Relaxation Station

Do you have students with sensory needs? Sometimes the littlest things can make the biggest difference! This year has been a unique year for me. I have a large number of students with sensory needs. Many times, these needs can be met with stress balls, chewing gum, student rocking chairs and brain breaks to name a few. Although I tried all these things and some more, I still wasn't able to find what one particular student needed. That is until I tried water beads and sand!

 

 The idea of water beads was shared with me, so I headed to Dollar Tree. Once I was there and found them, I then started to look around for other options. In the same area in the store, they had colored sand. I picked up a couple packages and it was a hit!

 

Of course, I knew everyone would want to try them out, so during our station time, I opened this station up where I supervised the students letting them know how the station will be used. Like all things that are new, everyone LOVED it! Like all things, when the newness wears off, it is only used by those that need that station.

I have a child this year that gets angry very quickly and he struggles with managing those feelings. He has learned to go to the "relaxation station" to get himself calm and then return to whatever he was doing. The first day, he went to the station 6 times. His first choice is the sand. He likes to rub the sand in his hands, bury his hands, and let the sand run through is fingers. After the first week, I gave him a special pen and stack of post-it notes and asked him to tally every time he went to the station. He created his own goal of trying to go back there less each day. It was AMAZING to see how he took ownership of this station and how it calms him. Now, there are days he doesn't go back at all, and other days he will start in that station before he starts his morning work. I am able to get a quick reading of his feelings as soon as he walks in the door!

I encourage you to try sand and water beads in your room if your students have sensory needs!

SPIDERS!!!

Teaching is amazing when you can incorporate several subjects into one unit!! This week, I  was able to teach science, reading, and writing in one awesome unit! To start the week, I added webbing, paper spiders and spider facts to our classroom. As soon as the kiddos walked in on Monday, they were hooked!

All day long they were asking "When are we going to do science"?? When the time came, they were all ears! We started the unit discussing what we "think" we already know about spiders. Since we are starting informational texts, this was a great time to explore facts. I have a great group of kiddos this year that already have great background knowlege, so getting a list of things they think they already knew helped me guide my lessons!

Each day, we looked at a new passage, book, or Internet piece of information to learn even more about spiders. We touched on verbs and adjectives that relate to spiders.

Throughout the week, we collected facts about spiders that we thought were really cool and wrote them in our "Facts About Spiders" book. Since we are learning about informational writing, this was a great time to incorporate this. Even though the facts were very basic, they did a great job!

I could have stretched this unit out more than one week, but with all the neat things that I want to teach my kiddos in November, I kept the instruction to one week. Since we were ending the unit and Halloween is tomorrow, I wanted to incorporate fun activities to the end of the unit.

Our school is promoting "healthy snacks/foods, so I wanted to make sure I was adding that into my curriculum anytime I can! Once again, I wanted to fit in as much teaching as I can along with fun learning, so my kiddos got to choose a snack they wanted to make!

 

Our healthy snack choices were a witch's hand, a monster mouth, or a spider web! Each kiddo had to choose which snack they wanted to make. They followed the picture steps and made their snack.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once their snack was made, I gave them a "How To Make" book. They had to write the steps they took to make their snack. I was sooo thrilled to see how easy it was for them to do!

 

 

As a concluding activity, those with great behavior all week wrapped me up like a mummy! YES, they used toilet paper! It was a blast!!!

 

 

 

Learning Projects!

Sadly, our plant unit came to an end. The class did an excellent job creating learning projects to show their creativity and new information they learned. In my class, I like for my students to present their learning to others as a final step. If they can turn around and teach others something they have learned, I feel they truly have a firm grasp on their learning! One of my favorite learning projects this unit was a "learning vest". This can be used with any topic! On the vest, the kiddos show what they have learned. In the picture below, one of my students chose to show everything he knew about roots. He labeled a plant to show where the roots are, and he searched on the Internet to find really cool root pictures. He had a volunteer wear his vest as he explained to a group of others. It was REALLY NEAT to watch!

I also had 3 of my students create a commercial for their "plant store". They had to survey their classmates and find out the type of plants they would like to buy at the store. They then created a store name and practiced making a commercial to invite others to come to their store and buy plants. This was neat to listen to but if they saw me watching them, they would giggle so much that they couldn't finish the commercial, so I pretended I didn't know what they were doing!!

 

 

Next,  our classroom is going to turn a "little spooky" just in time for Halloween! Check back later this week to see what we learned!!

 

Eating a whole plant

 We have learned all the plant parts and their function, so it was a prefect time to show the class the different plant parts we eat. First, each child was given their placemat. Then we talked about each type of food that was handed out. Once the food was discussed, the students had to sort the food into the correct square. As we reviewed the foods, the kiddos ate each piece.

The discussion that took place as the children were tasting the foods was very funny. Not a lot of broccoli or cauliflower was eaten, but at least they tried a very small piece. I even had one little girl take a piece of lettuce and crumbled tiny pieces of all the foods onto the lettuce and told me she made a salad!

Next, we are moving onto photosynthesis and project time!

Making Learning FUN!

Recently, we started a unit on plants. To start the unit, the class was introduced to learning contracts. Learning contracts in my room are a way to show evidence of their learning. All types of learning styles are accommodated. We talk a little about each choice, but I do not go into great detail. I want to see how they interpret the idea on their own.

 

 

After several days of learning new information, we have project time where they get to work on their projects and apply the new information in a way that makes most sense to them.

Today, we learned about pollination. First, we watched a couple videos on You Tube that showed great examples of pollination happening in nature. The kiddos were amazed how humming birds, bees, butterflies, and even bats help pollinate flowers. After we watched the videos, we did a SUPER FUN activity where they were the different types of insects or animals and pollinated flowers. First, we colored only the petals of a flower on white paper. Then we took a smaller white flower with a mini cupcake holder in the middle that was filled with cheese puffs and Doritos. The kiddos touched the cheese puffs and Doritos which acted like pollen. They then walked around to other desks and sprinkled the "pollen" onto the flowers that were colored. This was SOOO fun to watch. At first, they couldn't see the "pollen", but as more and more kiddos added to the flowers, it was very noticeable. The class was excited to see the finished product. To set the "pollen", I sprayed the flower paper gently with hairspray to hold everything in place! The amount of learning that took place in 40 minutes was amazing! There are 2 products that I use for my plant unit. I have provided links below if you are interested!

 

 

 



 

 

Fluency...it's never too soon to start working on it!

I really like to have fun helping students build their reading fluency. There are so many fun, engaging activities out there that keep the students wanting to learn. One way I start with fluency is making sure my kiddos have automaticity with basic sight words. I use my "Racing to Build Sight Word Fluency" that helps students learn the 100 most used words in reading and writing. The words are split into lists of 10 words. As the lists are learned with automaticity, the students chart their growth on a progress chart grid. Once they have 50 words learned, I like to start them on reading sentence with those words. For that, I use my "Racing to Build Sentence Fluency" pack. These are pages that have 10 sentences on each page. For most of the kids, this is a great next step. For others, I have found that it is too big of a step. I needed to use something a little easier. I started to use "Sentence Pryamids". This is one sentence per half sheet that naturally helps students build phrasing with each line. We practice using different types of voices each time we read them. FUN STUFF!! Below, I have placed links to my TpT store if you would like to check them out!

 

 

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How do you help your kiddos buuild fluency?

 

Mid-Summer Thought!

It has been awhile since I posted anything, I have been a little busy...I recently finished 15 semester hours since March! What was I thinking...right?

Just recently, I was deep in thought about how I wanted to get my room in order and it became overwhelming. A list started to form and it became very clear to me that if I was feeling a little overwhelmed after 17 years of teaching, how are new teachers feeling? How are teachers to a new grade level feeling? I created a "Back to School Teacher's Tool Kit" to help out. In this pack, I included a checklist of things I like to have ready before school starts. Included in this pack are many pages that I like to use and are there for you to copy, personalize and use yourself.

Hopefully you find it useful! Just click and it will take you to my TpT store. Thanks!!!
 

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