What a week it was... new computers being installed Monday and Tuesday, Tornado Warnings complete with hallway fun on Wednesday, Teacher of the Year finalist stuff on Thursday, and PTA launched their wonderful appreciation of teachers on Friday. Three out of four of those things ended well. We got four computers instead of three, a tornado never touched down where we are, and PTA's breakfast and flowers were great! Well, except that my breakfast was a little too close to my flowers when I sprinkled the preservative into the vase... Take it from me- it doesn't taste good! I was not named Teacher of the Year, but it is still an honor to get as far as I did and I thank my colleagues for that. :)
Despite the chaos, we had some pretty successful lessons. I am going to share two of them that I did in social studies. We are studying Presidents' Day.
The students should know what a president does to help them understand why we would honor them, so we watched the Brainpop jr. video titled Presidents to start. Then we did a flip chart where we decided if the statements in each column were true. The headings were A president does... and A president does not... I included pictures of the flip chart so you can see what it looked like. Unfortunately, I can't share flip charts because they have unsecured clip art. This clip art is from www.scrappindoodles.com.
Then the students did a sheet, "If I were president of the United States... I would..."
Then, on another day, we learned who we celebrate on Presidents' Day. First we read, President's Day.
Then we did another flip chart. It is kind of silly, but helped get the point across and only took a few minutes both to make and to do in class. We pulled pictures out from behind the black box and put them on stage if it was someone we celebrated, and put them in the audience if it was not someone we celebrate on Presidents' Day. Again, I can't share the flip chart. The clip art came from www.scrappindoodles.com, creative clips' teacherspayteachers store, digiwebstudios.com mycuteclipart.com and www.cklr.com.
Then I had the students do this sheet:
Both response sheets are available for download. I am experimenting... hopefully I did this right. I have had a Dropbox for years, but just learned about the public folder. I learned that I can use it to share things... so here is my first shot at it. By the way, if you don't have a Dropbox yet- you need one! They are awesome!!! Go here to get one.
http://db.tt/LtAidqz. They are free! You won't be able to figure out how you did without it. A friend of mine pulled up her transportation home document on her phone when we ended up dismissing from the cafeteria unexpectedly on Wednesday. She was so glad she had it (and yes, I had gotten her started so I was glad I helped someone out, too!)
Back to Presidents' Day, I enjoy our Presidents' Day unit a lot! It is easy to incorporate into ELA. Here are two more things I have recently done. Both are available at my Teachers Pay Teachers store.
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