Loved That Lesson: Introducing my Class Theme of the Year

I'm so excited for the first day of school, just so I can introduce the theme for our classroom this year:

"be the change"

It all started when I watched a music video by Alex Boye and then a viral video about some German students who stop to support a homeless man on the street.  It all just seemed meant to be, so I decided my theme for the year would focus on being the change based on this quote from Mahatma Gandhi:

So, on the first day of school, I'm going to introduce our classroom theme.  I"ve planned three lessons that introduce and explain the theme to students and lead us to the ultimate end of having students set goals on a regular basis throughout the year to make change in themselves, thus influence those around them.  Below, I've outlined the first lesson.  You can get the full three day outline along with the student goal sheets in my full mini-unit set linked at the end of this post as well as a link to get posters of each quote for free. 

Start by sharing the Mahatma Gandhi quote with students, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world”.  Hang up the poster of the quote.  Ask students what they think this means and support students in a discussion without giving your opinion or steering students toward a “right” answer. 

Then, show this video about three German students who stop to help a homeless man.  Ask students to think about how the quote relates to this video.     

Then, have groups of students write their thoughts on some post-it notes. Have some chart paper or your whiteboard ready for students to stick their notes.  You can label sections with the reflection questions or just have a parking lot area ready for students to place their notes.

Some reflection or guiding questions might be: 

·        What were some correlations with the quote and video?

·        What strengths/skills did these people bring to the    situation? 

·        What was the outcome of the collaboration? 

·        What strengths can you offer to help make change? 

As students are writing notes and posting them, wander among the groups and take note of some of their ideas to ready yourself for a class discussion following the group brainstorm.

Bring the students back together and hi-light some of the recurring ideas or those that especially stand out as ideas to share and discuss.  Lead your discussion to the conclusion that we have the power within ourselves to make change that then affects others.  Hopefully, we use that power to effect positive change.  

I'm so excited for this to be my theme and to come back to it frequently throughout the year.  I'll also be relating it to my introduction of the 7 habits for effective students that I introduce the first week or so of school.  We're not a Leader in Me school, but we introduce and refer to the habits as a grade level team throughout the year.

If you'd like the posters of the quotes that I made you can get the set here. There's a quote and video for each lesson.  You can get the second two lesson plans and goal planning sheets for the entire school year in this set.  

Be sure to click below to see many other great lesson ideas and link up your own great lesson idea as well!

Review Ordering and Operations with Decimals

We've been reviewing everything over the last few weeks.  We started testing writing in February, and it seems like we've been testing ever since.  That's made for a very long end of year...

I can't take credit for this idea, it comes from my teammate.  This is how it happened in my classroom though.   It's a super idea and my students were engaged and loved it.  To review decimal numbers, she made a tented cards with a decimal number on each; one for every student.  I strung a piece of yarn across the front of the room from a 3M command hook I have on the side of a shelf to the cart my document camera is on.  Here's how the lesson played out:

1. I handed out a card to each student.  This worked really well as I could easily differentiate for each child as I passed them out.  I passed them out randomly to mix them up and as I did so, I could give more difficult numbers to students who better understand decimals and I gave the whole numbers to my students very below grade level in mathematics.  
2. I called a table at a time to bring their cards to the front of the room and place the tent over the string in the general area they thought the card should go.  
3. Only the table whose turn it was could adjust the tents.  That was very difficult for my high students who wanted to jump in and fix everything. 
   
   
   
   


4. After every student had placed his/her card, I asked the students to examine the number line carefully and see if anything needed to be fixed.  We had 3 mistakes and they became very good discussion pieces to clarify misconceptions that a few students had.  
5. Once our number line was in order, we did some decimal operations with the cards.  I would choose two cards and post them on the white board with magnets and write in an operation between the numbers.  Students then figured out the solution.  Students solved on their whiteboards (or desks as I let them write with Expo markers on their desks) or in their math notebooks.  I just wanted to see the work, wherever it was done.  I was surprised how engaged the students stayed with the challenge of just solving each problem.  I didn't have to incorporate any kind of competitive incentive at all.  After giving time for students to solve each problem, we did it together on the board.  Mostly I just quickly demonstrated the solution, but I had a few students show their solution as well.  We also had some good discussions during this time about where decimals should go moving decimals in division, etc. 

This was a great review of decimals with my students.  In incorporated so much, allowed us to discuss understanding and got the students moving.  

This idea of tented cards on a yarn string could certainly be adapted to many topics.  I'd love to hear what your ideas are on using this idea.  Please share in the comments section below this post.

Thanks to Meg of The Teacher Studio for hosting this linky!

Click the button above, or here, to see all the other great lessons that are linked up.