Christmas in Europe: France

Many of you who follow my blog know our social studies standards have changed 

BIG TIME!

We have worked hard to try to get these standards to the students in many different ways this year.

We have changed so much of the way we teach including how we do our behavior system.

The students earn money each day and at the end of the 9 weeks we have a Market Day for them to spend their money they have earned.

This 9 weeks we crossed the ocean for Market Day and explored the continent of Europe.

The majority of the students' money was spent on buying their passports.

They had to fill out an application for the passport and send it off.

My class was worried because as of Wednesday morning our passports had not arrived and our flight was due to leave on Thursday morning.

They came in though with time to spare!

Mrs. Kim, our principal, bringing the special delivery package to us.

They were so excited the passports had arrived!

In the standards, the students are suppose to be able to locate and identify 6 countries in Europe.

They are also to know the history, geography, culture and government of these countries as well.

We have worked on most of these elements except the culture, so we thought Christmas would be a good time to get that in - as well as be a fun way to learn.  There are 6 third grade classes, so each of us drew a country.  

My class got France.

Now, it was up to us to learn as much as we could about the culture of France and then be able to teach our friends when they came to visit on Market Day.

You can see here some of the ways we prepared for our visitors.

The kids worked hard on getting the room ready as well as preparing themselves to be the tour guides on Market Day.

Here are some shots of the day in France as they taught their friends about France.

When the visitors came in, passports were checked and stamped to show they had visited France.

Then, they colored a French flag and glued it to their suitcase.

They also colored France on the map that was on their suitcase.

My students that were in charge of the art of France wanted us to have our own Louvre.

This was the perfect spot for it.

Each child made their own Mona Lisa.  Our visitors were able to use a QR code to show the real Mona Lisa exhibit at the Louvre.

We also studied Claude Monet who was from France.  We recreated his Water Lillies painting and, again, a QR code was used for the students to see the real painting.

For our food station, the students were able to purchase

Ratatouille - which they LOVED

baguettes

Muenster cheese

Brie cheese

Sparkling Grape Juice

The students that were in charge of the language did a cute job.

They found a website and created a QR code that would speak to the students in French.

They also had little French men with speech bubbles coming out of their mouths.

The top speech bubble would have a word in English and when you lifted it up, it would show you how to say the word in French.

The Eiffel Tower was the central focus of the room.

The kids loved this part of the room.

They would gather to have their picture taken, but the especially loved the QR code that allowed them to have a live camera feed on the Eiffel Tower.

It was super cool!

               

               

We were so blessed to have many parents and grandparents join us as well as members from our county's central office.

              It was a trip to remember!

Check out our #ECESEuropeanTour on Instagram and Twitter to see more.

Back to School Bash: First Days of School Plans

I can't believe we are on our third week of the Back to School Bash!!

It has been a great way to see what others are doing in their classrooms for sure!

We had our winner of the TPT products drawn last week and she has been contacted, but the giveaway is not done yet! 

Keep scrolling to find out the new giveaway you can enter for the next 2 weeks!

This week we are talking about:

I usually was not a fan of planning the first day and week of school.

I dreaded it to be 100% honest with you.

However, a few years ago, our school decided to do 2 weeks of character education before we started anything else.  That was awesome!

It really made the difference in how I looked at and treated the first 2 weeks of school.

For 2 years we used the book The Energy Bus by Jon Gordon.

There is a book for adults and a book for kids.

This year we are using the book The Leader in Me and the 7 Habits.

With my kids being third graders, I have been able to keep the language of The Energy Bus even though we are moving on to something else.  It has really helped.

My pictures from the first day of school must be on my big camera, so I will add those later - Sorry.

However, this is what we do since our first day of school is only a half day of school.

When the kids arrive, they see their desk looking somewhat like this.

A Superhero rubber duck from me, a bag of Lucky Charms from my partner teacher, their folder for the year, a name tag, a packet of information for the parents to take home and fill out, as well as a Welcome to Third Grade note from me.  This note welcomes them to third grade and walks them through what I need them to do this morning while I meet the other parents and children.  It has worked very well.

This is an example of my note:

From there, we have DEAR (Drop Everything And Read) time.

The first week I read to them.  This year, I chose to read Third Grade Angels and The Lemonade War to my class.  We finished The Third Grade Angels pretty quickly and I liked the message in the book.  The kids really liked it.  I tend to read our read aloud books MUCH faster than the other teachers on my team, so we started Lemonade Wars after they did.

After DEAR time, we spent the first of MANY moments learning procedures.

I spend many planned moments as well as spontaneous moments teaching, modeling and practicing procedures.  If these are not learned in the first week or two of school, you are in for a rough year.

The next item on our first day of school plans involved each third grade class visiting the other third grade classrooms.  We really embrace the idea that EACH third grade child is OUR child.  Our children are not just the ones in our homeroom each day.  We want all of the third graders to know the other teachers because they will have most of them as teachers at some point during the year due to our schedules.  In this 5 minute visit, we do "All About Me" bags.  The teachers each place 3-5 items that tell about them in the bag, so the kids can learn about them.  

What's in my bag?

- chocolate

- Harry Potter book

- Burts Bees chap stick

- picture of my family

-items that show my favorite sports teams - The Braves and Alabama football

We end with our own class because that is when we give them THEIR All About Me bags.

This is their homework for the night. They can fill the bag with all things about them and can decorate the bag to represent themselves.  

The last part of the day as we wait for closing announcements and calls for buses is spent making self-portraits. I will talk more about these in the next linky party next week.

That is the end of Day 1.

The next few days are spent continuing to read our read aloud books.

A favorite is also the sharing of the "All About Me" bags.  We usually choose 3-4 to share a day.

I love this because it gives me a chance to introduce speaking and listening skills from the very first day.  We also are able to talk about what are good questions to ask.

The kids LOVE this part of the day.

I always write each child a note telling them how much I enjoyed their bag and mention

something special about their bag.  They love getting these notes from me.

I mentioned how we spend the first 2 weeks teaching character education.

Third grade is the highest grade in our school and we are in charge of the first SOAR or SUPERHERO assembly of the year.

To help with all of this, we decided to have a Leadership Camp for the first 2 weeks.

We spend about 30-45 minutes each day talking to the third grade as a whole about what is expected of them.  We also work on songs we are going to sing for the assembly at the end of the second week of school.

We put each class in their school shirt for this part so we can tell the difference.

We also have name tags on each child for at least the first week of school.

After our singing part of Leadership Camp, each teacher takes a lesson to teach to each homeroom.

Our topics are:

What is a Superhero?

A Hero in Math Class

A Hero in Specials

A Hero in Reading Class

A Hero's Behavior

A Hero's Goals

My lesson was A Hero in Reading since I am the reading teacher leader for the school.

I plan on blogging about that lesson soon.

I feel like it is very important the first weeks of school to be real with the kids and to just sit back getting to know them.  This class of mine this year LOVES to color - anything. We enjoyed sitting around the desks coloring and talking with each other.

One procedure we are harping BIG time this year is hallway behavior. 

Due to our schedules, our classes will be walking in the hallway A LOT by themselves - without teacher supervision.  Each third grade teacher made a sign with the class name on the front.

On the back is the afternoon schedule so they will know where to go.

I have been emphasizing this procedure with the Brownie Point system.

I tweaked it to fit us a little bit.

Each time the class gets a compliment from another adult, they get to add a brownie to the cookie pan.  Additionally, the first 2 weeks of school we have a "Mystery Walker" every time we leave the room to go somewhere.  If the "Mystery Walker" does the right thing, a brownie is added to the pan.

When the pan is full of brownies, the class earns a brownie party!

I am proud to say, we earned a brownie party the first week of school!

Just look at that great line!

Another part of Leadership Camp is learning our Common Language of third grade.

Each teacher will teach a part of our common language:

whole brain teaching

12 Powerful Words

Line Up Chants

Celebrations

Attention Getters

Here is a group of my kiddos learning the 12 Powerful Words by Larry Bell.

We LOVE it!!!

The first weeks of school - 

EXHAUSTING, but oh so important!

What do you do?

Please link up with us to show your plans.

An InLinkz Link-up

On top of this, we are having ANOTHER giveaway!!!!

That's right!! You could win ONE of TWO $50 gift certificates to TPT!

Be sure to enter!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Monday Made It: July 20

Well, I didn't make it last week, but here I am with my first

ALL SCHOOL

Monday Made It, thanks to 4th Grade Frolics.

I really have enjoyed this link up each week.

Next week I will have a ton (hopefully) because this is my last full week of summer break.

Last week we had 4 days of PD with our school and grade level from all over the county.

My first Monday Made It was suppose to be for that.

When I went to our Common Core training this summer, they mentioned this method to help students retell what they had learned.  It is called the GIST method.

You can get it in my TPT store for free.

(I promise to liven it up a little later, but I wanted to get it made.)

This is a great way for you to see if your students can answer basic questions about what they have read as well as summarize what they have read in 20 words or less.

I loved it and can't wait to use it!

So much of my teaching is done in small groups.

A few years ago, I realized I was not allowing the students to be leaders in these small groups.

So I found the TEAM method.

I have slept since then, and I have searched Pinterest high and low to find where I got this idea.

However, I cannot find it AT ALL!!!!

In the past few years, I just had the jobs listed and each person knew what they were.

However, with observations and make the learning more student centered, I figured I needed these jobs to be more prominent.  So, I made these last night.

I bought lanyards and badge holders from Amazon.

I did not want them huge, so they are smaller than some might like.

I am going to use these at the beginning of the school year, and then move into badges that just have the job name on them.  I just figured at the beginning they will need to be reminded of what their job is suppose to do!  Then, later on in the year, I can make them cuter as well!

You can get the set in my TPT store for free.

I can't believe the school year is here!

I can't wait to share my classroom with you and see what you all have been making as well.

Happy Creating!