Valentine's Day in the Upper Elementary Classroom!

It's February... you know that that means! Valentine's Day! Here are some of my favourite activities that I hope you can use to celebrate in your upper elementary classroom!

With our big kids, it can be fun to focus on kindness throughout the week of Valentine's Day.

One way to do this it to spread Random Acts of Kindness!

Start by having students brainstorm all of the different things that they could do for people in the school that would be kind. Then they each pick one to write on their Random Act of Kindness Card. All of the cards go into a basket.  Click here to grab the FREE cards! Each morning, draw a Random Act of Kindness from their suggestions and students have until the end of the day to complete the challenge.

Here are some of suggestions that might help to get student ideas flowing:

• Make a Thank You card for the custodian
• Ask someone new to play with you at recess
• Say "good morning" or "hello" to every teacher today

Hopefully your students will end up suggesting that you do something nice for your buddy class or for some younger students. This is where my "Once I was a Heart" book comes in handy!

Head down to your buddy room with red construction paper, scissors, glue, photocopies and smiles :) 

Students can work with their buddies to help them create their "Once I was a Heart Books". The great part about these books is that once they have been assembled, students can continue to read them together for the rest of the year during buddy reading time!

Did you know that the movie Wonder comes out on DVD on February 13th 2018? It is a sign that we must watch it in our classrooms! The movie ties in perfectly with the idea of spreading kindness and your students will love comparing it to the book. I have created a set of critical thinking activities for students to complete both before and after watching the movie. This is a great way to incorporate some reading standards into your party! Best of all, it's only $2! Click on the image below to check out the resource. 

After watching the movie, return to your classroom for some positive affirmations - Digital Style!

Your students will love creating digital compliment books! They will have a blast writing compliments for each other in their Google Slides Digital Books! Best of all, this product comes with a step-by-step teacher guide, perfect if you are new to using digital activities in your classroom! Click on the picture below to check it out!

How will you spend Valentine's Day with your Upper Elementary Students?

Word Nerds - A Book Study

I am on a mission to learn more about vocabulary instruction so I picked "Word Nerds" by Overturf, Montgomery and Smith. If you are also reading this book, I would love for you to comment with your ideas and what you have learned!

Chapter 1:

The authors of this book start by explaining the difference between Tier 1, 2 and 3 words. 

Tier 1 Words: Words that students already know when they come to school (happy, play, desk).

Tier 2 Words: Words that students will likely encounter in their reading but don't know well (industrious, fortunate, absurd).

Tier 3 Words: Words that are domain specific (product, molecule).

The authors then go onto describe that Tier 1 words don't need to be taught at school as they are taught at home and Tier 3 words should be taught in content areas. That leaves us with teaching Tier 2 words during our vocabulary instruction. 

But this still begs the question...How do we teach these words?

Thankfully they start by listing some strategies that do and don't work. These weren't very surprising to me. 

1) Looking up words in the dictionary doesn't help! (Thank goodness because I find this to be a rather torturous process!)

2) Students can learn some words through the use of wide reading!

3) Students can learn new words through word play!

I am looking forward to having them fully describe the strategies that they use in more detail.

The final piece of this chapter discusses how students need a basic understanding of morphology. The authors suggest that students need to understand prefixes, suffixes, as well as greek and latin roots. 

Click HERE to check out a vocabulary lesson that you can use to reinforce the suffix "ed" with your upper elementary students or teach it to your primary students.