Hashtag Awards

Let's face it--this generation is growing up in a completely different world than the one we grew up in. 21st Century Learners has become cliche but we are preparing our kiddos for a world of technology being used on a daily basis and they need to know the vocabulary.

When I was doing their awards this year I thought to myself-maybe I should just do #awards! For example: #futurepresident,  #futureFridaKahlo, #classfashionista, #stellarspeller. I didn't get my act together in time to create something for my students before our awards day so I asked the students to make their own certificates and create their own hashtags (or tic-tac-toe boards as they call them) to describe themselves. Now let me preface this by saying, I would usually send them back to sound out their words better but we just have so much going on right now I just wrote their dictations for many of them. I also cropped their names out so I know it's hard to get the full picture of the frames they made.

This is my future rock star (he's already a ZZ Top fan) so this one was perfect.

#handsomeandbrave    

We just read Ramona the Pest where the teacher tells her to "sit here for the present" so we just talked about what that word means. She said she's here every day so #present

#awardsdayparty

#numbers

#bffsandbooks--that about sums up a Kindergarten experience! :)

Inventing a New Holiday

Even if you are not in Texas, this is a good resource for ideas of cumulative projects to do with the kiddos. http://www.texaspsp.org/primary/primary-tasks.php

We did the holiday one in our class. We brainstormed a list of all the holidays we could think of. Over a few days we did Venn diagrams to compare/contract the traditions of two holidays at a time. I showed them some basic ways to do research on the computer and we answered questions they came up with regarding the different holidays.

Then the challenging part. They broke up into groups to invent their own holiday. Many right away wanted to do Easter or Valentine's Day--so we had to talk about inventing something new. They decided on the traditions, the date to celebrate and the budget needed.

 This is what they came up (I know you'll know right away which one is my favorite. :) .

We had a little girl with a broken arm so they were thinking of a day that would cheer up people who got injured and can't participate in PE or recess any more.

:) 

Community Festival Day

What I loved about this one is they said they would do a Compliment Circle just like we do in class.

Library Day

Dad's Rock Celebration

Here in Texas our school year ends before the end of May. So we don't get to officially have the kids participate in making activities for Father's Day. Because we celebrated moms I feel like it's equal opportunity to celebrate our dads too! Dads tend to be either more reluctant or more busy-they don't typically get as involved in our day to day activities. So I think they were excited to be invited into our class to be appreciated. We painted portraits of them, we wrote their biographies (my favorite line is the student who wrote "when my dad was 11 he graduated college"--I didn't know I had Doogie Howser as a parent. :) And we wrote cinquains. The students wrote what they called their Dad to start-dad, daddy, papa, papi, pop and then 2 adjectives, 3 verbs, a sentence and then another name for their father.

Here are a few examples;

I LOVE that he came up with "Star" and "King" as his dad's names. :)

This was our spread:

I think it was a good experience for everyone!

Getting Feedback From My Kinder Students

I think it's important to get feedback from your students on how they think you are doing. This can be tricky with little ones. They are very good at gauging your reactions and telling you what they think you want to hear. We used to use the Renzulli Learning program and it did an interest survey in the beginning. My students would just click "LOVE" for everything! :)

So I do it in a way I can see from their responses how I am doing. I generally ask them:

What does your teacher like? (Now I've had years where students would name particular students like they thought that student was my favorite-that's not what I want to happen, so if I'm doing that I need to correct it).

What doesn't your teacher like?

What does your teacher always say? (The response I want to this answer is something like 'good job' or 'yes'-I don't want answers that make it sound like I'm fussing at them all the time).

What does your teacher eat? (I throw this one in for fun to see how well they know me).

And then finally--my teacher is.....(and I leave it open-ended).

These are my responses from this year:

This kiddo knows me very well! Oh and she thinks I'm beautiful and creative, so....:) 

My teacher likes inspiring kids--wow! And she did a very creative answer saying that I eat "green eggs and ham".

I LOVE that they know I like books! I did not like that I always say "be quiet" (I actually don't think I have ever said those words-but that's what she hears I guess when I ask them to keep the noise down).

My teacher like me!--LOVE!!!!

I am a vegetarian so I actually do not eat chicken. :)

This one made me laugh-I don't dislike ladybugs but it's not like they are something I collect or anything and I really don't feel strongly about pudding either-not sure where those answers came from.

I DO like sharpened pencils!!!

Ruby is my dog by the way. :) And again, I don't eat McDonald's, but in their minds.....

An easy way to take the temperature of your class and see how you are doing and how well your kiddos have gotten to know you throughout the year! :)

What Teachers Dream About....

I like to teach Multiple Perspectives in different ways. We write about how a character or object feels, thinks. Or maybe comparing what two different creatures see, hear, etc. like a butterfly vs. a caterpillar. I also like to ask the students to put themselves in someone else's shoes and think about what that person/thing would dream about.

Since it's Teacher Appreciation Week and all, I asked them to write: What do teachers dream about? I knew everyone would right away think of a class of good listeners, so I asked them to dig a little deeper and think of something else.

My favorite one--inspire kids!

Now let me explain. :) When I do guided reading, I ask for no one to disturb me unless there's an emergency-like Justin Timberlake is at the door ready to sweep me off my feet.

This little guy didn't know what to write. His mother is also a teacher so I asked him to think about what she would dream about and right away he said he knew what to write.

My dog. :)

Now I know she wrote this because I asked them not to just write about kids being good.