Have you ever gone to a conference or a training session and had one of those “aha” moments like we yearn to see in our students?  Well, this summer we had the opportunity to present at the Innovative Schools Summit conference in Las Vegas.  Now, the experience of presenting at Ceasar’s Palace...wow.  Absolutely amazing, but that could be a whole other blog post for another day.  In addition to getting the opportunity to speak, we also go to attend the remaining keynotes and breakout sessions. One session that we attended completely blew our minds and has helped shape how we are approaching our year in our classrooms and in our business.
  
    The session we attended was “180 Days of Joy - How to Use Social Media to Change the Narrative of a Title 1 School School”.  It sounded interesting, and since we use social media quite a bit we decided to check it out.  What we heard, saw, and learned was so inspiring. Mike Randolph, a principal in Florida, spoke on how he transformed his school by using social media.  He began what is known as 180 Days of Joy.  Now, if you follow our social media outlets, this may sound familiar to you! He spoke on how he used social media to change the culture of his school and ultimately his community. Everyday of the school year, something positive was shared about the staff and/or students in that school building.  He gave testimony on how the power of positivity created radical change for his community, school, and students.  Something so simple but yet so powerful… a positive word.  
  
    As we listened, we immediately began to think of how we could take this idea and bring it back to our building (we are an elementary school), our classrooms, and our business. We, too, wanted to create a culture in our classrooms that promotes positivity, even on the hard days.  We wanted to use this platform in our business to encourage other educators and build a community with a positive outlook.  So we took this idea and ran with it!

    Now, if you know us, we tend to jump into things head first.  We want to dive in and explore all that we can.  The more we do so, the more we find that helps our students become successful lifelong learners. So, dive in we did. We began our 180 days without knowing exactly what would happen or how our students would respond, but we are here to say it has been pretty amazing.  

    At the end of every day, we have a daily debriefing. We discuss how our day went, what went well, what didn’t go well, and we end on what brought us joy that day.  As a teacher, it always amazes me to hear what students say.  They never say what you expect and it makes your heart want to explode.  Joy for them comes in the story that you read to them that day, seeing their friends after a weekend away, the hug you have them in the morning, learning from you, visiting the STEM lab, and so much more.
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    If you are wanting a way to strengthen the culture and community in your classroom or school building, we encourage you to find joy.  Even if you do it for yourself in your planner or journal everyday, find joy.  Teaching is a difficult job and there are hard days, more than we’d like to admit. The 180 Days of Joy won’t take all those hard days away, but it will lessen the sting.  Let the small moments of joy help keep you and your students focused on the good.  Let the moments of joy propel you into a year of impact and gratitude.

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​10. Interest Surveys:  Now, at the beginning of the year we actually do quite a few interest surveys with our students, they just don’t necessarily look like the normal “survey”.
​We survey our students on how they work best (individually/partner/group), what kind of seating they prefer, their “perfect” reading spot, and book choice.  All these surveys and information about our students help us, as educators, create the best and most effective learning environment for our current class.   ​

As always we are here to answer any of your questions. Feel free to send us a message! 
                                                          Meg and Kara

A few tips on how to stay motivated until the end of the year.


We have all been there. The countdown is on (8 days, 16 hours, 3 minutes, and 27 seconds….but who’s counting?)  Students are getting antsy and teachers are tired.  And the end of the year does not come without its own type of crazy. There are field days, celebrations, field trips, final projects, report cards, grades, paperwork, meetings, testing, testing, oh and did we mention testing?  

With so much chaos happening around us, our focus can become skewed and our energy can start to wane.  How can we stay motivated to end the year strong?  How can we keep our energy up for our students and for ourselves?  


Here are some things we have done/are doing to help keep us motivated and focused during the end of the year craziness!

Student Motivation:

1. Keep your routines!  Whether it's your routines at home or your routines in your classroom, try to keep them as close to the same as possible.  It will help give students a sense of normalcy and it will help keep you centered as well! 
   
2. Keep it FUN! Get students engaged and excited with adding some different elements into your daily routine!
   
   1. Games 
      
   2. Stations
      
   3. Themed Celebrations 
      
   4. Lessons Outside
      
   5. Bring in the arts (visual, music, dance)
      

Keep it Moving!  It is the time of year that the weather is getting warmer.  Incorporating any type of movement into your lessons will help keep your students engaged and it will help get out some energy! ​

Some of our favorite read aloud books are:

1. Andrea Beaty books like Rosie Revere Engineer 
2. Peter Reynolds books like Word Collector
3. Stuck by Oliver Jeffers
4. Those Shoes by Maribeth Boelts
5. Sandra Markle books like What if You Had Animal Eyes?
6. You are Special by Max Lucado
7. The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo
8.  The Old Women Who Named Things by Cynthia Rylant
9. The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires
10. Who Would Win Books 
​11. Say Hello by Jack and Michael Foreman
12. The Cool Bean by Jory John and Pete Oswald (the same authors also wrote The Bad Seed and The Good Egg)

​We hope this list might give you some new book ideas to pick up and read! We would also love to hear from you about what some of your favorite read alouds are too! Comment below!  Happy Reading! 

In honor of Teacher Appreciation Week.  Thank you to all of the educators out there who do so much for students everywhere. ​

Kara:

When thinking about influential teachers, I have been blessed to have many along my educational journey.  But there is one that sticks out in my memory as one who not only impacted my academics but my heart and the teacher I am today. 

3rd Grade. Mrs. Miedema. Walking into her classroom felt like home.  It was a space where I felt safe and that no matter how I scored on a test or how well I performed on an assignment, I was always welcome. I was not what some teachers would qualify as the best student.  It took me a longer amount of time to catch onto concepts, especially in math.  She never once made me feel inferior to my classmates, but covered me in encouragement, support, and love.  Because of that, I strived to be better.  I didn’t want to disappoint her. 

Her example has stayed with me, even all these years later (not going to say how many years 😉).  I strive to show that same encouragement, that same support and love to my students. I strive to be that kind of a teacher, not only because I know that is what is best for my students, but also because I know how much of an impact that can make on a student, even if it's just one.    

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I remember sitting in class my senior year of high school listening to my teacher tell us how to understand the meaning of a poem. Something about the color red representing loss or being a color of evil. I wondered to myself, “If this is what teaching or learning poetry is all about, it’s not for me.”  Because of that poor experience, poetry hasn’t been my favorite thing to pick up and read. It certainly wasn’t something I wanted to teach. 

For the last few years, I dabbled in teaching poetry to my class. I have to admit, I didn’t believe I was good at writing poetry so I didn’t really expect my students to be either. We wrote some acrostic poems or tried our hand at rhyming, but it wasn’t something purposeful or necessarily meaningful. It was more of a filler activity if we had time. 

Then I took a master’s class in poetry. As a student, I experienced poetry in a new way and my mindset was shifted. I now view poetry as amazing! Ok...it might have had something to do with my professor and her love, passion, and viewpoint of this type of literature to get me interested but now I am HOOKED! Teachers are amazing that way. 😉

Here are some basics I took away about writing poetry. 
1. It doesn’t have to rhyme. 
2. You can write any way you want. You don’t want to capitalize a proper noun then don’t. 
3. You are never wrong. This was a game-changer for me. 
 
That next week I marched to our school library and checked out stacks of poetry books. I couldn’t wait to share these with my class. Each morning I would pick a poetry book, flip to a page, and start reading. Then, as a class, we would talk about what we liked about the poems. Did we like the style? Topic? The way the author wrote it on the page? By the end of the second day, I had students asking if we could write poems. My answer….of course! Before I sent students off to write, I modeled for them first how to get started.  (Modeling for students is good teaching practice, no matter the subject area!) I thought of a topic that I knew something about then I started to write phrases. I modeled for students to go back, to change, getting stuck in my thoughts, and finally be happy with my finished product. For the next week, students would get time in the morning to write poems. They wrote about sports, friends, family, colors, themselves, and so much more. Students learned about different types of poems like acrostic, Biographical poems, poems about using their senses, and narrative poems.     

As a final project to showcase their learning, students listened to the book I Wish You More by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. This book was great text to introduce and teach students about synonyms and antonyms. Students created their own poems based on the work of Rosenthal. They used Google Slides to type their final drafts. Students loved the freedom to use different fonts and sizes. Next, students used PicCollage to create an image of them blowing a wish from a seeded dandelion. One student had the idea to put their wishes in small print and blow them away like the seeds. At the end of the week, we held a poetry reading for our students. Students walked in after lunch to candlelit tables with fancy plates filled with goodies to snack on as they enjoyed the reading of their peer’s poems. The best part was to teach students to snap instead of clap when one’s reading was finished. 
    
After seeing the excitement in my classroom throughout this poetry unit, I am so excited to integrate this into our upcoming years, thinking of new ways to make it even more impactful. Students loved to share their poems and I learned so much more about them from their writings.

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Now keep in mind, we like to Integrate subjects, standards, and skills whenever we can.  We also like to spiral our learning and our teaching.  With that being said, we came up with a short list of different ways you could integrate poetry into your teaching. These are only a few ideas to help get your creative juices flowing!  

1. Write a poem at the end of a science unit to solidify vocabulary and knowledge on the topic. 
   
2. Use poetry to teach rhymes, antonyms, synonyms, similes, etc…
   
3. Creative Writing - use poetry at the beginning of the year to get kids excited to write again (no grammar rules in poetry). 
   
4. Bio Poems - build community and relationships at the beginning of the year (or anytime really).
   
5. Non-Fiction Acrostic Poems - give facts or information about the topic (Ex. RAINFOREST - using those letters, students would give facts about the rainforest).
   
6. Character/Author Acrostic Poems - do a character or author study and share information using this type of writing instead of a traditional “book report” type assignment.
   
7. Color Poems or Senses - use to help teach nouns, verbs, adjectives throughout the year. 
   
8. Story Problems 2.0 - have students create story problems for math - poetry style!  Students could have a lot of fun with this. 
   
9. Christmas Lists - instead of students writing a traditional letter to Santa, have them put their list in the form of a type of poem!
   
10. Mother’s Day - students can write a poem about their mom/important woman in their life.
    

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Anyone else remember the early 90’s sitcom, Home Improvement?  That was a weekly family event in our house, watching the new episode that came out.  And then after it stopped airing, every rerun that was shown.  I am pretty sure I could at least remember a snippet from every episode of that show.  But the one line that you heard on every episode, without fail… “Does everyone know what time it is?  Tool Time!”  

Anyway … when thinking about what we wanted to share this week, we wanted to give you some concrete takeaways that you could implement tomorrow if you’d like.  So we decided that we would share our top ten tools.  Now, we aren’t going to share about tools that can fix your leaky faucet or wiggly table, but some tools that we find we use on a consistent basis in our classrooms, tools (both hands on and tech related) that we couldn’t teach without!  

Now you know why that classic Home Improvement line kept popping up into my head! 😉 
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Top Ten Tools: 

1. Music/Bluetooth Speaker: We use music all throughout our day! For moving our bodies, transitions, work time… you will hear music! The bluetooth speaker is a great way to enhance the music without having to go through the room’s sound system.  You can find cheap ones that will do the trick at almost anywhere.  
2. Sharpie Chart Paper Markers: I know, I know….you’re thinking, “Markers...really?”  But hear us out! These markers are the BEST when creating anchor charts and visuals for your students.  We LOVE them!  We go through at least two packs of these markers every school year.  We promise… once you use them, you’ll understand why we put them on our top 10 list! 
3. Google Suite: Our team lives in and loves the Google Suite!  We put our daily lessons plans and events on Google Calendar, share and organize resources through Google Drive, and create resources on Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google Drawings. 
4. The Ramped Up Read Aloud by Maria Walther: This book is GOLD!  There are such great lesson ideas that range in age and skill level.  And the best part, it is all based upon a read aloud book! We use this book for inspiration in our unit planning and has definitely been a useful tool for us! 
5. The Reading Strategies Book by Jennifer Serravallo: This book gives some amazing ideas on different ways to teach the skills and strategies specific to reading.  It ranges in grade and skill level.  We use this to help us plan whole group, small group, and individual instruction. 

    6. The Writing Strategies Book by Jennifer Serravallo:  Jen for the win again!  Similar to the Reading Strategies book, this book gives some great ideas on ways to deliver writing instruction.  It ranges in grade and skill level.  We use this to help us plan whole group, small group, and individual instruction. ​

Do you ever have those moments when you take a second to stop and scan your classroom and you think,” Oofta! This place is a disaster!”  If you haven’t…. Please tell me your secret to keeping seven year olds tidy!  But if you’re like me, this scene is more of a daily occurrence. :) 

From the very beginning of my career I have always believed that if the kids are the ones doing the work, they are the ones learning.  Now, I will tell you, that way of thinking does not always lend itself to Pinterest worthy bulletin boards and Facebook posts. I started teaching in kindergarten...need I say more?  But what it does leave you with is a classroom full of students proud of their work, students who are 100 times more sure of their work's purpose and students who are gaining more understanding of the learning.    

Just last week, my classroom, to one passing by, may have looked like a scene of utter chaos.  But to me and my students, we were in the learning zone!  Paper scapes were everywhere. Glue and popsicle sticks and construction paper scattered the floor.  Students' discussion filled the room (along with a little music..because why not?).  It was a messy, loud, beautiful sight.  I overhear a table of students talking.  One student said, “Look at this mess!  We have stuff everywhere.”  The other student turned and said, “That’s okay!  We are getting a little messy, but we are learning and having fun! Right, Mrs. Rigsby!?”  Music to my ears! 

If you are wanting Pinterest worthy, I can understand that.  There is a lot of pressure and eyes on us as educators that make us feel we need to live up to certain expectations.  But I would encourage you to examine the ‘Why” of you needing that picture perfect project.  Is the student at the center of that project and the learning?
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So, will my classroom look like a tornado went through it on a daily basis… probably.  But there is beauty in that mess.  You just might have to dig down past all the construction paper and glue to see it. :)