After all these years, my favorite thing to teach has always been U.S. Government! I adore working my way through the three branches of government and am constantly looking for new ways to engage middle schoolers with content that doesn't make an automatic connection with their lives.
I recently found the Genially website and knew that I could use this to create a super engaging activity! Genially is a website that allows users to create super interactive presentations, quizzes, games, and escape rooms.
It is free to use in your classroom and includes all the tools I could want! I can record audio right in the website, insert icons, link to other website, make game boards, and more!
I used the tool to make this engaging digital escape room where students got locked into the Capitol Building overnight (I know... we should really talk to the proper authorities!) and they need to learn about Congress and solve puzzles to escape!
I also love Genially because the tools offer me many avenues to differentiate and accommodate for my emerging learners:
I have added audio reading to pages that contain text.
Genially works with accessibility extensions like Read and Write for Google and Read Aloud. The hover speech function of Read and write works wonderfully on this game.
Genially works wonderfully with the Google Translate extensions. It will translate each page separately.
In order to move through the escape room, students need to answer questions correctly. They are redirected when they are incorrect. This supports executive learning.
If you head on over to my store or Teachers Pay Teachers you can get this resource for 50% off for the first two days!
Woah! What a start to summer!!! We have watched movies in the backyard outside, seen Toy Story 4, and spent a ton of time in the pool! I so enjoy the slower pace of life and my time with my kiddos that are growing up way too fast! I also appreciate that I have only been on break for 5 days and I have tons more to enjoy!!!
As many of you know, I get absolutely jazzed around election time and the upcoming: Presidential election is no exception!!! I wanted to take the time this summer to create some great resources to get your students jazzed and informed about the next election. Today I have finished my labor of love (I've been working on this since February!!) of candidate resumes and task cards for all 27 major candidates. It is a great way for your kids to get a concise overview of each candidate so they can compare and contrast. On each resume, I have included biographical data, education credentials, work history, & military experience. I have chosen to focus on minimum wage and economically helping families, education, immigration, and healthcare for the issues discussed. There are 21 task cards that help students investigate the candidates in greater detail. I have them look for those that have been governors, served in the military, been a Rhodes Scholar, etc. The task cards give the students a scaffold for investigating these amazing women and men!
This item is going to be part of a larger growing bundle. I will be making a Primary Word Wall which will help students understand topics like Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), single payer insurance, refugee status, and much more. I will also be creating an interactive bulletin board to track the primaries in January, and an escape room to help students navigate and further understand the presidential primary process! I think that should take up my summer nicely (on top of teaching coding camp and taking a course in STEM education....at least I'll have a tan while doing it!) ***Head on over to my Teachers Pay Teachers Store right now! This item is 50% off till midnight on Friday!
Hey all! I'm trying to take the labor out of your Labor Day! Head on over to Teachers Pay teachers and give yourself a break from planning with one of my bundles! today and tomorrow, my bundles will be an additional 20% off their already discounted price!!!
Don't forget to sign up to get ideas, tips and tricks, and freebies to engage your students!
I love Thanksgiving! Mostly I love Thanksgiving because it means I get to put up my Christmas tree the next day, but I do really love having my whole family over to just spend time together. Thanksgiving also is a great opportunity to sneak in some learning no matter what age you teach. So, what are some awesome, low prep activities?
If you teach middle school, Thanksgiving is a great opportunity to talk about myths and legends vs. facts. On of my favorite activities to do before the holiday was from Beyond the Bubble. Beyond the Bubble is operated by the Stanford History Education Group and focuses on students being critical readers of history. Beyond the Bubble has a great activity comparing the facts of the first Thanksgiving and the picture that was painted in 1932. Click here for the activity!
2) A teacher can never have enough books and little ones can not read enough! In the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, think about joining Epic! Books ! I’m going to blog more about Epic! Later this week but just know that your students can access high quality, digital books about Thanksgiving! Students can read both fiction and informational text on the site and can find books that are read aloud. Epic! Books are also great for young students to start their journey into researching!
4) Introduce your kiddos to podcasts! Podcasts are a super hit in my house and they help students create critical listening skills. Stories Podcasts is one of my favorites. Students write stories and the lovely peopl at The Stories Podcasts act them out and add music. They have a cute and short podcast about two sibling fighting about a Thanksgiving Pie Off. I suggest it for 3rd grade and above:)
The game is performed whole class but students compete in a group of 3 or 4. I launch the activity by having students turn and talk and discuss the following essential questions:
What obstacles and what successes did the Pilgrims encounter as they attempted to survive at Plymouth?
Once students are in groups I give each student a point sheet and each group gets a spinner. To use the spinner, the students need a pencil and a paperclip.
Once the students have all their paper resources, I begin the presentation. The presentation has students spinning through the game to assign them their actions on how they would have acted in the months leading up to the first Thanksgiving. Every option in the game is taken straight from history. If students “choose” the same path as the Pilgrims, they will be successful all the way up through the first Thanksgiving. Students will also experience the difficulties the Pilgrims had on the way to success.
Last year when I played this game with a group of 3rd graders, they didn’t know that I had created it. While we were playing, one of the kids turned to me and whispered, “Don’t tell my teacher but this is really fun!” Engagement for the win!
Once the game is complete, I have my students go back through the presentation and analyze the information by completing The History of Thanksgiving: Questions for Understanding. As a summary activity, I have the students create an advertisement that extolls the magnificence of the lives of the Pilgrims and and Warning sign that gets settlers to stay away because of the hardships.
Yeah! I love the time of year where I get to start with a blank slate and plan my classroom! I'm not ready to go back just yet, but I'm always ready to shop! Teachers Pay Teachers is having their Back to School sale on Tuesday, August 1st and Wednesday, August 2nd to receive up to 25% off! Don't forget to use code BTS2017 at checkout!!!
If you would like a little extra cash to fill your classroom and curriculum, enter to win a $10 Teachers Pay Teachers gift card and $15 credit to my store! A winner will be chosen at 11 pm tonight!
I looked at my blog the other day and couldn't believe that I haven't updated since July! The start to the year has been fabulous! My seventh graders are adorable and witty. They make me laugh every day. My eighth grade is a wonderful group to loop with. We are already having so much fun. So, how did I start my year?
#1 Yoga Balls!!!
I have been doing tons of research on sensory integration lately and realized that although I make room for movement breaks and try to plan hands on lessons, some of my kiddos need more. We tried a couple of yoga balls in the class and the next thing I know EVERY one of my kids wants to sit on one. I did a GoFund me and through the generosity of my amazing family, was able to buy a classroom set of balls and an air pump. I bought them at 5 Below for 5 bucks and the kids and I couldn't be happier!
I got a new couch too. I'm becoming quite the lounge!
#2 Over the summer I read this amazing book called learn Like a Pirate. It was written by an amazing educator named Paul Solarz about his journey to create a student led classroom. I'm going to slowly start to implement some of his ideas this year and I started with this fabulous team activity that I read about at Runde's Room. They looooove it and it really set us up to talk about working as a team where I am the coach.
#3 It is primary season baby!!!
I am an election enthusiast, nerd, and connoisseur! I created this fun primary board that we use for Do Nows and to spark amazing conversations. I love that the whole school likes to stop by and talk with the kids about the race! if you are interested, you can find it here at Teachers Pay Teachers.
Lastly, I'm gearing up for some amazing green screen videos and finally invested in some longer lasting fabric!
The kids can't wait to get out our video studio up and running!!!
So I'm taking a break from readying my store for the big Teachers Pay Teachers sale on August 3rd and 4th.
I just wanted to remind all of you fabulous followers that there are so many ways to connect with me!
I'm new to Periscope and Instagram so bear with me! My facebook page is very active and I am an AVID (or rabid!) Twitter user.
For those of you that follow my teachers Pay teachers Store, I have a bunch of new products that differentiate for all learners in the middle school social studies classroom. Head on over and take a look!!!
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:
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.
Have them write down a student friendly definition.
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).
I show the kids a YouTube video that better illustrates the word or a visual.
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.
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