Keeping Students Engaged Before the Holidays

Remaining the 'Star' of the Show

Don’t Deny It, the Holidays are Here!

  I remember the first few years I taught elementary school. Holidays were always so hectic. There were parties, room moms bringing sugary snacks, and lots of overly-excited kiddos. It was a fun time, but an exhausting time. After our schools consolidated and I was moved to the middle school, I thought wow, so much is going to change! Holidays will most likely be a bit calmer now that I am with older students. Ha! That was not the case. The more I refused to acknowledge Halloween was on the horizon, the more my students tried to remind me. The more I refused to accept the fact that Thanksgiving was soon to arrive, the more my students reminded me. I suppose you can see the pattern and now know what happened when Christmas rolled around. I finally got it. Message received. My middle school students still looked forward to holidays. Instead of denying it, I embraced it. I created ELA  task cards that touch on Common Core Standards while remaining festive. This  helped me stay on track with my instruction and my students engaged. When we were working on independent work, I played quiet instrumental Christmas music, and I had my Advisory students make Christmas cards for the lovely people at the retirement home in our community. Don’t deny it, don’t refuse it, the holidays are here! If possible, focus a lesson or two on upcoming holidays. Take this time to practice textmapping of non-fiction passages by examining holidays across the world.

                                    Christmas Task Cards

Continue Your Daily Routines

While you may not be able to continue with business as usual, still continue the same expectations. Surprisingly, students crave routine and normalcy. Though you may change your instruction a bit to reflect the upcoming holiday, keep the same routine going. If you conference with your students every Monday, be sure to conference with them on Monday. Any additional changes might cause more ruckus.

Let Your Students Move

When winter (in PA at least) rolls around, lethargy sets in. I, even as the teacher, don’t feel like moving and grooving too much. This is the best time, however, for students to get up on their feet and get moving. This might be a great excuse to try a gallery walk, jigsaw activity, or some other type of cooperative learning. If students are already excited and moving around, might as well make it worthwhile!

Do Not Count Down the Days

  Counting down the days until Christmas break was always one of my favorite things to do in elementary school. We would make paper chains and rip off one piece every day leading up to Christmas vacation. As a middle school teacher, I see how that may actually be counterproductive. While I do have some classes that could count down the days and continue working as hard as ever, I have some classes that will basically interpret this as well, what we are doing now doesn’t really matter because our break is almost here! Counting down to Christmas, ok. Counting down until Christmas break, not ok.

Differentiate Your Instruction

  Students might benefit from learning contracts or some other type of instruction that provides choices. While we should be doing this all year long, the holidays prove to be a crucial time to pique student interest. Or, provide your students with a high interest activity such as this Instagram Activity created by our own Caitlin and Jessica over at EB Academic Camps. We all know our students love them some social media! Add some technology to your instruction. Programs such as Kahoot or Quizlet keep students highly engaged. Both are available on a tablet or on a desktop computer. 

Take a Virtual Field Trip

  This might be a great time to ‘leave’ the classroom. Plan a virtual field trip visiting another country, watching bobsled races, or even ‘visiting’ a local attraction. Take a stroll through the Smithsonian. Visit the White House or explore the night's sky. 

MOST IMPORTANT

  Remember that not all of your students are looking forward to Christmas vacation. Some students don’t even have a Christmas tree let alone the news gaming system or cell phone under the tree. Many do not have a home life that causes them to look forward to spending the next 10 days out of school. Some may not even have a sufficient amount of food for the long holiday break. Remain aware and sensitive to your kiddos this time of year. That one student who keeps 'acting up' just might be anxious for the upcoming break. 

You

  Most likely, you are the one handling lots of the holiday business at home as well as at school. Be sure to take even 5 minutes to breathe. Perhaps making lists help you feel in control of what you need to accomplish or maybe you need a cup of coffee, alone, with no interruptions. Make it happen. You need to take care of you. 

Middle School Students and Anxiety

I once had a student who was scared of birds and airplanes.

Walking across campus was tough. Recess was tough. Lunch (we had no cafeteria) was tougher, and field trips? Especially our week long camping trip? Let's just say we both learned a lot about how to deal with stress.  This student didn't have any traumatic memories or stories linked to birds or airplanes. Instead, it was a symptom of her anxiety disorder. 

Teachers have a lot of demands placed on them in the United States today. Meeting benchmarks, planning, differentiation, parent concerns, dealing with administration, professional development, it goes on and on. 

What we sometimes forget however, is that our students are also under an increased demand to perform both in and out of school. This has caused an increase in both diagnosed and undiagnosed anxiety disorders, particularly for students in grades 5-8.  Anxiety is a huge category of specific disorders. Some examples include general anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, separation anxiety, post traumatic stress or selective mutism. 

At the beginning of the year, and periodically throughout, I sit with my homeroom and we do a check in to see what anxieties and pressures they are feeling. We generate an anchor chart of strategies to deal with anxiety at school and at home. This chart is displayed in the classroom throughout the year and added to as we go. Building a strong and supportive classroom community, where mistakes are okay, goes a long way in helping students who feel anxious. 

Anxiety often has a physical impact on a student. This can range from headaches or stomachaches, bloody noses, tingling, heavy breathing,  fainting, nausea, crying, or hives. If a student is experiencing any of these things, it's important not to dismiss them. 

A copy of these teaching strategies as well as the free graphic organizer I use to help students NOTE their thinking can be found here: Teaching Strategies for Anxious Students

8 Teaching Strategies for Dealing with Anxious Students

Teach deep breathing techniques. This is particularly helpful before a test or presentation.

Teach students to NOTE their thoughts. Notice what they are thinking, Observe how they are feeling, Think about a solution, Enact a plan. I keep a stack of graphic organizers in the corner of my classroom. Students can grab one to help if they want to. I always let students who use the organizer give it to me to be shredded if they wish. 

Giving a prearranged signal when a child is about to be called on.  

Presenting oral reports in front of the teacher alone. Alternately, letting a student with selective mutism record their presentation at home for submission. 

Giving a signal before going over instructions. Students who are anxious about missing information will find this particularly helpful.   

Working with the student to determine a "safe person". This is an adult OR peer that can help the student refocus or put a situation into perspective. 

Explain any changes in schedule or procedure. This will often require repetition

Make sure that students with anxiety are not seated next to the "chatty ones". Students who fear getting in trouble will be more focused on disassociating themselves from their neighbors than on class content. 

3 ways for Middle Schoolers to be of Service During the Holiday Season

At this time of the year, people look for ways to give more than they receive.  Every year, I try to get my students involved in just that.  

First, I ask my students for ideas.  Generally they always come up with a canned food drive or a clothes drive or some kind of pet food drive.  Now, don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with drives - I just like to think out of the box.  

I write all of their ideas on the board and then, I say "What's one thing you are good at doing?"  I list those things on the board too.  

Next, without speaking, I write ideas for service that are more personal next to the talents the students shared.

The we start brainstorming where we could carol or for whom we should make the cards.  It gets exciting when we start to think of others! 

Over the years, the 3 best (or most popular) ideas have been:

Singing Carols at the nearby Assisted Living (complete with Christmas hats and cookies of course!)

Making Christmas cards for the Custodians, Cafeteria workers, the local firemen and the local police.

Decorating the halls of the school, hospital, or Assisted Living.

These are all low-cost and focus on giving of oneself rather than on giving material items.  To me, this is the true meaning of the season and one of the most important lessons of all.  

Writing an Argument

Are you here for an argument?

Hi, it’s Marypat from Just Add Students ready to argue with you!  

Well, not really.  But I am here to give you a suggestion for getting your students fired up about a writing assignment:  Give them something to argue about!

There seems to be nothing middle school students like better than arguing.  And there are tons of juicy topics your students can sink their argumentative teeth into – cell phone usage in school, school uniforms, homework, video games as Olympic sports – the list goes on.

This is the perfect time of year to have students write an argument and then host a debate. 

The Steps to a Perfect Argument

Step 1:  Define what an argument is.  

This makes a great class or small group discussion.  For starters, you may want to share the Monty Python video with your class:  Are you here for an argument?

As your students come up with the qualities of an argument, have them create a class anchor chart that lists the elements of a good argument – and a chart of the elements of a bad argument.

Step 2:  Choose the topic.  

By this time in the school year, you probably know some (or many!) of your students’ passions, pet peeves, and tirades.  If your students are like mine, they share their feelings quite freely! 

Tap into the topics they’re interested in.  Focus on topics that are at their level.  Political and broad social issues are generally too complex for my students and often require research that would extend writing time you may have for the assignment.

You may want to give your students their choice of what to argue or you may want to assign the topic.  If students are going to choose their own topics, be sure to allow some time to “prime the pump” by having students brainstorm.  The topic “pet peeves” is a good place to start.

An alternative to allowing students to choose their own topic is to allow students to choose for a limited number of topics.  That way, students can work in groups to develop ideas and organize their logic.  Additionally, this makes it easy to hold a class debate after the students have written their arguments.

Step 3:  Choose sides.  

While your students may not be in favor of school uniforms or allowing video games to be an Olympic sport, it’s great critical-thinking practice to ask them to take a side they don’t personally agree with. 

If you want to host a class debate after students have written their arguments, be sure you have students working on both sides of an issue. 

Step 4:  Prewrite, argue, prewrite, argue, and prewrite some more!  

Use an evidence graphic organizer.

Before students even begin writing their argument, they need to figure out what and how they are going to argue.  Use prewriting position and evidence graphic organizers to help your students determine where they stand on the issue.

Once students have a basic foundation for their argument, don’t let them start writing.  Discuss the phrase, “Does it hold water?” Students should use this adage as they work with a partner to determine the validity of an argument. 

Pair up students and have them argue their position.  The job of the partner is to find holes in an argument.  Once that is done, send students back to their evidence and logic graphic organizers to strengthen their position.

Allow students to meet again with a different partner to argue their case.  Again, the partner’s job is to determine if the argument “holds water.”

Step 5:  You might decide that at this point your students are ready to hold a debate.  A simple debate with teams of two works great.  Hosting a debate at this point in the writing process really solidifies student understanding of the topic and the logic of the argument. 

Whether you choose to hold a debate now or after students have finished writing their papers, you’ll find the debate is a blast!  I’ll write more about how to host one in a future post.

Step 6:  Write the argument!  At this point, most students will feel like the argument writes itself! 

You can download the free evidence graphic organizer from myTpT store to help your students gather evidence.

Have fun “arguing”!

Growth Mindset

How many of you heard of this new concept: fixed and growth mindset? If you have, I bet you can vouch for me of how great this really is.

Here is what it is:
Many students think in a FIXED mindset. I am bad at this. I will never get this. This is too hard for me.
Students need to think in a GROWTH mindset. Let me try a different strategy. I know I can do this. I can do better work than I am doing right now.

This is not only a positive mindset, but it helps students that may not think they are "smart"--GROW! Research has shown that it is a lot about the mindset of the students because they have been allowed to be in that fixed mindset throughout their whole school career.

I found out about this research last year during second semester and work on it with my kids. I kicked it up a notch this year and wanted to share it with you! I think they really got it!

Carol Dweck is the guru behind all of this and this video below explains more about this process.

One way that I introduced this topic to the kiddos is through picture books.

I used the following books:

The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires

Lily the Unicorn by Dallas Clayton

The Dot by Peter Reynolds

Going Places by Peter and Paul Reynolds

Ish by Peter Reynolds

There by Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick

It is hard to get this across the students so I love to show them through videos. Here are the ones I use below:

All of the above videos are FANTASTIC! They really teach the kiddos that they DO HAVE THE POTENTIAL to DO IT!

Finally, I incorporated FOOD into my lessons because students always seem to understand it more with food? Am I right?

I made a Growth Mindset snack mix. Here is how I did it:

I split up each letter over seven days. You can see when you look at the chart that each letter is representative of one skill that is needed to have a growth mindset. We watched a video and then talked about why each letter fell with that food. I then gave them ONE of that. For example, one marshmallow, one piece of life cereal, etc. We then did that for each day. At the end of our seven days, we reviewed everything and it order to make our mix they had to recall everything. We then ate! While the kiddos were eating, I had them work on this book I found this book is a freebie from Growing Firsties. Even though, it is first grade--my kiddos still loved it! It gave us something to remember and recall everything we have learned.

Here is a freebie just for you about all of the reasons why I used that certain food! Some of them are a stretch because I wanted specific food for allergy purposes, but if you buy into it they will too! They will love it!

12 Days of Christmas Activities (FREEBIE ACTIVITY)

Happy Holidays Everyone!

We hope all you USAers (is that a word?) had a fantastic Thanksgiving holiday with family and friends! We are officially into the Christmas and Holiday season, and it is oh so exciting!

Celebrating the holidays was one of my favorite parts about being a teacher. I've always taught in Catholic schools, so Christmas was a huge deal to say the least. I used to decorate my classroom with Christmas lights, play Christmas music all day long, decorate with student Christmas work everywhere. You get the idea ... I stinking love Christmas.

This year, Jessica and I created an awesome 12 Days of Christmas Activities unit that can be used in conjunction with any unit of study! Since you are all awesome Middle School Mob junkies, I want to direct you to an EXCLUSIVE FREEBIE that is not featured in our TpT Store. You can only access it by CLICKING HERE!

Here are some awesome pictures of the complete unit. How cute are these activities for students, which you can then use as decorations for your classroom? It's a win-win if you ask us!

Wishing you all a joyous Holiday Season!

Hiding our Turkeys - When School Needs to be More Than School

Hey there, Susie from Anchored in Reading here to share a free resource and to talk about something always on my mind. School drop-out rates are soaring, students are experiencing stress like no other generation, and, some may say, the focus on testing has caused a shift in the focus of education and learning. This first sentence is not meant to depress anyone, but to show that there remains an increasing number of factors to consider when planning for instruction. The expectations of our students continuously changes and this weighs heavily on our learners. I, for one, have one plan of attack for all of this. I believe I have the solution, the magic formula, the answer to our conundrum. You might not believe it, but I’m saying it anyway. Fun. Yes, you heard me loud and clear and I hope you tell on me. Shout it from the rooftops, I'm not trying to ditch rigor for one second, but I want my students to have fun. I want them to enjoy school. I want my students to see the bigger picture beyond testing. They should understand the standards set forth are important to learning, but not life-threatening. I am here to admit that I do take a break from text dependent analysis, close reading, discussing figurative language, and other class work from time to time. My students have fun and they have success. Both can be achieved, really.  And, yes, this may even mean ‘letting’ my students participate in a fun Thanksgiving activity!

Another elephant in the classroom I’ll address regards parent communication. I’m here to say that it is okay to get parents involved in projects outside of the classroom, even in middle school! These types of projects do not have to stop in second grade. Believe it or not, there are students still wanting their parents, grandparents, foster parents, older siblings, aunts, uncles, etc. involved in their school work. These fun home-school projects give many students the opportunity to feel successful. A little bit of that goes a long way. When I taught Learning Support I was always so afraid to send any work home with my students. I didn’t know what type of support they were receiving at home and I wasn’t sure if I would stress them out even more by assigning them work that most likely wouldn’t get done. You know what I found out: students will rise to your highest, or lowest, expectation. How dare I make that decision for these students and their families! I assumed I knew everything and actually singled out my students by making this decision for them. As hard as I worked throughout their school day to make sure all accommodations and modifications were in place so they could participate with all peers, I was robbing them of the chance to participate in all school experiences because I thought they couldn’t handle it.  It’s embarrassing now, but I was doing what I thought was best at the time. The same goes for middle school students. One cannot assume a sixth grade student does not want to participate in a fun project that is to be completed both in school and at home. To create an effective, cohesive, and enriching school experience, we need to offer a multifaceted approach to learning. 

So, how do we do this? How do we support our home-school connection while keeping learning fun (yeah, I used that word again, so what)? Ah, the holidays! This is a time that lends itself to celebrating traditions while working on standards. One way I accomplish this task includes the good old faithful ‘Turkey in Disguise’ project. There are many variations of this, but I encourage my students to make a turkey in disguise outside of the classroom and then we complete a creative writing activity about our turkeys in class. Because there is still a tiny part of me that will always believe there are kiddos who do not have home support, creating a turkey in disguise at home is not a requirement for a grade, but a fun activity I encourage my students to complete. Students complete the writing activity regardless if they actually make a turkey in disguise outside of the classroom.  The prompt students respond to involves the adventures of their turkeys and what happens as they are hiding from the dinner table. Oh the creative disguises we see! If there are students who did not create a turkey at home, I tell them to base their writing off of any disguise of their choosing. I encourage them to think of how they would disguise their turkeys. Lastly, I let my students write creatively. To me, this is acceptable because my students feel successful and not stressed out about paragraph structure, mechanics, and length of the assignment (although I secretly keep my fingers crossed that they will apply the writing skills we have been working on!). In the past, I have graded these based on a strict rubric, but I find that is not always necessary. This activity always proves to be an enjoyable way to end the last couple days before Thanksgiving break.

Take this post as validation that it is acceptable to have fun every once in a while. Provide holiday activities, use current songs or social media in your instruction, do whatever it takes to gain the interest of your students. Don't ignore the other 'stuff' we have to do, but keep in mind it is best practice to provide opportunities for every child to feel successful. Even if you do not choose to do this particular project, think of a way to include fun. You know your students best. How and what I teach now that I teach in a rural area differs a bit from when I taught in the inner city, but I always had the same goal. These moments of letting loose will have a stronger impact than your best-planned and most thoroughly taught lesson. These are middle school kiddos; this is what they need.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!