Social Skills and Classroom Expectations

Hi all!  It's Emma from Clever Classroom. 

Are you looking for quality books and resources to help model desired behaviors as you start a new school year? 

I have previewed and selected 30 books to help your students learn a range of social skills. 

Each book contains a message that you can turn into explicit instruction within your classroom on a daily basis. 

To help you teach explicit social skills and expectations, I move on to using our posters.  I laminate and display one copy and bind another. 

I use these posters to focus on what I expect of students. We break each skill down using our social skills flippy books.  Students notice when others are doing the right thing and congratulate each other. The posters are ideal for introducing and revisiting expected behaviours. 

Having the books organized in one area, will make it easier for you to grab for them, when needed. 

Click through to see each book listed in this collection. 

Sight Word Activities

Hi there, it's Emma from Clever Classroom.


I love creating resources that are a bit different and require an element of interaction, movement and fun.  You can view the interactive/hands-on resources in my store. 

This post has inexpensive center ideas that can not only be used with sight words, but with any word list. 

 Are you always on the look out for cheap and also recyclable materials for your students?  I love collecting and using inexpensive props for hands-on literacy activities.

Bottle tops and ping pong balls fall in to this category! There are so many things you can do with both bottle tops and ping-pong balls.





Use ping pong balls or bottle top lids to create fun, hands-on sight word centers.

Ask staff and students to bring in clean bottle tops.  You could hold a table competition to see who brings in the most tops.  Collect them in a container and write on the top of each lid with a permanent marker.

You can use any word list for the 5 activities mentioned below.

1. 

2. 

 I have created a whole bunch of bottle top activities with record sheets and instruction cards, all of which can be used with any word list. 

3. 

4. 

5. 

Find more of these games in our Bottle Top Games bundle.

For even more sight word ideas, see my blog post.

Thanks for dropping by.

Let's Play! Active, free, FUN math facts game...

This math game is exactly what the teacher wants:

1. Fun

2. Effective

3. Easy

4. Free

The purpose of the game is to help your students learn their math facts fluently. I always start my 2nd graders out memorizing their doubles (sums to 20) with this game and then it morphs easily into doubles plus one facts, and then onto the real toughies (7+9, 8+6, etc.).

Directions:1. Use masking tape to make a 3x4 box with the sums of problems you want them to memorize. This picture above shows the students working on their doubles facts.2. Make a set of flashcards with the problems you want them to practice.3. All students should sit in a line around the box (not shown here because of privacy issues).4. Choose two students to be "it". They stand on the number 0.5. Call out a math fact. The students hop to the correct answer.6. The first student to hop to the fact with their completely within in the lines stays in. The other student sits back down in exactly their same place. Keep it light-hearted and take away the competitive nature. To do this, I emphasize how much luck plays into it (i.e. "ooh, you had good luck being right by the six").6. Then the next student in line is in against the last rounds winner. Luck really does take a big part of this and you will see that one student will rarely last more than three rounds before someone else bumps them out. 7. We play this as a group for a few days. After that, I leave the cards and box out and let the students play if they ever have a free moment in class. After while, I change the numbers to more challenging problems. I have had my "game board" set up since September and they STILL are going crazy to play!

This game can be set up and implemented ANY time of year! Have fun!

Countdown to Turkey Time!

Happy almost Thanksgiving Break! 

Tammy and Christy here from Fluttering Through First Grade, officially counting down to turkey time. 

We're pretty sure you may be counting down too...

Us teachers have a tendency to do that. 

Right?

November is a quick month for us at school {Insert two teachers jumping for joy, maybe, *possibly* even screaming like school girls here}, but just enough time to share some of our favorite activities.

We love to bring the story of Thanksgiving to life with Dr. Jean's Thanksgiving bracelet. You can read about it {here}. We created a class read aloud poster and worksheet to go along with the bracelet. It's free by clicking the image above. Enjoy!

A class that cooks together, stays together. Right? Well, for the school year at least. 

We are one of the *lucky* classes who get to go to school the few days before Thanksgiving.

Are you *lucky* too?

It's the perfect opportunity to sharpen our annual cooking skills by baking with our class.

We pull up our sleeves and bake pumpkin bread turkeys with our favorite little turkeys. 

This will be our 12th year baking for Thanksgiving. It quickly became an experience they remember for years to come. Plus, the pumpkin bread is kind of ridiculously moist and super delicious...just saying.

On the days that drag follow we decorate our turkey pumpkin breads to look like turkeys and take our class through the entire writing process about their baking experience.

We collect one pound coffee cans for this project, but have adapted it so you can use small bread loaf pans as well. We bake in our school oven, but have also asked parents to take them home to bake or have even stuffed our own ovens. 

Click the pic above to see it in our TpT Shop.

Ummm...We know. We love him too.

We make these every year for our parent volunteers. But, shhh...Please don't tell them. We haven't made them quite yet this year. We know, we'd better get cracking crafting!

Are you a crafter? 

Is that a silly question for a teacher?

If you answered, yes and yes,  hop on over to our blog {here}to see how to make him too.

Happy Thanksgiving sweet friends!

Thanksgiving Math With Teaching and Tapas

Hi everyone! It's Alyssha from Teaching and Tapas!

I am writing here all snuggled in my pajamas at 6:30 pm because I am fighting some serious exhaustion. It's the GOOD kind of exhaustion though! Late last night I flew back into Madrid after spending the past 5 days in Rome for our regional Professional Development conference. Sometimes I have to pinch myself to realize that I am living in Spain and a weekend trip like this is no longer only a dream! It's fun and I am so THANKFUL for these adventures happening in my life!

This trip wasn't only pasta, pizza, and vino. I spent most of it inside a conference room. Luckily, I was learning some great stuff! One presentation in particular stands out. We learned all about using the Singapore Math bar model method.

With Common Core, this year I have been all expecting my students to use a model to show their understanding. This is another model that is great for any teacher or classroom! This model can't work with ALL word problems, but it think it is another modeling tool that I am excited to share with my students.

I am going to delve into using this modeling method with my students this week using a little Thanksgiving problem solving freebie I am happy to share with you all! 

This FREEBIE includes 12 problem solving questions that fit perfectly with the upcoming holiday! Download it here. Enjoy :)

Alyssha