Have you checked out Pinterest?  It’s another social networking site, but with a twist.  You really don’t interact with other people as much as you do with their ideas and interests.  Pinterest works like a virtual bulletin board.  You create boards about things you are interested in, and when you find websites, blogs, ideas or photos that you like, you pin them to your boards.

Like other social networks you follow other people, but in this case you follow their boards.  In other words you see the things they have pinned to their boards.  If you like it, you can repin to one of your boards.  I have boards titled Ideas for School, Food Ideas, Owls, Math, Dogs, Craft Ideas, and photography, to name a few.  If you are a visual person, you will love it!

Pinterest is a gold mine for teachers.  During the month or so I have been on Pinterest, I have gotten some great ideas for things to try in my classroom.  I have also been introduced to some fantastic blogs.  It has also made me more creative, as I work to put my own spin on things.

We’ve only been in school a week and a half, but here are some of the new things I tried, because of ideas I first saw on Pinterest.

Class Name Puzzle

The original idea for this puzzle poster came from a blog from Germany.  While I had a year of German back in college, it wasn’t enough to enable me to read the blog post. I managed to read the picture well enough to come up with this “getting to know you” activity for our first day of school.  It was a perfect fit for our “Capturing Kids Hearts” plans to engage and get to know students better.

It was a great illustration of the fact that everyone in our class is unique, but without everyone, our class would be incomplete.

I used a large piece of manila oak-tag, which I divided into 30 pieces (29 kids plus me).  I have student desks grouped, so to make it easier to reassemble the puzzle, I cut the puzzle into five sections with 6 puzzle pieces per section.  I traced the section on my dark blue mounting board.  I had the kids cut out their individual puzzle pieces.  I didn’t realize until I was ready to hand the sections out that I needed to mark the top of each piece, so students would draw and decorate their name upright and on the correct side.  When it was time to put the puzzle together, we called one group at a time to come up to fit their pieces.  It worked amazingly well.

Top Ten Posters

This was another great way to get to know students.  I saw a poster similar to this in the Really Good Stuff catalog.  Later I saw those posters pinned on Pinterest.  I decided to design my own.  I got out my scrapbooking “how to” books, to help me with the lettering.  I drew the poster free hand, then took it to a local copy place to have 11 x 17 copies of the poster made.

I tied the project into our Writer’s Workshop and grammar lessons.  It was a good way to review sentence structure and talk about writing complex sentences using vivid language.  I modeled the writing process, and designed my own poster, demonstrating how to add designs that added meaning to the poster.  If I hadn’t taken time to do that, I don’t think I would be getting the quality work that I’m seeing.

Each child is presenting their poster to the class a’ la David Letterman.  We’re having a lot of fun, I’m learning a lot about the kids, and it will make a nice display for the hall.

Good Bye Poem

I was looking for something to use as my Launch at the end of the day, (more Capturing Kids Hearts stuff.)  I saw a handwritten copy of this poem on Pinterest.  Later I saw where someone had created a poster with different colors and fonts for each line.  At first I just printed that one, but it did not have all the lines that I wanted to include.  That’s what gave me the idea to recreate it myself using Printshop Deluxe.  I found all the graphics in the Printshop library.

After printing off a small copy of the poster, I scanned it and made it into a jpeg, which I uploaded to Walgreens.  I was able to have the poster made for about $11.  I am very pleased with the results, and the kids and I are having a great time learning the lines to this poem.

Where are you finding inspiration as you begin your new school year?  What new things are you trying this year?

Last week I spent three days in an all-day workshop called “Capturing Kids’ Hearts.” This workshop was paid for by my school district and was presented by the Flippen Group. Our presenter was Dr. Kate Cirillo. The goal of this training was to provide tools to educators to build more positive relationships with fellow staff members and students. It reminded me of my undergraduate work in Organizational Behavior, which was aimed at a business environment. I have a degree in Business Administration with a concentration in Organizational Behavior.

This workshop was designed for education. Principals in my district have been taking Flippen Training for the past two years, so in our building we have already utilized a few of the tools, such as the Social Contract. We did this as a staff, and most of us did it in our classrooms as well.  The Social Contract serves as the framework for the behavior expectations in your class.

Build your social contract by asking four key questions, and brainstorming the words that come to mind. Ask your students these questions:

1. How do you want to be treated by me (the teacher)?
2. How do you want to be treated by others?
3. How do you think I (the teacher) want to be treated by you?
4. How do we treat each other when there is conflict?

I took notes as we discussed these questions.  If a word was mentioned more than once, I put a check beside it for each time it was stated.  Then I entered the words we came up with into Wordle.  The more times a word was entered, the bigger it was printed.  These were the things that were most important to us.  I printed off the Wordle and mounted it on poster board.  We all signed the contract.  Our Social Contract wordle is below.  We had this posted on our classroom door all year, and on our class wiki.

I will do the social contract again next year, but during the first day of the workshop, I was somewhat resistant to some of the other ideas in this class.  Half way through I was becoming a little burnt out, because the workshop requires an emotional investment, but by the end, I can say this is some of the best training I’ve taken in a long time. There are a number of things I will definitely be implementing in my classroom this year.

The problem with taking professional development early in the summer, is you tend to lose some of your momentum and enthusiasm by the time you actually return to your classroom.  One of the reasons I’m writing a blog post about this class, is so I can reread it later to refresh my memory, and it’s a great way to make a committment to change.

The whole point of Capturing Kids’ Hearts, is that by creating a safe nurturing environment in your classroom, students will be able to succeed academically.  Flip Flippen, the man behind the Flippen Group says, “If you have a child’s heart, you have his head.”

The goal is to help kids EXCEL, and that brings  us to the EXCEL model, and the steps that create this environment.

The first step is to ENGAGE students.  Greet each student at the door with a handshake at the beginning of each class.  I have tried this and I know there is a dramatic difference in the start of our day.  If I am at the door and cheerfully greet my students as they enter, we have a much more productive beginning, that often extends through the entire day.

The second step is X-PLORE.  Take time to find out where students are emotionally, physically and academically.  This involves taking time to explore, ask questions and actually listen to and address needs.

This class is one of those experiences that is most profitable if you are willing to do some soul searching, and be honest with yourself. I know that I am a good teacher, but I am an introvert by nature. There are steps I can take to make my classroom a warmer more welcoming environment for kids.  We usually hit the ground running each morning.  I need to slow down a little, welcome them into our room, and find out what’s going on with them.

Some ideas for doing this are to take three to five minutes to ask for some good news.  This way kids have a chance to share important things that are going on outside the classroom.  Another idea is to start out with a Joke of the day.  I know some days I definitely need to lighten up a little, so I’m going to have a Joke Can.  Each day we can draw a joke out.  As the year goes on, the kids can help add jokes to this can.

The third step is COMMUNICATE your purpose.  This is something I’m pretty good at.  When I started teaching, Madeline Hunter was the “in-thing” and we have talked a lot about explicit instruction in our building.  I usually communicate a focus or objective for the the things we are working on.  I also like to make real world connections, so kids understand how they will use these skills in their grownup life.  We always have our schedule for the day on the board, along with a pocket chart of objectives.

EMPOWER students to use the skills they’ve been taught.  This is step four and I already have some goals in this area regarding technology and letting kids take on increased responsibility for their own learning.  Important elements here were to provide students with affirmation, and to teach them how to provide support and affirmation for each other.  A big part of empowering students is creating a safe environment for them to take risks.  Communication comes into play here.  We want to make our classroom a place where kids and teachers alike, are kind to one another, affirming, and friendly.

During the workshop we all had mailbags that people could slip notes into.  The notes were affirming the things we appreciated about each other.  I have an idea to set up a mail center and to teach kids how to write complimentary notes to one another.  We already have mailboxes.  So in other words, I will be modifying my rules about the writing and passing of notes, but in a good way.

The final step in this EXCEL model is the LAUNCH.  We want our day to end on a powerful note, and instill enthusiasm and passion in our kids, so they leave school feeling successful and eager to return the next day.  An inspirational quote, or a cheer or chant to end the day were some of the ideas.  Our days often end in a rush.  Things get crazy as I make homework assignments, pass out notes, and we work to straighten up the room.  I really think I can impove this by just ending instruction a few minutes earlier, and taking a few moments to process our day.

So those are the steps:

E – Engage

X – X-plore

C – Communicate

E – Empower

L – Launch

Obviously there was a lot more to this three day class.  These are just some of the important points.  If you have an opportunity to participate in a Flippen Group workshop, I highly recommend it.

What techniques do you use to engage your students, or launch them at the end of the day?  Do you have suggestions for inspirational poetry or quotes that we might use? I am looking for new ideas.