Social Studies – The Teaching Texan

Engineer This: How to Build a Kindergarten Community

theteachingtexan — Wed, 27 Jun 2018 21:49:40 +0000

Hey y’all! Super pumped to share a project with you that brought our classroom so much color, life, and fun. It’s an excellent project for so many reasons. It’s kid-tested and approved, helps with the transition from “me to us” mindset that is so critical in kinder, builds and encourages creativity and problem-solving, PLUS, it reuses old materials, so it’s friendly to the environment. What’s not to love?

At the beginning of the year, we started with a Social Studies unit learning about ourselves. Throughout the year, we slowly branched out to our families, solving problems with friends, and eventually to our community. Our transition from the self to the community in the curriculum was intentional, as our kinderfriends are in the midst of that transitioning mindset in their own lives. Scholastic breaks it down well, saying of 5 and 6-year-olds, “they are transitioning out of the egocentric me stage, to a stage in which they have a greater understanding of the me within the us.”

Thus, the neighborhood project was born. To help our friends start to see where they fit as a contributing member of a larger whole. The project was the culmination of our community unit and incorporated art, engineering, and design – so win-win-win!

First, we drew plans of our houses. This is super important, as many students want to jump in with the materials right away BUT that can quickly lead to a mess without a cohesive finished project. I asked the students to label each part of their illustration with what they would use to build it after showing them all the materials we had available and displaying them to see while they planned.

Next, we learned how to read maps and placed our drawings on a map. This helped greatly with spatial awareness and planning. We used a 10×10 piece of poster board as our “lot size” so students didn’t end up with huge houses and they could all fit in the neighborhood.

Then, plan in hand, came time for construction! Students used recyclable materials (egg cartons/food boxes/paper towel rolls/etc.) combined with tape/glue/etc. to create a 3D model of their house.

After construction, teachers painted a base coat of white and let dry overnight. Once dry, the students painted on the details. Early finishers got to build the additional buildings of the community – hospital, school, store, etc.

In the future, I’d extend the project and have them add in roads and stop signs and whatnot. But overall it was a blast. The whole project took about a week and a half and our team was able to incorporate it in various subject areas, which was great! Want to give this a try? Download the FREE STUDENT PLANNING page below!

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How could you incorporate this into your curriculum? I’d love to hear your ideas! If you need more resources for your neighborhood/community project, check out my Community Helpers unit!

Monday Motivation: Making Recycled Paper

theteachingtexan — Mon, 19 Oct 2015 22:21:00 +0000

Happy Monday!

I always say that October is absolutely my favorite month of the year, but for some reason it seems to be the busiest as a teacher. Maybe it’s the first round of report cards/development records, parent conferences, or a host of other things. It’s likely the combination of it all, but I’m forcing myself to make time for things I enjoy – like blogging.

Since it’s a Monday, why not share some Monday Motivation?!

We’ve been marching through our tree unit in science for some time now. We have wrapped up the structure and function of various tree parts and moved into tree products. You can learn more about some of our other tree activities [here].

As we near the end of our tree unit, I thought it was important to talk about the impact that cutting trees down to make paper has on our world. Even more, what impact does all the paper waste have?!

After using a couple of trade books to illustrate how paper was made centuries ago and how landfills have filled with paper products (amongst other recyclable trash), we dove into creating our own recycled paper.

This may seem like an impossible stretch for a Kindergarten classroom – but I promise the kids absolutely LOVE it, and it really helps them see how much effort it takes to recycle just a small amount of paper. (We’ve been discussing using paper wisely so there is less waste, but we still have a huge tub of scrap paper. I’m sure not a single Kindergarten teacher out there is surprised about that!)

If you’d like to re-create this activity in your classroom you’ll need: scrap paper (construction paper, cardstock, newspaper, magazines, etc), a blender, felt, sponges, 2 $1 frames from Michael’s, screen (can purchase at Home Depot or Lowes), tubs filled halfway with water (big enough to submerge the frames).

I grouped my kiddos by their table groups to decide on a color for their recycled paper from the scrap paper we had available. We had construction paper, cardstock, white printer paper, and some newspaper. All 4 groups ended up mixing several colors to see what the outcome would be.

We needed all hands on deck to rip the paper into smaller pieces to make the blending process go a little more smoothly. I don’t have an exact amount of paper vs. water ratio, but I’ll say air on the side of more paper – you can always add more water to the blender AND you squeeze the water out in a future step, so you really can’t use too much.

I operated the blenders while the kiddos helped “hold” the lids on. Lets be honest, the lids weren’t going anywhere, but keeping them involved in the process was important!

After we had a nice looking “pulp,” we added a bit of glitter to the mixtures as well as some seeds. The seeds add texture AND the kiddos were excited to know they could plant the recycled paper and grow plants from it.

I poured a bit of the pulp onto each groups’ frame apparatus. These are just two $1 frames from Michael’s (one that has screen attached and one without). The screened frame acts as a sieve to allow water to drain out while the top frame acts as a mold for the paper’s shape.

After the pulp is poured, the kiddos used sponges to help flatten the pulp and push out extra water.

I helped them transfer the wet paper to a piece of felt (absorbs more of the water) by flipping it onto the felt. It takes a good day or two to completely dry, unless you use a blow dryer or iron on low heat with a barrier between it and the paper.

The finished product looks a little something like this. I know there are ways to make it thinner, flatter, etc. but for the purpose of our lesson this was just fine! Sometimes keeping things simple (as hard as it may be) is really the best.

This makes a great addition to a unit about trees, recycling, or even for Earth Day! Happy October y’all!

The Little Explorers Debut

theteachingtexan — Wed, 15 Jul 2015 21:12:00 +0000

As I sit down to write this post I realize that it is mid-July. Wait. Summer, where are you going?!?

This summer has been a busy one for me with lots of PD, teaching a summer camp, and working on non-school related things. I’ve got to remember to tell myself to slow down for a few days and recharge.

Speaking of slowing things down a bit, I’m unveiling a brand new non-fiction series today that I’ve been working on like a madman. Literally… Now that I can share this awesome-sauce resource with all of you, I think I can take a backseat to working for a couple weeks.

So anyway, enough about that. Are you ready to see my brand-spanking-new non-fiction series? I hope so! But, I’m going to make you wait just a moment longer while I explain my inspiration behind it.

I’ve always loved science and learning about animals, gadgets, plants, etc. through non-fiction. When I started teaching I even wanted to just be a science teacher (OK, that may still be a dream of mine). I hoped to inspire my students to love science just as much as I do. As I jumped into the classroom, planning math my first year, I quickly learned that my school and team did not do the best job possible bridging and connecting content areas. I will raise my hand and admit that I was part of that problem. It just felt like an insurmountable task once we were knee deep in the school year to plan these big thematic units and gather all of the necessary materials.

Fast forward to my second year teaching. New school, new grade level. We, and I do mean my whole team, did a much better job of bridging content areas through thematic units. If our literacy unit was about the ocean, we spent time picking and connecting ocean-themed topics that fit the standards for science and social studies as well. But, it still felt like more could be done.

I could honestly see a difference in how my students connected with material. Because we were building and modifying kiddos’ schema across the board, they had an easier time fitting new pieces of knowledge into their existing framework. No more reading about automobiles in literacy block, then exploring plants during science, and being a good citizen during social studies. The choppiness of days like this literally made my stomach hurt.

I’d love to know other teachers’ opinions. Does it shock you to know that there are schools that don’t use thematic units? Or, is that how your school plans?

To make this already long story short, my goal is to make sure that I am prepped and ready for bridging content areas this year. I’ve got a road map for units through the year, and I’m spending my time on the front end putting together the resources I will use. Lucky for you, I’m sharing them!

Please welcome [Little Explorers: The Complete, NO-NONSENSE, Non-Fiction Resource]!

This is the road map for the year.

So once I had my road map laid out, what next? I figured ironing out the exact activities that needed prepped in advance vs. what could be done right before the unit was taught was important.

After reflecting a bit, I decided on a few must-haves for each unit that would help myself and other teachers easily connect reading, writing, science, and social studies.

I really feel like having all of these items ready to go is going to make this aspect of my year such a breeze. Now I can spend my time focused on working with my kiddos rather than that nagging feeling of everything I need to do to prep for the next day or next week.

Now, I should be clear and state that the whole year isn’t complete yet. It’s a growing unit so each month on the 15th I will upload the resources for the following month. But enough with those details. Let’s dive into what all is inside a unit. I think we’ll use the [Fantastic Farm] unit that is featured for August as an example!

As you can see, there are a TON of resources included for each non-fiction unit. My hope is that myself (and others) will have plenty to pick and choose from as needed.

I’m the king of trying to pull up all YouTube videos for the day, signing into each account, opening center rotation files, etc. in the morning before kiddos arrive. Nothing spells T-R-O-U-B-L-E more than having to log into a website or search for a video while kiddos sit by idly.

The Teacher Tips page is perfect for this because it lists recommended mentor texts, videos, and prep work. I even made the video pictures clickable for easier access!

Of course I love building in the thematic unit during small group or Daily 5 time. That’s why I included leveled readers for the topic accompanied with comprehension pages and close read passages.

Who doesn’t love to look at beautiful, full-color pictures? That’s the inspiration for the magazine-style articles in each unit. These articles are short bursts of information that dig deeper in the overarching unit. They are perfect for hooking students into a unit or as an extension. I can totally see these being perfect for small-groups, too!

And let’s not forget the importance of vocabulary and writing. Content-related vocabulary can be such a struggle for kiddos, especially English Language Learners and students with little background knowledge of a topic, so there are many resources included to bolster content-related vocab.

Didn’t I mention content-related vocab was important? This QR Scavenger Hunt is sure to be a hit! Last year was my first time delving into the world of QR codes, and my students LOVE using them!

Plenty of options for graphic organizers are a must.

Another idea I considered while designing this unit was that many teachers/schools only teach non-fiction text and text features as a unit during one part of the year, especially in younger grades. But why? Why are we not providing our youngest kids plenty of exposure to non-fiction texts early on? Well the included mini-book steps up the exposure and actually asks kids to utilize or create non-fiction text features. This way, using non-fiction text features is a daily, weekly, monthly experience rather than an isolated unit. I imagine this will greatly impact my kiddos as they move into higher grades.

Last but not least, are the engaging science experiments and recording sheets. I tried to make these as straight-forward as possible and think through some helpful tips for completing the experiments.

You can check out the current Little Explorer resources at the links below! There is much more to come in the future!

[Fantastic Farms: A Non-Fiction Farm Unit]

[Think Green: A Non-Fiction Tree Unit]

[Little Explorers Non-Fiction Yearlong Bundle]