3 Step Kung Pao Room Transformation

People are always asking me how do you decide when to transform your room or how do you get your ideas?  Room transformations have become a way for me to let my creative side out and bring real-life experiences to my students.   

I will never forget my first room transformation it was my 3rd year and the new Charlotte's Web movie had just come out. I always did a Charlotte's Web unit but this time it was amazing because the real Wilbur was from Murfreesboro.  There had been a red-carpet event for Wilbur at one of the local banks and my best friend's dad was working for that bank at the time. He had given me movie posters, stickers, activity books, button pins with Wilbur and Charlotte quotes, and I had cut out articles from the local newspaper.  Oh, and I can't forget Charlotte. I had hung a plastic spider on my bulletin board. The children came in the next morning and were hooked immediately and excited.  I knew then this is how I engage my students. I was an Early Childhood Major so themed units and all the crafty things were like second nature but struggled on how to bring all that into a 3rd-grade classroom my first couple years because my coworkers at the time loved them some worksheets.  After this, that is all she wrote. Every year after that they have kept growing and growing and growing to what it is today. 

If you are anything like me I always want to know the why and what research says before I implement anything new in my classroom for my students.  I'm such a nerd for research and data.

William Glasser measured the retention rate of students after 24 hours with different delivery methods. Your thinking why 24 hours? This is when the working memory must move to long-term or it will be dumped. Look at the diagram to see a breakdown of the percentages of retention. If you notice the areas with the most retention are the strategies that have the most engagement.

  

Dr. Robert Marzano says to foster student engagement you must ask yourself and your students 4 questions: How do I feel?  Am I interested?  Is this important? Can I do this?  The first two questions How do I feel? and Am I interested? focus on the attention of the student. If your students are highly engaged, then their attention and learning will turn into working memory. If you are presenting information that is considered not interesting, then that information will be dumped and not processed into their working memory. Now take this research and think about room transformations.  Room transformations provide attention, curiosity, interest, optimism, and a passion or inspiration to learn for your students

We have to teach the standards but it’s about how 

WE CHOOSE

 to deliver those standards that inspire our students.

Let’s face it the words room transformation can sound scary and you may even begin to panic because of feeling a lack of control. I am here to ease your worries and to tell you to start simple.  Your first room transformation is like making a new recipe. Worries of will it taste good, will it flop, are they going to hate it, and what is plan b if it is really that bad but if you follow the recipe and add just the right amount of seasoning then you know in the end it is super yummy! A room transformation is the same way. You have to add just the right amount of curriculum, spice, seasoning, excitement and voila a yummy treat for your students. 

The ingredients you will need to whip up your first room transformation are standards or curriculum, a theme, experience teaching the standard, real-life experiences, excitement, and just the right amount of creativity and passion. 

1. What are you teaching?

The first step is to decide what you are teaching. Look at your standards break them down into learning targets and performance goals. Once you have done that then you can decide on a theme. I like to use my science and social studies standards to guide my theme then I pull in the math and reading standards to connect it all together. 

The following are the standards I have chosen from the first nine weeks Instructional Guides from our county to show you how I would begin a room transformation.

3.LS1: From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes 1) Analyze the internal and external structures that aquatic and land animals and plants have to support survival, growth, behavior, and reproduction.

3.OA.A.1. Interpret the factors and products in whole number multiplication equations (e.g., 4 x 7 is 4 groups of 7 objects with a total of 28 objects or 4 strings measuring 7 inches each with a total of 28 inches.)

3.RI.KID.2 Determine the main idea of a text; recount the key details and explain how they support the main idea.

I would break down these standards and come up with a week to two-week unit using the above standards.  

2. How are you going to teach it?

The second step after breaking down your standards is to decide how are you going to teach them, engage them, and inspire them. This is where my creativity comes out.  Using the above standards, I would turn my room into a zoo. Remember I like to use the science standards to establish my theme. 

Here is an example of my Jurassic World that would be very similar to a zoo theme. I would have artificial plants, animals, turn my desks into jeeps, a zoo hospital, and have binoculars, and zoo badges for my students to wear.  Now that you have a theme how can you incorporate it to teach the above standards? The science standard covers external and internal animal structures and that is where I would begin. We would investigate and explore animal structures in Science using some of the following activities: Eat Like a Bird, Ear Shape, or Designer Ears 

We would then read about animal structures using the books below to find the main idea and details.  These stories have very short paragraphs and are great to use to introduce main idea and details.

Amazon Link

To connect math into this unit I would use a lot of context. What do I mean by context? Here are some examples. 

At the Nashville Zoo, there are 3 monkey exhibits. Each exhibit has 3 monkeys. How many monkeys are at the Nashville Zoo?  or The zoologist has 5 bears.  Each bear eats 4 fish. How many fish will the zoologist need to feed the bears? We would also use animal manipulatives to act out the multiplication.  I have made these multiplication math mats that would be great to use for this theme as well. Here is an example of one.  

You could then use animal manipulatives, play dough, chips, animal crackers to solve these problems.

Remember just because you turned your room into a zoo doesn't mean that the rigor and high expectations goes out the window. That is why I break down the standards first then apply my theme to my lessons and complete the room transformation. I also do not recommend trying a room transformation with a standard you have never taught before because you just don't know what can occur and the rigor may not be there. You want to be confident in your standards so you can make sure that the rigor and high expectations are always there.

3. Add creativity, excitement, and have fun!

The last step to a room transformation is the setup and purchasing of items. I first always look around my house and my classroom to decide how I can use items that I already have.  I then will ask other teachers to borrow their items and last a trip to the Dollar Store or my Amazon prime account.  Dollar store has so many things you can use over and over again for different room transformations. I also look in the Target $1 section and their birthday party isles. Walmart also has great items in their arts and crafts and party isles.  I try to purchase big items that I know I will use repeatedly for different room transformations. 

A few of my favorite items to use when transforming a room is tablecloths, photo backdrops, cardboard cutouts, and anything that will bring the experiences to life for my students. 

Here are a few of my transformations from the past year:

Football Theme

Mad Scientist Lab

Camping

Grinch Week

Winter Olympics

Winter Olympics

I hope these steps help you to accomplish your room transformations with ease and excitement. My students are always asking when will I do the next one and what will it be. I like to keep my students wanting more and excited for the next day of school. 

How have you transformed your classroom?

What are your go-to items for a room transformation?

Leave a comment to help share ideas with teachers from all over.

Thanks for stopping by!

Agents at Work

A detective theme is a great way to start off your year and get your students excited to learn. Remember the I's to Inspire. Instill high expectations, be innovative and imaginative, invigorate, impact and influence your students to learn and grow. 

I transformed my room into a spy lab and the JCE Squad Headquarters. To transform your room into a spy lab is one of the easiest ways.  All you need is a metal ring, white yarn, black lights, detective hats, and other details to make invigorate your students. First, I used a metal book ring and tied long pieces of white yarn. Each piece of yarn was about the width or length of my room. I then hung the ring from my ceiling. Then taped each piece of yarn to a wall, floor, or desk. This makes the room look like it has spy lasers. Next, I placed 6 24" black lights around the perimeter of my room along with 2 lamps with black light bulbs. Last, turn off the lights and Voila, you have a spy lab! 

Example of a spy lab from Elementary Shenanigans

After you have created your spy lab now comes all the fun details to make it innovative, and invigorating for your students.  I am always thinking about what will draw my students in and make them engaged. So I add all kinds of details like caution tape, fingerprints, footprints, evidence numbers, hand scan, evidence board, flashlights, detective notebooks, and invisible ink. 

Here are some examples:

Now I have my room transformed now its time to implement the lessons. I am a K-5 interventionist so I did two different lessons. For my 3rd-5th Graders, I did the Case of the Missing Mona Lisa.  I saw this book and it got me to thinking how could I implement this into my lessons. 

Then I found this on TPT which I tweaked with names of teachers in our building. This packet included detective interviews and clues to help solve the mystery.

The Missing Mona Lisa Activity

I set the stage by having a picture frame with a question mark in it and caution tape around it. I also dressed up as an agent with a suit, tie, and I used my earbuds like I had an earpiece in. My students have instantly engaged in this week's lessons because they wanted to solve the case. Next, I set the stage with my Prezi. My Prezi contains each day's mission. It has our objectives, mastery criteria, and modeling of the days objective.

After I had gone over our objectives and modeled the mastery in my whole group lesson. It was time for the detectives to get to work. They had to go around and solve math problems on index cards. I had written in invisible ink what they had to solve for and this is where the black light flashlights come in handy. The invisible ink just adds another detail to the transformation. They wrote their answers in a detective notebook. 

The last 5 minutes of class each day we read a detective interview and they would receive their clues to help them solve the mystery of Who Stole Mona Lisa?  

 

On Friday we played a Breakout Edu game called Math Mission. I placed inside the lockbox the final clue to help them solve the case of the Missing Mona Lisa. 

How did I adapt this for my K-2 reading and math classes? For my 1st and 2nd grade classes we had to solve the case of the missing number 8. I used the index cards again and drew dot images of numbers 6, 7, and 8. They had to find all the 8 cards and draw them in their detective notebook. After they found them we then put them into our case file of numbers. Inside this file, we wrote the story of 8. We wrote all the ways we can make 8 with using a 10 frame, number bond, and dots. 

        

For my reading classes, I wrote sentences and words that contained the phonics skill we were working on in invisible ink. They also had to get their detective read on and find all the words in a passage that contained the phonics skill using a highlighter and black light. 

           

For my Kindergarten class we were working on recognizing the letters A, M, and S. They had to find these letters and write them in their notebook. I also put out dot image cards that they had to count and then write the number they found. 

   

 

My students were so engaged and learned so much this week.  Just because your room looks different doesn't mean it is play time. You still have to have the same expectations and learning as if it were a normal day. This is how I inspired my classes using a spy/detective theme. 

How do you inspire your students? 

How have you used a detective theme in your classroom?

Please leave a comment so we can share our ideas.  

Thanks for stopping by!

Inspire 180 Days

Inspire is defined by Merriam-Webster as to influence, move, or guide. Inspire means to me instilling high expectations, influencing and impacting students lives, invigorating students, and providing imagination and inventiveness into my lessons. This post will discuss how to transform your classroom to inspire your students every day.

Why I Inspire

Have you ever videoed yourself to see if all of your students are engaged? Dr. Michael Schmoker author of, Results Now, found in his research of 1,500 classrooms, only 15 percent of the classrooms had more than half of the class at least paying attention to the lesson. Wow! Only 15 percent of classrooms had their students engaged. Article: How do we know when students are engaged?

The following are influences that help to inspire your classroom and their effect sizes provided by John Hattie who wrote Visible Learning: 

• Teacher credibility .90
• Classroom discussion .82
• Teacher Clarity .75
• Teacher-Student Relationships .72
• Student Expectations (relevance) 1.44

What do those numbers mean? It means you would show over a years growth if you implement these influences into your classroom. Love me some data! I'm such a data nerd when it comes to research and best practices! 

Are you convinced yet to inspire 180 days?

The I's of Inspire

Instill a classroom culture that has high expectations, feedback, classroom rules, and questioning. To create this culture it takes modeling from you and what you expect from your students. It also takes your students knowing what they expect from each other. 

Inventiveness and Imagination creates intrigue and adds surprise to your classroom and lessons.  To accomplish this get to know your students and what they enjoy.  Create lessons based on a theme, holiday, or favorite tv shows. Think outside of the box. Take a boring standard and add imagination to engage all of your students. I have set up construction zones to teach area, archeological digs to teach rocks, minerals, and rectilinear area, cooking Thanksgiving dinner and an airport theme to teach elapsed time. 

Invigorate your classroom with energy, excitement, and enthusiasm. If you aren't excited about teaching then your students will not be either. It is ok to laugh and be silly with your students! 

Influence and Impact your student lives. Empower them to work hard, to persevere, and to believe in themselves. Set up a red carpet, student-led parent conferences, student-student feedback, and honoring a student's work are all ways that influence and impact a student's life. 

To accomplish all of this you have to find the perfect balance for your classroom. 

The first step to Inspire 180 days is to decide What does inspire mean to you?

Next, think about your classroom are all of your students engaged? Don't know video yourself using 2 ipads. Put one ipad on you and the other on your students. Take a look at the results. Were your students inspired?

Last, start your planning. You can create an atmosphere that inspires your students to learn and grow every day. The posts that follow will be full of ideas on how to transform your room, themes, and lessons that will engage and inspire every student in your classroom.