100th Post!! and "The Friendship Project"

I cannot believe that this is my 100th blog post! I know this may seem like a very small amount to those of you who are pro-bloggers, but I feel quite accomplished at posting 100 times over the past year. :-)

I wish I had something amazing to give away to all of my followers to celebrate this moment as so many of you do....but alas, I do not have one due to a tiny budget and student loans to pay off. And, as a second year teacher I don't have too many great activity packets that I could make available to y'all either. BUT! I would love to share with all of you what I have been up to this last week. And, I would like to make all the handouts I have created for this past week's project available to any one who wants them!

A couple of weeks ago God laid it on my hear to create "The Friendship Project." Our reading unit right now is on Friendship and of course, since it is the beginning of the year, we have been talking about making new friends and being a good one. The Friendship Project was designed to be the culminating event of our unit.

Here's what was involved in it:

1) Students were divided into groups. I asked them who they thought they could work the best with and tried my best to make sure everyone had at least one person they wanted to work with in their group. I ended up with 6 groups - 5 groups of 3 and one group of 2. Boys with boys and girls with girls.

2) Students worked together to write a definition of friendship.

3) This was my favorite part! Students interviewed teachers around the campus about friendship!! They took a video recording device (I let them use my iTouch) and they recorded their interviews!! It was so much fun. They learned some valuable communication skills from this! The teachers were just as excited as the students I think. All the teachers commented how "professional" the 3rd graders were as they came in to conduct their interview. Too cute! 

My job this weekend has been to put together the final copy of the interviews. I made them all into a movie! As I was watching the final product on my DVD player I just laughed and thought, "Wow! I can't believe this actually worked!!" 

(In fact, I'm burning copies of the DVD now to give to all the students and teachers who participated.)

4) Students also conducted at home interviews with a parent. They then came back together in their groups and wrote up an article for our Friendship Magazine based on these interviews.

5) And the final thing we did, was to make posters representing friendship through drawing. They turned out so cute!

This was such a great project that really made the students think a lot about what good friendship looks like. We had some very deep conversations going on in each of the groups. This will be a great project to keep referring to throughout the year when arguments or tension may surface between friends.

It was also a good project because it had at least one aspect that every student loved - writing, drawing, speaking, group work, and individual work.

They will get to see their movie tomorrow! I can't wait to see their little faces when they see what they made!

If you want any of the handouts I made for this project, leave a comment with your email address and I will send them to you. :-)

Classroom Management Success!!

It is the fourth week of school and I am seeing awesome results of classroom management we have been working on for the past weeks!! I'm just so excited I have to share!

Every morning at 5'til the bell rings signaling that we have 5 minutes until school begins. At this first bell, I begin playing a 7 minute song (the End Credits to the movie "Up" - so cute!). This signals that students should now be in their seats working on their morning "Wake Up Your Brain" journal. When the song ends I always ask the pledge leaders to come up to the front to lead us in our morning pledges.

Well today the song was playing like normal and when it ended I was in the middle of answering a student's question. When I turned around to ask the pledge leaders to come up, they were already standing there (quietly!) looking at me, ready to go!!! WOW! I praised them up and down and just went on and on about how wonderfully they did their job. I was so happy to see such positive results of this simple classroom management technique. I was hoping we would get to this point by 2nd quarter, but they surprised me greatly!!

I also use songs to signal that we have one minute left before a transition and a song to signal that students need to line up. They love all these songs! The first week and a half of school I would show a powerpoint slide with each song's directions on it. But now I just hit a button and transitions happen smoothly. My students hear the "one minute song" (an short instrumental piece from "Finding Nemo") and they finish their work, clean up the activity, move back to their seats, and sit waiting for me to tell them what comes next. The "line up song" is also a short instrumental piece from "Finding Nemo". Students hear it and move quickly to the door. We are now working on getting into a 4S line as soon as we line up without having to be told to stand in a 4S line.

OH! I have also been using some Whole Brain Teaching techniques!!! I use Class Yes to get their attention. I tried out Mirror and Teach Okay with great success too! I will write another post about these later.

YAY classroom management! :-)