Take Time to Celebrate (and Still Meet Your State Standards)!

    

It's no secret that I love any excuse for a celebration! Especially at this time of year, when teachers are in the throes of test prep, taking the time to celebrate something special can be a welcome (and needed) respite.

Holidays can be a really great topic for exploration with gifted students, and there really are so many things you can do to celebrate a holiday, while still working on meeting necessary standards.

Why Holidays?

If there's one thing you've probably noticed about gifted children, it's their innate curiosity. They are full of wonder and questions! They want to know how things work, why we do certain things. Cause and effect. They start their questions with phrases like, "I wonder...," and, "Why...," and, "But how...," right? One topic my students always enjoyed exploring was the origin of holidays and the roots of the customs that have become part of a typical holiday celebration. It's fun to stop and consider things like, why do we have Christmas trees, or why do we set off fireworks on the Independence Day?

Especially as the testing season is closing in upon us, it's easy to convince ourselves that we don't have time to spend "exploring" silly things like holidays, right? It's easy to get into the mindset that teaching to the standards or preparing for tests and having fun are mutually exclusive ideas. Well, I have good news for you! You can celebrate the holidays and still help your students prepare for the tests. You can help satiate their desire for exploration and learning while still meeting state standards. You can support the gifted child's need for choice and autonomy while developing critical thinking and close reading skills. One way to do that is to find (or create) high-interest reading material, and then create (or find) questions or activities that encourage high-level critical and creative thinking, analysis, and evaluative thinking skills.

I know that creating your own materials can be really difficult and time-consuming, which is why I've made it part of my mission not only to help educate people about the nature and needs of gifted children but also to spend time creating materials that teachers can use in their classrooms to help meet the special needs of this population of kids, while still meeting the standards. I'm not on this journey to become rich and famous--I truly want to help people learn about and serve gifted children.

An Illustration of How We Celebrate One Holiday in My Classroom 

To help you understand how I made holiday celebrations in my classroom, I'll tell you about how we celebrated St. Patrick's Day.

Before starting, I spent time researching St. Patrick's Day and the traditional customs that we have in the United States--things like wearing green clothes, decorating with shamrocks, drinking green milkshakes, and going to big parades. As it turns out, many of the things we think we're doing because we're emulating or celebrating Ireland and Irish culture are actually rooted in America. Did you know that St. Patrick wasn't Irish!? He wasn't even born in Ireland! And he didn't wear green, he wore BLUE! I also learned that while we celebrate this day in March with raucous parades and green drinks, the holiday in Ireland was really a pretty somber occasion spent in reflection of the life of a non-Irish missionary on the day of his death. I don't know about you, but I find things like this to be fascinating, and I'll bet your students will, too.

After researching the information about St. Patty's Day, I wrote three reading passages. They're all about the same topics and facts, but they're written on the 4th, 6th, and 8th-grade reading levels, so that the children in my class could access them on (at least close to) their independent reading level.

I also created a pre- and post-reading comprehension activity in which children read statements prior to reading the text, and make predictions about which statements they think will be true or false. Students read the text and then come back to the activity sheet to determine whether they still think the statements are true or false. They have to change the statements so that they are all true and cite the location of text evidence. I wrote these activity sheets on three different levels as well.

Finally (and this is my favorite part), I created a set of eight task cards based on the three highest levels of Bloom's Revised Taxonomy (analyze, evaluate, and create). The task cards include questions for reflection, writing, creating, and/or discussion. For example: Have you ever thought about a how holiday celebration gets invented? How do you think people get a new idea for a holiday? How to they decide the ways they celebrate the day? Another card suggests the students design a flow chart showing how St. Patrick's day has changed over time (past, present, and future predictions). Recently, I revised the file to also include activity sheets/recording pages for each of the eight tasks.

The beauty of engaging in activities like this is that teachers have tons of flexibility with how they employ them in their classrooms. There are eight different cards, so children could have a choice about doing one, two, or more. They could work independently, in pairs, in small groups, or as an entire class. Some of the cards could even be a jumping-off point for research. One of the cards asks students to research and reflect on how and why holidays aside from St. Patrick's day have changed over time. They can answer from personal reflection and observation, but they could also research how holidays have evolved over long periods of time. This would require more reading and text analysis, and if they use internet sources for their research, of course, you could throw in a mini-lesson about source credibility. All of these things are reinforcing standards in reading, writing, and social studies, engaging students in something they're interested in learning about, activating analytical and creative thinking skills, and allowing them choices about how they interact with the materials.

If you're interested in a closer look, you can link to the activity in my Teachers Pay Teachers store by clicking the St. Patrick's Day picture, you can take a peek at my entire store right here or check out how we celebrated some other holidays by clicking the pictures below.

Let me know if you have questions! Do you think you can see something like this fitting into your lesson plans?

Thanks for reading!
~Jen

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February Currently!

Quick post today! I'm linking up with Farley from Oh Boy It's Farley for her ever popular "Currently" series! Today is Saturday, my kids and husband are home, so I want to get out of my office and back to playing with my family! 

Listening: My children giggling! So cute until I remembered that they're supposed to be tidying up their room! Oops. Distracted mom problems. 

Loving: My new gig as a teacherpreneur! I just started this journey a few weeks ago, but it's been awesome so far! I had an awesome chat (or epic three-and-a-half-hour extended it's-been-way-too-long-since-we-talked conversation) with my dear friend, former colleague, and superstar teacher entrepreneur, Ashley from Schroeder Shenanigans in 2nd! I  hung up feeling so energized and ready to put the pedal to the metal today! I literally can't WAIT to get working each day, and THAT is an incredible feeling. Thanks, friend! <3

Thinking: About working!? What? I literally can't wait to get back to work creating, blogging, and sharing new work! It's crazy how much I love it. 

Wanting: to head out to the Natural History Museum. We only moved to the Pittsburgh area this past summer and haven't yet had a chance to explore all the great things this town has to offer. I'm looking forward to acting like a tourist as we explore our new surroundings!

Needing: To help my girls make their Valentine's Day boxes for school. This was always one of my favorite things to do as a child!  We're all ready to go with stickers and glitter and paper galore! It was always fun at school and at home to have a day (or month!) set aside to focus on the people and things we love! <3 I created a product recently to help our family focus on sharing the love this month. You can pick up a free copy here.

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Swooning: The SUN is out! Hooray! Sunshine makes me feel happy, hopeful, and excited to enjoy what's sure to be a wonderful day! It's time for me to get out of this office and into the sunshine!

Thanks for stopping by! Hope you have a fantastic day! 

~Jen

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Celebrate Pi Day! Getting Kids Engaged in Math

Nerd alert: I LOVE celebrating Pi Day! It is quite literally one of my favorite "holidays" to celebrate with my students. Yes. I consider it a holiday. It's that important. My students LOVE celebrating this day as well--sometimes questioning me as early as the first week of school about how we were going to celebrate it this year. 

So today, I'm dedicating a blog post to this most exciting day, since it's right around the corner. I hope you'll start getting into the excitement, too! 

For students, sometimes even mentioning the word math makes them get a little anxious and jittery. Even in my gifted math classes, there were always a handful of students who didn't love math, despite the fact that they were able to score in the 95th percentile (or higher) on nationally-normed achievement tests. This makes sense, really. Just because you're good at something doesn't mean you enjoy doing it. For me, I am pretty skilled at folding laundry. I mean, I can fold a MEAN fitted sheet with the best of them. Buuuut I don't love it.  

Not even  a little. 

That's why making learning FUN is so important for the students in your classroom. They don't all walk through those classroom doors of yours with the same bubbling-over passion that you have for the subject.  Fortunately for us teachers, though, with the right combination of joy, resources, comedic timing, and great teaching, they can walk out of your classroom with an increased appreciation for the subject at the very least. And for some students, the way you engage them can mean the difference between them feeling ho-hum about your subject, and them turning your area of expertise into something they end up wanting to pursue down the road as their own lifelong passion. 

We have so much power, teachers! Our motivation needs to come from this place of our profound ability to make a difference in children's lives every.single.day. 

Okay, stepping down from the soapbox. 

Back to PI DAYYYY! 

I was fortunate enough to be able loop with my students. I got to teach them math and/or language arts for three years in a row, which was incredible.  One side effect, though, of having students year after year is that you can't really reuse the same activities over and over again. So, after a while I began to amass a pretty decent repertoire of activities to use on days like Pi Day. So today, I'll explain a bit about some of my favorite activities for the nerdiest of celebrations. 

My students loved all things pi. They especially loved eating it, so I did make it a point to indulge them each year. I even had an awesome parent who volunteered to send in the pies, which was so great because it saved me a few dollars. If you celebrate Pi Day in your classroom, I would suggest reaching out to the families of your students. I always found that parents were always more than willing to donate things when I asked. 

My students also loved this simple beading activity. I heard of the idea from a fellow teacher at a math conference a few years ago, and I marveled at the 

simplicity. All you have to do is assign a color of bead to each of the digits from 0-9, then string the beads in the order of their corresponding appearance in the digits of pi. We saved black beads for the decimal. I found that buying the Perler Beads from a craft store or Wal-Mart was the most inexpensive way to get LOTS of beads in a variety of colors. I had kite string left over from another fun math activity, and it worked well for stringing, plus it's strong, so I didn't worry about them stretching and/or breaking the string while they worked. 

Another really great activity I did was an experiment with blowing and measuring bubbles. I had seen my daughter's preschool teacher using bubbles with soap and paint to make artwork, and it got me thinking about using that same technique with bubbles in math. Only, I just needed the bubbles to be temporary (and easier to clean up!). For this activity, students blew bubbles on a cookie sheet that we wet with the bubble solution. Make sure you don't skip this step, because the bubbles pop too quickly if you don't.  Students could just do this right on the top of their desks (hello, clean desks!), but we used cookie sheets because I thought the clean up would be quicker. It's a good idea to let your students play around a little with the whole, "I get to blow bubbles in math" novelty for a few minutes before they start working on the real activity. They WILL play, so why not give them permission? 

Eventually, the bubble pops, and lucky for us, it leaves a ring behind. I had students measure the diameter of the circle with a ruler. Then they used a sentence strip or string to measure the circumference of the circle. They recorded the measurements for each bubble on a recording sheet. Once their sheet was filled with data from their bubble-blowing extravaganza, I had them find the ratio between the measurements of the circumference to the measurements of the diameter (otherwise known as PI). If they were accurate with their measurements, their ratios usually turned out to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 3.14. It's an awesome experience to see their faces light up with the realization that they found pi, and for us math teachers, it was the kind of authentic learning experience that led them to a deeper understanding of what pi really means, instead of just tossing out a formula to them and hoping they could plug in all the right numbers and 'get it.' If you'd like a free copy of the recording sheet we used, email me at jen@soaringwithsnyder.com and I'll send you a copy. I promise I'll keep your contact information private. 

Other activities we did included listening to music that was composed based on the digits in pi. I read to them Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi by Cindy Neuschwander, which you can buy here or listen to a free read aloud here. We composed poetry about our love of pi, had a pi memorization challenge, and so many other fun things. The best part of the celebration is that everyone had FUN. They were engaged, they were challenged, and if only for a brief time, they liked MATH! 

If you're as excited about celebrating Pi Day as I am, you should check out this Pi Day Tic-Tac-Toe Menu Board that I made. There are NINE of my favorite activities in the packet, including recording sheets with detailed directions for each activity, an answer key and rubric, a list of needed supplies, and a bonus memorization challenge class roster sheet. 

Maybe if someone had taught me to fold fitted sheets with activities like this, I'd be a Folding-Sheet Grand Champion, orrrr something like that. 

If you're looking to just tiptoe into Pi Day this year, maybe you'd prefer one of these other products instead...*Note, these are PARTS of the NINE PRODUCT Bundle. They're not different activities. Just providing options! Lots of options!  

Here's a mini-bundle of just three activities.👇🏻

Or you may like this this one, based on the bubble activity I mentioned above. It is always a hit. 

And here is a problem solving activity. If you're short on time, or want to assess the quality of my work, this is the way to go. 

Let me know if you have any questions! I'd be happy to help you make this day SO much fun for your students! 

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