Celebrating Kindness #weholdthesetruths

Hey, everybody.

Let's talk.

This country is a big place, full of lots of people. There are many different kinds of people, with lots of different backgrounds, beliefs, and goals. We don't always agree. 

Growing up in a time like this can be a challenge. Little people feed off the energy of big people. 

This is evidenced by conversations my students have on a daily basis. The fears of their parents become their fears. The anxiety of their teachers becomes their anxiety. The concerns of the world rest in their ten-year-old faces. 

It's a hard life. 

So I think it's time (and so do many other amazing Teacher-Authors) to pause and take inventory. All we really have is each other. That includes the little people. And we might be sending some mixed messages. 

But when you come right down to it, what's the most important message? Kindness.

If we can choose one thing for our kids to learn, it's kindness. Kindness towards themselves, kindness towards other Americans, kindness towards the rest of humanity, and kindness towards the Earth.

And that's why I've teamed up with so many amazing TPT Teacher-Authors to create some free resources for you to use in sharing the message of #kindnessnation and #weholdthesetruths with your students!

Here's my contribution: Sí, Se Puede: A Partner Play about Cesar Chavez.

What does Cesar Chavez have to do with kindness? He stood up for underprivileged Mexican Americans because he believed they deserved to be treated like people, too. Sometimes kindness takes courage, and Cesar had it. 

This Cesar Chavez partner play is a great way to introduce upper elementary students to Chavez's life and accomplishments, while developing comprehension, vocabulary, and fluency, too! And the best part: It's a FOREVER FREEBIE! That's right! All of the products mentioned in this post will be forever free!

 

But this freebie is only one of dozens! Visit Teachers Pay Teachers and search for #kindnessnation or #weholdthesetruths to view all of the incredible freebies about these important topics:

-Understanding our Branches of US Government and the US Constitution
-Democracy
-History of civil rights movements, including suffrage
-Environmental issues including climate change
-Critical thinking and examining media bias
-Kindness, empathy, compassion
-Anti-bullying
-Equality and inclusion for all people
-Understanding and respecting of cultural differences

I've selected a few of my favorites for upper elementary to share with you here.

    Empathy Interactive Notebook Kit by Adventures at Home  

I am really impressed by this product. It's beautifully designed and thoughtful. Students think about empathy and how they can demonstrate it to others - what a powerful message!

 

 

Dr. King's Positive Peace. What Does it Mean to be an Ally for Justice? by Angela Watson

This 32-slide presentation guides students through the ideas of positive peace and negative peace, and includes some excellent discussion starters to get them thinking. 

           

American Dream Posters by Two Boys and a Dad Productions

These eye-catching posters include important themes and great Americans. The quotes are inspiring and serve as great discussion starters, too!

       

Keep being kind, America!

Want to find even more awesome freebies? Check out the link-up below!

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An InLinkz Link-up

An InLinkz Link-up

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Makeover! Made-over Product Giveaway!

So everybody can use a makeover sometimes, right? Honestly, if someone credible walked up to me and said, "Girl, you need a makeover," I'd say, "Yes, please. I don't know what else to do with all this." and then I'd let them be in charge.   That's probably not going to happen.    So instead, I did a product makeover! I mean, someone should feel pretty, right?  

I made over one of my dumpy old products. It was from my first year on TPT.  It was sad. So sad.

And now it's not! Now it's happy and shiny and new! 

It includes this adorable craftivity (which my kids loved)  

  If you already downloaded my Government Pack, please download it again for the nice, new version.    I also made over my hideous Genre Study Book from four years ago. I'm so excited with the new design! 

 

If you've already purchased it, please download it again for the nice, new version!   And if you haven't bought it yet, here's your chance to get it for free! Just leave me a comment with the which product you'd rather win: the Genre Study Book or the Government Pack. I'll choose three winners over the weekend! Good luck!      Pin It

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!

Several years ago, I wrote about some activities my students and I did on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. You can read about that series of lessons here.

This year here are some new activities to try!

 

This is my favorite project: Martin Luther King mobile! On each little piece, students write about what King thought, said, saw, did to change the world, and more. It's a cute craftivity and a good way to have kids write in little bits about his life.

 I think this "I Have a Dream" bunting would make such a lovely decoration - string your room up with the kids' dreams for the future!

A few years ago, we made Martin Luther King fact cubes. These are fun and an easy way for students to think about what information is important about King's life.

 

To round out your unit, here are some great book titles to read aloud! 

 

Martin's Big Words

I Have a Dream

A Picture Book of Martin Luther King, Jr. 

(I like Adler's books - they always have a lot of information)

 My Brother Martin

 

 

You can grab the above activities at TPT! Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day! 

 

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Marshmallow Math & Kids at Parent Night *Freebie Repost

Today we got ready for Parent Night. I mean, I like parents and all, but... well... I stress about parent night. I'm not sure why. I just expect parents to come in with a frowny face and angry eyebrows. Maybe because I'm deathly afraid people won't like me. That's sad. But they don't. I usually get nice feedback, or none at all. It's funny to see the kids explain things to their parents. On Reading... Kid: This is my prediction. Parent: Of what? Kid: Of what I'm reading! Parent: Oh. reading "Why do spiders spin webs." Hmm. Why DO spiders spin webs? Kid: I have no idea. Nice. I'm really making an impact there. lol On Social Studies... Kid: This is our tree with the three branches of government. Get it? Trees have branches!! Parent: Yes. Can you feel the excitement?

On top of their desks, the kids put several of their notebooks to share about, including their math, reading, science, and social studies, as well as their science collection. Kids also write a brief note about parent night to their parents and put it in their Write On Wednesday notebooks. This parent night, on top of all that stuff, the kids had their marshmallow 3D shapes we made as part of our 3D shapes unit. It went super well. First, I had the kids predict the number of marshmallows they would need for vertices and toothpicks they would need for edges for each shape we made. 

We compared the prisms to pyramids, in the hopes that students would notice the major differences: - pyramids have a base with a vertex opposite of the base -prisms have two faces opposite each other You can get both of  get the activities from my TPT store.

Also, grab the marshmallow model recording freebie at TPT!

At TPT 

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Celebrating Martin Luther King, Kr. Mission Accomplished!

Finally!

Today, my kids finally finished our Martin Luther King foldable we started almost two weeks ago!

This is undoubtedly my fault. I can't just do a simple foldable. Oh, no. That would be too easy. We have to...

 read an article

gather information

write a response

revise it, edit it, publish it, use the map to practice map skills, sketch a portrait, identify character traits, create a timeline

and use the timeline to answer questions.

Then we can put together our foldable.

I do this all the time. I get a simple idea of something I think might be useful for the kids to do, and then I think, But wait! I can make this waaaaay better.

Then, six weeks later, we are putting the finishing touches on our

endangered species

black history month

forces in the earth

objects in space

European explorers

Native Americans

fill in blank with other extremely large unit

unit

that should have taken, like, four days.

But really, what do kids remember? Fly-bys? Learning everything there is to know in a couple of days? Or experiencing content in a variety of forms and reading and writing about it?

I hope it's the second one or I'm really wasting my time.

For our unit, we used several sources - an article I found online, a BrainPop Jr about MLK, and this Scholastic News article.

Here are some of our foldables.

Some of them came out sooo cute.

My favorite is the Martin Luther King holding the tiny backwards American flag. Totally unexpected.

 For the front, we used a timeline from Scholastic but I mixed up the events and had kids sequence them on the timeline.

Then, for the inside of that flap, we used the timeline to answer questions about events in Martin Luther King's life.

On the inside of the one of the other flaps, we glued the map of the new Martin Luther King memorial that we received from Scholastic. The kids answered the questions using the map.

We also did a simple bubble map, or web, describing the traits that made MLK a good citizen.

The response in the middle is to the article in Scholastic about the new MLK memorial. We read (reread, discussed, charted) and then wrote a nonfiction response using the format from this previous post.

We also made these fact cubes based on the articles we read. The kids recorded a fact about Martin Luther King on each side of the cube.

So whew! I'm glad I got this done before Groundhog Day! That's just embarrassing.

If you're interested in the fact cube we made, you can find it in my Celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day at TPT! It's got the fact cubes, an article, a fun mobile activity, an adorable banner, and some writing prompts to help kids think about Dr. King and his (and their) impact on the world!