I'm Back!!!!.... and teaching vocabulary!

I'm back! I totally apologize to all my readers for disappearing for the last couple of months.  I took my first real grad class this fall and had no time to breathe.  Something had to give and unfortunately it was my blog.  But, the class is over and I am back!  I have so much to tell you but instead of one long post, be looking for short posts over the next week or so to catch you up!

The class I took was TONS of work but also very rewarding.  In Massachusetts, if you have even one student in your class who is and English Language Learner, you need to take a class called Rethinking Equity and Teaching for English Language Learners (RETELL). It's basically an intro to ELL and walks you through tried and true activities that helps ELLs succeed in the classroom. Being my second year in district, I found the class to be EXTREMELY helpful and my biggest takeaway is direct vocabulary instruction. I have always felt that vocabulary is such an important part of teaching social studies and last year I just knew I wasn't cutting it. My students were just understanding vocabulary on the most superficial of levels and I knew it was because I was teaching a population I had never really experienced before.

In the class they taught us a vocabulary activity called the Seven Steps to preteach vocabulary. Here is a fabulous example of Seven Steps from an elementary teacher:

I knew this was exactly what I needed but I decided to tweak it for my class.  Now, almost every day, my kiddos walk in and we preteach a word or term they are going to need in order to understand the upcoming content (Tier 2 and Tier 3 Words). We do it in the same order every day:

1. Introduce word and have them pronounce it twice.  Ask if they know anything about the word and identify and prefixes, suffixes, and/or base words.
2. Have them write down a student friendly definition.
3. Tell them how we are going to use it in content.  I also like to tell them how it is used in other contexts (for the word "convention" this week, we talked about the Constitutional Convention but we also talked about ComicCon).
4. I show the kids a YouTube video that better illustrates the word or a visual.
5. Lastly, the students are given a sentence stem that they need to finish with the students in their table groups.  We then share out as a class.

This method has truly revolutionized my class!  Not only are the kids truly understanding the vocabulary, it has allowed me to frontload my teaching.  As an example, I taught the term Articles of Confederation three days before we really learned about the Articles of Confederation.  The kids absolutely love it and have been acing their vocab quizzes like champs.  They can use the words weeks later in a sentence and I really feel like it has helped me make bigger connections in my content. 

I showed two different videos with this term.  The first clip, I explained to them, is how the British knew how to fight and the second video was how the Americans learned to fight from the native Americans.  We were able to compare and contrast the two styles and this whole lesson took less than ten minutes of my class.

If you're interested, I have started to gather together these vocab lessons and have made them available on Teachers Pay Teachers.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Mesopotamia-and-First-Civilizations-Direct-Daily-Vocabulary-Instruction-1675580

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/American-Revolution-Direct-Daily-Vocabulary-Instruction-1672787

Head on over to TPT to check these out and look for more as I progress in the year!

Social Studies Brackets, Word Walls, and Interactive Notebooks....oh my!

Another great couple of weeks in the book!  The hubs, kiddos and I got our third bout of strep throat but we weathered through it and we can finally see the other side.  School wise... knock on wood... everything has been bliss.  The kids have hit a sweet spot, academically, where I can continually ask for more and a greater percentage rise to the challenge.  Here's a breakdown of what I've been doing:

1. Civilization Madness
We finallllllllyyyyyyy finished Mesopotamia and I wanted to finish it up in an engaging way but not too engaging because the kids had just finished their Hammurabi plays.  I had been reading about using a bracket system in social studies.  You take multiple THINGS (people, events, etc.) and you have the "compete" in a March Madness type bracket system.  We had Sumer, Babylon, Assyria, Chaldeans, Phoenicians and Hebrew compete against each other for "best" civilization.  I told the kids they were able to choose what made them the "best".  I launched with this....

...and then the fun began...

The kids loved the whole activity and it was a great way to summarize the whole unit.  If you are interested, click here to grab some of the resources so you can do this on your own!

2. Egypt!!!
Egypt is always fun and I decided to combine the spirit of genius hour with a Common Core research activity. I decided at the end of this unit, the kids would be able to choose any topic they found interesting and research it.  Instead of just a simple research and report, the kiddos need to make a claim and support it through research (i.e. "Mummification was disgusting." or "A woman's life was tough in Ancient Egypt.")  The kids will be able to support this claim with evidence and I'm going to have them present in a variety of ways.  I'm going to allow Go Animate, the Zimmer Twins, Google Presentation and basically whatever they want.  We just started our Egypt unit bit I wanted my early finishers to have a chance to start thinking about the project.  When I moved into my new classroom, I was amazed at the amount of nonfiction was there but I wasn't sure how to use singular books on a single topic.  I figured it out though...

When kids are done with class activities, they are able to peruse the books looking for possible topics.  So far, my early finishers love it.  By the way... isn't my word wall fabulous....

3. Rejuvenation of Interactive Notebooks!!!!
I love my interactive notebooks, but being my first year with new curriculum, I lost my path around November.  I really started to plan and document with the notebook and I see the buy in from the students increasing every day.

 It's so funny, the more I focus on the notebooks, the more invested the students become.  It really shows that what a teachers feels can go a long way.  We did a pretty amazing Constitutional Convention unit where the kids did text mapping while I worked with six kids at a time on the Great Compromise and the 3/5 Compromise.  I looooove when I get to figure out how to work small group teaching into a class of 27!  After we completed our unit, the kids had to pretend they were a member of the Constitutional Convention and were Tweeting at the scene.  I gave them an example......

Then they amazed me......

All in all... an amazing week!

If you are interested in some of the foldables, head on over to Teachers Pay Teachers and check out my newest activity.

Finally breathing!

I'm back!  It has taken me about three weeks, and many glasses of wine, for me to finally catch my breath in my new district but I'm finally getting there!  My new school is totally different than my old school.... But I love it so much.  My kids aren't different.... Kids are kids and I love them so much.  One of my kiddos, the other day, stopped my riveting lesson on the 50 states to say,"Miss.... We know you didn't choose the thug life.  The thug life chose you."  I responded, "I'm so happy someone finally understands me!"  Needless to say, we love each other.

So.... What have I been up to?

1. Setting up my room

My classroom was an old music room and is huge and awkward.  It doesn't have any bulletin boards and horrible walls.  I used a trick I saw on Pinterest and covered some of the walls with plastic tablecloths.  My husband suggested edging them with decorative duct tape and .... Voila!

2. I really wanted to start my new year with a bang so I used the first day activity from the book Teach Like A Pirate. I had the kiddos tell me something about themselves through the sculpting of play doh.  I'm cheap, so first I found a simple recipe on Pinterest and spent a Sunday making play doh with my midgets.

My new students looooooved this activity and made some amazing things

Musical notes

Bacon

A crown because she's a princess:)

Asian noodle

Volleyball

3. I did some really fun getting to know you activities using Twitter rules.  I had so many teachers come in to look at themI got  to meet a whole bunch of the staff! #yolo!!!

What do you need in a teacher?

What is your opinion of school?

What type of learning environment is the best for you?

4.  I've started our interactive notebooks and the kids already love them.

I'll have some amazing student work to show you next week.  If you are interested in some of the geography units I made for the interactive notebook, go on over to Teachers Pay Teachers and take a gander.

Lastly, I am making a big ole Common Core push this year so we will be studying primary sources till our eyes bleed.  If you are doing the same thing, you may want to look at my TPT store.  I have made task cards for both documents and artwork as well as offering both as a mega bundle.

Have a great week!

Interactive Notebooks

One of my goals this year into really start pumping up my Teachers Pay Teachers store. I promise I won't inundate you with lots of products. Just like with blogging, though, I've noticed that there is definitely a need for middle school products. After we got back from the White Mountains, I spent all night building building an interactive notebook unit for the five themes of geography. I can't wait to use it in class and right now it's on sale in my TPT store. Click here to check it out!

While you are there, my entire store is 15% off for two days only. I have some awesome argument writingfoldables in there that have worked wonders in a notebook and have made argument writing easy cheesy! Click here to buy my swag!!!

Enjoy and if you make a purchase, let me know how you like it!!!!

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Just Fun Stuff:)

No, I did not run away or fall off the edge of the planet. For those of you who are already dipping your toes in the pool and sipping margaritas at 4pm, please remember that I live in New England. You know.... That place that had a blizzard this winter and a hurricane in the fall. That means that my kiddos aren't getting out till the 25th and I'll be out somewhere around the 27th. You heard me right.... The 27th of June. Needless to say I have been busy with my Grad Dance, final grading, end of the year evaluations, end of the year hiring and next year's budget.....you get my point. Well, as we speak almost everything is done but the budget and that is so close (over 1000 markers later).

So, now I get to play. Although I've been a bit lazy on documenting lately, I thought I would share some of the fun things I've been doing with the kiddos.

1. About 10 years ago, I had my kiddos keep interactive notebooks and although I loved them desperately, I was too early in my career to figure out how to grade them without ending up in a straight jacket. My department head said she could always tell when I was at the end of a unit because I was in tears and my hair was falling out. This is what happens when you collect all notebooks and grade every page.

Well, I'm older and wiser (and much chubbier) and Pinterest has renewed my interest so I've been doing some activities that are notebook worthy in order to practice.

First, after doing a round robin activity on the major inventions of the Industrial Revolution, we talked about how all regions would benefit from the inventions but one region would benefit most. I gave kids a map with the regions drawn in and pictures of the inventions. I had them number the inventions and write the names at the bottom then we talked it over. The students soon realized that the west was going to boom with the inventions, the north was finally going to prosper and the south was going to become more isolated and dependent on slave labor. We talked about how the south just got a box with combs and major transportation lines actually ran to its north. The kids were able to mark up their pictures however they wanted (I.e. arrows, letters, etc). I used to do this as a class with no artifact, but the kids loved making their own.

2. One of my favorite things to teach is Manifest Destiny and I love to start it with an analysis of the picture. If you teach it right after the Industrial Revolution, it dovetails brilliantly because the kids can really take in the telegraph lines, Transcontinetal Railroad, steamboats, etc. This year, in my readiness for interactive notebooks, we guided the conversation by making this:

We worked on the definition using this Prezi and then I instructed them to circle three things in the picture that they noticed, wanted to talk about or wanted to question. Underneath the picture they had to make a guess as to what they circled. Once everyone labeled three things, I had students point out things in the picture and we discussed them as a class.

Because I have a long throw projector, I gave the volunteer the "magic paper" and had them isolate the object and then step away from the board about two feet. Voila!!! They loved this and didn't even mind volunteering just to ask a question. They had amazing conversations and our principal even got in on the action. Nothing like a fabulous launch to the unit.

3. Last but not least.... Good old notetaking and foldables. In order to end the year we have toplow through how we acquired the United States from coast to coast. I have the kids read various resources and answer basic comprehension questions. Most of the resources I used were Bentley Boyd's Chester the Crab comics.

My students love these, they come in 5 comic units and even though they are comics, they are challenging enough because they include dialogue, sidebars, etc. Students really need to focus on all aspects of the cartoon to understand what is happening. Using all this information, students created a foldable that they used an an open note assessment.

I so rarely do traditional notetaking, my kids said this assignment was like a "scavenger hunt". Ha!!!! I love when you fool them and make them learn at the same time.

So, do you use an interactive notebook in social studies? I would love to get some suggestions and pointers because come this September(yes, we don't go back till September) I'm all in!

 

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