Secret Scientist

I always try to find ways to encourage my kids to work hard ALL the time, not just some of the time. Sometimes, that requires a little incentive.

I took the idea of the "mystery walker" for younger kids and turned into something that I could use in the science classroom with older kids. During labs, it's easy for kids to let others do the work while they just sit there and have fun. Instead of giving those kids a discipline tactic, I figured I would try to find someway to reward them for doing their part, and alas...

THE SECRET SCIENTIST

During a lab or a group activity, I might choose to have a secret scientist. I have 5 classes every day so each bucket has a little bingo chip with the names of the students for that class. Before the activity begins, I pull one name and I am the only one who knows who the secret scientist is. Since they don't know if they are the secret scientist or not, they ALL do what they are supposed to. Why? Because I let them get into my fancy prize box if they do and if they are the secret scientist. These are prizes that are a little more expensive and I have fewer of so the kids love any opportunity to get in there! It's quite a sight to see. 

At the end of the activity, I decide if my secret scientist did their job or not. If they did not follow directions, did not do their part or just chose to mess around, I tell the class that my scientist didn't do their job. Because I don't want to embarrass this person, I never tell who the scientist is. If my secret scientist DID do their job, I start by saying "My secret scientist ... (and then I brag on all the good things this person did). My secret scientist is.........(I always pause forever and make them wait and they get giddy and yell MRS. BRAZELL!!!!!! And then I give the name). The kids always clap for that person as they go get the prize. It's so cute!!

This has been a huge success as far as getting all kids to participate. I hope you could use something like this in your room! Happy teaching!

Pencil Cemetary

You know how kids are always asking to borrow a pencil? Or go to their locker to get one?

As you saw in my previous post, I had pencils made for kids to borrow but some absolutely refuse.

I wanted to think of a way to get kids a pencil to borrow but I was tired of having mine stolen so I came up with the dun dun dun...

PENCIL CEMETERY!

There are ALWAYS pencils left behind in my room or in the hallway. Why let a good pencil go to waste? So I created the cemetery. When I find pencils laying around, I put them in the cemetery. I told the kids that if they need a pencil and absolutely REFUSE to use a Justin Bieber pencil, that they can come get one from the cemetery and it's theirs to keep. This way, pencils are being used and I'm not having to buy them in order to supply them. REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE!!

A pencil lost is a pencil gained.

I keep it by the pencil sharpener in the "student office" and the kids love it. It's seriously a good use for all those random pencils.

Behavior Management/Reward Chart

I call it my "fishy chart". And guess what folks, IT WORKS!!

As you can see, I have 5 classes. 5 classes means lots of different personalities throughout the day. *kid personalities, not multiple personalities from me :)

Overall, my kids are always pretty well behaved but as all teachers know, students have their days where they just CAN'T keep their mouth closed, they CAN'T follow directions and they just plum want to do whatever they want. So last year, I came up with my fishy chart as a reward system for good behavior.

As a science teacher, I give a vocab test every week and a half/two weeks. The fishy chart is used from vocab test to vocab test. They get to start with 3 fish. Come vocab test time, if they have at least one fish left, they get some kind of reward for that test. If they have no fish left, they don't get that reward. After that test, they start all over with three fish until the next vocab test.

I've come up with some pretty sweet incentives to get them to do what they are supposed to and my little fishy chart has been extremely successful. One threat to even remove a fish will quiet them down. The best is when they aren't doing what I ask and I start walking towards the fishy chart, I hear "She's going to take a fish away!! STOP Y'ALL!!"...

...and "it" stops :)

Examples of some of my incentives are...

1. Whisper partner test- they get to work with a partner on the test but they have to whisper. It's fun.

2. Silent partner test- they get to work with a partner with NO talking. It's interesting but fun!

3. Answer peanut- I give them a foam peanut and with that peanut, while they are taking the test, they can raise it up and I will give them the answer to ONE question, then I take their peanut. If they don't use their peanut, I still take it up after the test. The next time, I will use another object so kids can't try and hoard the peanuts. I use beads, corks, whatever I have 20+ of. The kids LOVE that reward.

4. Big ball review- I have a big beach ball and we toss it to people who then give the definition to a word. This serves as a review for the test they are about to take but they also like throwing a big ball around the room.

5. Prize for a 90 or above- if that class has a fish, then whoever gets a 90 or above gets into my prize box.

6. Sit wherever you want- self explanatory and oddly loved :)

7. Shoeless test- that's right, they get to kick off their shoes!

8. Teacher/student review- I have sticks for each class with the kid's names on them. I pull 4 sticks and those 4 are the "teachers". I continue to pull sticks and assign those "students" to the teacher. The "teacher" has the vocab and they get to quiz their "students" for 10 minutes so it's a good review and it's fun.

So this is something that has worked wonders for me so hopefully it can be something useful to you as well!!

My poor class hasn't fared so well!

Earth Science Bulletin Board

I decided to redo my bulletin board into an earth science theme since we will be spending 9-10 weeks on earth science.

I originally wanted to incorporate a bit of everything we cover in earth science but it would have just cluttered it up and would have been too much work so I came to a point where I just stopped and became pleased. I had fun painting the little mini solar system.

I hot glued real rocks and minerals to tacks and pushed them into the fabric. The kids can't keep their hands off so I guess it's cool :)

I got off center with the word "science" and it's really bugging my OCD self but since I hot glued the letters to the fabric, I can't fix it. Ugh!

Science News Bulletin Board

For the past 2 years, I've used one of my little bulletin boards as a homework/missed work board. At the end of the day, I put any papers we worked on in the file folders that were stapled to the board. This worked pretty well but since I changed my big bulletin board, I felt like I needed to change my little one as well, if not just for a change of scenery. Here was my board before...

Kind of ghetto, I know, but I didn't want to print out letters, then CUT OUT letters to put on the folders.

With my new board, I searched google for ideas but didn't find anything that really struck my fancy. I didn't want to do anything specific to a certain area of science I was teaching because then I would have to constantly change it to what I was teaching.

THEN I saw this board...

http://katie-stories.blogspot.com/2012/08/bulletin-boards.html

What a great idea!! I am always trying to get the kids to connect science to our everyday lives. One of my favorite websites for science is sciencenewsforkids.org! It's awesome. So I figured that I could find tons of articles and print them out and post them (change them out weekly or every other week) so the kids can read how science is used in everyday life. Another thing I like is that these articles come with a printer friendly version of the article so it's easy to print.

My favorite part about this website is it has lots of information that deals with STEM. I recently attended a SciGirls workshop that focused on getting girls (8-11) interested in STEM and how to pump them up for it. It got me really motivated.



But I wanted more in my little bulletin board. Kids love fun facts. I have 3 of the Weird But True books from National Geographic. Book #1 that I have was pretty torn up so I decided to tear the pages out and that I would have a section on the board that displays a few of these cool facts at a time and switch them out weekly. There are enough facts in that book to last me all year!

So my bulletin board idea was now concrete. One part for fun facts, and one part of science in the news. I am quite pleased with my final product. The article I posted is about museum science and you can read that article here.

Happy teaching!!

Test Taking Skills Foldable

Every teacher has their way of teaching things.

One of those things is test taking strategies. There are a million things that you could say or do, but this year, I thought I would create a foldable for the kids that explains these strategies the Brazell way.

I got the idea for a test taking skills foldable from this pin on Pinterest...

http://savvyschoolcounselor.com/8-tips-new-test-takers-should-know/

My creative juices were flowing a little bit better than with the bulletin board I made, so I was able to take this and morph it into something more relevant to my classroom.

I did 6 flaps total.

1- Read the question twice
My kids always tell me they only read it one time and after going over the answer with the kids, they say "Oh, I didn't read the question right." So I encourage them to read it twice before even looking at the answers to make sure they read everything and hopefully understand it.

2- Open your filing cabinet
One of our special education diagnosticians refers to the brain as a filing cabinet. It stores information and we just have to go back and get it. I always tell my kids to try and answer the question without even looking at the answers. What do THEY think the answer is? So I ask them, does this questions require prior knowledge that you need to go get? Or is the answer in the question? If you need to go back into your filing cabinet, go get that information and use it!!

3- Underline vocab words
Vocabulary is so important. Questions can be so difficult if they don't understand the vocabulary being used. I pound vocab into their brains. So they need to make sure they understand the vocab before they can answer the question.

4- Highlight key words
To me, key words are when, where and how something is going down. Questions about lab safety for example, it's important to know if you should wear gloves before, after or during a messy experiment. So I encourage them to find these words so they have an idea of time and place.

5- Circle amounts
If there is a question that is basically spelling out information on a chart, but not giving you an actual chart to look at, the numbers or amounts are important so I tell them to notice those things.

6- Slash the trash
Now we get to the answers. They are pretty good about being able to cross out one or two answers. Once those are gone, chances are they will get closer to the correct answer.



I'm sure these could be used in any order really, but they are all important to me and so I wanted to have something the kids could physically hold and read to help them remember these steps. I plan on letting them have them out for tests. We'll see how it goes!!

Student Organization

As the only science teacher for my grade, I see all 5 classes every day. So it's around 110 students a day. As a teacher, I have to be super organized or I go crazy. Trying to get my kids to be organized is another story.

Getting parents to be involved in their kids work is a whole other can of worms. So I wanted to share what I do to keep things running smoothly with so many students.

For each class, I have a crate that can hang those green file folders. Each student has their own "file". As we do work through the week, their papers get put in their file. If we are doing an activity that's not for a grade, they put it in their file at the end of class. If it's graded, then I grade it and put it in their file but on lazy days I just pick a few students to file for me :)

So come Friday, they have a weeks worth of work. On the first day of the next week, I have them take all their papers out and get a slip of paper called a "work check". They have to take their work home to show their parents what we are doing in science. The parents have to sign that slip of paper that says "I have seen my child's work for the week" and that sucker is due the next day.

This way, the parents are aware of what's going on school wise, grade wise, etc. and I don't get emails or phone calls asking me why their kid's grades are low. It also teaches the kids responsibility to get things turned in on time.

So this method has worked very well for me in my classroom so hopefully it can somehow be incorporated into your classrooms if you see a ton of kids every day. HAPPY TEACHING!!