Class Antics – Inside Elementary Education

Teach an art appreciation lesson and make Mother’s Day cards!

“I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.” –Georgia O’Keeffe

Students love to learn about Georgia O’Keeffe’s oversized flower paintings. The bold lines, bright colors and happy subjects speak to children. In my experience, students truly appreciate learning a different way to see the world.

Teachers like to have students imitate famous artists’ styles, and for many students, that is very frustrating. Most of us will never be able to approximate the works of the great artists, and kids know it. Georgia O’Keeffe’s flower paintings feel more accessible to kids.

At first, my students have trouble filling a paper with just one flower. I usually do a few examples, with different types of flower outlines. Once kids see how it’s done, they are raring to go!

For reluctant or self-conscious artists, I draw the giant flower myself and let them color until they build up their confidence. Students who figure out how to draw big flowers like to help their friends.

The giant flowers make great Mother’s Day cards. I hope you and your class enjoy this simple but educational art project!

Cross curricular connection for science: plant growth is a third grade science topic in my district. I like to tie in art by having the kids make Georgia O’Keeffe pictures and gluing little clip-art bees on them. It’s a bee’s-eye view of a flower!

Visit the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum’s website for a gallery of her flower pictures. Fun anecdote: I visited the museum with my little brother when he was in third grade. Halfway through our museum visit, my brother said, “Wait. These are the original paintings? The ones Georgia touched?” He was awestruck.

See if your students understand that the paintings at art museums are the originals. You might be able to give them more appreciation of their next art museum visit.

Many schools have interclass competitions for all sorts of events: readathons, jogathons, fundraiser competitions, school spirit days.

I am not insanely competitive, and I don’t push my class to win everything. Winning takes a lot of dedication from the teacher, students, and families. I think it’s best to put that kind of energy into educational goals.

Here are the five tips I developed when G3 decided to win the school readathon.

1.  Set your goal high, and make it measurable. Yes, your goal is to be the best, but what do you think it will take to win? It’s only an estimate, but quantifying really helps. Your class can revise the estimate as early results come in.

2.  Set the goal for individual contributions. The competition is organized by class, but you’ll have to figure out what each person needs to do. Often, I find that the per-person goal is fairly low. Watch out for this—it makes people think they don’t have to do anything. As with most things in life, a few students will carry the rest. The next tip increases the numbers in the few, the proud…

3.  Reward individuals. Decide on a reward for individuals in your class who work hard to achieve the goal. For our readathon, we decided on an Oreo party for everyone who got their log signed each night and read a minimum number of minutes. Participation soared!

4.  Encourage the kids to motivate each other. My students and I identified a surprising pitfall in our quest for the readathon championship: the reading itself wasn’t so hard, but remembering to put the signed reading log in your backpack each night was. My students called each other to remind them to put their signed reading logs in their backpack each night. (Bonus: G3 parents got phone numbers for other G3 students.)

5.  Communicate with families. In most interclass competitions, parents’ support is essential to success, for example: signing the reading log, making sure the school T-shirt is laundered, making cans of food available to donate. The class performs better when the teacher forms a partnership with parents.  I sent emails at critical points in our quest for the championship.

When G3 won the school readathon, we invited our families to help us celebrate during the last few minutes of the school day. Families who couldn’t attend were encouraged to hold their own celebrations at home.  I think it’s an important life lesson for my students to learn how to create lifetime memories celebrating their accomplishments. This helps kids internalize goals and intrinsic rewards. Those benefits last a lifetime!

The elementary school librarian has a big job. In addition to managing thousands of books, the librarian teaches hundreds of children everything from how to select books to how to research any topic under the sun.

Instead of just dropping off your students, why not take a minute to help?

When I take my students to library, I facilitate the librarian’s task of checking in books by arranging all the books into several fanned-out piles with the barcodes easily accessible. This way, it’s a snap for the librarian to scan each book. If the librarian lets me, I then load the books onto the re-shelving cart. (Some librarians find it faster to do it themselves than explain their system.)

My students have caught on and take pride in laying out their books so that it’s easy for me to make the little piles.

Incidentally, this trick is also a good way to help another person we meet frequently—the store cashier. When clothes shopping, I even go so far as to fold my clothes after they’re scanned, which helps move the line along and leads to fewer wrinkles later.

There you have it—a teaching and shopping tip in one!

I always try to take care of my students’ basic needs: hungry, cold kids can’t learn. Add to that list a wintertime problem—kids with chapped lips can’t concentrate.

I solve this problem with the class Vaseline jar. It’s not gross, I promise! 

 I buy a big jar of Vaseline (or generic petroleum jelly) and Q-tips (or the cheapo knockoffs.) When kids have chapped lips, I supervise them as they dip the Q-tip in the Vaseline. No double dipping allowed!

The students swipe their lips with Vaseline and feel much better. The kids are really grateful for the class Vaseline jar.

…until I pronounce them “all better” and put them back to work!

Accessing information you’ve already memorized is
as easy as Z-Y-X!

That’s a catchy way to introduce this tip: teach kids to access memorized information by showing them where to look for it, so to speak. All you need is a backwards alphabet and a buddy!

Here are the Z-Y-X steps:

Z: Ask the child to stand right in front of you and recite the alphabet—backwards.

Y: Watch the child’s eyes as he attempts this task. Note where the child looks.

X: Tell the student that when attempting the task, he looked to his top left (or top right, or whatever you noticed.)

For THIS STUDENT, that is where to look when trying to access memorized information. Everyone is different, so you will need to help each student individually or buddy kids up so the buddy can identify where the partner should look for answers.

Got a test coming up? Try it yourself and you’ll know where to find all the answers!

It’s much more effective than staring into space.

This is another one of those tips that will involve spending your money.  In a nutshell: keep spare treats for kids with allergies.  Common allergies are peanuts, tree nuts, milk, and gluten or wheat.

Keeping spare treats it is helpful when parents bring in birthday treats or refreshments for classroom parties.  Sometimes parents will arrange this with you in advance, sometimes they won’t.  Often, parents will ask about avoiding allergens for a treat they plan to bring—but if you have several students with varied allergies, a parent may find it very difficult to avoid all those troublesome ingredients.  In many cases, parents don’t realize how complicated this can be unless their own children have allergies. 

Keeping alternate treats helps you avoid complications and disappointments.  Other teachers and the nurse sometimes ask me if the allergic child’s parents have sent an alternate treats.   I just take care of it myself so it doesn’t become another admin responsibility.  Plus, if you have treats always available, you can head off disappointments and even tears during what should be a moment of celebration. 

Here are a few ideas for treats that avoid various allergens:  Skittles, Rice Krispie Treats, Little Debbie Cakes (those that avoid tree nuts or peanuts), lollipops, and hard candies.  You can check ingredients lists easily—the potential allergens are listed at the bottom of the nutrition information section.  I always stay on the safe side and don’t buy treats processed at a plant that works with peanuts or tree nuts for students who are allergic to those foods.  Often, I have a nice fresh piece of fruit available, but I can’t always guarantee that.   (It just depends what goodies are in my lunch that day!)

If I’m ever out of stock and a treat shows up that I know a child can’t eat, I just arrange for someone to cover my class while I take the child to the teachers’ lounge to pick an alternate treat out of a vending machine. 

This is just another example of how being a teacher can become expensive.  However, I think you will be glad to have these spare treats on hand.  Kids with allergies have problems enough, and they will really appreciate when you go the extra mile for them.

In third or fourth grades, many children begin to need eyeglasses.  It’s not unusual for a third of the class to be wearing glasses by the end of the school year.

If you think a student might need glasses, call the nurse to schedule a convenient time, then send the child to the nurse for a vision screening.

If the child fails the vision screening, the nurse will send a note home to the child’s parents indicating that the child should be taken to an eye doctor.  In many cases, often the very next day, the child will tell you she has an appointment at the eye doctor.  If this doesn’t happen, remind for a day or two, then wait a week to see if the child brings it up again.  If not, go back to the nurse.

Let the nurse remind parents.  If you get the feeling (or know for sure) that affordability is an issue, make sure to tell the nurse.  School nurses have a few resources for free eyeglasses, but quantities are limited.  You can tip the balance in your student’s favor by advocating and staying in contact with the nurse.  Remember not to promise anything to the student, and don’t tell the student about your efforts to secure free glasses.  You might not succeed.

A heartbreaking scenario is when a child has glasses that are clearly many years old and inadequate for the child’s current vision needs.  Sometimes the tip-off is that the glasses are too small for the child’s head. Send this child to the nurse and go through the vision screening procedure.  If the parents can’t or won’t get the child new glasses, work with the nurse and social worker.  Always, always involve the nurse as the primary case manager.

Teasing and glasses envy: New glasses wearers worry about peer pressure and teasing, but in my experience, this rarely happens in elementary school.  Rather, I find that other students catch a bad case of glasses envy.  They borrow the glasses of the “lucky” nearsighted students and wear their dad’s old geek glasses to school.  They even buy glasses accessories in stores like Claire’s at the mall.

Destruction: Once kids have their glasses, they often destroy them the first week (or day) out.  Glasses tend to cause headaches until the wearer is used to them, so kids set their glasses down anywhere.  My family still talks about the first day I got glasses (in 3^rd grade!) and for some reason I set my glasses on the floor.  My big brother accidentally stepped on them. 

Glasses that go missing: Students lose glasses all the time.  Many students need glasses, but their eyes aren’t really bad yet, so they only use them for certain tasks.  This means the student is always setting the glasses down somewhere.  Consequently, glasses get left in the computer lab, lunchroom, gym, library, or school bus.  If a child is missing glasses, send the student and a buddy to check the lost and found and whatever special you had the day they went missing.  Then check the main office.  Before you officially declare the glasses MIA, offer the whole class a chance to find them.

“Forgetting” to wear glasses: Some kids just don’t take to glasses, and they start “forgetting” to bring them to school (or home).  Give it a shot and remind the child for a day or three, but I strongly recommend that you make no promises to the parents about reminding the child to wear his glasses.  You don’t want the onus of a stubborn child’s glasses-avoidance issues on you.

The beginning of the school year is a classic time for kids to have trouble with their eyesight.  In third or fourth grade, many students who previously didn’t wear glasses suddenly need them.

Symptoms include the obvious—squinting, asking to move closer to the board, and headaches.  These are usually apparent at the beginning of the school year.  Many kids’ eyes may have changed over the summer, but families didn’t notice because very few people need to see the whiteboard from their living room couch.

Talk to your school nurse and ask when it’s convenient to send a child down for a screening.  Make sure the screening is during class time, not a special class or, heaven forbid, recess.  No need to add missing fun to the child’s stressful experience of taking a vision test the teacher recommended. Watch students all year because new cases will crop up. 

Finally, from the School of Hard Knocks, I offer this tip: not all kids will thank you for referring them to the school nurse for vision screening.  They’ll blame you for quite a while.  I think that you have a moral obligation to refer the child to the school nurse anyway.

Eagle Scout is the highest rank a boy can achieve in the Boy Scouts of America.  To reach the goal of Eagle Scout, boys must advance through all the ranks of the entire scouting process and earn at least 21 merit badges in a variety of skills.  To top it off, scouts must complete an Eagle Project, a community service leadership project.

My older brother is an Eagle Scout.  His Eagle Scout Project: teaching students about different kinds of shelters and conducting a hands-on lesson so students could build them in their own  classroom (see photo).  I remember the accolades he received—his Court of Honor was a big deal.  Since we’re an Air Force family who moves all the time, my brother knew some very special Scoutmasters from far-flung locations.  My parents arranged for some of them to attend his Eagle Scout Court of Honor.  My brother requested a congressional candidate to attend—and he did!  Everyone knows that achieving Eagle Scout is a big deal.

I know a teacher who is very talented at harnessing the power of the Eagle Project.   Through Eagle Projects, our school created murals, built benches, installed a garden—you name it!  Of course, this teacher was always there as executive oversight.  (The Eagle Scout candidate did the actual leading.)

I haven’t been brave enough to sponsor an Eagle Scout project myself, so I don’t want to talk big.  I just want to alert you to the power of the Eagle Project and provide you with a few resources.

The Eagle Scout candidate tracks down the materials (often with donations from local businesses), organizes the work crews, plans everything and completes the project.  However, a dedicated staff member at the school has to be ready to help or find information any time the Eagle Scout candidate needs it.

To find a troop near you, enter your zip code at the Local Council Locator, or simply Google your town + Boy Scouts.  Even better would be to use your personal network to find Scouts already affiliated with your school or an organization (often a church) that many people at your school attend.  A really great source of Eagle Scout candidates is school alumni and older siblings of your students.

EagleScout.org gives comprehensive information on what an Eagle Scout Leadership Project is and isn’t.  The list might give you ideas for projects for your school.  I’m sure they would not mind if I list some of the ones that seemed particularly applicable to schools:

1. Built a Playground
2. Picnic Tables for Park
3. Leadership Training Program: helped the school district organize and train the staff members for a week long retreat for the 6th graders.
4. Made Bicycle Racks for Baseball Complex
5. Flag Pole: the school’s flagpole was really old, so the eagle scout candidate got a company to donate the cement and pole for a new one. His boy scout troop helped put it in.
6. Walking/Nature Trails at local schools including chips and shavings to walk on, leveling trail for ease of use, etc. Several days with various sized crews of 5-10.
7. Built a volleyball court
8. Moved the shelving, supplies, stock, and books from a stockroom in a 500 pupil elementary school to a new storage building.

Our school acquired a garden through an Eagle project.  It was a wonderful contribution to our school.

Building the garden was one thing (the Eagle Scout candidate led that effort). 

Planting the garden was another thing entirely.  I had extremely limited gardening experience and no idea how to begin.  I wasn’t sure what supplies we needed, how many plants, or even how much topsoil to buy.

Awesome parents to the rescue!  A parent whose family owned a nursery helped us plant the garden.

The garden was so incredibly exciting that it permeated our class culture.

My students and I knew the garden would make learning come alive, but that didn’t prepare us for the exciting reality.   Every aspect of the project was an adventure.  We got in the green thumb mood by watching John Denver sing “The Garden Song” with the Muppets.

We made academic preparations for their garden by studying the life cycle of a plant and learning about the vegetables they would grow.  We relished every step in creating and tending to the garden.  To third graders, pulling out weeds so we could lay the topsoil was thrilling.  Did you know an entire class of third graders can fit into one of those garden boxes and weed it, all at the same time?  That was a moment I’ll never forget.

Before we planted the garden, most of my students’ experience with vegetables was limited to tagging along at the grocery store and making “icky” faces when forced to eat those awful organic substances.  After planting our garden, my students were asking for more vegetables at home and closely monitoring the status of their garden.  Students were enchanted when our garden attracted dozens of bees happily buzzing to and fro, just like in storybooks.  The kids launched an aphid control campaign to capture ladybugs from our soccer field and transport them to the garden.

The garden has sparked a feeling of community among my students.  They manage their own garden club and have written dozens of just-for-fun reports about plants, vegetables and garden bugs.  My third graders consider themselves emissaries of the school garden and enthusiastically share their knowledge with younger students.  The excitement when we harvested for two separate salad parties was almost more than they could bear.

We created awesome class books to thank the Eagle Scout who created the garden for us, the family who helped us, and the nursery that donated plants and materials.  The kids worked harder on those books than any class book we ever created.  Their gratitude was just so immense.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”

Emma Lazarus’s inspiring poem is engraved on a plaque at the Statue of Liberty.  Many people only know the famous ending, but reading the whole sonnet gives a much deeper meaning.

“The New Colossus” makes a wonderful memorization challenge.  Your students can handle it—my third graders sure did!

The title refers to the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.  The Colossus of Rhodes was a huge statue of the titan Helios, constructed to celebrate Rhodes’ victory over Cyprus.

America’s Statue of Liberty is “The New Colossus,” symbolizing welcome, freedom and hope.

I hope you and your students will enjoy my teaching notes and vocabulary handout.  It gives background information and lays the poem and relevant vocabulary words side-by-side.  Having all this information on one sheet will help your students understand and memorize the poem.

Memorization tips:

1. Give a deadline:  Students will work harder if they have a deadline.  Memorize the poem alongside your students.  Offer a reasonable deadline—I chose two weeks—but you can tell students that if they don’t have it learned by then, they’ll get an extension.
2. Offer a reward.  My class’s reward was an ice cream sundae.  I expected about five students to take them time to memorize, but 35 students qualified! (Tip: when you’re making that many sundaes, save yourself the trouble of scooping and buy the little ice cream cups.)
3. Study and analyze the poem:  Students learn and memorize more effectively if they understand the material.  Work as a class to find examples of metaphor and symbolism.
4. Memorize in sections.  Begin with the most famous lines, “Give me your tired…”  Then, go back to the beginning and memorize in sections.  Practice each section over and over.  Don’t move on until you know that section cold.
5. Don’t worry about the lines.  Sometimes one thought continues onto another line.  Focus on meaning, not form.
6. Memorize with your students.  When you undertake to memorize this yourself, you’ll come across tips and tricks to help your students.
7. Finally, appreciate the poem’s beauty.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

You can read about “The New Colossus” at Wikipedia.  Be sure to click and read about the Colossus of Rhodes.  Visit the Statue of Liberty’s official site, as well.

Lately, I’ve been really into the Soundscapes channel on my cable TV.  The background music helps me focus while I write, and this keeps me from getting up and making snacks.  (A really good one: Frozen Banana Boppers, courtesy of my prankster character Chris.)

I have developed criteria for evaluating music to listen to while you study.  The perfect background music has a calm, steady beat, is written in mostly major keys (too much minor is just depressing), has no lyrics, and isn’t too peppy or catchy.  (No Eine Kleine Nachtmusik while you study.)

Following these principles, I have found some CDs that work like magic with my students.  We all focus much better with these CDs, and when I deviate from them, we tend to have problems.  Here are some recommendations:

Feng Shui Harmony Balance Energy: This CD is magic!  It has mysterious child-calming properties.  The class always falls silent when I play this CD.  I use it sparingly so the effect doesn’t wear off.

Classical Music for Reading: This mix features some of the big names in classical composition and works very well.  Fun fact: I bought this for my class on a trip to Mexico where I also purchased two foam puzzles of the human sistema digestivo.  You can buy the album on Amazon—much easier although less fun.

Poeta by Al Conti: This is a nice calm instrumental album with a New Age sound.  It’s very soothing and is probably the disc we spin most often.  Fun fact: before Al was a composer, he was a soap opera star.

Touch the Sun: I came across composer Eric McCarl on Soundscapes.  This is soothing and pleasant piano music that everyone enjoys.

Classical Music to Study To: After stumbling across Classical Music for Reading, I started getting into pre-selected mixes.  This one is very good, too.  Several of the songs are in minor keys, and they’ll definitely slow you down a little.

Art of the Guitar: Andres Segovia and John Williams: This is a soporific collection of Bach preludes.  I remember I used to play one of them on the piano and if I didn’t watch the sheet music, I’d lull myself into a stupor and just keep looping the song.  It was good background music, though.  This CD is good for calming students to the extreme; not so good for inducing critical thinking.  Still, there is a time and place for this album.

Touched By the Sea: Uplifting Piano Solos: Silvard is another artist I discovered on Soundscapes.  His original compositions are just perfect for background music.  My students and I find it calming and pleasant.

My latest shipment from The Great Courses, producer of audio and videotaped lecture series, prompted me to write this post.  They came up with an innovative marketing/thought provoking technique: Think Inside the Box.

As you can see from this picture, the inside of the box is full of facts and anecdotes from various lecture series.

“Rossini wrote all of his operas before he turned 37, and then he retired.  He started at the age of 18, and 19 years later he had written 35 operas before he put down his pen forever.”  –How to Listen to and Understand Opera

“During his secret negotiations with Zhou Enlai in Beijing in 1971, Henry Kissinger wore an oversized, borrowed shirt with a label that said “Made in Taiwan.” –The Fall and Rise of China

“Beethoven’s favorite foods were oysters, blood sausage, and head cheese.”—The String Quartets of Beethoven

“In the late 1800s Georg Cantor proved mathematically that there can be more than one infinity, an idea that seems conceptually impossible.  He showed that there are infinite infinities.”—Zero to Infinity: A History of Numbers

I developed an interest in The Great Courses when I bought my parents a lecture series about the Louvre since they were interested in visiting Paris.  I ended up watching the course myself and have ordered many more since then.  Between the cool anecdotes in the shipment box and the constant supply of enticing new catalogues, I just keep ordering and learning!

I mostly like the arts-based Great Courses, but you might like the business, scientific, mathematical, philosophical, historical, or health-themed lecture series.  My favorite course is The Genius of Michelangelo—truly fascinating whether you have a passing or significant interest in the man.  I’ve ordered several surveys of art and have branched out to Understanding the Human Factor: Life and Its Impact (about the implications of man’s transition from hunting and gathering to the domestication of plants and animals) and Myth in Human History (a lot easier to explain).

If you want to learn but don’t like dealing with papers, commutes and professional development credit, The Great Courses are for you.  They make daily tasks more fun and educational.  I actually look forward to laundry and ironing because it’s such a good time to watch a course.  I imagine that an audio course would be nice to listen to on a summertime cross-country car trip or just bumper-to-bumper traffic.

I am not affiliated with The Great Courses, except as a satisfied customer.  I don’t receive any benefit from this post.  I just wanted to tell you about how these courses enhance a lifelong-learner lifestyle.

P.S. About pricing of The Great Courses:  Courses go on sale all the time, so watch for sales.  If you like a course but it’s three to five hundred dollars, just wait for it to go on sale.  Once you buy a course, they tell you about all the sales and send you coupons.  The courses are more affordable than you’d think.

This is a quick tip for a meaningful (and realistic) idea of how to organize the last five minutes of the school year. We gather our supplies and are ready to leave before we start this procedure.

I gather my class for a fun reminiscing session about favorites from the year. Depending on the age and attention span of your students, you can have individuals share memories, or you can just shout out fun memories and let the kids cheer and talk amongst themselves. I choose the latter method because I know that as a child, I could never have sat through a pensive circle time in the last five minutes of the school day.

My method is more like a speech at a political rally—each sentence punctuated by applause and cheers.

Example:

Well, it’s been a great year in G3!

(Applause)

We learned our multiplication tables!

(Applause)

We had two Teddy Bear Picnics!

(Applause, chatter)

We planted a garden!

(Applause, chatter)

We made a salad from our harvest!

(Applause, chatter)

We learned chess!

(Applause, chatter)

We had two chess tournaments!

(Applause, chatter)

…I keep this up until the bell rings. Then, we all huddle up and say our class cheer: Go us, G3! Then I race to the door so I can hug everyone one last time.

What are your last-five-minutes-of-school traditions?