Brag Tags for Big Kids? You Bet! (I've Got a Freebie to Prove It!)

I am not a treasure box teacher. Even as a mom, I've resorted to bribery only a handful of desperate times. I'm not a giant fan of junk food - garbage in is garbage out - and, frankly, I don't have time or money to fill a box. Besides, should we really get food and prizes for doing what we're supposed to do? If that's the case, then I want a margarita machine next to the afternoon sign-out book. Just sayin'.

Still, it's nice to have something small, inexpensive, maybe even subtle for a pat on the back. I already have a stamp for the kids' agendas to use when they meet a goal. Enter brag tags. They've been all over Pinterest and TpT. Cute, little tags that the kids can collect to document wins of all sorts... only they're mostly geared toward primary kids.

I've seen posts on some Facebook groups, with people asking if brag tags would work with upper elementary. Umm... yeah! My kids will love them. My disorganized kids will lose them, but that's only a very few kids and that doesn't mean that they didn't appreciate them. (Really.)

Since my kids travel between me and their homeroom teachers, rather than get the silver ball necklaces to keep their tags, I'm going to get the bracelet-sized ones. ($12 shipped for a hundred from Amazon .) and they can be clipped into the three-ring binder or run through the zipper of their pencil cases. I've seen some way cute tags with colored backgrounds, but I've got about 50 kids, so I'm thinking that, in general, I'll keep the backgrounds clean to save ink. I'll print these at home, since we don't get color copies at my school, on white cardstock, laminate, and hole punch them. Easy-peasy! I'll pick up a couple of plastic sorting containers at Hobby Lobby or Michael's to keep them neat and organized. I'll probably pop the lids off of them to make it all fit better.

So, I've set to work creating some tags for big kids. Kahoots are a big deal in my room full of fiercely competitive gifted kids. Closest thing some of them come to a contact sport. Here's one to commemorate a win. Just click the image to get a full size, printable copy!

Need more big kids' tags? I've got a growing bundle at my TpT store! So far, you'll find:

• Homework club for each month
• 100% on math quiz
• Science accomplishment
• 40 book challenge milestones
• Meeting a reading goal
• clean desk
• May the Fourth and Pi Day (Totally holidays in my classroom!)
• Perseverance, flexible thinking, being helpful, and being a team player.

It's a growing bundle, so while it's at 25 pages of tags now, I'll be adding tags as I find I need them and get them done.

Yep. These will be fun! Don't forget to pin this to save it for later!

Thanks for stopping by!

Poetry Web Freebie

It's the off-season! I spend a lot of the first few weeks of summer retooling the units I thought could be better. I did a lot with math last year, and it's time for my reading units to get a makeover.

As a gifted-ed teacher, I do a lot of work with concepts. Our county uses two of the William and Mary units, and as a whole, I like them. One thing I haven't liked, though, is that the literature webs that come with the units aren't differentiated from prose to poetry, and that leaves out a lot of the whole point of poetry. So I made one of my own.

 

Click on the image to snag a copy!

I gave a good bit of the page to space for drawing the central image, because poetry is supposed to create pictures in our minds with few words. I also added space for identifying sound devices.

What gave me fits was adding the little connecting lines in Photoshop since the boxes are so tight, and I'll either ignore them or grab a Sharpie before I run copies on the Riso. 

I hope you find this helpful.

Wishing you a productive off-season!

 Remember to pin this to help out your teacher friends!

Easy-Peasy Formative Assessment with "Gimme 5!" and Freebie Poster Set

One of the keys to being able to differentiate instruction and keep groups fluid is good ol' formative assessment. Sure, I use exit slips and quizlets and such, but my go-to is a 'Gimme Five' approach.

Kids show, using the fingers on one hand, on a scale of 1 to 5, where they are in their understanding of a concept or ability to work a computation. Super simple, right? Not so much. What I found is that without some definition, 5 (or 3, or 1) meant different things to different kids, so I decided to standardize them. I looked on Pinterest and found a few anchor charts with ideas about what each number of fingers meant. I read them over, made some adjustments, and popped them into a poster set for my classroom. 

Now, a two is a two and a four is a four, and we're all speaking the same language, which makes it easier to get help to the kids who need it and helpers that can be trusted to actually be helpful. 

Are kids shy about showing a finger or two? They can be. Usually, I make a joke while I'm asking, which helps. I'll say something along the lines of,"Okay, guys, quick! Gimme 5! On a scale of, 'Oh, I got this!' to, 'Woman, what are you talking about?!' where are we?" even if we've done it a bunch. Some will laugh and that takes the edge off. Remember, in any classroom, things are only a big deal if you make them one. Risk-taking classrooms don't fret over a two, especially at the beginning of something.

Clicking the poster below will hook you up with the Google doc with the set.

Thanks for hanging out on The Big Kids' Hall today! I hope you find this useful!

Adapting Mentor Sentences for Big Kids

While cruising Pinterest not too long ago, I came across this blog post about using mentor sentences as a means of teaching grammar and mechanics in context. As a bonus, kids get close practice with writer's craft, something that has quite fallen by the wayside in my class, since in North Carolina, fifth graders get an extra state test, one in science.

I was intrigued. The work would only take a few minutes each day, offered consistent practice, and came from the kids' favorite texts. I was sold. Too bad the examples I found were meant for younger kids.

So, I got to work. Found some great lines from the books my kids love best and adapted them into Mentor Sentences for Big Kids. I did them up interactive-notebook style because so many upper elementary/middle school kids put everything into notebooks.

Each week's practice begins with a chance to look closely at the sentence with a critical eye. Why is it a 'good' sentence? What's interesting? What techniques were used? The next two opportunities focus on grammar and mechanics. Why the comma there? What kinds of words are used? Can you tell the point of view? Finally, children use a scaffold to create a similar sentence and the next day, a chance to revise it.

I added in an optional bit of notebook notes that relate to at least one of the items on the right-hand side of the notebook. They're on a separate sheet, so you can leave them off, if you like.

The right hand side has four flaps and the work beneath. The top flap on this one directed kids to circle the nouns.

I'm excited about using them this year! If you'd like a taste of Mentor Sentences for Big Kids, I did up a fun freebie. Just click on the image.

If you're ready to jump right in, you can find the first nine weeks' worth by clicking this set:

Now, to keep digging for more great sentences. I'm all up for suggestions...

Expert Lists: Getting Everyone the Help They Need (First in a Series on Differentiation)

Are you interested in differentiating the instruction in your classroom? My team has been doing it - and reasonably well - with math instruction for a couple of years now, and we've seen a genuine payoff. This is the first in a series of blog posts about how it can be done with less stress. First up, what to do when kids need help, but you're busy?

One of the difficulties of differentiating and offering choice in the classroom is the fact that there's only one of me. I've heard rumors of people having crazy things like TA's in upper grades, but that's never been my experience. It's one of me, 25 of them, and I'm usually busy with a small group.

That's some ugly math.

One of the benefits of tracking data, then, is knowing who's an expert at each skill. Those are my tutors when someone's stuck and I'm with a group or when there's a very few kids who can't get their heads around something and need some work before they re-quiz..

How do I decide who's an expert? In our state, the cut score for our End of Grade testing for math is around a 77. With that in mind, we always set our in-class quiz goal at 80%. If a child has assessed a skill with 80% proficiency, he or she is an expert on that topic.

How do kids know who's an expert and can help? Expert lists hang on the side of their desks. Forgive these for not being a prettied-up version. Making a snazzy template is something I'll get done this summer, but for now, it's good ol' notebook paper: (Look below! I've gotten one done now!)

Aren't some lists longer than others? Doesn't that cause problems? Not really. So much of that depends on you. Over the years, I've learned two things:  

1.  Data doesn't judge. It's just a thing. As long as you don't treat it as a judgement, it doesn't become one. Kids totally cue off of you on this. "You've got a 60 on something? Well, now you know what you need to work on. How can we help?" is healthy. "Oh, my goodness; he just can't graph that! What will people say?" causes drama.
2. No one's list is ever empty. Everyone, even my EC kids, are bangin' at something. They're proud of their lists, even when they don't like this one:

Yeah, occasionally we get cocky, but like we say down South, "It ain't braggin' if you can do it." He can. It's not a problem (and I let him keep the list as-is) because he's a very good-natured kid who is a patient and thoughtful tutor. He is the kids' go-to guy.

At the risk of some snark... Does it occur to anyone to tell the kid with great hands to drop the football at recess more often because his skills make other people feel bad? Of course not. Every kids has talent; each should be allowed to shine.

Finally,
Are kids obligated to tutor? No. I've got a girl whose expert list is also complete. She'll tell you in a skinny second, "I just don't have the patience for it. If you've got a specific question, fine. If you don't have a clue, I'm going to get frustrated with you." We respect that

In all, having kids, whose expertise is backed with data, available to help out others is huge in letting me work easily with small groups and making individual work time profitable for everyone. It has helped my class develop a sense of teamwork and camaraderie and maintain our "Clarkelings never leave a man behind." attitude.  

Hey - here's that jazzed up version:

 It's a freebie! You should just be able to right-click it and save it. It was made at U.S. paper size. Keeping it legal: Clip art and font credits:

                                 
 Anyway, I hope you'll find this helpful in your quest to differentiate the work in your classroom! Next Up: How do I group kids?
 




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Cheap Thrills: Using Kidblog to Power Up Reading Responses

Getting kids to respond thoughtfully to higher-order thinking questions in book club discussions isn't all that hard. Sure, it takes some training, some modeling, but once you get them engaged in the conversations, the kids really take off. In fact, after a bit, you get in the way.

Writing the thoughts out in a well-constructed response? Yeah. Not so much.

Since I'm sending the kiddos off to middle school next year, and I know, having once been a middle school ELA teacher, how annoying it is when their responses are, at best, shallow, and, at worst, incomprehensible, I really want them to hone this skill. Unfortunately, as much as they love to talk about their reading, they acted like getting it down on paper was cruel and unusual punishment.

Then I found Kidblog.

The platform is extremely easy to use, for both the kids and for me. We had tried working with edublogs, but found it very cumbersome. There's a bit of a learning curve as the kids figure out how to navigate their dashboards, but most catch on quickly, and everyone else, wanting to show off their computing chops (and, thus, making the computer geek kids the coolest kids in the room) love to pitch in and help. Kidblog is also very secure, with nothing - no posts, no comments - being posted without my approval. We can invite people outside of our class to join and access our pages, but the world at large can be safely locked out. The basic package, all you really need, is free. Yup. Free. If you want to drop $25 a year, the kids can customize their pages

Suddenly, reading responses were their favorite thing to do! Score!

Here's a post one of my boys, a just-graduated-from-ESL student did this winter:

We use our blogs in content areas, too. Discussing ideas across our blogs is an easy way to make 'getting it' fun. Here, the kids wrote about William Lloyd Garrison:

Oh, and you'll notice that the kids have funny names.Another online safety measure I use is to assign them new names that we use for everything from blogs to IXL. These came from a blues name generator I found on Google. I think next year we'll go with the unicorn name generator. 

For the small amount of effort put into setting them up, the blogs have had a big payoff. As you can see, I sprang for the snazzy pages, but it really isn't necessary. 

One of my goals for setting up these blogs was to post badges that they earned in math to them. Edublogs promised that I'd be able to link in with Classbadges and it would be easy. It wasn't. Getting that sorted will be one of my goals for this summer.

Here's a nifty freebie I whipped up to help kids plan blog posts and comments along with a rubric for grading responses: Find it here!

As the year draws to a close, you might find a little time to play with the idea. If you're a bit of a technophobe, you can get help from the kids you already know and who already think you rock. Lets you save face next year, when you're in front of a new batch! 

Happy blogging,
Lizzie