Makeover Madness

I’m joining the amazing ladies at Teach Create Motivate, Third in Hollywood, Peppy Zesty Teacherista and Sparkling in Second Grade for their TpT Seller Challenge.

Week one is all about making over an older product.  I chose one of my best sellers and one of the first products I ever created for TpT. 

I still love the paleontologist and dinosaur clip art, but I wanted to spruce it up a little by adding some cute borders and some update fonts!  My border and font collection has grown by leaps and bounds since I first created this 3 years ago!

So, here is what it looks like now!

If you already own Fossils are Fantastic you can head over to your purchases on TpT and download the revised product!  If you don’t own it yet, now is your chance to grab it on sale for 15% off!  Click HERE to check it out! 

This fun little challenge has motivated me to take a look at some other products that could use a little freshening!  I’ll keep you posted.  In the meantime, head on over to one of the blogs to check out everyone else’s makeovers!

Mindsets in the Classroom {Chapter 5}

This is one of my favorite chapters yet and it really made me think of how my kiddos, specifically some of my gifted kiddos, respond to failure.  This is the population of kiddos who have heard their whole lives  how “smart,” they are and for a lot of gifted kiddos it is important to look “smart” at all costs.  Failure is handled very differently depending on which mindset you have.

My goal this past year was to get my students to see failure as a lesson and to understand that taking a chance or not getting something right away doesn’t make you a failure.  This quote was from one of my gifted kiddos after a particularly challenging day of problem solving in math.

“Our goal is to encourage students to internalize the belief that their own actions and behaviors, not external factors, guide them to achievement or failure.” –Mary Cay Ricci

This part of the chapter was very convicting for me.  I have been thinking for a while now that I need to revamp the whole clip chart/prize system thing.  I like being able to reward students for positive things in my classroom but I really want my students to see that accomplishing a task, especially a challenging one, should be a reward in itself. 

It made me think of those times that we play a class game or do something challenging and the question comes up, as it always does, “What do I get if I win?”  I always respond that you get the satisfaction of winning or completing the challenging task, and for some that is enough.  Now I see that those are my kiddos who are in a growth mindset. 

What do you use in your classroom to manage behavior and/or reward students?

So, how can we help our students respond to failure appropriately and see failure as a chance to grow.

Teachers can help students when they make errors by:

• help students interpret errors as “data,” that will help them
• ask students what strategies they have used
• ask students what other strategies they could try

Moving forward, my goals are to reevaluate my behavior management/reward system and to help my students see failure as information to use moving forward.  Lots to think about!

Join us over at Hello Sunshine and link up your thoughts!

Mindsets in the Classroom {Chapter 4}

Today’s chapter is all about the importance of critical thinking in a growth mindset classroom. 
 



The chapter begins by talking about the 3 types of critical thinking: reasoning, making judgments/decisions, and problem solving.  The author makes a critical distinction between everyday decision making and the type of decision making necessary for critical thinking.  Ricci explains that it’s our job as educators to give our students opportunities for DEEP and CRITICAL thinking, that critical thinking is not a skill that is taught and then they have mastered it.  It is a process of strategies rather than a set of skills. 
 
I loved the connection the author made to the critical thinking that is embedded in several of the 8 Mathematical Processes.  This immediately made me think of Number Talks.  If you have been reading my blog for any length of time you know that I am a HUGE fan of Number Talks.  As part of the Number Talk process students must:

• Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them. (Practice #1)
• Reason abstractly and quantitatively.  (Practice #2)
• Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.  (Practice #3)

Another connection I made was to the problem solving that we do in our math journals.  After having time to solve and reason in their journals, I give students time to talk to their peers about how they solved the problem.  This process emphasizes the same three Mathematical Practices.
 

Grab these Math Journal Prompts free from my store!  Just click on the picture above!

 

Next year, I plan on continuing with Number Talks and Math Journals.  I also plan on looking into many of the games the author mentioned in the chapter to build reasoning skills.  My friend Heather at Learning with Mrs. Langley just shared the other day that she put together a Donor’s Choose project for some STEM supplies.  That got me thinking, I may put together a project to fund some reasoning games to use to increase critical thinking and help my students learn the importance of perseverance and effort. 

Here are a few of the games:

• Rush Hour
• Chocolate Fix
• Gravity Maze

 

I can’t wait to read what everyone is thinking after reading chapter 4.  Don’t forget to link up at Hello Sunshine!

What I’m Wearing Wednesday

I’m linking up with  Ideas by Jivey to share what I’ve been wearing.  I may regret sharing this since these favorite shirts of mine sell out pretty quickly as is…..but they are too good to not share!
I have been obsessed with these shirts on jane.com.





I own this blouse in navy, coral, and blush and whenever they are up I grab a new color!






They are the perfect length and I love the lightweight material.  The button on the sleeve and the pleats at the neck make this shirt work perfectly with dress pants for work or jeans for a fun evening out!


The royal blue and kelly green short sleeve shirts are another gem from jane.com called the Ashleigh blouse.  I just picked up another one in pink!  The little puff on the sleeves is so cute!





My other obsession is my favorite pair of Kendra Scott earrings.  I have been pairing them with just about everything.  My blush Kendyl blouse, my navy Kendyl blouse, my coral Kendyl blouse…..do you see a trend here!





I haven’t quite gotten the hang of the selfie yet (my teenage daughters would be so embarrassed!) and the color of the earrings is hard to see, so here they are from the website.





That’s what I’m wearing this Wednesday….and this week if I’m being honest….it’s a rainbow of Ashleigh and Kendyl blouses over here!  Friday the royal blue one with my pink Kendra Scott earrings is on the rotation for my fun girls’ night to see Move with Derek and Julianne Hough!

Mindsets in the Classroom {Chapter 3}

It’s time to link up again for Chapter 3 of Mindsets in the Classroom.   This chapter was a great refresher on some of the training I received when I became the gifted cluster teacher for my grade level.  Teaching gifted children is all about differentiation…teaching all children is all about differentiation in an ideal world.  So what are some ideas that we can take away to help us be responsive teachers who meet the needs of all of our students?
Here is my chapter summary, followed by a few takeaways from each section of the chapter.





In this chapter the author takes us through the steps for planning differentiated and responsive instruction.

For me personally, this is a huge part of my planning process.  Often when  I preassess my students I find that a great deal of them have already mastered the standards….this is especially true in math with my students who are gifted quantitatively.  Preassessing helps me to determine if there are gaps or skills that students are missing before we continue.  Sometimes I will make center activities and small group lessons that center around these skills.  It also helps me determine which skills will need the most practice with during our math rotations.

How do you handle students who have already mastered the standards you will be teaching?





Curriculum Compacting is something that I learned about in my gifted cluster training.  If I am being 100% honest, it is still the thing I struggle with the most.  What to do with the students that compact out while I still need to teach 28 other students. 


I would love to hear from those of you that use curriculum compacting successfully and how you make it work!





Again, in my gifted cluster classroom this is something that is happening often.  I have an extension menu that I created last year to go with the curriculum frameworks we teach first quarter and my goal is to finish making menus for the rest of the quarters this summer.  Here is what my first quarter extension menu looks like.





When I create an extension menu I try to incorporate math, ELA, science and social studies.  I also try to use the multiple intelligences so that students have a variety of ways to express what they have learned.


Do you use extension menus in the classroom?  Would you be willing to share them?  Maybe we can all swap ideas and avoid recreating the wheel!


Another way that I enrich is through the use of Genius Hour!  Once I get Genius Hour started in my classroom, I allow students who are early finishers or who have already mastered something have extra time to work on their Genius Hour project.  You can read all about Genius Hour HERE.


And check out the Genius Hour Starter Pack I created by clicking the pic below!










For me this part of the chapter was a huge affirmation!  I am the teacher that when the majority of my class does poorly on an assignment, I ask myself where I went wrong.  If they didn’t get it, that is on me.  I need to go back and I need to try it differently.  It drives me C.R.A.Z.Y. when teachers put assignments in the grade book that most of the class did poorly on. 
 
Here are some of my favorite ways to do formative assessments on my students:

• Plickers- my kiddos go crazy when I pull out the plicker cards.  The website is super easy to use and I love that I can control everything through the app on my phone!  If you aren’t using Plickers you NEED to check it out!
• Learning Road Trip- this is Meet Miss Parker’s cute take on fist to five.  I have the posters hanging in the front of my room and we use this often.  I love to use it to get a quick gauge of where they are before we partner up or before I make small groups.  I heard a great idea in a training to snap a quick pic of the number they are holding up so that you can refer back to it when making your small groups!
• Exit Tickets- I love using short exit tickets, especially after introducing a new concept.  I check them over at night and use them to group kiddos for reteach time and station work.  Here is an example of an exit ticket I used after introducing equivalent fractions.

Chapter 3 was a great review for me of things learned during training two summers ago. I definitely needed a reminder of the kind of responsive and student centered classroom I want to have.


I hope that you will link up with us as we continue to learn about transforming our classrooms and schools!

Monday Made It {Photo Booth Fun!}

Today I’m linking up with Tara at 4th Grade Frolics for Monday Made It!  I absolutely love this linky because it helps keep me on track with all of my crafting goals for the summer! 

Today’s project was a bit spur of the moment!  I have been wanting to set up a “photo booth,” at Meet the Teacher night for a few years, but I always seem to run out of time.  Yesterday, we were at Michael’s and my daughter spotted a wall full of these fun wooden photo booth props…

The best part was they were all 40% off!  Each piece was either 50 or 74 cents!  My youngest daughter turns 15 tomorrow and we thought, what a fun idea to set up a little photo booth fun to occupy her friends….and of course then I can reuse everything for my classroom!

We picked out some fun paint colors and used sponge brushes…it makes the painting so quick and easy!  I had a bunch of left over Christmas party paper plates that came in handy for painting.  I always throw the random left over seasonal paper plates in the crafting bin!

Today I ran by Dollar Tree to see if they had a few more fun props to add to the basket.  I ended up filling an entire basket with fun hats, some fairy wings, a glittery microphone, a coconut bra, a grass skirt and leis. 

We plan on hanging some colored butcher paper on the wall with a banner that says, “Happy Birthday Lindsey,” and the photo booth fun will be ready to go!  I think they are going to have a blast and it was all under $20!  Now to think up a hash tag for the girls to use when they post their pics!

Head on over to 4th Grade Frolics and link up your own Monday Made It or just see what everyone else made!

Mindsets in the Classroom- Chapter 1

Every once in a while something comes along that changes you….for the better.  Several months ago, my husband introduced me to the research of Carol Dweck.  Dweck is the researcher behind the concept of Growth Mindset…and let me tell you…it rocked my world!  (You can read a previous post about Mindset HERE).  I tore through Dweck’s book and then set about finding out as much as I could about how to introduce this concept to my students….enter the book Mindset in the Classroom.  I was so excited when I found this book and couldn’t wait to go through it with all of my bloggy buddies.  I do hope that you will join us on this amazing journey toward changing the mindsets of our students, staff and community. 


Today, I’m linking up with my bloggy buddies at Hello Sunshine for chapter 1 of our study.  Head on over there to get the reading schedule and link up with us to be entered into a drawing for a gift card!




www.mindsetworks.com is a great website that has FREE resources for teachers to use to introduce and teach students about growth mindset.


I created this little graphic to help talk to people about the differences between the mindsets.  Click on the pic to download it.





Head on over to Hello Sunshine, grab the chapter summary frame and link up with us!  I can’t wait to hear everyone’s thoughts and ideas!