My Favorite Classroom Management Tip

Picture this scene from my first year classroom:

Thirty third graders, excited about an activity, *speaking* VERY loudly at each other, there was probably a kid under the table at some point (face palm). I, the poor first year teacher who introduced a fun activity without laying down some ground rules, surveyed the chaotic scene in front of me, picked up a small responsive classroom management chime (that I was told worked like magic….) and tapped the chime very gently in the hopes of regaining control of the classroom. Obviously, it didn’t work or I wouldn’t be telling you this story.

So, here is what I WISH someone had given me instead of a little chime my first day of teaching:

Call and Response Cards: Why I love Them

Call and responses are exactly what they sound like: the teacher calls out a cue and the students respond. I start the year with some favorites posted on a prominent wall in the classroom. These become our go to call and responses throughout the school year. Then below those I add “Special Call and Responses” that are seasonal and change throughout the year.

I swear by posting these up in the classroom for a variety of reasons:

1. My memory is terrible and if I don’t have call and responses posted on the wall I revert to tired ones that everyone is sick of hearing.

2. Kids LIKE to be able to see them and will get so excited about new seasonal call backs. They will even make requests or ask to lead them!

3. It is so helpful for specials teachers or other instructors who push into your classroom to be able to see exactly what you do to get everyone’s attention so that they can keep your classroom management system consistent for your students.

Click this link for over 70 unique call backs to use throughout the school year!

Do you use call and responses in your classroom too? What are some of your favorites? Let us know in the comments below!

How to Tell Your Students You're Having a Baby!

First of all, CONGRATULATIONS!! This is such an exciting time for you and I’m sure you are eagerly awaiting the day you get to share the good news with your students.

I have a couple of fun ideas for you:

My Teacher is Having a Baby Reveal Word Search

This activity is SUPER low prep. Just print out the appropriate word search for your students, slap a poster up on the white board and watch their reactions unfold! BONUS: If you are having twins this is the activity for you! I included a special “My teacher is expecting twins!” word search just for you ♥ Click on this link to take you to this activity.

Unlock Your Teacher’s Biggest Secret Baby Announcement

This is the digital activity I used with my students to announce my pregnancy during COVID distance learning. I was so sad not to be able to see their reactions in person but they were very excited and shared their enthusiasm with me virtually! Essentially, students need to “unlock” your good news by solving a series of math problems. This activity is geared towards 4th-6th graders. If you are a fourth grade teacher and doing this at the beginning of the year, your students will need more support from you in order to solve these problems. ♥ Click on this link to take you to this activity.

Classroom Gender Reveal

Have you already told your kids about your soon to be bundle of joy? They get JUST ask excited to find out the baby’s gender! When we found out our baby was going to be a boy I gave my students this word search, a bag of pink and blue confetti and, since we were still virtual, had them solve the word search and then send me a video of them throwing the correct color confetti. It was SO MUCH FUN ♥ Click on this link to take you to this activity.

How did you tell your students you were pregnant?! Have you used any of these activities? Let me know in the comments below! ♥

How to Host a Glow Day in the Classroom

Glow. Days. Are. Awesome. I can’t stress this enough!! And after almost a year and a half of not being in the classroom in person with students what better way to start the year than with glow sticks?! It's an obvious no brainer :)

But, if you’ve never hosted a glow day before I can definitely understand how this could be intimidating. Before my first classroom glow day I spent a kazillion hours researching online for info and I just couldn’t find much. SO, here I am to share what I’ve learned along the way:

Make it Dark:

The first thing you need to tackle is to make your classroom as dark as possible. There are a lot of black out curtain options available online but my favorite, and likely your cheapest option, is heavy duty black trash bags.

Then of course, is the all important question:

How do I make my classroom glow? Black lights will make all neon, glow in the dark, and black light reactive materials shine brightly. A quick search online will show you that black lights are an expensive investment!! So let’s answer the next pressing question:

How many black lights do I need for a classroom? The simple (but not so helpful) answer is: it depends on the size of your classroom and how much you want things to glow. When I hosted my first glow day I used 4 of these black light bars. It definitely worked, my students LOVED it, and there was definitely a WOW factor. I invested in a few more lights as the years went on but I probably never used more than six black light bars in my classroom. I did, however, also invest in these cute black light flashlights. They are relatively cheap and my students loved having their own light to flash around. I use them for a little hide-and-seek leprechaun activity for St. Patrick’s Day.

Make it Glow:

There are so many things that glow with black lights and here are some of my favorites:

• Glow sticks

• Black light reactive tape

• Neon pipe cleaners

• Glow-in-the-dark paint

• Yellow highlighters

• Astro Bright neon printer paper (certain colors glow better than others)

Make it Educational:

I prefer to use glow days and other room transformation days for content review, and will often plan one of these events to help students prepare for a unit assessment or end of term exam. It is a great way to keep kids excited and engaged in what might otherwise be a dull activity. I have used task cards and QR readers to keep kids working hard throughout the glow day activity.

Make it a Competition:

I taught 4th grade for the longest time and if there is one thing I learned about kids that age it’s that EVERYTHING is a competition. So if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. I made a lot of my activities competitions. What did the winning team win? Eternal glory. #teachertip

Make it Fun and Relevant:

Simply ask yourself two questions:

1. What are YOU excited about?

2. What are your KIDS excited about?

If some of your students love golf…incorporate golf into your glow day! If you love basketball? Incorporate basketball into your glow day.

Make it Happen:

You’ll never know if you don’t try. I truly believe glow days are magical learning days. Students are so enthusiastic about working hard and that brings me so much joy as a teacher. I promise you will not regret it. An easy way to start is that first week back to school. The stakes are low because there is no educational content involved. Just a few kids and their teacher getting to know each other:

Have you tried glow days before? Share your best tips and tricks in the comments below!

Classroom Digital Escape Rooms

Escape rooms are my new classroom obsession!

5 Reasons I Love Digital Escape Rooms:

1. They boost student engagement instantly

2. Little to no-prep is involved in setting these activities up

3. These games promote team building in the classroom

4. You can use these games for virtual learning, in-person learning, hybrid learning, home-schooling, and tutoring

5. Students enjoy doing math ♡♡♡♡!!!!

Lets take a look at how these games work in the classroom. All the images below are pulled from my Zombie Attack Escape Room for grade 4.

Step One: Set the Stage

Get kids invested in the game by setting the stage and placing them in the story:

Step Two: Throw in Some Learning

At this point the kids are invested and in-it-to-win-it! So throw in a little math and I doubt you’ll meet with much protest. You can boost the excitement even more by setting a timer and telling the students they have X number of minutes to complete the activity and escape the Zombies (or whatever else they are attempting to escape from).

Step Three: Ensure Success

There is nothing more defeating than getting something wrong and not being able to try again. These games allow students as many chances as needed to get to the right answer. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again and all that. It works. If kids are excited about a math activity and they want to play and win the game, they’ll have no problem going back and looking for their mistakes. #learning

Step Four: Leave them Wanting More

There are a couple of ways to accomplish this last step. You can leave them with a little bit of a cliff hanger like in this Zombie Attack game or you can tell them they did such a great job with this activity that there will be another! I would be very surprised if they didn’t ask the next day when their next escape room activity will be ☺.

Have you tried an escape room in the classroom? I’m interested to hear about your experience with it!

Video Game EDU

On a regular day in the classroom one of our goals as educators is keeping students engaged in their learning. We achieve this with funny accents, classroom decorations, educational games, student participation, group work, the list goes on and on and then BOOM! We’re hit with distance learning!

The first week of distance learning was like reliving my first year teaching! I struggled to find ways to keep my kids excited about learning from home where there are distractions I can’t compete with: group chats, annoying siblings, the kitchen fridge, and of course, video games.

I kept coming back to the idea of video games as a means to get students excited about school. So I gave it a whirl and created my first educational video game: The Wrath of Lord Fraction.

The engagement was off the chart! All my students wanted to escape the wrath of Lord Fraction and the only way to do so was to solve fraction problems.

A story line guides students through the game as they attempt to master each level.

And thus, Video Game EDU was created! You can check out all my currently available educational video games here.

If you have any requests let me know in the comments section below!

February Freebies

After approximately 131 days of January, I’ve never been more ready for February!! To celebrate, I’m posting about two activities we do as a class this month with links to these free products in my TPT store.

Multiplication Heart Craft

This super easy craft comes with four multiplication problems and is a perfect Valentine’s Day station or math center activity.

The plan is to make loads of these hearts and hang them from the ceiling in our classroom! Multiplication is definitely one of those skills we need to go back to and review often. Click here to grab this freebie!

This download comes with:

• Teacher instructions

• Student work packets (4 math problems)

• Student instructions

• Craft assembly guide (with images)

• Answer key

Enjoy and happy crafting!!

Valentine’s Day Cards for Students

Every year I go back and forth on Valentine’s Day cards for my kids. One year I paid way too much money to have fancy Valentine’s Day cards made with my name & class printed on them. Other years I’ve done nothing because I’m too swamped with lessons. This year, I figured I would mix Valentine’s Day with a math review lesson. Win-win, right?

Students will need to know basic math facts to solve this secret Valentine’s Day card message. Another great station or math center for February 14th!

This download includes:

• 1 Valentine's Day card

• Secret math message that reads: "Have a magical day"

You can download this freebie by clicking here!

Happy February!

Dress Like an Idiom Day

Dress Like an Idiom Day is by far one of my favorite school days!

As a class we study a whole bunch of idioms and post their meanings on the walls around our classroom.

We host a “Dress Like an Idiom” fashion show to celebrate all we have learned about idioms throughout the year. To get the kids excited, I give them a special all-access press pass that they need to present to get in the door of the event, because security will be tight ;)

You can grab these passes and entrance tickets for free in my TPT store—just click here!

Students pick their favorite idiom and create a costume representing the idiom’s literal meaning. We use our classroom stage as a runway and line student desks up next to the stage to create an audience gallery.

Students walk down the runway one at a time while their classmates try to guess and define their idiom.

At the end of the fashion show, students share their idiom + definition and the class self-grades their work. One point is awarded for guessing the correct idiom and one point is awarded for correctly defining that idiom.

We calculate points in the end to see who guessed and defined the most idioms!

All the materials I use for this activity can be found by clicking here. Let me know if you give it a try!

Back to School in the New Year

Happy New Year!!

We are heading back to school next week after a nice, long winter break and I wanted to share what I do during the first week back to ensure a successful new year:

1. Confetti Welcome

Nothing says, “WELCOME! I MISSED YOU! HAPPY NEW YEAR!” like a splash of confetti as you enter the classroom on the first day back to school in January. Here’s what I do to set this scene:

1. I use astro bright paper and chop it into small squares to use as confetti.

2. I play “It’s a Good Time” by The Deekompressors and plug in our classroom disco light .

2. review Classroom routines

Arguably the most important part of your first week back to school is reviewing classroom routines and procedures with your kids. December is typically the month that routines go out the window so picking up the pieces in January and reestablishing procedures will make all the difference in the second half of the school year. Here is what we do:

1. We learn new call-and-responses to keep things fresh.

2. We play “Trash-ketball” (a basketball game) to review all the most important classroom procedures.

3. Students apply for new classroom jobs because I can’t do it all myself!

3. Set gOALS: Looking forward

We take the time to reflect on last year and set goals for the year ahead. We have three activities we complete the first week back:

1. New Year Resolution Horns and Hats: We review what resolutions are and how to set realistic goals in this simple writing activity. It also makes a super easy bulletin board!

2. New Year Character Trait Light Bulb Craft & Activity: We review character traits and students share how they will demonstrate certain character traits in the new year.

3. Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset Activity: This is the perfect time to discuss the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset and helps kids start the year off on the right foot.

welcome back and happy teaching!

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Engaging Halloween Activities for the Classroom

Cue the crazy! Halloween is such an exciting time but as a teacher it can be a daunting week. Below are my top 10 Halloween activities to keep things engaging for students in the classroom:

10. Halloween Themed Call & Responses

Sometimes, things get a little loud around Halloween ;) Get your students to quickly focus their attention on you with these fun halloween themed call & responses.

9. Construct a Haunted House

Everyone loves a hands-on-projects! This activity includes math and arts-n-crafts in one engaging package. Kids will solve addition and subtraction problems to earn pumpkins (currency) which they can then spend on construction materials to build their haunted houses.

8. Crime Scene Inferencing Activity

Terrify the students with an elaborate crime scene in the classroom! Kids will have to use the evidence from the crime scene, their thoughts and background knowledge to infer and draw conclusions about what happened at the crime scene.

7. Grammar House of Horror

Is there anything more terrifying than poor grammar? In this activity students will practice identifying tricky homophones, sentence types and subjects/predicates.

6. Magic Math Potions

Channel your inner potion master, decorate the classroom like a Harry Potter dungeon and have students create their own magical math potions! Students will conceal their potion ingredient amounts with math. Variables, order of operations, or subtraction— choose your poison ;)

5. Spin-a-Spooky-Story

Decorate the classroom like an enchanted forest and invite students to bring in their favorite lawn chair! Spin some spooky stories around a fake little camp fire! Set the mood with dim lights, black lights and some haunted forest music!

4. Bat-sketball

A mix of math, bats, and basketball sounds like a great lesson! In this activity, students will solve subtraction problems for a chance to play bat-sketball and earn points.

3. Monster Multiplication

Ready for a multiplication monster mash party? Students will practice their multiplication skills while getting to play pin the witch’s hat on the monster.

2. Build-a-Word-Problem Halloween Themed

Word problems can be tricky so breaking down the structure of certain types of word problems can be incredibly helpful for students. Once they have mastered the structure, students can build their own Halloween themed word problems and share them with their friends.

1. Halloween Stations

Keep the chaos in check on Halloween this year by rotating students through 6 engaging stations!

Back to School

Here we go again…

Like it or not, the first day of school is rapidly approaching! A few days ago, @GiftedTeacher305 started a great IGTV series on engaging back to school lessons. I had the opportunity to share two of my favorite first day of school activities. You can find my video on IG @SpaidsInTheClassroom but I thought I would share them here too.

First Day of School Challenge

There is nothing my 4th graders like more than a “challenge”! So we start off right away with this easy-to-print packet. Students work their way through various tasks: a word search, multiplication facts and a writing prompt. Each task leads to a clue that will tell students what to do next.

It takes me about 5 minutes to prepare for our very first lesson in 4th grade (#winning)! I print these packets on colorful Astro Bright paper and hand them out as students walk in the door! This activity takes about an hour— I play music and students leisurely complete the work. The beauty of having this independent challenge at the beginning of the day is that it leaves me free to get to know each student and watch how students interact with each other.

Get to Know Me

After the back to school challenge we play a get to know me game of musical chairs or pass the parcel. I love these two old-fashioned birthday party games and use them a lot throughout the year to make task cards more exciting.

These games are super quick and easy. Either print out these ready-made task cards or jot down a few of your own get-to-know-you questions.

Let me know if you try either of these activities and have a great first week back to school!