Teach Learn Thive and GROW! Growing the Empathy Advantage in the Classroom

After ten years of teaching, the one thing I have done consistently year after year is to help kids identify as "Kind Kids". I have found that teaching kids about kindness, helping them to be successful at being kind, and by holding them accountable for kindness has been instrumental in building a strong community of learners that are supportive, tolerant, and they are able to navigate friendships with greater empathy. It is not uncommon to hear me say, "Try that again with a kind heart, kind words and/or kind face." In my classroom, I want to help kids realize that kindness is not just in words, but in our actions. The Kindness Tree Activity is a fun way to build the momentum for spreading kindness. This year, I kicked off a 30-Day Kindness Challenge and asked one student to manage our daily goal and record it on a sticky note. I also invited students to design and construct a Kindness Tree for our door. I find the more that students are involved in the proc...

Well, it has been way too long since I have posted (since last November)...yikes! I can't believe that summer is also nearing as August is just around the corner. I have been busy taking summer courses such as Responsive Classroom, Jane Goodall's Roots and Shoots "Turning Learners into Leaders" certification program, and I was even lucky enough to attend the Las Vegas Differentiation Conference at the Venetian! My brain is on overload with all the new ideas that I have planned for this year and the panic that I won't get it all done. However, one thing in particular that caught my eye as I was happy pinning on Pinterest was the "Jitter Glitter" poem. I am sure you all have seen it, but if not it is SUPER cute. All you have to do is Google "Jitter Glitter Poem" and it will pop up. I do not know who wrote it but I tweaked it a bit for my needs for first grade. Today I was out shopping at Dollar Tree and low and behold I found a six pack of in...

Veterans Day is an annual American holiday honoring military veterans. In honor of this day, I created a writing activity for my first grade class last year. It is a free resource that I have  available at  TpT store (as well as here on my blog). My belief is that we should honor and send our troops and veterans as many kind and supporting notes as we can. I hope you enjoy this free  resource. By the way, I finally found the answer to the use of an apostrophe or not! Good news...the United States government has declared that the attributive (no apostrophe) rather than the possessive case is the official spelling.   Happy trails. Veterans Day We Salute You Writing Paper.pdf

This craft was completed on Friday (thanks to Amy Lemons freebie on TpT).  We have our acrostic ghost poems up, spiders in the web, and now we move to my Stellaluna unit  and bats! Since I am a BIG fan of Halloween, all items in my TpT store are 10% Monday, October 28 through Halloween. Happy trails.

Leaves are falling down, quickly. I always feel like a kid when I see all the beautiful leaves on the ground. I can't stop searching for the "perfect" leaf as there are just too many pretty, bright colored leaves. Just when you think you found the perfect leaf, you see another one that is even more amazing than the last one! As a classroom teacher, I try to get my kiddos outside as much as possible. Recently, I took my kiddos on two sensory hikes, we collected leaves for a sorting and graphing activity, and just completed a grandparents' day activity to decorate our hallway bulletin board with multi-colored leaf wreaths that corresponded to one of our Autumn poems. I think it provides a great visual, it is festive, and it was a hands-on experience that was engaging and fun for the students (including me)! ! Happy Trails. Beth *credit given to my fabulous teaching partner for her collaboration on this project (and her neat printing on the sentence strips!)  ...

Acrostic Halloween Freebie by bvine55