What the Teacher Wants!

Using Fancy Nancy to Teach Fancy Words

In the Language Standard of the Common Core (specifically the vocabulary and acquisition use), our students should be expanding their vocabulary!

My students this year just love Fancy Nancy and so I thought why not incorporate synonyms into it! They've been using their fancy words SO much lately. I'm almost sick of hearing the words humungous, spectacular, fantastic, and superb. :) Almost.

Of course, we start off reading Fancy Nancy to introduce Fancy Words (and we continue reading different Fancy Nancy books all week). I even have some princes in there to get the boys engaged. Here are some fun things we did all week to work on our vocabulary acquisition (that's a fancy word for learning big words).

We read Fancy Nancy and my students help me make an anchor chart with synonyms:

After the book, we did a little craftivity. We took the words that we learned and made wands with them (of course I called them wizard wands for the boys and princess wands for the boys). They wrote their favorite fancy word on the star and drew a picture of the meaning of the word.

This is our Fancy Word Wall (also included in the packet). My students came up with *most* of those fancy words up there!

To make sure my students are applying what they've learned, I challenge them to use fancy words in their journals. And when they come up to conference with me after journal, if I see any fancy words used correctly, they get to circle them with MY "magic marker". SO precious!!!

Check out my Fancy Word Activities pack {here}!

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Teacher Appreciation Week

Next week is teacher appreciation week and I wanted to let some special teachers at my school know that I love them! I bought individually wrapped bath bombs, but you can buy the pack of them, put them in a cupcake liner and wrap in clear wrap. So cute!

This post contains affiliate links:

Download the tag here and some bath bombs here!

For more Teacher Appreciation ideas, click here.

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Top 10 Ways to Be Kind - A Bulletin Board Display

Teaching our students to be kind is an important life lesson and a skill that students need to learn and practice. Character education often times comes after we get our reading, math, and science lessons in, but we need to make it more of a priority if we want to create students who are kind members of the community.

We have created this fun bulletin board display that you can add to your classroom to help encourage students to treat each other with kindness. Use this at the beginning of the year to set up a classroom community based on kindness or use it later in the year to help emphasize treating each other nicely. Either way, this a great way to increase the kindness levels in your classroom - and it works for any classroom grade!

Option 1: Just use the posters to create a kindness bulletin board in your classroom or hallway. This will help motivate students to be more kind.

Option 2: Add "Kindness Catchers" and catch students when they show kind behavior and reward them with this little ticket. You can add these to your bulletin to make it an interactive board.

Option 3: Add the student writing piece. We have included multiple versions so you can choose the template that works best for your students.

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Spring Math Tubs

I've got some math tubs ready for next week so that I can pull my guided math groups. Also so I can keep my sanity before a very late spring break. We just finished with our time to the hour and half-hour unit and I want to meet with some groups to re-teach and enrich. I also want to throw some review of ALL THE THINGS because, spiral review. ;)

My kiddos love memory/matching games for place value and this one is from my

Springtime Math Centers Packet:

I feel like time is so fun to teach! It's awesome to see the kiddos telling you what time lunch starts {only if they raise their hand, of course!}. They are loving this game, "Rock Around the Clock" from my Telling Time Packet:

You play music and the kiddos dance around the classroom, when the music stops, they find a different desk and write any time {whatever time you are working on} they want {digital}. Then, I start the music again {they dance} and when the music stops, they find a different seat and draw the analog clock time to match the digital time. I check them off, they erase their boards, and we play again. :)

The mats are laminated and we use dry-erase markers on them.

This one is also from my Telling Time Packet. Why are kids so obsessed with spinners? They spin the spinner and make that time on their analog {Judy clock} clock. If you don't have a set of Judy Clocks, you can use the DIY cardstock clock that I provide in the packet.

Here's one of the most popular games that my kiddos loooovvvee to practice time!

Here is a game for teaching/practicing time! I have left the clocks blank so that all grade levels can insert the times that they are working on. In partners, each player takes a turn drawing a card. Then, they write down the digital time on their recording sheet. Watch out for that fly in that pile! If you pick one, you lose a turn! The first player to fill up their sheet is the winner!

Click {here} for the game!

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