I know... it's Tuesday, again! I've just been so busy and haven't felt comfortable enough to blog on my phone yet.
Call me old school, I dare you!
The CORE conference ended last Thursday and it was amazing! I know I've already shared with you some resources about Storytelling, so here are a few more tricks to add to your teacher bag.
1. Cooling down your classroom with YOGA!
I learned a couple of great ideas and techniques from this classroom management tool. It's all about changing the climate of the classroom through concentrated breathing and knowing where you are within yourself. Weird... I'm the definition of an extrovert and when someone talks to me about yoga, I start getting the shakes...
With Cooling down your classroom, I learned how to create a classroom community with my students during the first weeks of school.
--It's called the clap.
First, have the students stand in a circle and explain that they must make eye contact while they send the clap around the complete circle. Easy enough for me, I was in drama! However, for those not so fortunate, this can be a challenge. The next challenge with this concept was to pass the emotion, I've played a similar game where we were playing telephone and passing the emotion, but this was much better. Students had to listen to a random emotion yelled out and then mirror the sound and face of the partner showing them their interpretation of that emotion. As students get progressively faster at this and master it, the teacher then adds in two people going at the same time confusing circle and adding a sense of frustration. This can help you as the teacher to identify who has a shorter fuse and how you can change it in a second. It also allows for that student who just got into a fight at home, or is thinking of something happy or sad, to let those emotions out in a controlled and safe environment! Finally, we don't have to coop our students' feelings up in a journal! The last challenge was called polyphone where in the same circle we have progressed into a team setting. In this challenge, students are asked to create a symphony of sounds using only their bodies (voices included). I LOVED THIS IDEA! The way I am going to do this during the first week of school and record the symphony they make, then I am going to use that recording as a "bell ringer" music. During each quarter, they will make a new symphony. I feel that this can definitely create a classroom environment conducive to collaboration and unity! YAY!
Another activity we did was tell stories using the yoga sheets in Carla's book. I will try to use these yoga positions as a quick brain break for my students. For example: If we are doing a lesson about ancient civilizations and I randomly yellow WARRIOR, my students will know after practicing, to go into the WARRIOR position. Fun right?!
Cooling down the Classroom
Another session that was great was by Connie! Holy cow, I felt like the classes I chose to attend were all related to each other! Connie talked extensively about storytelling and changing ones position in their state of mind. She asked us to breathe and sit up straight to make sure our minds were refreshened. She then passed out books to people who participated and/or asked questions. Yes, I won one of the books! Woo hoo! It's all about brain research! I am already learning so much about how the brain works in general! If I take just one thing out of Connie Palomo-Koehler's presentation it was to incorporate the following into your teaching... ALL THE TIME! It really helps to make the students' brains feel good!
- Storytelling
- Props-yes props, just like theatre! Connie had a toy toilet and toilet paper. This was to emphasize that she would be doing no educational wiping! LOVE IT!
- Music-Connie suggests that the music you use should be instrumental or contain foreign lyrics so the students can work without their lyrical memory bouncing off the walls. (I know I do that all the time!)
- State Change-breathing and changing the physiology of the actual body. Brilliant!
- Celebrate! Connie says to celebrate everything! Hooray! Every little bit of news that a student tells you is a cause for celebration! Why wouldn't you want to build them up!
Teaching with the Brain in Mind
With all this learning aside, I had a great time incorporating new strategies into my teacher's toolkit! I just received my key for my classroom today! Holy cow! I am so thankful that I am in a room that belonged to a retired teacher! She left me some true treasures! She left me some guided reading novel sets along with instructional lessons and activities that she used with those specific novels! I plan on tracking her down to thank her for her generosity! She also left many posters that have Garfield on it with various sayings that correspond to ELA structures. What is funny about this is that when I was a kid, Garfield was my FAVORITE cartoon character I love coincidental humor!
Tomorrow starts the set up and I will definitely post pictures of what my classroom looks like! I am also going to input my classroom library into the app on booksapp.
As always, thank you for reading and have a wonderful week! Next post will be about my classroom set up and theme!
-HK
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