Videos to Use with Your Students

We all know we have pockets in our day-5 minutes until we get ready for lunch, 10 minutes before it's time to go home. And because I believe in using every minute of the day, one way I like to fill that time is by using video clips. Animated clips can be used to teach making inferences, others just to educate about science or math applications in real world settings.

I wanted to share my favorite places to find video clips:

http://thekidshouldseethis.com/ -lots of different videos to choose from-some are more exciting to the kids than others-my students love the domino challenges. You can sign up for their weekly e-mails to see what is coming out new each week.

If you don't follow Terri at Engage Their Minds you really should! She is the best at finding videos to use with the kids. This is one post where she shares clips that have become staples in my classroom: https://engagetheirminds.com

Ted Talks for Kids: https://www.ted.com/playlists/86/talks_to_watch_with_kids - obviously you should always screen and make sure it's appropriate and relevant for your kiddos. My students loved the one on using digital photography to photograph the minute things in the scientific world-including mites that live on your eyelashes! They were also impressed with the 12 year old who created a very popular app all by himself.

Tumblebooks-most public libraries give members access to this site-you just have to enter in your ID number. We watch the Robert Munsch stories over and over again.

There was a time when showing "movies"in class was frowned upon and YouTube was even blocked in our district. Luckily, the times have changed and there is wisdom in using video clips to add some flavor to our lessons.

Digital Stories-If I Were an Author....

I am a big fan of giving students different ways to apply what they are learning. We talk about what an author is the first day of school. We do author studies and I love to see them come back from the library and say "look Ms. Trayers-it's an Eric Carle book!"--because we did an author study on him. I call them authors in our writing workshop, they sit in our Author's Chair to share their work.

So one year I asked my students to write about what they would do if they were an author. They wrote digital stories with their answers (I use the program Pixie). I think they had some really great ideas:

Can you tell that they know what an author does? :) 

End-of-Year Collages

If you can't tell, I tend to take a lot of pictures in my classroom! The past few years I started making a very simple keepsake for my students. I discovered that you can upload pics to Walgreen's photo site and make collages with them. You upload the pics, can shuffle them around until you are happy with it and then put a message on the bottom and add a background color. It's actually pretty easy. What I do is write a message on the back of each one after it is printed-this is what I will remember about you being in our class. 

This year is occurred to me that I probably had enough photos to make collages for our graduating 5th graders-I used pics from when they were in my class and on the bottom I wrote "Congratulations-I'm so proud of you" . This is one of my former students who just graduated from 5th Grade (she's a staff kiddo so I know mom doesn't mind if I use her pics. :)

I have also had pics printed for parent volunteers. We say thank-you using signs or spelling it out with ourselves or making a heart shape with our hands and I make a collage for the parents to thank them for their help. I will just write a note on the back-thanks for helping out on the field trip, etc.

Walgreen's is always sending coupon codes, so usually it doesn't cost more than 30 cents per picture, you can pick them up in the store or get them mailed to you. And I think the outcome is just priceless.

End of Year Read Alouds

I teach using themes each week which drive my choices for read-alouds typically. The last week I wanted to choose some meaningful stories to send my little ones off with. I found some that I really liked for inspiration.

Because let's face it, they will face problems. What do you do when that happens? I like this story a lot for the little ones.

No matter what they decide to be, they will be a good one!

Hopefully my students will grow up and see everything they want to see.

One of my favorite authors writes a story that my kiddos who are definitely going places can relate to.

In Defense of Read-Alouds

Packing up my classroom to move to another school I started with my books. I would take 2-3 office boxes of books home every day. As I packed the one thing I kept finding more and more of is books! They were everywhere! They are a huge focus of our classroom activities.

A few years ago my district decided to adopt yet another reading initiative. They were going to have all students reading by 3rd Grade. To do this we would be required to do guided reading and read-alouds. I was a little confused--doesn't everyone already do this? I attended a day long training to learn how to do a read-aloud and in speaking with other teachers realized they all don't do this. It was hard for me to wrap my head around.

We read a story every, single day. We read picture books, I read them chapter books. We read books to make connections in math, science, social studies, art. We read to learn about empathy and being a good friend. We read to learn about standing up for social justice.

Every week I go on my local library's website and request to put books on hold to go with upcoming themes. I check books out every week. One day this last week of school we had our field day and then painted like Michelangelo and had an assembly. We were getting ready to leave and one of my students says "Miss Trayers, we aren't going to read a book today?". When we were filling out our Kindergarten memories hands-down the most common memory was "Miss Trayers reading to us". They long for those activities as much as we do.

When I prepare a read-aloud, I read through finding any vocabulary I think will be unknown to my students and choose a few words to pre-teach. I often ask them to turn-and-talk about a time something similar happened to them to help them learn to make text-to-self connections. I don't like to interrupt the actual flow of the story with too many questions. I will ask a few questions at the end.

So what are my all-time, favorite read-alouds? Here are a few:

I love being silly and doing different accents so this one is perfect for me. The chickens decide to have a fiesta and try different recipes.

A classic, I know but still a beautiful, meaningful story. How are you going to make the world a more beautiful place.

An example of problem solving. Some boys in Africa are playing soccer and a bully wants their ball-but they are too clever for that.

I LOVE this book! It's a beautiful, thoughtful story about visiting your grandparents.

This is a great story to go along with Earth Day themes. She makes a little refuge for nature in her yard and it grows and grows.

The true story of the friendship between an abandoned baby hippo and an elderly tortoise. This one is a little wordy for the little ones, but they love that it's a true story.

For the love of a tree-this is a great empathy-developing story.

This is a funny story to read aloud because most of the child's dialogue is pretty indecipherable. But the students really like it.

An ingenious way to make new friends when you come to town-has a bit of a surprise ending that the students rarely figure out.

Another good example of problem-solving. Isabel wants a balloon for her own but she's a porcupine.

A worm and a caterpillar forge an unique friendship that extends even beyond metamorphosis.

My all-time favorite book about mindset and not giving up. A penguin with the soul of an eagle wants to fly.

This is a funny story to read-aloud and it has great illustrations!

I could probably list 1,000 books but those are a few of my faves.

Space Real Estate

I use the end of the year as an excuse to do fun units that do not necessarily go along with our regular curriculum. My kiddos had 1,000 questions about space and the planets so we did a unit on on the solar system. We learned about all the different planets and their characteristics.

Then I asked them to use the concept from Kaplan's Depth and Complexity called Language of the Disciplines. We were thinking like real estate agents. They were to sell land on one of the planets. We looked at brochures and I wanted their product to look more like a brochure but this is what we ended up with. They also recorded a commercial hawking their planet to buyers. With this activity I was truly able to see who was able to apply what they learned.

He chose Saturn because you can ride around the rings. 

He chose the moon because you can hide in the craters.

Jupiter because it's the biggest planet.

You can find special things on Saturn.

Neptune-it has rocks.

Makes you want to suit up and take some space travel, doesn't it?

Only One You

When choosing stories to read to my kiddos in this last time we have together-I'm trying to choose inspirational ones. I LOVE this book! Parents are giving advice to their little one about how to be himself. We watched snippets of different graduation speeches where people are giving their life advice and I asked the students to write their own advice-if I was a parent I would tell my child to..... Now for some this just turned into rules like do not steal but some of them really dug deep and came up with some good life advice!

Be happy!

(I believe she was thinking in the context of the fish-like characters in the story).

Be nice.

Don't go and be lazy and say gimme your money. (Maybe a future Republican here. :) .

When your old friends are mean, make better friends.

Be nice to your parents.

Respect teachers.

Be nice to people. Clean your room.

Make friends.

Don't let go of your dreams.

Help each other out.

Travel everywhere and see the world.

Be happy in your own family.