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.