Part 3: Are You Ready for the BEGINNING OF THE YEAR?

Tips, tricks, and Team Building

For the beginning of the year

Raise your hand if you are ready to start your first week of school?  If you are not then by the time you leave this blog you will be! I plan to give you lots of great ideas to begin your first week of school that will include stories, get to know you activities, and lots of team building. 

The last two posts we covered creating an open and safe classroom to talk and building strong relationships. The final piece needed to have a great first week is for your students to learn how to work together, struggle together, and encourage each other when lessons get tough. Team building is a great way to accomplish this. It also helps to see how students interact, what makes them tick, and they begin to learn more about each other. Here are a few of my favorites.

1. Hula Hoop Challenge: Have your class stand in a straight line holding hands. The challenge is for the class to pass the hula hoop once down the line without anyone letting go. Once you do it as a class you could split them into teams and see which team can work together the fastest to pass the hula hoop down the line. If you are looking for more hula hoop games Lead by Adventure had some great games to play.  

2. Marshmallow Tower: The marshmallow tower challenge consists of 20 spaghetti noodles and 1 large marshmallow. The challenge is to be the first team to build the tallest freestanding structure holding a marshmallow at the top using only the items provided.




3. Can You Save Fred?: Poor Fred the gummy worm his boat has capsized! He doesn't know how to swim and never wears his life preserver. He is stuck and his life preserver is caught under the boat. If he reaches for it he will fall into the water and drown. Can you save Fred?  This is also a great first-week activity to teach the scientific method and the expectations of a science journal. All directions and printables are provided on the link above. 

4. Spaghetti Races: Split your class into teams. The challenge is to be the first team to transfer all their spaghetti to a bucket across the room in 4 minutes. If they drop the spaghetti they must start over. All that is needed is paper plates and spaghetti.  

5. Pool Noodle Races: Pool noodle races is just like the spaghetti races but with 2 pool noodles and a beach ball or balloon. Split your class into teams. The challenge is to be the first team to transport your beach ball or balloon to the other side of the room or playground without it falling off. 

6. Longest Paper Chain: The longest paper chain challenge consists of 1 sheet of construction paper, scissors, and glue. The challenge is to be the first group to build the longest paper chain out of only 1 sheet of construction paper in 30 minutes.   

7. All Aboard!:  All you need for this activity is Dollar Tree plastic table cloths for each team of 4-5 students. Cut the table cloths in half and ask each group to try to fit inside the boat.  When the group succeeds, decrease the area (by cutting or folding the table cloth) and challenge the group again.  How far can the group go?

8. Flip the Boat:  Use the same table cloths from All Aboard. Have the teams to stand on the table cloth, challenge them to turn the table cloth over without anyone touching the ground in the process.  Can add a time limit to make it more interesting!

9. 100 Cup Towers: All that is needed is 100 dixie cups for each team. Challenge the teams to be the first to build a 100 cup structure without it falling. Can add a time limit to make it more fun.

10. Trust Line: Place a foot of tape on the ground and have the kids stand on either side of the tape, leaving no gaps. To start, one person stands at one end of the tape and spins around 10 times, while everyone counts his turns. The person must then attempt to run down the length of the line as straight as they can. The kids on the side stand with their arms out ready to catch and protect the person from falling. The point is for the kids to know their friends won't let them fall.

Teamwork Videos:

                                                  

What team building activities do you do in your classroom?

Don't forget to share with your teacher friends and especially all the new teachers out there. 

Thank you for stopping by! 

Part 2: Are You Ready for the BEGINNING OF THE YEAR?

Raise your hand if you are ready to start your first week of school?  If you are not then by the time you leave this blog you will be! I plan to give you lots of great ideas to begin your first week of school that will include stories, get to know you activities, and lots of team building. 

Now that you have created a culture of openness and discussion it is time to build respect and positive relationships.  If you remember from my last post I discussed John Hattie's research on positive influences in the classroom.  Those influences help to make the most growth in your students. When looking at effect sizes you always want a 0.40 or greater to see the most growth. John Hattie's research shows that teacher-student relationships produce an effect size of 0.72. This shows me how important it is to build and encourage these relationships on the front end. Students decide within 2 weeks whether or not you are worth it. So make your impact now!

1. Friendship:

I start my friendship lesson by discussing what friendship means, looks like, feels like, sounds like by using a chart like this.

Next, I read Enemy Pie by Derek Munson and discuss the importance of friendship. After I have read this story we add more information we learned about friendship to the anchor chart.

Here is a link for an 
online version
from Storyline

Then, I head to one of my favorite websites that has great lessons and activities to work on character education, The Ned Show. This is a great website to use at the beginning of the year. They have compiled lessons, stories, and videos to help teach 8 different topics ranging from growth mindset to preventing bullying for all elementary ages.  

The Building Relationship topic has 6 lesson plans that help to encourage and engage students in building relationships. One of my favorite activities is friendship soup.  There are several different ways you can do this activity. I first have the children come up with their own ingredients they would need and the recipe for a great friendship.  Next, they create a friendship soup, salad, or pie. 

Version 1: Friendship Fruit Salad

For this version, I found the symbolic meaning of several different fruits that would represent friendship.  This version is a great way to bring in Science as well. You can begin a unit on physical science about mixtures and solutions. 

Version 2: Less messy Friendship Soup

The 2nd version I used items I had around my classroom like below. This is also a great activity to learn about mixtures in Science and what tools are needed to separate a mixture. Possible questions to ask during the activity: 
How could we separate these items? 
What categories would we place these objects in? 

Love being able to combine 2 subjects into one lesson! 

Version 3: No Mess Friendship Pie

If you are not a fan of all the mess then this is the version for you. A Year of Many Firsts has this super cute activity. All the templates are provided on her website for the craft. 

Finally, we end our day by completing a venn-diagram displaying how they are alike and different from their friends. I display the word diversity and discuss the meaning. I then relate it back to friendship and what it means to be a great friend referring back to our anchor chart from the morning. I next read Spaghetti in a Hot Dog Bun by Maria Dismondy. 

Here is a link for an 
online version
from youtube.

Third Grade Thinkers has a great venn-diagram activity that I use to close this lesson. I love how she uses candy to match up the classmates. Read the link above to get all the directions and the link to this activity. I have done this on paper like below or I have stapled paper plates together to make a venn-diagram and then die cut out circles using skin color construction paper. The students then create their own faces and hair and glue to the top of the paper plates. 

                      

         

2. More Stories on Friendship

Here is a link for an
online version
from Storyline

Your students will love these stories about amazing friendships in the animal world. 

                             

Here is a link for an
online version on youtube.

Here is a link for an
online version on youtube.

To end your day on friendship establish a final list of what makes a great friend. Post it in your room to remind your students how important it is to have great friends.  

How do you promote friendship in your classroom? 

Please share in the comments section so we can create a platform to inspire each other.

Don't forget to hit follow!
 I will be posting through out the year how I teach Tennessee State Standards through engaging activities. 

Part 1: Are You Ready for the BEGINNING OF THE YEAR?

Raise your hand if you are ready to start your first week of school?  If you are not then by the time you leave this blog you will be! I plan to give you lots of great ideas to begin your first week of school that will include stories, get to know you activities, and lots of team building. 

      

How important is it to set up a culture of safety, kindness, friendship, and credibility? It's important right but how important?

John Hattie who wrote Visible Learning suggests teacher credibility is a 0.90 effect size, classroom discussion is 0.82, and teacher-student relationships is a 0.72 effect size. 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 teacher nerd when it comes to research and best practices!

I always start my new year by teaching the children how to sit in a rainbow (semi-circle). I want my class to feel like a family and to be able to see each other when speaking.  I feel that when we sit on the floor together we can see each other, it builds relationships, and a closeness to make everyone feel comfortable to speak and engage in learning. After I have taught them how to sit on the floor I teach them about purposeful and accountable talk.

Purposeful Talk:
While you are working on opening the lines of communication with your students and them learning to talk to each other it is a great time to teach and practice purposeful and accountable talk in your classroom. Purposeful talk is a focused, collaborative talk meant to deepen and extend our thinking about a topic. Life in 4B has an awesome example of how she begins this process before applying it to a text. I also teach my students to SLANT while they sit in a rainbow. SLANT= Sit Up   Lean & Listen    Ask Questions   Nod your head   Track the Speaker

Accountable Talk:
Students in accountable talk ask one another about their thinking and build on the responses of others. I start the year with sentence stems posted on the walls in the rainbow area and pictures of students using accountable talk. The Teacher Toolkit has printable stems, videos, and ways to practice. 

Next, it is time to implement all the fun activities and get talking.

1. Discussion Games:

  This or That is a game to get students up and moving and seeing what everyone likes or dislikes. You would come up with a list of items before hand and ask your class this or that. Then they move from one side of the classroom or to the other side. 

Example: cheeseburgers or pizza and they move to the side they like the most

Jenga Talk is a great way to get the discussions flowing. Students will be broken up into groups. Next, they will use colored blocks to answer questions that go with the color. The questions included in this game are all "get to know you questions" and some fun silly questions too.

                                         

Who loves candy? Candy always helps to ease nerves and your students sure do love some candy! I love these and it's a fun way to end your day!

Here is another great idea from 4 The Love of Teaching. Write questions on the ball and pass it around for your students to answer.  




One of my favorites is the yarn game or spider web activity. You can play with question cards where they throw the ball of yarn to someone and they ask a question.  Another version could be that they tell one favorite thing about school or they can say something they like and then toss it to a friend that likes the same thing.   At the end, your class will have made a spider web. You could then place a balloon on it and the class has to try and keep the balloon from touching the floor.  Finally,  you can discuss how everyone in the class is connected and that we each have a part in the classroom and it takes all of us to have a successful year.

Another great way to get to know your students all year long is using Miss5ths whiteboard prompts. If you don't follow her on Instagram you need to find her.  She places quotes or prompts on her whiteboard and has her students respond. I loved the idea of starting our day on a great note. I placed her prompts each morning on a Prezi or I would just type them into a Word document and project it onto my board. My students knew that when they walked in the first thing to do was to read the board and respond by placing a post it note onto the whiteboard.  They loved hearing everyone else's responses and it started our day on a happy note. 

As you have had these conversations to make connections with your students jot down things that each student has said and make a Kahoot game about your class. Students will have to remember who said what to identify the correct student.  This is a fun way to remind everyone of each other's lives,  likes, dislikes, favorites, how they are feeling, what bums them out and so on. 

2.  Scavenger Hunts:

There are two types of scavenger hunts to do at the beginning of the year. The first type is to help the children find items in the room. You can make your own to fit your classroom. Here is an example of what I use.

                                                     

The second type is to get to know your classmates. Again you can make your own to fit your student demographics. Here are a couple different examples that I use.

                 

             Find a Friend Bingo

        

           Get to Know You         

3. Stories:

There are so many stories out there that help in building relationships and helping to get to know your students and their feelings.  I use these books to help with discussions on how we are a family, how we are all different, and to learn more about my student's feelings and thoughts. 
Here are a few of my favorites I like to use:

Here is a link for an
online version
on youtube.

Here is a link for an
online version
from Storyline

Here is a link for an
 online version
on youtube.

Here is a link for an
online version
on youtube.

What activities do you like to do at the beginning of the year to get to know your students?