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. 

Got Feedback?

The last piece in becoming a great learner is feedback. My last two posts, Learn from your Mistakes and Move On and If at First You Don't Succeed Try Try Again helped to set the foundation for what a great learner looks like and does to be successful. In this post, your students will take everything they have learned about open discussion, kindness, accountable talk, mistakes, and growth mindset and apply it to feedback. 

WHAT IS FEEDBACK?

Feedback is grading an assignment and

handing it back to the student right? No!

Feedback is JUST IN TIME, JUST FOR ME, & JUST WHEN AND WHERE IT DOES THE MOST GOOD.  To provide effective feedback you have to first build a classroom culture that is safe, trusting, and promotes positive relationships. Effective feedback will explode when it is OK for students to make mistakes and feel that mistakes are welcome.  The second step in effective feedback is having clear learning intentions and success criteria. Students have to understand what they are supposed to do to be able to understand the feedback and use it to accomplish the task. A little data for you provided by John Hattie. Feedback is a 0.75 effect size and if you remember to have a years growth in your classroom the influence or strategy needs to be a 0.40. Hmm... do I have your attention now?

FEEDBACK LESSON:

The following lesson and activities with take a couple of days to complete. 


To begin this lesson I opened up with the question, What makes a good learner? I wrote down what they said on an anchor chart. I then read Leo the Late Bloomer by Robert Kraus.  We discussed what Leo did to become good or better at the things that he thought he wasn't so good at. Then I would ask the following questions to spark a discussion on strengths and weaknesses. What are you strong and weak in? How do we grow our brain to be stronger in what we are weak in? 

Next, I would ask this question How do we take our weaknesses and make them strengths? I would then display the word feedback and ask your students if they know anything about this word or what they think it may mean. You can then introduce the topic of feedback by reading this story, Thanks for the Feedback by Julia Cook.

This story is about a little boy named RJ. When a couple of friends give RJ compliments, he isn't sure how to respond. And when he hears from his teach and parents that there are some things he needs to work on, he argues and makes excuses.

After a class discussion on feedback, now comes the model and practice part of the lesson.  You will give each student a picture of a real insect, animal or object. Next, ask your students to fold a blank piece of paper into 4 blocks. Ask your students to do their best to draw this insect in the first block of the paper. You will want to give some time for your students to draw.

                                         

Here comes the exciting part! Now ask your students within their table groups to tell each other how to make their illustration more realistic. All students need to give suggestions/feedback. Put down everything and Listen, Listen, Listen! You will be so surprised and excited to hear their discussions. I 💗this part!

Next,  complete a second draft of the insect and tell your students they have to use one piece of feedback that they received. After giving time for their second draft you will have your students watch a video on a little boy named Austin and his drawing of a butterfly. Make sure to have your students think about what they notice about what the other children are saying and doing to help Austin. 

TIP: I would post these questions somewhere close to where the video is shown so they can refer back to them as they watch the video. 

                                Austin's Butterfly: Vimeo

After the video, have chalk talk questions ready and placed around the room. Give each child 4-5 post-it notes and break them into groups. Read aloud the questions and ask them to write their answers on the post-it and place on each question as they rotate around the room. 

Example Chalk Talk Questions: What am I going to do with feedback?  What did you learn from Austin’s video?   How am I going to give feedback to others?   What does feedback sound like? What were the 3 things that really stood out and that you noticed?  

Bring your students back together and discuss some of their answers. 

TIP: 1. What you are wanting to look for or hear is that the video showed the children being Kind, Specific, and the information was Useful.  

Next, you will have your students return back to their seats and give their group feedback on their second draft. Remind your student's that their feedback should be kind, specific, and useful. It is not just praise. 

TIP: Praise is important but not a part of being specific and useful when giving feedback. I would give an example: "If I gave you back a test and you had made some mistakes and I wrote great job! Did I give you anything specific or useful to help direct you to your mistakes or how to grow as a learner? NO. So we need to specific and useful when we g Here you can have that discussion of not confusing praise with feedback. 

Then you will tell your students with the feedback from their second draft to draw their third draft.  

After, you have given time to draw their third draft you will hand out 1-2 more post-it notes to each student. You will ask your class to participate in a gallery walk with the post its and have them write feedback to their classmates about their third draft.  In a gallery walk, your students will walk around and look at each student's third drawing. 

Then, ask them to sit back down and read all of their feedback and use that feedback on the third to draw the fourth and final draft. Hand out 1-2 more post-it notes and ask your students to do one more gallery walk to give feedback reminding them to make sure it is kind, specific, and useful.  

Finally, have them choose their best and add color to that one. Your students should by this point be making connections between feedback and how their drawings improved each time. 

Lesson Closure:

Bring your class back together and have a discussion about the lesson. You could do another chalk talk where they answer the questions using a post-it note or you could write their answers under each question. Example Questions: What did you learn about feedback?  How can we use feedback in math, reading, and writing?  How can we apply it to every lesson?  How do see feedback making you a better learner? 

TIPS TO REMEMBER:

1. The picture doesn't have to be an insect can be any animal or real object. 

2. To save time especially for your little ones you may want to have the paper pre-folded.

3. Before having your students give feedback the first time you may want to review how everyone needs to talk. That this is not a 1 person activity in other words you want to see all students participating by looking and discussing each others drawing. 

4. As students are drawing you can have soft music playing. You will be walking around having discussions with students on how they are using the feedback to direct them.  You could use some of the above chalk talk questions to guide your discussions. 

5. You will want to block a large amount of time for this activity to be able to give it justice. I promise it is worth it. though!

6. Remember to refer to the lesson all year when your students are having a group discussion, helping each other with assignments, or when working on a project together. 

7. Don't forget about adding in the accountable talk stems to help with giving kind, specific, and useful information.

EXTRA RESOURCES:

I Noticed & I Wondered video from Teaching Channel.

This video is about 3 minutes long and shows a classroom of students critiquing each other's work by using I noticed and I wondered statements. I use this technique when I introduce a new topic and when we are looking at my work to model how to use specific and useful information. Using stems like I noticed gets your students saying things in a kind way and practicing giving specific information they noticed.  I love the I wonder stem because it is a kinder way to point out a mistake or to ask questions about another student's work. 

To keep practicing and modeling feedback you can make anchor charts like the one above for all subjects.   I would place these on rings so you could easily turn to them when they need a stem or extra support to give feedback.

I hope this helps in your journey of teaching feedback to your class. Remember the key to this lesson is to help your students know what to improve, and give them opportunities in the future to show they’ve improved.

Love this video from Will.I.Am to add to this lesson. It has a great message on getting stronger and not quitting. 

Never forget the purpose is to close the gap in a student's learning. 

What are the ways you teach feedback in your classroom? Please share your ideas in the comments section so we can all try them. 

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Thanks for stopping by!