LisaTeachR's Classroom: Back to school

Showing posts with label Back to school. Show all posts

Monday

Welcome Back: Nurturing SEL Through Positive Feedback 😊

The start of a new school year is an exciting time filled with fresh beginnings and endless possibilities 🚀! As students return to the classroom, it's crucial to prioritize their social and emotional well-being in addition to academic achievement. Social Emotional Learning (SEL) plays a vital role in fostering healthy relationships, building resilience, and creating a positive learning environment. 🌱

One powerful tool for supporting SEL is through the use of positive feedback. 🤩 When students feel seen, valued, and appreciated, their confidence and motivation soar. ⬆️ By offering specific and genuine compliments, educators can help students develop a strong sense of self-worth. For example, instead of saying, "Good job," try "Your perseverance on that math problem was impressive!" or "Great work on tackling that together!" This type of feedback acknowledges effort, highlights specific strengths, and encourages continued growth. 💪

Positive feedback also reinforces desired behaviors. When students are recognized for acts of kindness, cooperation, or problem-solving, they are more likely to repeat those actions. 👏 It's important to celebrate both academic and social successes. By creating a culture of positivity and encouragement, we empower students to thrive not only in the classroom but also in all aspects of their lives. 🌟

Let's make this school year a memorable one by prioritizing SEL and showering our students with positive feedback. Their success and well-being depend on it. ❤️

How are you incorporating SEL and positive feedback into your classroom or school community? 🤔

Team building in that first week of school is so crucial. You want to be sure to familiarize your kids with routines and procedures. However, what is most important is building trust and community. Those kids will be with each other and you all year so that is sooo important. I hope these activities help you build that environment where your students feel loved, secure and supported.

Need something ready to go?

These activities have directions and a student sheet (unless that doesn't apply).

The packet contains:

Find a friend who...

Who am I?

Word Wranglers

One Side of the Room

Hula Hoop Challenge

Line up!

You can also find me on these platforms:

Thursday

Team Building Activities for Back to School

via GIPHY

It's been a long time since we've been back to school in person. Those introverts of ours have become even more introverted during this time. We need to do activities that help build community. These are Back to School Team Building Activities to help you out!

Why team-building is important in the classroom?

Find a Friend Who...

In this activity, you have the kids fill out a 3 x 3 sheet. They fill the boxes in with things like their favorite food, tv show, birth month etc. Then you give the kids a set amount of time to walk around and add names to the boxes of kids who like the same things.

They will find they actually have a lot in common with others.

How do you build teamwork in the classroom?

Word Wranglers

In this activity, students work in teams. You give students some random letters (and a few vowels) and see how many words they come up with. The longer the word, the more points earned!

Bonus!

(This one is not in my Back to School Team Building Set)

Comfortable or not?

Using a square of red construction paper, green construction paper and a tongue depressor, have the students make a paddle.

Green on one side, red on the other and

the tongue depressor works as the handle.

Then you ask questions like:

can you cook?
can you ride a bike?
do you read for fun?
do you like speaking out loud?
etc etc etc

It helps you get a sense of who the kids are and where they are coming from. You can even have the kids come up with questions. These paddles can also be used in the future for a bunch of different things that require a yes or no answer.

I hope you enjoyed these games. If you want the printables, just go to my store and get the packet.

Makes it so much easier. It's so important to build community from day 1! Have a great school year!!!

You can find me on these platforms (as well as my blog!)

Sunday

Flexibility and Grace

For us, school started two weeks ago. This distance teaching thing is hard. Just sayin'. The planning is exponential! Besides that, the conversations between teacher friends for brainstorming ideas and parents who need information is overwhelming. Just remember this when thinking about teachers. We are all on a very steep learning curve. Flexibility and Grace are needed now more than ever. We are all trying our best to learn how to most effective in our new role as distance teachers.

Top 5: My Favorite Diverse Reads

I love reading these books to my kids! I hope you'll love them too!

Just Ask! is written by the imcomparable Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. I was lucky enough to meet her when she was on the publicity tour with the illustrator, Rafael Lopez. This amazing book is about how we are all different. And when you have questions or don't understand something, Just Ask!

This beautiful book The Day You Begin is by Jacqueline Woodsen, one of my favorite authors.

It's also illustrated by Rafael Lopez. This book is about appreciating our differences and

seeing how we're all special.

Dreamers is about the immigration story of Yuyi Morales and her son and the beauty she found in libraries. Yuyi is one of my favorite illustrators and authors too!

All is Welcome: This welcoming picture book is written by Alexandra Penfold and illustrated

by Suzanne Kaufman. It's a great read for that first day of school. I love the diversity

pictured

among the students.

Finishing up my list with the Last Stop on Market Street written by Matt de la Peña

and illustrated by Christian Robinson. It's a book about appreciating what we have and

the neighborhood around us.

I hope you love these books as much as I do. If you need some help with lessons, check out the picture book units. They're in my TpT store. Enjoy!

Check out my friends from Teacher Talk for more great ideas!

You can find me on these platforms (as well as my blog!)

How can I make your job easier this year? Let me know in the comments. If I use your ideas for a blog post, you will win $10 to Teachers Pay Teachers. Even better, if I use your ideas to make a resource in my store, LisaTeachR's Classroom, I'll send you a free copy of that resource!

Must Have Back to School Picture Books for your Library

Must Have

Back to School Picture Books

for your Library

Even with all the uncertainty of what school will look like when we return in the fall, we need to have the best books at our disposal. If we are in person or doing distance learning, we need the best, uplifting, most inclusive picture books available. Here are my top picks:

All Are Welcome by Alexandra Penfold. This is an amazing book for your first day of school. It's a diverse read that celebrates inclusivity!
The Day You Begin by Jacqueline Woodsen. Have you read this amazing book celebrating diversity and encouraging kids to be brave? The text is lyrical and the illustrations just beautiful!
Each Kindness by Jacqueline Woodsen. Read aloud this beautiful book on the importance of kindness.
Happy Dreamer by Peter Reynolds. What kind of Dreamer are you? Read this book and discover the dreamer in you!
If You Take a Mouse to School by Laura Numeroff. Are you anxious about the first day of school? Read about the mouse and his adventures on the first day of school!

If you're looking for fantastic books for that first day of school when you go back, these are the books I suggest. I also have Interactive Read Aloud lesson plans available for you, if you need them. Enjoy!

You can find me on these platforms (as well as my blog!)

Saturday

Reading Strategies

If you're an elementary teacher, then you are teaching reading strategies.

It's super important to be explicit and clear. You have to provide kids with a toolbox of strategies to help them navigate their reading. Stephanie Harvey is amazing and knows all things literacy. Her book Strategies that Work has been a cornerstone for me.

We all know Reading is thinking. Kids need to interact with the text. The strategies are: Activating and connecting to background knowledge, determining importance, "fix up" strategies, inferring and visualizing meaning, monitoring comprehension, asking questions and synthesizing and summarizing.

Here is one of the anchor charts I made. I make posters out of them (there is a lot of text) and I made small versions for the kids to glue in their journals.

Now what?

First, read the book so you have a thorough understanding of all the strategies. As kids are reading in Reader's Workshop, monitor them. Confer with them and take notes. The notes will remind you what you've already covered and where to go from there!

If you need the anchor charts, they are in my TPT store!

The direct link is here. There are three versions; two black and white. One is more simple and the other has sentence stems for the kids. There is also a color version with tween readers clip art. Enjoy reading with your kids! Give them the tools they need and they will amaze you!