In the Students' Hands

There comes a time with every child when the parents must allow them to go off on their own to do their own thing.  We often talk about the baby bird first using its wings to fly, and while poetic, the real thing scares the crap out of us!  As teachers, it is the same feeling as we end the school year, knowing our students will fly off to the next grade or to their next adventure in life.  We question... did we do all we needed to do?  Did we do it right?  What should I have done differently?

Every year, on those final days, I take time to say goodbye to my students.  I am not a "party" teacher, and I was never good with the sappy "see you laters."  Instead, I tried to organize a simple discussion with my kids.  I gave that "What I hope for you..." speech and I told them as a whole group how much I had learned from them through the year.  I then opened the floor to their thoughts and concerns, often sitting there, hoping I would hear their praise and affirmations.

I taught 6-12th grades.  That praise and affirmation stuff I hoped for just isn't second nature for them.  Expecting them to openly, in front of their peers, discuss their dedication and appreciation of me and all I did for their lives just wasn't going to happen.

Now, I have to admit, I did have some of those classes, usually my AP or Magnet kids, who were open and appreciative.  They came with gifts, Starbucks cards, and cards filled with wonderful thoughts and wishes.  Here's the twist... I was less concerned about their opinions than I was about those who I could just never figure out.  I wanted to know that I reached them all... not just the ones I knew were "my" kids.  I wanted to know that I made a difference in ALL of their lives.  I HAD to know!

So, I did what I had to do... I gave my students one last assignment.  I gave them a Final Exit Slip.  Only this one was not to assess them; it was to assess me.  And they took me up on the opportunity to tell me all their thoughts, sometimes good, sometimes bad!

I have learned more from those exit slips each year than I learned in all of my education classes combined.  I've learned what I do right, and what I need to improve upon.  I've also learned that my perceptions are often WAY off!

And when I read those comments from the students I worried about most, I am reassured that in one way or another, I made a difference.  I receive that affirmation from them, in their own words.  And sometimes those words can be harsh, but they are what I need to remind me why I do what I do!

Michele

Need an Exit Slip to use with your students on the last day of school?  Try this one:

End of Year Student Survey Exit Slip

Thinking About Next Year?

For many, this school year hasn't yet ended, but this is the PERFECT time to begin your planning for next year.  And, while many of you are screaming that you need your break first, I argue this will help you shorten your planning and preparation time by leaps and bounds!

First off, as you are wrapping up this school year, what worked or didn't work for your students is fresh in your mind.  As you begin cleaning up (or packing up) your classroom for the summer, it is much more time efficient to sort your resources and organize them for the coming year.  If an activity was a complete fail, get rid of it.  If it needs modification, pack it for your summer work.  If it was the perfect class activity, keep in handy for your new crew!

•  A Lesson Plan for Teachers, New & Old!  A Guide for Student Teachers, New Teachers, and the Experienced Ones!

Next, almost every teacher in the United States is under pressure to implement the Common Core Standards into their curriculum.  This will be a huge task for many, and planning ahead can save you from the stress of trying to get it all together at the last minute.  More importantly, as the weeks wrap up, your co-workers are all there for collaboration and team planning for the CCS implementation.  Divide and conquer is a much better method than struggling all on your own over the summer when you would rather be on that nice, warm beach!

• Common Core Standards with Printable Versions
• FREE Curriculum Map Template
• FREE Unit & Lesson Plan Template

Finally, the best reason for planning ahead is you!  You are already in "teacher mode" right now.  As you rest and relax over the summer, it will be even harder to tackle that to-do list for the coming year.  And, if you already have your first weeks planned before your close the classroom door this year, think of the stress-free feeling you will have as you greet your new babies as they enter your door in August/September!

• First Day Community Building Activity
• FREE First Day Homework Assignment
• Student Identity Badges Activity
• Student Summer Newsletter Assignment

Happy Planning!

Michele

Time Filling Activities

While many teachers struggle at the end of the year to get through their content with the few moments left in the school year, others find themselves with time left at the end of the year that they do not want to go to waste.  What to do?

Make it fun!  Make it fulfilling!  Make it something to remember!

• Review the big concepts using games or "big paper" activities.
• Allow students choice in the lessons and activities they do in the final weeks.
• Turn the lessons over to the students for team/group instruction and competition!
• Review with play, such as creating paper dolls or doing scavenger hunts.
• Use the time for reflection and discussion on what we can all do better in the next year!

Here are a few tools to help you utilize those final days!

Allow students to pick their favorite characters from the books or lessons they learned in the year.  Create paper dolls and organize the dolls into themes or categories around the room!

Turn your classroom into a competitive stage with student-created board games on the different units you have covered throughout the school year!

Engage your students in an Olympic Competition!  Allow students to learn or review while competing in games of reason, strategy and fitness.  Be ready for the award ceremony, too!

Review all of your year's content with relays and other exciting individual or group activities.  You'll be amazed at how your students will work together to win these fun review games!

Keep your students learning new content while they have fun at the end of the year!  Use scavenger hunts to introduce them to fun facts about the presidents, new countries, or any other topic!

Have students plan their own travel itinerary as they learn about the history, costs, and excitement of planning that perfect vacation.  Travel the U.S., your local region, or even the world!

Happy Teaching!

Michele

Teacher Appreciation SALE!

Teachers deserve appreciation!  And this week, you will receive the perfect gift - A Sale at TeacherPayTeachers.com!  Use the promo code TAD13 for 10% off all of your purchases at checkout, plus visit My TeachersPayTeachers Store for an additional 10% off!  Be sure to check out all of my new products, and don't forget to stock up on the staples for next year.  What could be better?

Happy Shopping!

Michele :)

A Teacher Appreciation Giveaway!

Super Secondary TpT Giveaway! 

Just in time for Teachers Appreciation Week. 

40 Prizes from TpT's Top Secondary Teacher Stores. 

ONE Grand Prize Winner. 

Jump over to start at either Brittany Wheaton or Danielle Knight's Blogs to enter from May 1st - May 5th.

Danielle Knight and Brittany Wheaton are giving the winner (could be you!) a $10 TpT gift certificate to each of their stores and 40 other teachers (including me!) have made donations for the giveaway!

Good luck!  

Michele  :) 

The Importance of Me!

Throughout the year, we teach our students about the important places, events, and people of our world.  While these are all valuable lessons, it is also importance to teach them of their own importance and significance in our world.  Many may be thinking that I am referencing elementary aged students and the lessons they learn in the early grades as they adapt to the classroom.  Instead, I think the responsibility falls to the upper grades.  It is in these years that we can teach the students the costly lessons in life, and how to avoid the mistakes made by others throughout history.

What should we teach?

Start with the history or the literature or any other content.  Teach them about those people who have made our world what it is.  The heroes, the activists, the ground-breakers.  And then teach them their place in the world, and how they are responsible for making it a different place than it is today.

• Lead students to identify their areas of interest.
• Discuss with students the wrongs of the past.
• Identify the problems of today.
• Ask students what they can do to make a difference.
• Challenge students to change the status-quo.
• Encourage students to stand up for their beliefs.
• Allow students to be individuals and to think for themselves.
• Teach them that they are responsible for their world, and that by-standers are never positively significant.

Teach about today.  Talk about the hot topics that are on the news, and challenge students to think about what they would do differently.  And push them to think through topics, and to step away from the generic responses of generations past.  Today is a different world - and they should be different citizens of that world.  It is up to them to make it change!

Some of my suggested topics or activities to spur discussion:

• Review Important People and identify what made them important.  What could they have done differently?  How could they have changed the world or the future?  What lessons do they teach us about the world we live in now?
• Talk about the recent bombing at the Boston Marathon.  Ask your students what they would have done?  Would they have run from the scene?  Run to help the injured?  Are they angry at the bombers?  How can we prevent these events in the future?
• Discuss the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting.  What would prompt someone to do this type of thing?  How would they deal with a situation like this in our community? Do they understand how someone could do something like this?  Is there any explanation?
• Refer to the Theater Shooting.   How would they respond in such a situation?  What about their friends or family with them?  Are they sympathetic/empathetic to the shooter?  Can they explain why these things happen?  What would they change to prevent these shootings?
• Examine the Events of 9/11.  Is this really a battle over religion?  Were the terrorists bad people?  Were they following the tenants of their religion or acting as individuals?  How should individuals or nations respond to an attack such as this one?  Should we have gone to war?  Against who?  Are the people of the nations where the terrorists are from responsible for these attacks?

Challenge students to investigate other current events or Significant People in our World.  What is their role?  What is our responsibility as individuals?  What should our nation do in response?  How do they see the future? 

And then, ask your students to evaluate.  What type of person am I now?  What do I do on a small scale that impacts others?  How can I help my community?  How can I influence the people around me in a positive way EVERY day?  What can they do to make positive change?

•  A fun way to allow students to self-evaluate is to have them Create Paper Dolls of themselves.  Just as they would evaluate a character from a book or an historic figure, they can detail the characteristics of their own personality and identify their own contributions.
• Cultural Aspects
• Character Traits

As the school year comes to an end, challenge your students to become better people for their futures.  Challenge yourself to do the same!

Michele

Teaching the Important Lessons

As I end each school year with my students, I want to leave them with a lesson they will never forget.  I want to teach them about the world, about life, and about themselves.  I want them to know that the world is what they make it, and that the by-standers of the world will only become its next victims.  To teach these important lessons, I use the example of the Holocaust.

First, let me discuss the lessons that are still very real-world for our students that can come from the Holocaust:

• Religion can be a backdrop for any event we discuss in history or in modern day.  This does NOT mean that any particular religion is responsible for the actions of individuals who perpetrate these atrocities.  If we talk about the Holocaust, we are discussing the attack on the Jews by Christians.  Yet, the big lesson is that Christianity did not act out this crime, individual Christians did.  More importantly, if those individual Christians actually followed the doctrine of their religion, they would never have acted in the way they did.  This same message can be shared about the 9/11 attacks.  Those responsible for the terrorist attacks were individual Muslims who acted against the most important tenants of their religion while claiming they were performing as a response to its demands.  
• By-standers allowed the Holocaust to become as deadly as it did.  While atrocities happen all around the world, the numbers of the victims rise as the number of by-standers increases.  Every individual in the world is responsible for those around them, and our inaction can sometimes be just as bad as others' action.  In the Holocaust, many turned in their friends and neighbors, claiming they feared for their own safety.  If the entire population had refused to cooperate, or if other nations of the world had refused to stand by and ignore the signs (many signs of the persecution), the outcome would have been very different.  This lesson is one more often seen on a personal level for our students... Bullying.  How often do we all stand by as someone else is picked on or humiliated by others?
• Knowing who we are is humbling, yet also fills us with a sense of obligation to the world we all live in.  The more we know about ourselves, the less we should be willing to persecute others at any level.  As our world becomes more and more interlinked, we find that we are no longer individuals without anything in common with those around us, or even those far away from us.  We all share hopes, dreams, and aspirations.  Moreover, we all have flaws.  And if we want to talk genetics, as done by Hitler, the US government (sterilization programs and segregation practices throughout history), or even the KKK and other hate groups, we can now see that all of our genetics take us back to a singular shared origination.  This does not matter what religion or civilization you claim as your own, we all share common genetics.  And, in our modern times, our genetic mix is becoming more and more diluted with each generation.  Why look for these differences?  Why not look for the commonalities?
• Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it!  This lesson is often the one overlooked, but should be the most important.  Why can we not learn the lessons of our past?  If the people of Europe had learned from the past, they would have known what was coming.  Same message could be shared in America every day as we step into the same traps.  Even in our personal endeavors, we make the same mistakes over and over.  Why is this such a challenge?

Next, I want to share how I inform my students on the horrific events and how I allow my students to learn the important lessons through their own investigation and discovery:

1. I always start my unit with a Silent Timeline Activity.  The silence is important because it sets the stage for the significance of the topics that will be read once the students have arranged themselves into chronological order.  Also, students quickly realize the the Holocaust did not erupt with the coming to power of Adolf Hitler, but followed long-standing anti-Semitism across Europe.  In addition to this one activity, each timeline card can lead to a number of other lessons valuable in the study of the Holocaust and its significance.
2. A Complete Lecture Outline of the History of the Jews and the Holocaust helps students to organize the key information significant in the unit.  Students begin to evaluate the rise of the hatred across Europe, and are able to see how someone like Hitler could lead to such a devastating event.
3. Once students understand WHAT happened, and how it came about, it is important to introduce them to the terms of the event.  So many vocabulary terms are significant in the Holocaust.  One of my favorite scenes in Schindler's List is Stern informing Schindler that "special treatment" is not a good thing.  As important as the terms themselves is the image that comes with them.  A Vocabulary Visualization Activity helps students to develop the understanding and the importance with those images.
4. Dividing up the People of the Holocaust helps students to see the significance of the many different groups and individuals involved.  As students investigate the varying groups, and their impact, it helps them to start to see how things could have been different based on individual decisions.
5. At this point in the lesson, I want my students to begin to place themselves into the event to understand the impact they could have had then, and the impact they could have now.  More importantly, I want them to realize the significance of their situation in any event, and how what they perceive over time may change as facts become more clear.  Who Am I? Activities help students to begin this self-reflection.  This FREE set of materials also includes response sheets for reflecting on different events, different situations, and their own thoughts and feelings on the world and its people.
6. Depending on the time available in your classes, I could recommend many visual or literary activities to help make the unit more impactful for your students.  I always showed all or parts of Schindler's List, emphasizing the role of the by-standers and the heroes.  In addition, I showed Nuremberg (the TV version with Alec Baldwin) to show real footage clips and the response of the nations after the fact.  Finally, I have my students read many different accounts of the Holocaust for reflection.  One of the greatest resources are the ID Cards available for download from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.  These were used as my bell-ringer each day, with students reading a card, sharing their person with a neighbor student, and then reflecting on the individual stories.   In addition, we read aloud always as a whole class and then individually completing the reading guide, Night by Elie Wiesel. 
7. My next lesson is on the Propaganda used by the German government (and others) in the persecution of the Jews.  I stress that students need to be able to evaluate the propaganda around them and to discern what is positive and negative in nature.  I also encourage my students to look for the fact in the fiction or vice-versa with much of the propaganda produced by all of the governments discriminating against any group.
8. The final activity is an investigation and research activity on the Ties of the Holocaust to Today.  This helps students see that it is still relevant discussion, and that their action or inaction is still very important in our modern times.  As students see that Hate Groups are still very prevalent, and that atrocities and genocides are still occurring in our world, they are more willing to see their role in world events.
9. Finally, the Self-Reflection Materials are utilized again, asking students to re-evaluate themselves and their role in daily events or in major atrocities.  This message becomes clear as students compare their earlier response to this one in the end of the study.

Many school administrators and districts will argue that you do not have the time or resources available to teach this unit.  Considering the bullying, acts of terrorism, and other atrocities in our modern world, I argue that you do not have the time to NOT teach it!

Complete Holocaust Unit with all above activities included (except Night Reading Guide) available in my TpT Store.

Michele
My TpT Store

Additional Resources & Websites:
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust
Teaching Tolerance
Simon Wiesenthal Museum Tolerance Center