Telephone Number Games & Activities

This is for all of you Spanish, French, ESL, or other foreign language teachers out there. Need some number activities?  Conversational materials?  Cultural activities on Mexico? I’ve got an e-book for you. (http://www.lulu.com/content/4144199

I am one of you foreign language teachers, and I’ve just got to let you in on the materials and activities that I’m creating with my partner and former colleague.  Diane Farrug is a French teacher and she and I have joined up in our own Foreign Language House, in which we create and produce every type of activity and lesson for Spanish, French, and ESL teachers.

Other Subject Areas

I’ve always been a student of other subject area teachers because I have always gotten soo much out of what they do and how they do it.  Even if you don’t teach anything like a foreign language, you might find some ideas or techniques that could work for your students.

To view our currently listed Spanish and French e-books: Telephone Number Games, go to http://www.lulu.com/content/4144199

**This blog theme won’t allow links at this time.  Sorry

Community Question

Those student questions just keep on coming while you’re trying to start class or explain important concepts.  And  elementary grades teachers see hands stab the air before they even start anything!  How can you start class?  Explain the important stuff?  Finish off the class? When students flood the airwaves with questions it can paralyze a lesson and the flow of a class, not to mention getting everyone else off task. Set up community question time to keep your instruction intact.

The Community Question

A community question is a student-formulated question that concerns, or is beneficial, to most of the class, or the community.

After teaching the fifth grade for a while, I found that I had to overtly teach students this because they thought that all questions were fair game for public airing at any time and in any amount.  Can I go to the bathroom?  Can I get a drink of water?  Can I borrow a pencil from him? All in the middle of my instruction, or worse, directions.

Personal questions are for one-on-one asking with the teacher.  A community question is for asking the teacher in front of the whole class.

Teaching the Community Question Versus the Personal Question

The younger the students, the more time and explanation needed on explaining the differences between the two question types.  Ask for example of each and post them.  Give hypothetical situations.

Framing the Community Question

Now that the community question has been unleashed in your class, be sure to assign it an amount of time. There are some students who love to draw out community question time to half of the class time.

• Two minutes to 5-6 minutes is enough
• Designate this time for the beginning of class
• Designate this time for both the beginning and the end of class

If there is a persistent questioner who insists on being heard, hand him/her a sticky note to write the burning question down on, and then ask the student to post it on your desk, or on a bulletin board question parking lot.

Designating a short amount of time for community questions frees a class from interruptions, and ultimately give the students more time with you, the subject, the materials, and the activities. Everyone learns more and better.

Pie Chart to Manage Class Time

Don’t those classes, or subjects, fly by?  Or for some novice teachers, they drag and you feel like the clock is moving backwards!  Planning a class or a subject minute-by-minute can seem daunting, tedious, or down-right OCD.  Plan it using a classroom management pie chart the easy, clear way.  At the end of using a class pie the minutes of your class or subject will be staked out.

Planning Class by the Minute: the Classroom Management Pie Chart
Think of your class and its time as a pie, circle, pizza, cake, or any round shape that makes sense to you.  Now, sketch it on a paper.

Next, jot down the goals and the tasks you need for the students to complete.  Something like:

1. Read silently
2. Write a journal response
3. Copy new vocabulary
4. Read selection of  in groups
5. Discuss questions # 10-12 in groups

Now, assign your time estimates to each task. Of course you’ll consider your subject, your student’s ages, and your students cognitive and social developmental level. The younger the student, the shorter the tasks, and therefore there should be more of them.
**Remember: a student’s attention span is roughly half of his or her chronological age.

For an agenda like the one above, the tasks are going to vary in time estimates.
Class duration: 45 minutes

1. Read silently- 6 minutes
2. Write a journal response-5 minutes
3. Copy new vocabulary-4 minutes
4. Read selection of  in groups-15 minutes
5. Discuss questions # 10-12 in groups: 10 minutes
6. Class Re-Cap and Homework explanation: 5 minutes

You are the architect of your class and you decide where and how your students spend the most time.  Considering all variables, you need to determine which tasks must be done in class and which can be done for reasonable homework if you assign it.  Your class event structure can vary as you see appropriate, or it can be static on designated days.

Filling up the Classroom Management Pie Chart

Go back to your circle and make it a pie graph of your class. Designate each slice as a class activity. The longer the class activity, the bigger the slice, and vice versa.  Seeing a visual representation of your class or subject like this can be validating, revealing, or clarifying.

Agenda Posted on Board

Do you even hear your students ask, “Mr/Mrs. . what are we going to do today?” It’s such a rhetorical, conversational question that we don’t know how many times we’ve heard it.  It is a gift to be able to point, or nod your head to the class agenda that you’ve already posted.

Classroom Management Basic

One of the few, basic, but vital keys to great classroom management occurs the second the students enter your classroom.  Students need to know what they’re going to do in class, and when they do they feel more secure and open to learning.

Posting the Daily Class Agenda

Sounds basic, right?  It is, but it is also easy to get away from posting the classes daily events, especially for the secondary teacher, and double-especially for the “floating teacher” who can barely arrive on time.  Most teachers begin the year posting the class’s daily agenda, and then they cease because it feels so rote and sometimes useless.

But, when I observe class after class I see that students immediately look at the posted agenda if there is one.  They tend to sit down quicker, and even get out pencils or paper.  The students begin the class with more focus and direction.

Agenda Posting Tips

• Post the estimated minutes that a task will take.  This is going the extra mile, but the students react so positively to this.  It also helps to keep us all on task!
• Write the date (and the period if a secondary class)
• Differentiate tasks or events in different colors
• Use a numerical list, or bullet points
• Write Homework in a different color

Teacher & Students in Classroom

Go ahead, ask me a question.  All of us need guidance and advice on classroom management, teaching techniques, dealing with parents, and school politics (yes-schools are full of politics) all of the time. Please see the Ask Mrs. 14 Category as a type of forum.

Teaching really requires relating to so many different types of people.

The Diversity of People We Relate to:

• Students– of all ages
• Colleagues
• Administrators
• Parents
• School Staff

Now, if your question has to do with something I haven’t dealt with, I’ll go to one of my sources for an answer for you.  Bring the questions or situations and challenges (I really love these).

Student Icebreaker Activiies

AnimalNametage for Name Games

Now everybody is back in school, teachers and students. Rosters are printed out, customized, and kept neatly in your designated desk space, and everyone has been introduced.  The next steps are for us to:

• learn and remember everyone’s name
• to get to know each other a little

NAME GAMES and ICE BREAKER ACTIVITIES

Here are some handy, memory jogging NAME GAMES and ICE BREAKER ACTIVITIES that I’ve learned or created over the years.

NAME GAMES
AnimalName  Guess Who?

1. Pass out the student-created AnimalName plaques to their owners.
2. Give Students 2-4 minutes to scan the room and instantly memorize students and AnimalNames
3. Pick up all of the AnimalNames and hold them behind a binder or clipboard so that students cant see them
4. Describe the Animal on a plaque without saying the name.
5. Ask Guess Who?  The first student wins points or other small incentives.

**Foreign Language Teachers- great in the target language
Teacher On the Spot (so popular)

1. Students trade AnimalNames and keep exchanging plaques for 2 minutes
2. Teacher’s eyes are closed
3. Teacher needs to place correct AnimalName with Student (tough for secondary teachers and those high enrollments!)

Ball Toss Names

1. Students sit in a circle on the floor, or in a circular desk formation with the AnimalNames propped in front of them
2. Teacher tosses a ball to a student to initiate a continuous ball toss
3. Tosser says,  “Hi.  I’m Catherine.”
4. Catcher must say, “Hi Catherine, I’m Mark,” before he/she tosses ball to a different student.
5. Continue until all students are hit

*degree of difficulty increases if teacher adds another ball or two that are tossed  in simultaneously
**Foreign Language Teachers- great for greatings and my name is . . .

ICE-BREAKER ACTIVITY

Preference Circles
An oldie, but boy is it a goodie if you make the preferences fun, yet firmly age appropriate for the students.

1. Students and teacher form a large circle, with the teacher as the designated first caller.
2. Teacher asks Who Likes . . . ? and Who doeesn’t like . . . ? question one at a time
3. The students who answer Who Likes The Jonas Brothers? Step in to the middle of the circle, or on the next question, the students who answer Who didn’t like Mama Mia? Step into the circle.

*degree of difficulty increases if you quiz the students later on exactly who like what, or who didn’t like what.  Then you techies can whip up graphs of preferences, or have your techie students do it for extra credit.
**Foreign Language Teachers: Excellent for practicing personal preferences

Memorizing all of those names can be as much fun as getting to know your students.  Establishing that teacher-student relationship is priority #1 during these first few weeks. There are so many engaging ways to do this.  Got any tips for the rest of us?  Please post a comment below.

Primary Grades Name Tag

AnimalName plaque as lizard

1. Ready to get all of those students’ names memorized?  Got your acronyms handy and your student-separated-at-birth-from-celebrity tricks going?  Name recognition and using students’ names immediately just starts the teacher-student relationship off well. All students love for teachers to know their names, and to use them frequently. But how to remember them all instantaneously?
2. It’s challenging remembering twenty five names and faces on the first day of school for k-5 teachers.  Then teachers of grades 6-12 and beyond are tasked with putting upwards of a hundred names with faces.  Student created animal-name cards get the name-game going, and they also lead into engaging ice-breakers, and even subject area activities.
3. AnimalName Plaque
4. The goal is for each student to create an Animal Name Plaque of their own first name in the shape of a favorite animal,car, etc, or a monster. The student’s name is prominently posted on the plaque so that the teacher and other students can read it from across the room.  Plaques should be able to stand up alone on a desk or on the floor.

Materials

• Choice of white paper: computer paper, or white construction paper cut down to 41/2’’ by 6”
• Pencils
• markers
• crayons
• class set of kids’ scissors

1. Each student folds one piece of paper in half—like a hamburger, with the CREASED SIDE UP.
2. Students then turn the folded paper where the opened part faces to the right.
3. They draw the side-view silouette of a favorite animal, car, or a monster is a favorite with  grades 5-12.
4. Outline the silouette WHICH HAS TO BE AT LEAST 2 INCHES IN HEIGHT with a dark marker.
5. Open the folded paper.
6. Students are to draw a mirror line of the line on the page to the right to create a SYMMETRICAL SHAPE.
7. Outline the entire figure in dark marker.
8. With imagination, students are to color and add detail to the shape as an animal, or the desired object.
9. **Always best to fill in shapes with crayons since it goes so much faster, wastes less markers, and doesn’t “bleed through the paper” as marker does.
10. Student finally writes his/her name clearly in dark marker on the colored side of the animal.

clipart.peirceinternet.com/objects.html

Classroom management is about student management, as in carefully placing, directing, and knowing where each student is every minute of your class.  When you manage your class this well, there are no discipline issues, nor are there those empty minutes of trying to find lesson plans, notes, seating charts, or even students.
The best aid for staying on top of it all is the LOADED TEACHER CLIPBOARD. It’s portable and light, so you can have it with you all of the time.
And you techie-teachers, you need an analogue dashboard (a see-it all page of info for those techie-teachers who have sites or blogs) to stay on top of running your class, and

Your clip board is your mini, portable desk. Instead of running to your desk across the classroom  for reminders, note,  and lesson details, have it all with you on the clipboard.  It will have your class roll(s), seating charts, the class or your schedule, and the days lessons plans clipped to it. And, I always had a few neon post-it notes on there with random notes and lists.

Materials

• Clip board-standard size
• Class roster(s)
• Pencil
• Blank sheets of paper
• The Class’s daily schedule, or your schedule
• Scotch tape
• ruler

1.  Seating Chart. Draw a basic seating chart of your class, or classes on computer paper. Create enough space in each desk icon so that you can write each student’s names in it.  Leave some room at the bottom for notes.  Make several copies; you can use a seating chart per week and use it to take student notes for reminders and documentation.

2.  Class Rosters.

3.  Tape a copy of your class schedule, or your schedule on the back of the clipboard.

4.  Lesson Plans. Copy or use original lesson plans for the day to clip onto the clipboard.

Stack the above in the order that is the most useful to you on the clipboard.  At the end of the day, jot down some notes about the class or students on the seating chart  leave it on top of your desk. Organize it to be ready to go for the next day: rosters in order of class meetings, lesson plans updated.  The loaded teacher clipboard is also great for substitutes since there is so much student and lesson information in one place.

Content Bulletin Board from beverlyschools.org

Time to set up those bulletin boards and bring some color into your classroom and hallways!  I love a carefully planned and executed bulletin with colors that sing to you, but . . . for years I couldn’t do the execution part, or get it all up plumb and square.

Materials

• butcher paper in the background color
• tape measure
• scissors
• bulletin board trim
• loaded stapler (kind that can be un-hinged to use on walls)
• straight pins (who knew!?)
• All of your “postables”

Just like cooking, the secret to a great outcome is having all of the ingredients/materials layed out in front of you and ready to go. A blessed veteran teacher took me aside one year and stepped me through her fool-proof process.  She was a math teacher, so I learned from her organization, precision, and secret ingredients.

1. Measure the width (more imporant) and the length of your board with a tape measure; write them down.
2. Gather enough butcher paper to span the length of your bulletin board. (take you tape measure and notes with you when you get the paper)
3. Enlist a friendly colleague to help you hold the paper up to STRAIGHT PIN IT ONTO THE BOARD. The whole straight pin step changed my life; I could get it wrong up there several times and just re-do it.
4. Staple the paper onto the board.
5. Razor the edges with one “arm” of the scissors
6. Put the boarder on with STRAIGHT PINS first; then staple them.
7. Post your materials and decor with–up–STRAIGHT PINS first.

So . . remember: tape measure, straight pins, friendly colleague.

spirals & number 2's

I love back-to -school shopping for my classroom as much as I do back-to-school-shopping for clothes!  Well, almost.
Back to School Shopping is everywhere, all over Target, Old Navy, and JC Penney.  Just as our students need to be prepared, we teachers need to be outfitted with our own Classroom Survival Kits. A great or just a good Classroom Survival Kit, CSK, can make your day-to-day classroom experience by having all of the tools that you need  ready and available for hard duty, plus some essential niceties that just make you feel better.

The best post-its, your favorite pens, the most reliable stapler, and the least-scented dry-erase markers . . . you’ll be thanking me in mid-October.
Top Ten School Supplies for the Classroom:

1.    Grading pens. This is super-duper personal territory.  Whether you’re a Red or a Green or Purple (I love those two), the more you like the pen, the easy all of that grading will be.
2.    Number 2 pencils.  The basics work most reliably here: yellow and hand sharpened like good old Ticondergas in a box.  Students love the mechanicals, but I always break them.
3.    White Legal pads.  The best for the eternal to-do lists.  You can flip over a page when you’re done so that you can flip it back the next day to see all that still needs doing.
4.   3 Hole puncher: electronic if you can swing it.  Our colleagues forget the No Child Left without 3 Hole-Punched Paper Behind law.  Eases all faculty resentments. (Newbs-nobody is excited about picking up papers after a poor kid whose teachers gave him holeless handouts)
5.   Stapler. Swingline really has the monopoly for both papers and bulletin boards.  Write you name in black sharpie on the bottom of it, and slap some masking tape on top with your name written in Red sharpie.  Theft control.
6.    Crayola washable packages of markers.  All of the poster, illustration, and mural projects calling!
7.   Sharpie pack: medium & multicolor.  Keep this in your desk and lend them judiciously to  visible and trusted students. (Newbs- they’re permanent, meaning not washable)
8.    Staple remover. No need for words (NNFW).
9.    Kid scissors- a few.  Get as many as you can! For all of those cutting up and cutting out activities.  Use them too; adult scissors in a classroom are a bad accident waiting to happen.
10.  Scotch tape. Popular among the student population.  Good for sealing envelopes.

Top 13 School Supplies for Teachers (Couldn’t limit myself-I don’t like even-Steven stuff either)

1. Binders. Gradebook hard copy binder, unit binders, lesson plan hard copy binders, etc.
   
2. Dividers. Use them in the binders and label them with detail.
3. Post it notes.  What would we remember and do without them? Not to mention the hundreds of classroom activities that can be done with them.  I prefer, big, neon, and lined.  The classic pale yellow just seems invisible now.
4. Paper clips. NNFW
5. Manila folders. The supply needs to be endless: some for you, and one for each of your students.
6. Colored manila folders. The for you organizers for your classes work and for your to-do yesterday file.
7. Folder labels.  NNFW.  Use them with clear detail!
8. Full Month Calendar. Several options and this is highly personal.  I prefer a big, thick, desk calendar that lies smack-dab in the middle of my desk.  I write every holiday, meeting, school event, conference, and personal event on it with multi-colored sharpies. Lots of pencil too for erasing.
9. Clip board. Clip on seating charts, class rolls, lesson plans, and it is a mobile, analogue memory bank.  Works great.
10. Freshens mints or altoids spearmint mints.  Picks you up and wipes out any teacher dissing in the bad breath category.  I pop one before each class.  Nice ritual.
11. Water bottle. Hydrate as you project your voice like you’re at the Actor’s Studio eight hours a day.
12. Anti bacterial gel. NNFW
13. Tea bags. Pick me up during a planning period or at lunch, or after school.

Wish List (Why not dream?)

1. Mini- dry erase boards in a class set
2. Bundles of wash cloths for erasers
3. Strong magnets to post papers & posters on magnetized dry erase boards

What do you think?  Please submit any other suggestions in a comment here, or if you have a better ranking suggestion I’d love to hear that.