will post a round up of the week in case you missed something.
Thank you for stopping by this week. I am celebrating the thousandth post on Artistry of Education. All week long, I am sharing freebies that have a thousand theme.
Yesterday I shared a mini-research project called A Thousand Years Ago. Today I am having students travel through time in the opposite direction and imagine what life will be like a thousand years from now.
The questions on the two assignments are similar on purpose. I want students to think about how people meet their needs based on their surroundings.
To download the organizer for A Thousand Years from Now, please click here.
