Piggy Valentines

I have been pretty M.I.A for the past couple of months. I will try to be back more often!

 Until I have time for a longer update, here are some pig valentines I made with some free clipart/graphics.

The clipart is from mycutegraphics.com and the background is from  Teresa Lewis @ TPT.

 I'm not pro at creating things but thought I'd try it out. I hope the link works!

(If there's a copyright infringement, let me know please! I'm not sure how that specifically works.)

Valentines…Piggy Edition

*Steph*

5th Graders are Thankful for

There are a few things that we make sure to do as a 5th grade team, not matter which reading class we have. That way all kids feel included and it helps create community. 

This is a great activity because students have the opportunity to think creatively and express themselves. We begin with the normal THANKFUL acrostic poem. I challenged my intervention students to think about things that weren't tangible. If they wanted to say something tangible, they also had to explain why. 

 Then we looked at different autumn scenes, mainly pumpkin oriented, and the students created their own using crayons. When they were finished, I washed over them with black watercolor paint.

The finished product….

I'm linking up with Joanne from Head Over Heels For Teaching and her Spark Student Motivation Saturday linky because my students were completely engaged in this activity. Being able to express themselves and draw with crayons made them feel really good about themselves. Since we spent a decent amount of time noticing things about the autumn scenes, the artwork came out much better than on others that we didn't talk about. Also, they love being able to have their work out there as a grade level. It makes every one feel good. :) 

 Thanks for stopping by!

*Steph*

Halloween Closure…

So I know that we have all moved onto Thanksgiving and some of us are even onto Christmas planning. I'm trying really hard to wait for Thanksgiving before moving on, but I'm really feeling the tickle to just put out all of of my Christmas decor! We'll see if I can be the master of my actions.

BUT… I took a bunch of pictures during Halloween because my school goes all out for it and I wanted to share. There are some teacher/team costume ideas here too...

Outside and our front office

The 5th grade team decided to dress up as Despicable Me characters. Our one team member has alopecia and she thought it'd be fun to Gru and our 5th graders be minions. I don't remember the scientist guy's name and I am Lucy from Despicable Me 2. 

I even borrowed my daughters play lipstick so I had my lipstick taser.

Minion goggles were ordered and the kids just wore a purple or yellow shirt.

Look at these adorable cupcakes for our party. I had to snag a picture before they were all gone!

Our 1st grade team dressed up as "Fly Guy"

Our Kinder teachers were all the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree.

This is our registar secretary.

A 2nd grade teacher

4th grade Jasmine and Abu

Our admin secretary

Our principal.. before the parade begins, she reads a Halloween story with the pages projected up on a screen and makes it interactive where the kids says certain parts with her.

Our school also hosts a safe night the night of Halloween. We had P/T Conferences so the parade happened on Wednesday and then the safe night was Friday. There are lots of activities and my hubby and I took our little girl.

Kind of playing Goblin Golf.

Waiting for the cake walk to start

A family pic (thanks to my mom for my dress and my daughter's)

Five for Friday/Student Motivation: Quarterly Incentive

I am going to be linking up with both Doodle Bugs and Head over Heels!

As a fifth grade team, we came to the consensus to keep points for each students. At the end of each class period, we go around the room and the kids tell us how many points out of 3 they have earned.

1 for being prepared with EVERYTHING they need for class

1 for participating, not just sitting there like a bump on a log

1 for on task behavior that follows expectations

We, the teachers, can award an additional point to a student that we feel went above and beyond what was expected. That is few and far between. 

At the end of each 9 weeks, we calculate how many points they earned, what was possible accounting for days the student was absent, and then come up with a percentage.

Then we come together and take an average from their three classes (reading, math, & homeroom)

If they have an 85% overall, they qualify for the quarterly incentive. We do not tell them what it is before. It is a surprise! 

(If they don't have 85% then they go to a study hall room and have a packet of work to keep them busy.)

Our plan for this quarter was simple. We were going to watch Mr. Peabody & Sherman and have caramel apples. We found out about 20 mins before school that the movie was a no-go and all of us started thinking a million miles an hour. What were we going to do to fill an hour & a half with 60ish kids? Luckily we have our prep first thing in the morning and I hit Pinterest for "Halloween Crafts". I found a lot of idea but what could we do with whatever supplies we had in the school? 

After scrounging and begging from our fellow staff members: 

Ta Da!

The kids loved it and it turned out super cute!

This was probably the favorite of most kids…

They just got to be kids.

The grass was covered just enough with frost that they could slide down on their coats or shoes if they didn't have that great of traction.

I tried to take a picture with just a couple of kids… others noticed and wanted in on it too. 

Their yummy treat!

This wasn't part of the incentive. This has been a tradition as the advanced/on grade level reading classes use it to spring board into How To speeches. We decided to just make a day of the activities. 

Yes, his head is completely inside his pumpkin.

Most of the 5th grade team…missing one.

Hope you all have a fabulous Halloween week! I have conferences on Thursday and Friday so it's a short week. However, my school basically drips Halloween so I won't miss out on the chaos. 

Smiles!

*Steph*

Bully Prevention Month

October is National Bully Prevention month. As an activity, we read the book Spookley, the Square Pumpkin and then did a circle discussion on the carpet. It was good to get things out in the open at the end of the 1st quarter of school. This way we all knew of things that were happening and what we each could do to help make school a great place for students to be. 

Visit www.spookley.com for more activities and videos.

The students then were able to create their own pumpkins. The only limitation was that there had to be ridges, so that you could tell it was some sort of pumpkin. You can see that the kids went pretty crazy! Then each student made a letter for the heading of our hallway display. They didn't know what the title was going to be until everyone had finished their letter.

Mrs. Udy's Bully-Free Pumpkin Patch.

Patriotic Activity

 I did this activity with my Advanced Reading class my very first year of teaching. I was raised a fire fighter's daughter and feel very strongly for the people who devote their lives to the profession. September 11th was a huge day in history. Every has their own opinions about what happened afterwards, but I feel that the US really came together that day and immediately after. I wanted my students to know a little bit about it.

This was a couple of years ago, so I don't remember all the details, and I adjusted it for the next year. The first year, I talked about 9/11 and asked what the kids knew about it. I made sure to talk about all the different placed that were attacked and the different people who responded or even went on the offensive to help and protect. Most of the kids were born in 2001. I then had them think about the following questions:

Why is 9/11 important to remember?
Did 9/11 change the United States forever?
What did the heroes of 9/11 sacrifice for others?
What is an American?

After a little more discussion, I had them write an answer to one of the questions on their strip. (Each long stripe is 2 small strips put together.) Then we assembled it into an American flag. I love they way that each kid had a part in the creation of our flag. It took a group to complete it, just as we are a nation that pulled together in the time of need.

We hung in in our school hallway and a parent actually asked to pay for the shipping to send it to a NY fire station.

The next year, I did a smaller version of this. It didn't have the cooperative part of creating a big flag. Part of reason for the change was to put the emphasis more on the action of the responders instead of the actual event. This year, all the kids were born AFTER 9/11 even happened. 

Each student created their own 9x12 flag (normal construction paper size) and wrote their own definition of a hero on the white stripes. It was definitely a smaller activity, but I feel that we were able to have a good discussion about helping others and doing what is right. 

Even though my emphasis was based around 9/11 and all the different kinds of heroes from that event, this activity could easily be adapted for Veteran's Day, Memorial Day, or any other event that causes for people to reflect and think about others.