Favorite Lessons of the Month

I teach over 450 lessons a year. Sometimes I just forget what I've done and sometimes a lesson changes multiple times as the month progresses. In an effort to help me remember what worked, I try and blog about my most successful lessons of the month. Here's some of my favorite from the past month:

3rd: We read Ping and Pong Are Best Friends (mostly) and then discussed feelings of jealousy and what we can do to cope with those feelings using my activity packet online. Next we watched this cute video on conflict resolution.

After the video I broke students into teams and they had to create as many conflict resolution strategies as they could. We ended our lesson with some words of wisdom from Kid President.

4th Grade: We talked about perseverance and growth mindest.

First we read one of these awesome books:

As we were reading or during reading students wrote down examples of a negative or fixed mindset. You can use blank post it notes or Counselor Keri has an awesome resource for this lesson.

Next we watched some great videos on Class Dojo. 

After watching the videos I put students into groups and each group had to change at least 4 fixed mindset statements into positive mindset statements. I made it a relay race and as teams finished they either got supplies for the Marshmallow Challenge or the paper for the Class Dojo challenge. 

5th- We are doing to Weird! Series. Check out all the details here.

Help I'm overwhelmed by TPT!

Do you ever feel this way? I do! In fact sometimes when I go back through my purchases to find something I find 20 other things I forgot I had purchased. So I thought I'd share my favorite purchases from TPT- the purchases I use the most and of course the books I'd pair with them.

Don't Be A Bossy Bear

Today we did a lesson in being bossy!

First we read this book, which I love because my dog is Boss and I often call him Bossy Bear.


When reading this story we stopped at the "oh" page. I used to always fear not reading an entire book, but through a lot of encouragement through my librarian friends I have embraced the idea of not reading the entire book.

So after stopping on this page we discussed what he might be thinking. If the author had added a thought bubble, what would it say? You could give students a page or paper with a thought bubble and have them write it down if you want.

Here are some other books you might like to use:



Follow up videos:

Here is a very bossy frog that the students can follow along to:

This is a very cute video with a very bossy sister bear:

Practical practice:

Follow it up with giving a direction for example- passing the crayons, and have students act it out in a bossy or non bossy way!

What would you do to address bossiness?

Lessons for November- friends, safety, empathy, decision making, thankfulness, and bullying!

It's almost time for Thanksgiving break!!!!! Until then, here is a little about the fun we are having in class..

K-
We are talking about being a good friend.

Intro: We started out by reading "Let's Be Friends" on BookFlix.

Next, we watched "Rainbow Fish" on Storyline Online to talk about how good friends put others first and share. 

The class shared examples of good friendship skills that I wrote on starfish and fish.  To end each student decorated his/her own rainbow fish that we put on our bulletin board: "We are all friends in our school" (get it school haha!) 

Need more: Check out the word match on Book Flix:

1st Grade: Our character education word of the month is citizenship. We are reading "Michael, Recycle!" This is such a cute rhyming book and it has a lot of big vocabulary words for 1st grade, like crusader! 

In the past I have used this amazing Rhyme, Define, Rhyme pack by Speech Snacks I found on TPT.

I really like it, but I think its too hard for 1st grade. I would definitely use it for 2nd or 3rd. If your students are up for the challenge there are rhyming cards in the TPT pack- you could hand them out to each child and them find the partner whose card rhymes with theirs. There are also some great discussion cards you could play Quiz Quiz Trade with. 

First, we read and slowly discuss the book. I let the students turn and talk and share their ideas and answer questions. Then at the end the students draw what they would do at school if we had a "Be Greener Campaign." 

Book Fair Books

The problem with your best friend being a librarian is you always have to buy books...I mean how could I not. Seriously she inspires me to add to my collection- I can't wait to share with the kids!

I got some great books at book fair this year check them out:

You know I can't get enough of the "3 Ninja Pigs" and this book has been on my wish list for a while. I can't wait to use this book along with Corey Rosen Schwartz other books to compare and contrast, talk about point of view, etc. Need ideas - no worries- here is the teachers guide.

Here is the book trailer:

I love this book by one of my all time favorite authors Amy Krouse Rosenthal.

This is a great way to add non fiction into your lessons. This book talks about bug manners and it's GROSS, which means the kids will love it. It would be super fun to have the kids vote on which but they think has the best and worst manners and why. Get the teacher's guide here.

I also grabbed a Tom Litchfield book. This book is going to be so much fun for our career unit and talking about not giving up on your dreams. Read the story behind the story here.

If you have "When Sophie Gets Angry" then you have to  check out this sequel.

This is a great book to talk about conflict resolution and problem solving skills. It would be fun to read it and then follow up with a socratic seminar on dogs vs. cats.