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A Smiling Teacher

A Teaching Blog by Amber Masters

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Winter Resources E-Book!

February 1, 2016 by Amber Masters

Hi Friends! 
It’s hard to believe that it’s the beginning of February already! The month tends to pass by quickly because it’s the shortest month of the year, but also because it’s full of Parent-Teacher Conferences, Valentine’s Day and President’s Day festivities. Since it is such a busy time, I’ve teamed up with some fabulous bloggers to share a FREE book of winter resources! 



Today I am going to share about how I introduce one of my favorite Social Studies units in my classroom…  American Symbols!  


Introducing Symbols
Chances are that for many of your students, this  will be their first introduction to symbols. Most students have probably seen them before but few understand the term. 
I like to start the unit by finding out what my students already know about symbols. 
They usually know very little, so I begin by explaining that a symbol is something that stands for something else. 
Of course, just saying those words is not enough. Students need to see symbols from their environment to understand the connection. 
I created this simple little powerpoint that I open up on my Smartboard. It helps to guide our discussion. You can grab the powerpoint by clicking on the image below. 

Once we understand a little bit more about symbols we go on a Symbol Hunt! 
Each of my students grab a recording sheet, a clipboard and a pencil and we line up.  We head out into the halls of the school to look for symbols within our building. The students draw pictures of the symbols they find on our hunt. 




U.S. Symbols
Once my students have a grasp of what a symbol is, we move on to exploring U.S. Symbols. 
We LOVE watching the symbols video from BrainPOP Jr. I am lucky enough that my school has a subscription to this website, so we are able to enjoy all of their videos. However, if you do not have a subscription, the U.S. Symbols video is available for FREE! Click on the image below to take you to the video! And then make sure you ask your principal to buy it for you! 🙂 
Over the next few weeks, we spend time learning about each of the U.S. Symbols. We like to use Google Maps to locate the monuments on the Smartboard. This allows my students to experience it without actually being there. My kids go crazy for this! You can zoom in and see what it would be like if your were standing next to the monuments. 

The White House also has a interactive tool on their website that allows you to “go inside” the Whitehouse. You are able to move from room to room. It’s always fun to do this with the kids because they think it is the fanciest place on earth! 


I hope that you found something that will be helpful in teaching American Symbols with your kids! Don’t forget to pick up your e-book and enter the $100 TPT giveaway below! 

You will need to keep track of my word “flannel”.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Don’t forget to grab your resource book below!! 🙂 

Have a great week!!

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A student gave this to me the week before schools A student gave this to me the week before schools shut down last March. We had no idea what was coming. I haven’t taught students in person since then. I’m posting again because I need all the motivation to finish this school year teaching online. I really miss teaching kids in person. That’s all.
⬇️ Easy Math Game Idea -students spread out ⬇️ Easy Math Game Idea

 -students spread out their pattern blocks and the teacher does the same
-teacher describes a shape or shapes (ex. Find a shape with four sides, or find the blue rhombus, or hold up shapes that make 7 sides all together) 
- students / teacher hold up the shape or shapes that were described. 
- if a student holds it up first, the class gets a point / if I hold it up first, the teacher gets a point. 

My students have loved playing this game. I like that it keeps them engaged, and that I get some valuable info about what my students know. Also, you should know that you’re playing against the entire class. The first time we played, I took it pretty easy on them and slowly grabbed the shapes. The next time, they actually beat me! They were so fast! 🤣
⛸ Ice Breaker is definitely a book you’ll want ⛸ Ice Breaker is definitely a book you’ll want to share with your students. Ice Breaker tells the story of Mabel Fairbanks who broke down color barriers in figure skating. Despite Mabel’s talent and hard work, she was still denied the opportunity to compete for an Olympic gold medal because of the color of her skin. Mabel became a coach, mentor, and advocate for equality in skating. She was the first Black women to be inducted into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame.
Grateful for this guy today, and every day! 💗 W Grateful for this guy today, and every day! 💗 We “celebrated” with Chuy’s last night 🌮 and 🍕 for lunch today. We might go crazy and get 🍦 tonight. I mean Valentine’s Day is about the food right?!
💗❤️ so many possibilities! We explored this 💗❤️ so many possibilities! We explored this math problem in one of our live Meets today. Students worked independently and shared out at the end. We’ve been working hard to challenge our brains 🧠 and solve these types of problems in multiple ways. Some students were working on counting one to one, others were working on persevering and working the entire time, and others were working on writing number sentences.
💗We are keeping Valentine’s Day super simple 💗We are keeping Valentine’s Day super simple for online learning. Students are creating one Valentine for the entire class with whatever materials they have at home. I took some screenshots of pictures from Google for inspiration, but students can get as creative as they’d like!  When they’re finished, they’ll post them to Padlet, and we’ll read them as a class the next day. I think it will still be a pretty special day!
Last Friday we celebrated the 100th Day of School Last Friday we celebrated the 100th Day of School online! Here are a few activities from our day! 
-Students brainstormed 100 exercises... (yes 10 cartwheels 🤸‍♀️😳 and still feeling it) 
-100 day hats and colored 10 groups of ten colors
-Students made a creation out of the numbers 100 and wrote about it
-Students used foods from their home of count out their own 100 day snack mix 
-We colored and read! 
It was a good day! 💗
We’ve been learning about the life of Mae Jemiso We’ve been learning about the life of Mae Jemison who was the first Black woman to travel to space. Students were fascinated to learn that Mae was in space for 8 days, that she’s had many other jobs besides being an astronaut, and that she fluently speaks several languages. We read Mae Among The Stars , as well as Scholastic’s Digital Let’s Find Out February issue. There are also several lesson extensions/activities on the Let’s Find Out website, like the Name Rockets we created today.

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