Sharing the Planet: Teacher Tips!

As we learned about sharing the planet and the kids were starting to make choices based on what they learned, I did some reflecting on the amount of paper I was using. My life sometimes feels overwhelmed with paper and I hate it! And sometimes its not about the planet... Do you all have copy limits? Limited budgets? All those things can make planning a little difficult.

But there is a way to:

Save Paper, Save Money, Save the Planet...  and Save our Sanity!

So here are some things we can all do to feel like we are doing our part!

Whether it is basic sheet protectors or dry erase pockets, these things are a LIFE SAVER! Instead of having to print a class set, you can print one or two sheets, slip them in a pocket and you are good to go! Groupon has had deals on the pockets so I have a set of 20 and we use them ALL the time, small groups, workshop stations, sometimes even whole group. I LOVE them!

This is a new one for me. We have always been good at recycling paper when we are done, but now if there is a blank side, we fill it up!! The first couple of times the kids were so confused about what side to work on, but they quickly figured it out.

We have all bought those great packets on TPT that end up taking up a TON of paper... but sometimes there is extra space on the page. Did you know that you can print two pages to a page on PDFs?

My printer/PDF viewer at school looks like this:

Just go to page scaling and pick multiple pages per sheet. Click on two pages and it will scale it down!

My PDF view is, for some reason, different at home. I guess they may be different versions.
Anyways. If I only want one page for a station I will choose the pages I want to print (blue arrow) mark the same page twice, choose the multiple page option and I get a half size sheet. A lot of times shrinking it down to half size still gives them enough space to write!

Just a couple clicks, but it can help save lots of paper!

This is easiest to do on our laser printer at school, because you don't have to feed the paper through again, so check to see if your printer will do it too!

Go to preferences when you click print and the screen that is special to your printer will come up. Choose to print on both sides. Ink Jet printers might have special directions, but no extra work is needed for the big printers at school!

Call me a pack rat, but certain things I know I can reuse, so I hold on to them a little bit longer. If I don't use them in the next couple months I will throw it away, but think creatively first! I used to use shelf liner for my bulletin border. When I changed up my boards I held on to the long strips for a bit, and they became perfect for number lines! I have had these for a couple of years now and the kids love them when I pull them out!

Those are 5 easy things to start doing! Start saving the planet! :)

Five For Friday

It's been a week! Even with Tuesday off for Election day, it was still a really LONG week! We have been working some more on teamwork activities because the kiddos are really struggling to get it along. I wrote about some of the things we have been doing here.

I'm linking up with Doodle Bug Teaching's Five For Friday to share some of what we have been up to this week!

1. We finished up our unit of Sharing the Planet. As an ending activity the kids worked together to make a pledge. We added it to our bulletin board. 

The kids also wrote the pledge to add to their portfolios. We wrote it on the back of old paper to make sure we were reusing!

2. I pulled out a new math game now that we have been focusing on number paths and counting on an counting back. I made it using old bulletin board boarder (or actually shelf liner!)

I love these add/subtraction dice too! It is such a good way to have kids move back and forth between adding and subtracting!

3. Election Day meant I got to hang out extra with this little man! We went to the library for story time while Alex was at his preschool. They were having a story time cafe so Liam enjoyed some gold fish while I had a coffee and scone!  We then made it through most of story time! 

4. My kids have been loving this activity from my Dice Games pack! It's editable so I have used it for sight words, short vowels, and much more! 

Be sure to check it out!

5. What a better way to end the week then with a sushi party with your team! It is so fun to teach friends how to make sushi and open them up to a whole new world of fun! :)

Composting!

What I love about guided inquiry as a teacher is that I can GUIDE the direction a bit... I've always wanted to try composting-- at home and at school, and after we read the book:

we continued the conversation about food waste and composting, and I was REALLY hoping that someone would suggest we try composting....

Thankfully someone did! :)

So I told the kids that I didn't know too much about it, so we would spend some time researching it in the classroom to figure out how to do it! The kids had some basic background knowledge, thanks mostly to Peppa Pig's episode about composting. Another boy kept saying Worm

s, Worms.... (not going there quite yet!)

The night before I did a little online research to get started, but it was a process that we were really going to do together. In my mind, this was a going to be a "fun" day, off of our regular schedule. Little did I realize how this "fun" experience was really an authentic learning experience that allowed us to apply a lot of skills that we have been learning in the classroom. As I think back I probably could have planned out those moments better, but now I know and plan to do a lot more of this in the classroom!

We started the morning talking about how we research (CCSS W.1.7) We talked about how we could can use the internet or the library. We googled our question "How do you compost?" and started watching videos, reading some websites, and looking at images to find information (CCSS RI.1.6).

Then we wrote down some of our notes and findings:

Then we took a trip to our library. There we talked about where we should look for our books about composting--in the Fiction or Non Fiction section. The kids all shouted out nonfiction because we needed real books and ones that give information. (CCSS RL.1.5) That was good for my heart to hear that all those conversations about fiction vs. non-fiction were helping them apply it when they needed it! Then we learned more about the dewey decimal system and went in search of some books!

When we got back to classroom, I told the kids that I didn't want to read the whole book to see if it talked about composting and wondered what I should use to figure it out... That of course led us to nonfiction text features! (CCSS RI.1.5) I students suggested I look at the table of contents, but when that didn't give us enough information, i suggested we look a the index. That was a feature they had trouble understanding the purpose of, but after this experience, they definitely understand how that will help us! If the book didn't have either feature, we did a quick picture glance to find out the info.

 Then we started focusing on the recipe for composting and we found out we needed some browns and greens. The kids got a little confused when thinking that the object did not have to be brown or green to count as that kind of material, but they worked in groups to make a list of some things they could start collecting.

We collected food scraps from breakfast and lunch over the next couple days. We also gathered pine straw and dead leaves from outside. 

I found this resource that was helpful to me in figuring out how to do this small scale (classroom bin instead of an outside one). We do have a composter bin at school, but I am not ready to go large scale yet. 

Friday we made the compost recipe! 

We did a little bit more brown materials-- I read that it would help the smell not be so overwhelming. Every couple of days we need to stir it up a bit. I have no idea how it will turn out and really hope that it doesn't invite a lot of bugs into the classroom this weekend, but it was a great learning experience!! I am excited to see how this helps us change our thinking about food waste over the year. Once challenge is the fact that we are collecting a lot of the same types of food, so that can affect the balance. 

If anyone is an expert in composting and wants to share some advice, we would love to learn more!

I'm excited to incorporate more authentic learning experiences into our weeks. It is so important to help the kids see why what they learn is important and they were all so engaged I did not have to have some of the behavior conversations that I normally did!

I'm curious to find out on Monday what kind of conversations they will have with their families about the experience. In the days we have been focusing on food waste, I have been a lot more conscious of all the compostable materials I am throwing away! We are never too old to keep learning and reflecting!

Five For Friday: Goodbye October!

Not only were we celebrating red ribbon week, but Halloween too! Craziness!! But we survived and had a great week!


1. We are finishing up our unit on Sharing the Planet. The kids decided we needed to try composting so we spent a morning researching and finding out information about it, and then today we put it together! Read here for more details. I'm really curious to find out if it will turn out!

2. We also collaborated with a fourth grade class to reuse our trash by turning it into something useful! The kids had so much fun working together. We watched the Landfill harmonic first. I need to watch the whole documentary sometime. It is so amazing!

3. Our district is smart and made today a half day for professional development! The kids could not get over the fact that we weren't going to spend the whole day talking about halloween anyways, so it works out well! ;) Anyways, this is the second year that our school has done a cancer awareness walk. We walk around the school. It is such an awesome thing to see all the pink and kids come together at the end and meet in front of the school. Last year it really brought us together as a school community after a lot of change. This year it was just as wonderful!

4. Call me a nerd, but good collaboration in planning makes me so HAPPY! We are working on our new planner and it makes me so excited to teach it! We still have to finish the planning, but I think it is just what our kids need. It's that time of the year when they can get comfortable with school and the procedures, but thinking about greatness can encourage them to keep striving for more! I'm SO excited!!

5. Happy Halloween! We had fun trick or treating tonight!

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching's five for friday!

Five For Friday: What a week!

It was definitely a full moon week and the start of the fair...

that and we are anticipating fall break!

Here's what we have been up to this week:

1. I worked on a vocabulary tool kit to help my kids when they are writing. Alex enjoyed it a lot too! You can find it here at my store.

2. The pigeon came to visit! He's helping us remember to use punctuation when we write! As I conferenced with kids I had them add some sentences where they used punctuation to help make their writing sound more interesting! 

3. Let's break for a home success... Alex wrote his name! Backwards of course and the A looks like an H but... look at that E! It starts by the brown arrow and he decided his X needed to be big (see black arrow). He is close to turning 4 but has had little interest in writing at home... Those two days of weekly preschool are helping out!

4. This sweet child could barely write her name at the start of the year. We worked together to stretched out the sounds but I was so proud that she heard all these sounds and knew the letters to match!! 

5. We started working on our new bulletin board. We are currently in our Sharing the Planet unit. We are focusing on earth materials, natural resources and then what we need to do to sustain them. These first couple of weeks our class has been talking about earth materials so the kids wrote down facts about water, rocks, sand, and soil and why they are important to us. Them they made the pictures to go with their facts. The kids were so creative! Next week we need to bridge the gap between earths resources and how we need to take care of them. I'm trying to think of a way to help lead them into that discovery by themselves! I have a couple book ideas, but would always welcome any great suggestions!

So glad it is the weekend!

I'm linking up with Doodle Bug Teaching's Five for Friday!

Sharing the Planet!

Last week we finished up our first unit Who We Are...well mostly! We still need to dive more into the Learner Profile and Attitudes, but we made a good start. We actually reflected and added work to our portfolios (more on that soon!)... which was a first. Usually we are reflecting on two or three units at at time, but this year I really want my kids to be proud of what they are putting in their portfolios. I would love to meet with parents at some point to have kids share with their parents about their work. I think the more they are internalizing their learning, the more transdisciplinary it will be!

Our provocation to start out our new unit, Sharing the Planet, was a little nature walk. I gave each student a ziploc and told them to go collect some earth.--whatever they thought the earth was. So they ran out of the building and "Collected Earth"! It was so interesting to see what they came up with... and for the most part they were right on target! (it double as a preassessment too! :) )
It was starting to sprinkle so one girl wanted to collect the rain... "Is rain the earth?" she asked me!

We will use these collections for more investigations!

Today I read Our Big Home and then they shared some questions they had...

We went off on a little tangent on what is a country vs state, but while we were exploring the world on google maps we talked about the difference between land and water too. It's all learning! I love it! 

Here are some of the questions they asked:

Not all are supposed to be covered in this unit...the ones about if the whole earth has the sun at the same time are technically another unit, but I'm sure we will get them answered now too! ;)