Summer Countdown – Life of the Rookie Teacher

SCHOOL’S OUT FOR SUMMER

June 6, 2019July 5, 2019Posted in Education, UncategorizedTagged 3rd Grade Life, Amazon, June Life, Kindness, Last Day Blues, Love, Reading, School Life, School's Out For Summer, Spring, Summer, Summer Countdown, Summer is Here, Teacher Feels, Teacher Life, Teaching Life, Writing1 Comment

I am pumped! Today has been an emotional day for sure. I was so excited for this day to come but when I was sitting in my room with my kiddos the last 5 minutes of the day, I realized I didn’t want them to leave. It has been such a great and amazing year.

We started the day off by moving all of our tables into one giant table. I wanted us to be together as a group for our last day instead of separated by 5 different tables. They came in and it was very chaotic (just as expected.) I had a mini word search for them to work on as something to do but most of them didn’t find that to be as exciting as laughing and talking with the rest of their friends, which is understandable. By the time they settled down we came to make a circle at the front of the classroom for our last morning meeting together.

During the meeting we did an activity that we did on the first day of school. The activity is one of my favorites that involves toilet paper (which they find to be hilarious!) I pass around rolls of toilet paper and they are told to take 1-3 pieces. (Some versions of this activity say to have them take as many as they want without telling them what it’s for but I found with 3rd graders, that was too much to handle.) On the first day of school they had to then tell myself and the class that many things about themselves, today they had to share that many memories/favorite things about 3rd grade. It was super sweet. Most of them took it pretty seriously and had some really good answers. We had some funny moments that came back up as well. It was nice for me to get a flashback of the year to remember what all happened.

I then had them go back to their spots and take out something to write with. I gave them each a blank piece of printer paper and told them to write their name in the middle and circle it. We then spent the next 15 minutes passing each sheet around the table so each student could write something nice on everyone’s piece of paper. It could be something they liked about that person, a nice memory, or a kind word. Again, most of them took this seriously and loved it. (Yes a few tried to be “funny” or “too cool” for the activity but the nice thing was that the rest of the class didn’t feed into any of that.)

Once we finished I read the great book Last Day Blues by Julia Danneberg and then we went to play outside. They went straight to specials and I took out their end of the year gifts to put at their spots. I found a pack of 24 “80’s style” sunglasses on amazon for $16.47 (prime) and 24 jump ropes for $39.75 (prime) and put together a little message to go with it. Props to Pinterest’s help on this one. I wrote each of them their own personalized card and put in the message “you shined so bright this year, now it’s time to jump into summer” into each one. (Hence the sunglasses and the jump ropes….not original, I know but easy!) Because they are sweet 8 and 9 year olds, they LOVED it!

To end the day I had put together a slideshow/video of our year together. I love taking pictures of everything we do throughout the year because I love looking back at the memories and how much they’ve grown. I also love putting it together into one movie to share with all of the families. We watched our slideshow and then took some final end of the year class pictures.

I am going to miss my class so much! We’ve had our struggles, oh yes, but they were all sweet and kindhearted and that is something I will truly miss. They have been such an incredible group of kids who cared so much about everyone else. My one goal when the year starts is to make them all love to be at school and today I got to see that I accomplished that. One of my boys who has never been afraid to tell me he hates school told me today he was very sad that school was over and that he would really miss me. He followed that up with a hug and I almost started to cry. It was everything I had worked so hard for. It’s those moments that make it all worth it.

That being said, I am very happy it is summer! I am EXHAUSTED and ready to sleep, read, swim, eat, and do whatever else I want to do when I want to do it. Tonight I plan on binging on pizza and having a nice cold one as my reward for making it through! Happy summer to my fellow teachers who are on their breaks and to all of my friends still in school, keep plugging through, you are AMAZING!!

As for me, peace out to year 2! I am so excited for year 3!!

Bottle Flipping Our Way Into Summer

June 4, 2019July 5, 2019Posted in Education, UncategorizedTagged 3rd Grade Life, Almost Summer, End of the Year, June Life, Love, School Life, Science, Scientific Method, Spring, STEM, Summer Countdown, Teacher Life, TeachersPayTeachers, Water Bottle Flipping, Where is Summer1 Comment

ALMOST DONE!!!! Oh man, it has been a long road to get here but we officially only have 2 1/2 days left of school. I am so excited!! For the last week of school I want to do some different and fun activities to keep them motivated to finish the week out strong. Yesterday I did one of my absolute favorite activities that involves the scientific method, a little STEM, and some water bottle flipping!

I found this AMAZING activity on TPT from the shop Carly and Adam. The activity is officially called End of the Year STEM Water Bottle Flip. When my kiddos heard “water bottle flipping” they lost their minds!

The resource comes with enough pages to create 3 different packets worth of testing. You can either test different bottle sizes, different bottle shapes, or how full the bottle is to see which has the best flipping result. We did our experiment on how full the bottle is (so I only had to buy 1 pack of 24 bottles and not multiple packs.) No matter what experiment you choose, the first page in the packet is their prediction page. They form a hypothesis on which will have the best result and why. Once they make their predictions, it’s time for their favorite part.

The second part of the experiment is obviously to test and see which has the best result. For our experiment they had a recording sheet (the one below) to fill out as they went. They had to flip the bottle 20 times at each level and record if the bottle landed horizontal or vertical. After they tested the 4 levels they could easily see which had the best result.

They LOVED this part. I took them outside (because the water bottles will bust open and it saves a lot of time cleaning up) and let them go at it. They thought it was so fun and cool that they got to flip bottles in school as part of a science experiment. I also had lots of fun too, taking pictures and slow motion videos to show parents and to put in our end of the year slideshow.

When the flipping was done we came back inside to record our results. Most had vastly different results (because of all of the different variables, like how they each flipped the bottle) but it was a great discussion piece on why we had different results. They filled out their final report page and then was able to finish off the water they had left (if there was any left.)

It was such a fun activity and one of my all time favorites! I did this last year with my 4th graders and they had just as much fun. It’s an easy twist on something they love to do so they don’t really know they’re learning.

Summer is almost here and I am just hanging on. I love my kiddos but I am ready for the nice summer break. We have many activities coming up in the next couple of days that hopefully will help the days fly even more. Happy June!

For more day to day activities and lessons (and summer fun) go follow my instagram @lifeoftherookieteacher!

Reading Cafe Open for Business

May 24, 2019July 5, 2019Posted in Education, UncategorizedTagged Almost Summer, Authors, Book Tasting, Genre, Love, May, May Feels, Reading, Reading Cafe, Spring, Summer Countdown, Teacher Life, TeachersPayTeachers, Teaching in May, Teaching Life, Teaching Techniques, Where is Summer, Writing1 Comment

We are getting closer and closer to the end of the year and those school days left are decreasing fast (but not always fast enough.) At this point of the year, I am officially done with all of my required curriculum materials (expect for one more math test) so I am pulling out any and all activities I can.

One activity that I found and purchased on Teachers Pay Teachers was a Book Tasting Kit. I have seen this idea on Pinterest and through different teacher’s instagram accounts and I wanted to try it so bad. The one I bought was from Staying Cool in the Library‘s page. I think this kit is great because it has two separate kits inside of one so that it can be leveled to a specific grade level. There is an upper elementary version and a primary version. I used the primary version for my kiddos because I wanted it to be fun and easy with limited writing. I wanted the major focus to be on the books.

What I did was I printed out the “menu” pages found in the kit and made each student in my class their own menu to use. Inside each menu I included 5 “review” pages that they used when they found a book.

I set up 5 different stations of genres in my room and placed many of those types of books at each table. The genres I pulled out to use for my kids were historical fiction books, realistic fiction books, mystery books, fantasy books, and biographies/autobiographies. At each table, they had to pick one book they thought looked interesting and filled out the form in their menu. They read a page or 2 from each book and decided if the pages were easy or hard to read. They then described the cover and any other pictures that might have been in the book. They finally rated their book out of 5 stars. Once they finished with their one book that was recorded in their menus, they had a few extra minutes to look through other books and discuss the ones they found with the others in their group.

I gave each round/station about 8 minutes at each table/genre. Overall, it took us a little over 40 minutes total to get through all tables. Most of my kiddos had a really good time and really took their time looking into different types of books and genres they aren’t used to. When my students entered 3rd grade, hardly any of my students wanted to read chapter books. As the year went on, they started to get into the Dogman series, The Bad Guys series, and of course, the Junie B. Jones. books. As great as it was that they were starting to read chapter books, they didn’t really extend their reading any farther. Most of them stuck with these books throughout the year. My goal with the book tasting was to show them that there are plenty of other amazing books out there. I wanted them to walk away with a list of new books to read over the summer or next year when they walk into 4th grade.

Of course, I had that handful who couldn’t handle it. I decided to put my struggling kiddos in the same group for this activity so they wouldn’t disrupt anyone else and take away from their learning. It was great for the other 4 groups at the other 4 stations but that one group was very difficult. I had my sister come volunteer in my classroom just to keep those kiddos on task. (That still didn’t work too well.)

Overall, my kids had fun and found a ton of new books they are eager to read. It was a lot of prep work getting everything printed and put together but it was worth it. I recommend trying this out (but maybe not at the end of the year because the energy level is WAY higher than normal!)

Side Note: If you want to add some more flare, have some instrumental French music playing in the background. It sets the mood pretty well and who doesn’t want to pretend they’re in a French cafe?

We only have 8 school days to go!!!!! We are so close people!!!!

For more day to day activities and lessons, go follow my class instagram account @lifeoftherookieteacher!! With the end of the year, I have many fun projects coming up. I will also be sharing some fun summer activities and you don’t want to miss that!

BINGO, Kickball, and Officially Published

May 17, 2019July 5, 2019Posted in Education, UncategorizedTagged 3rd Grade Life, Art, Authors, Because of Winn Dixie, BINGO, Class Bonding, Love, May, May Feels, Reading, Spring, Student Authors, Student Treasures Publishing Company, Studentreasures, Summer Countdown, Teacher Feels, Teacher Life, Teaching Life, Where is Summer, Writing2 Comments

Happy Friday friends!!! More like FINALLY FRIDAY!! Holy cow this last month of school is a marathon and we’re ALL feeling it.

Today we had an early release for students so we could have a professional development afternoon. Because of that, we all tried to make today a fun day. We started the day with school wide BINGO. We’ve had a school wide goal since the beginning of the school year to read 25,000 books by the end of the year. We reached that back in February so we bumped the goal to 50,000. We have benchmark prizes throughout and BINGO was the prize for reaching 44,000. [[Super fun right!? Well it was at first….

Every Friday we have some “Friday free choice” time right away in the morning for about 20ish minutes to start the day. Because BINGO started right at the start of the day, we didn’t get time to do our free choice time. My kids were upset about this and didn’t understand why they couldn’t have both. Really?

When we started to play BINGO my class was the first 3rd grade class to get a BINGO so we won a class prize from the principals. Sometime in the next few weeks they’ll be taking my class outside to play some kickball. When my students found out this was the prize, half of my class threw a fit because they don’t like kickball. Who doesn’t want to get out of class on a nice spring day to play kickball!? Honestly it blew my mind. I was livid with how they were reacting. Oh my goodness, seriously.

After BINGO we finished a math test and then we watched Because of Winn-Dixie because we finished the book. A few of my highly emotional students (who work with our school social workers multiple times a day) were crying because they didn’t feel like watching a movie today. Ummmmmmmm what!? What 8 year old doesn’t want to watch a movie in school!? Oh my goodness I almost lost it.

Majority of my class was super awesome during BINGO and during the movie but it’s those handful of 3-4 that ruin my mood because there has to be a problem with everything. I can’t win with them.

A super positive side about today though was that we finally got our published books in the mail. A few weeks ago my class created our own book. A friend of mine told me about this awesome company called Student Treasures. What the company does is it sends a teacher a book making kit for their class. In the kit there is a full list of instructions and order forms to send home. You come up with an idea on what you want to write about and go from there. One teacher I know made a class cookbook and another made their own “I survived” story. The site also has a ton of ideas and examples of different class books that have been made. Once the whole process is completed on the teachers end, the whole kit gets sent back and the company does all of the publishing! A few weeks later the books arrive and they are amazing!

My class recently read the Wayside School series by Louis Sacher. We decided to base our book off of that series by making our own wacky and crazy stories. Each student wrote a chapter about themselves. They got to come up with a silly story about what they might do in our class and illustrate a picture to go with it. Today the books came!

The title of our book was Upside Down Stories From Becker Intermediate School. They turned out so cute and the kiddos were so excited. The book comes with a dedication page and a “meet the authors” page. My kids were adorable on their dedication. We talked together as a class and came up with two different dedications. The first was they wanted to dedicate our book to another 3rd grade teacher, the one who originally gave me the idea because she did it with her class. The second dedication was “to all of the sick.” They wanted to bring some cheer to anyone who isn’t feeling that great. They want anyone out there to have a good laugh because that makes everyone feel better. I was so proud when they decided on their two dedications. I had nothing to do with what they wanted.

At the beginning of our book I wrote a little introduction with the chapters for each student but the rest is all them! I am including examples from the different chapters in our book because I find them super cute and innocent.

It was a super fun process to build our class relationship. We decided on commonalities for our fake class like a common class discipline system and the name of the school principal. A lot of them decided to include other classmates in their stories (I told them as long as it was appropriate and they got permission from the other student, they could include whatever they wanted.) Overall, it was such a fun process. I HIGHLY recommend looking into Student Treasures next school year. It’s probably a little too late at this point of the year because it takes some time for the books to get back to you, but I think it is something every class should participate in.

Oh man, the end of the year cannot come soon enough. I love my class but MY GOODNESS they are losing their minds! Here’s to all of you teachers out there who understand the May feels.

For more day to day activities and projects, go follow my class instagram page @lifeoftherookieteacher!

14 School Days and Counting!

May 16, 2019July 5, 2019Posted in Education, UncategorizedTagged 3rd Grade Life, Almost Summer, Art, Craftivity, End of the Year, Flip Flops, Love, Spring, Summer Countdown, Teacher Life, TeachersPayTeachers, Teaching Life, Vacation, Where is Summer3 Comments

We’re almost there!! One of my coworkers has a countdown on her door and, as of today, we are down to 14 (school) days. Today in Minnesota, it is a beautiful 80 degree sunny day! It’s days like this that make me want summer even more. Beautifully warm days like today can be rare here, especially in May and June, so it’s nice to enjoy it while it lasts.

With the summer feelings sinking in, I wanted to do a summer craftivity with my kiddos today to get us in the mood. What I decided to do was decorate flip flops that show what our favorite activities to do in the summer are. At the beginning of the year, we made jerseys to put on everyone’s locker. The jerseys had to somehow represent them. The flip flops were a similar project but centered around summer likes rather than their everyday likes.

I found this activity in a summer activity pack I bought on TPT last year for my fourth graders. The pack is called End of the Year Activities and Printables. It was from TheHappyTeacher‘s shop and was $4.25. It is TOTALLY worth the price because it comes with a ton of fun end of the year activities (and time fillers.) I’ll be sharing different activities we’ll be doing from the pack over the next few weeks.

In the pack, it has a “design a flip flop challenge” coloring page. The page says to make it a contest to see who can make the best flip flop in the class. I added the part about making it about themselves so they would put more effort into them. I put my own example on the board and set them loose.

They all turned out super cute and definitely matched their personal styles. We hung them in the hall to add some “summer flare” to the school.

I am SO ready for warm summer days lounging on the beach reading a good book but I have to remind myself that we still have 3 full weeks of school left to get through before those wonderful days are here.

For more day to day activities (especially as the year is winding down and more fun things are to come) go follow me on instagram @lifeoftherookieteacher!!

Field Trips, Animals, and Inheritance

May 15, 2019July 5, 2019Posted in Education, UncategorizedTagged Art, Field Trips, May, Monster Science, Nature Center, Science, Special Education, Spring, STEM, Summer Countdown, Teacher Life, TeachersPayTeachers, Teaching Life, Teaching Techniques1 Comment

Happy Wednesday my fellow blog friends. This has been a crazy week already and we still have 2 more days to go until the beautiful weekend is upon us.

This week started with a bang on Monday because it was our glorious field trip day. Remember when field trips used to be the best day of the year and you looked forward to sitting on the bus with your best friends and getting to be in a small group with one of your friend’s mom because they were your chaperone? Remember how fun and exciting it was being off of campus for the day and getting to experience new things you never would have gotten to experience if you were at a different school? Yeah, field trips used to be the life. Too bad it doesn’t stay that fun and exciting when you have to play the teacher role.

For our field trip we had 2 different activities planned for the kids. The first part of our trip was taking the kiddos to a giant park where they could run and get their energy out. They would get to run, scream, and play to their heart’s content. We then had a picnic planned before our second stop. My coworkers told me that this was going to be everyone’s favorite part of the day because the park is so big and different. As soon as we arrived, however the issues began.

In a previous post a few months back I mentioned a student who should be receiving services for EBD but has never been evaluated for it. I’ve mentioned my concerns and gave examples of some of the choices she makes on a daily basis. I worked side by side with her social worker to get the process started. As of today, she is officially in the process of being evaluated. Well this little girl was not having the park whatsoever. She told me she thought the whole thing was stupid and a waste of time. She then got mad when I told her to put her lunch at the same picnic table as the rest of her group before she went off to play. Apparently that was the wrong thing to say because she took off.

When I say took off, she literally ran away from me around this giant park. It took some time of following her before she finally made her way to the gated in playground with all of the other students. Instead of enjoying the nice warm weather at the park, I spent most of my time watching and worrying that she would run off again.

The second part of our field trip was to a local Nature Center. We had been learning about adaptations in science, so at the Nature Center they focused on animal adaptations in nature. The first thing we did was go on a nature hike. Again, this activity should have been super fun and relaxing but my little girl did not want to go for a walk in the woods. She first refused to go with the group and then, once I finally got her to join us, she got upset again and ran off into the woods away from our group. This terrified me because I had no idea where she went. Luckily, the path wasn’t that long and I found her not too far from us but I couldn’t trust her to be without full on supervision for the rest of the trip.

On top of my runner, I had a nice little injury incident between the park and the Nature Center. Right after lunch, as we were getting onto the bus, three of my students were playing with sticks. I asked them to put the down and head to the bus. Well I guess I should have been more specific about putting them down because one of my students chucked the stick off to the side and hit another one of my students right in the face. She had a gash right on her eyebrow. The cut wasn’t that big but it was bleeding A LOT. (Just an FYI as well, the girl who got the cut who was bleeding is also my biggest hypochondriac and her mom is a very opinionated mom who shares everything and anything on Facebook. It was perfect.) I got to be a mini doctor on the bus to the Nature Center cleaning up her bloody face.

Needless to say, I was very happy when the day was over. Man do I miss those fun field trip days when I was the student and not the teacher. Besides all of my little incidences, however it was a very fun field trip for the students so it was worth it.

The fun part of the week so far has been a science project we worked on today in class. Along with adaptations, we have also been covering genetics. (With 3rd graders, this is super generic and basic.) We’ve done a lot of talking about how we inherit traits from our parents. We’ve learned the difference between inherited characteristics and acquired characteristics. In order for my students to get the full effect of this (as 8/9 year olds) I found this super fun activity on TPT that has students make a monster based on the traits of 2 monster parents. (I’m sure you’ve done a version of this activity at some point during your schooling but I personally think this one was pretty great.)

The activity is called HEREDITY Creature Features – Inherited and Environmental Traits. I found this on iTeachSTEM‘s shop. The activity was made for 5th-7th graders but I was able to “dumb it down” enough for my 3rd graders.

The first thing students do is flip a coin (we rolled a die) to decide if a child would receive a trait from the mom monster or the dad monster. I did an example on the board and then they took off to do their own.

Once they were finished rolling their dice to pick the traits of their monster, they got to draw them out for the class to see.

Tomorrow my plan is to have us go through all of them and talk about how our monsters are all related because they got their traits from the same parents but non are exactly alike. I honestly think they turned out super cute!!! They loved doing it and understood the difference between inherited and acquired traits.