A Classroom Tip You Will Love!

Okay Teaching Friends,

I have been wanting to share this tip for a long time, and I finally took down a bulletin board yesterday and had my wife film me so I could SHOW you, rather than try to do a lot of explaining. After all,  picture is worth a 1000 words, to this will make you a word millionaire! WAHOO!

If you are like me, and tired of taking staples out of everything before you change out a bulletin board (and/or cleaning up the gazillion staples that are all over the floor, then this really is a great trick. 

Just keep in mind that whatever you plan to save needs to be taken off first! This has saved me a lot of time and I hope it works for you too.

Thanks for stopping by.
-Mr. Hughes

Super Size It!

So, I have spent the last two days working like a madman to get this AWESOME kit ready for my on-line store. I created this board several years ago and have used it frequently since then.

It is a great motivational tool to get get excited about learning, behaving, and helps encourage responsibility. Will it fix every problem? NO! Can it be used all year long? Maybe. That would depend on how often you let students earn a chance to earn a draw card.

I LOVE how it looks on my bulletin board (See Below). I did modify it a little when I made it available on TpT. I wasn't sure how teacher's would want to post the goal students were working towards. You can see from my picture that I had it set up where the students select 5 smaller prizes to win, and several Mystery Motivators. A mystery motivator is a bigger prize- Movie, Pizza Party, etc. The way I play the game is to randomly select a mystery motivator and put it in the envelope. I usually don't even look at it. That way it is a true surprise. Then, when the class earns a BINGO, I have the number of the day roll a dice. The number they roll is the prize they earn. That way, I don't often give away BIG prizes.

Some of the ideas my class has had for the smaller prizes to win include:
-10 minutes of extra recess
- math game day (no lesson)
- Gum Day
- 30 minutes of free choice time
- Free choice PE day
- No Homework for the night
- Extra Credit points for the class
- Skip an Assignment

Some of the Mystery Motivator prizes include:
- Pizza party
- Movie in Class
- Free computers time (no assignments)
- Major art project (something that we wouldn't normally do)

I truly feel, that when used correctly, and not as a bribe (there is a fine line), that the Super Size BINGO is really a great way to encourage and motivate students.

Click HERE to check it out!

Later...

Last Value Board Activity

Values.
Traits that help build a responsible and caring citizen.
I know that this is rocky area when it comes to public schools. Parents will begin to question "WHO'S VALUES"? Is it the Catholic's values? The Mormon's values? The atheist? The Jehovah's Witness? Scary that VALUES are being taught.

This line of thought reminds me of a situation my professor shared when I was in my last year of my teacher training. He shared that as a 5th grade teacher he had been teaching the kids about being honest and not stealing. He had a very upset parent come to his classroom and tell him to stop telling his child it was wrong to steal, that their family did it all the time, and it was not the school's place to tell his child that it was wrong.

WOW! I thought to myself, "How can a parent see things this way?"

For me, values are not attached to a religion, but to a belief that all people have the ability to do good. Values simply provide a generic framework for people to follow. I have truly appreciated the amazing posters and values traits that values.com has provided for me to use. They have provided the poster and inspiring story, I have self-created activities and challenges to support those posters.

Over the past year, I have taken a values poster and focused on the highlighted trait. Traits like Rising Above, Compassion, Hard Work (scroll down), Living Your Dreams, and more.

This final month, our value of study is Vision. I choose this value because I truly believe that in order for my class to survive next year in high school (yes, high school. We don't have a jr. high or middle school. My students go to 7th grade in the local high school) they will need to really have Vision.

I have to admit that I felt truly inspired as I pondered an activity that would support this value poster. As I read about Erick Weihenmayer I knew that I wanted to inspire my students to conquer their "Mount Everest". So I designed an activity that required them to share their greatest challenge and then the plan they would use to overcome it.

I have included many examples from my students. I was a little let down that most wanted to put something related to sports or friends. I was truly hoping that my students would take the discussion that we shared previous to the activity and really strive for an academic goal. A precious few did, and they set some amazing goals for themselves. I even copied their papers this month so they could have they as a reminder of the goal they set.

As I go to the school tomorrow to prepare for the week, for family literacy night on Monday, and to "clean up" after the guest teacher I had on Friday, I will hang these student "Everest" papers for all students to read. I hope that by seeing that EVERYONE has a challenge they want desperately to overcome, they too will realize that it takes VISION to see the solution, and working together to achieve the end results.

Later...

RISING ABOVE

 I don't think that I will post these every month, but I really like how this activity turned out. I knew that going in to a new year, I wanted to focus on an idea that would help my students think about being better and push themselves to be better. Hence, I chose Rising Above.

This is the finished board. Each student was given an arrow page that I designed (see below for more detail).

 This one is my son's. I can do that because I have parental permission to use it on-line. :) Each student wrote in the arrow one or more things they want to do this month to RISE ABOVE. I love how these turned out with all the excuses I hear from students on the bottom half of the page in a faded gray.

 This is what went in the student journals. I printed these from the Foundation for a Better Life's web page.

I know that these are making a difference for many of my students. I have several each month who ask what we are going to focus on next.

What is YOUR goal to RISE ABOVE?

Later...

Snow People (Life Size) Project

I have done snow people glyphs almost every year for the last 5 years. However, last year I got a crazy idea to do them life size. I decided to wait until this year with my son's class to actually try it.

 Let's just say that the 45 minutes I had planned for this activity to take were FAR from enough. I figured since I had created an example (well, okay, my wife had), made up a good instruction board for the SMART board, and walked around and helped, that we would easily be finished.

NOPERS!

However, I will say that they turned out awesome. The kids measured their height and then marked it on their large white sheet of butcher paper. From there they made the snowballs to match their glyph key paper.

 I must say that hanging them up was an adventure. If you do this project and you have very many kids, reserve the main hallway for your display. I had to take over part of the fifth grade hall space (sorry Mr. Parsons) and even then I had to hang four of the eighteen snow people on and near my classroom door. I was hoping to have them all in one large group. But, as you can see, it all worked out okay. So enjoy the view of  the "6th Grade 2012 Winter Edition".

( Notice I re-purposed my hand-tree)

Will I do it again? Probably. The kids LOVED how they turned out and I can't wait to hear what they have to say as they see them in the morning for the first time hung on the wall.

I hope you feel inspired to try a project as big as life!

Later...

A "Giant" Happy Christmas Project

Each time we do a Winter Program at our school, each class is asked to create a decoration to put on the gym walls. Not only does this help with creating a festive atmosphere, it helps the students focus their excited holiday energy on something productive and fun.

This year I decided to dig out the Giant Card project. Not only does it cover several art objectives and forces the students to use their mathematical skills, it allows them to see how important their small piece is the to the success of the whole.

In my eleven years of teaching, I have only done this project twice before. It requires having the students practice copying an image, and then learning to enlarge a photo. I kind of had to rush through that part this year. The kids got about 10 minutes for both.

Next I show the students the card in it's whole form. This is the one this year:

 Next, I hand out small pieces to the students that are numbered so I know what order to put the picture together in. They look like this:

The students put their name on the back of their big blank white square paper and the tile number from the small cut Christmas card. This year I cut 6 inch by 6 inch squares for the students to enlarge their small pieces on. There are 36 squares from this card, and thankfully I had 18 students this year. So, each student did 2 squares. The final project turned out like this (Thanks to my lovely wife for gluing it all down):

I think that it turned out pretty good. If I were to do there this again, and I am sure that I will, I will have the kids work with the students who have tiles around theirs so that they can better align the picture. I also think that I will use a different card.

I hope that this post will inspire you to try something new.

Happy Holidays!

Later...

Reading Is A Gift

Each year at our school, each grade is assigned a month to do the bulletin board in the main hallway. This year I was given the month of December. I enjoy this month because you can do such fun things. When I was teaching in Alpine a few years ago, one of the teachers on my team wanted to do a "hand" tree. So each of the 90 students cut 9-10 hands each, and then we complied them into a mammoth tree. For that tree we used lots of hands cut out on white paper to make the tree look snowy. It was really, really neat. Then the students made ornaments and we "hung" them on the tree.

I knew that this year was the year for the major project. Hand tree it was. I had each student work to cut out 30 hands (they were SO thrilled with that, let me tell you). It took a lot more time than I had hopped for the students to cut the hands. However, we did discover that if the kids fold the paper and trace one hand, they can cut out several at one time. From there, I turned the hands over to my amazing wife, who cut a triangle and then started gluing each hand on, fingers down. 

We decided to go with the theme "Reading Is A Gift". As you can see from the picture below, the board turned out really simple, but eye catching. I love the rope lights that go around it. It makes me feel like I am looking out a large window, with a tree in front.

The students are currently making ornaments that will hang on the tree that will display their favorite book titles. I think it will look great.

Happy Holidays!

Later...

Hard Work

I have started something in my classroom that I think will leave a lasting impression on my students. 

As a teacher, you can request the Foundation for a Better Life Values posters. While you can't select the posters you get, you CAN design awesome lessons around those that are sent. A link will be provided at the bottom for those educators that want to try doing this as well.

Last month our poster focused on Compassion. It was a poster with Mother Teresa on it.

We learned about her and her life. We studied what compassion is and how we show it. Then I challenged the students to look for ways to show compassion. As they found ways to serve each other and those around them, they would fill out cards that explained what they did and I stapled them around the poster of Mother Teresa. By the end of the month almost everyone in the class had filled out at least one card. When the month ended, I took all the cards, hole-punched them, and put them on a ring that is currently hanging by my desk. Since I use, edmodo (another post someday about this site), I was also able to award those students that participated a badge. 

This month, I choose the poster for HARD WORK:

I went to the Foundation for a Better Life website and printed the mini-billboard off for each student. I also printed the blurb that is provided for each poster that tells about the featured person. 

In our Think Pad journals (journals that are used only for specific activities such as these) we glued in the mini-poster, the blurb, and then I had the students write for 3-5 minutes on what they thought the topic meant/what it meant to them.  At the end of the time, volunteers shared their thoughts. Only a couple wanted to share at first, but it snowballed quickly in to a class share.

This month, for the display, I had them transfer what they thought hard word meant to the pages I had printed off. I must admit, some of the students had less than stellar ideas of what hard work is (not really shocking looking at how most youth function today), but a few really caught my eye with wisdom that truly was beyond their years.

As the students handed in their mini-poster on what hard word meant to them, I hung them around the big poster. (I will say that I had envisioned them being much easier to read, but the students used pens and pencils and they didn't show up as well. I will fix that next time.) On the bottom of the page I had it say, "This message brought to you by ______________________" and I had the student sign their name.

This is what my bulletin board looks like. It is located in our classroom. I think this could be a powerful message for other students if it were displayed in the hallway, however, I want them to see it EVERY DAY, several times. Therefore I post it at the front of the room.

The pictures above and below are examples of a student Think Pads. The one below includes the student's definition as well.

These next two pictures are close-up's of the student's definitions. 

These were rewrites of their journal definitions.

I hope that this will help to inspire you to try something new with your students/class/family.

(Oh, the site where educators can request the posters can be found by clicking HERE.)


Later...

May the Force be Thankful...

Each month I try to do a bulletin board that reflects the season. I love doing the fall leaves. The students color them to their taste and then write what they are thankful for on them. This year several of the students got very creative and made the words look like part of the veins in the leaf. In fact, if you enlarge the photos you can see some of them.

P.S. Thanks my dear wife for making the background and tree, they look wonderful.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Later...