School Gardening

We are fortunate that our school has a school garden. We think of it as an outdoor classroom. Our first grade students have an end of the day science rotation. I teach the first graders about living and non-living things and use the garden for hands-on activities. I enjoy listening to the excitement in children's voices as they discover new kinds of plants and garden creatures.

We also have a composting bin in the garden. The children are currently learning about worms and vermicomposting.

We use EarthBOX® gardens that are housed in front of our rooms and throughout the school.

Lettuce and cherry tomatoes are growing in this box.

This is one of several EarthBOX® gardens that are placed throughout our school. Notice the signs that contain information about the plants.

The signs include QR codes that direct students to videos and additional information about the plants.

I used to order caterpillars and set up a net in our classroom to observe the life cycle of a butterfly. Now we are able to observe the process naturally right outside our classroom door.

We are currently growing milkweed (Monarch butterflies love to lay eggs on the leaves of the plant.), cherry tomatoes (a few green ones can be seen in the background), and strawberries in our EarthBOX®.

If you'd like more information about the garden containers or would like to have your own EarthBOX® garden, click HERE. We use ours all year long!

The site has planting and gardening resources, too. The system is easy to use. Students can plant and maintain the garden. I love the real world application of having one. When the fruits and vegetables are ripe and ready to be picked, it's fun to prepare a vegetable or fruit salad with them. I've found that for some students, it's the first time they've seen or tasted many of the fruits and vegetables we grow.

These are a couple of my favorite classroom gardening books:

 It's Our Garden by George Ancona.

Children learn about creating a school garden.

How Groundhog's Garden Grew by Lynne Cherry

Children learn about planting seeds, harvesting, and eating home-grown food as Squirrel teaches Little Groundhog all about gardening.

I'd love to hear about your school garden and any garden books you find helpful.

Favorite FREE Websites for Math

Happy Memorial Day!

It's Jennifer from Elementary School Garden!

Looking for some fun, FREE, educational, math websites to use in your classroom?  Here are my top 3 . . .

Xtra Math
Use this site for a quick and fun way for your students to practice their math facts both at home and at school?  You simply create a username and password, set up your class list, print out your students log-in and password info and your off and running.  A quick video plays for them when they log-in and it walks them through all the steps.  The best part is Xtra Math emails you, the teacher, weekly data for how your students are progressing with their math facts.

Sheppards Software
This site contains hundreds of educational games, activities, quizzes, articles, and more all for FREE!  Use this site to reinforce math, language arts, science, and social studies concepts throughout the day.  I have students access this site during math center rotations.  There are loads of fun math games that focus on common core math standards.

Common Core Sheets

Looking for some Common Core worksheets to supplement your curriculum?  Check out this site.  I love how there is a spot along the right hand side for students to record their answers.  Answer keys are included for each worksheet with the answers along the same side to make for easy grading.

What are your favorite math websites?

Organizing Math and Reading Centers

Hi, it's Jennifer again!  I've posted a few times about math and reading centers on my blog, Elementary School Garden.  Over the years, I have received a lot of questions about their organization so I thought I would share a little about them today.

How do you organize your centers?
I use center wheels for both reading and math.  Since I hate sorting through center cards each day I use a center rotation wheel for each subject.

A few years ago I started out with a huge wheel that contained 2 centers for each group each day.  Now I've toned things down a little bit and just have one center for each group each day.  I've had a 6 day rotation (back when I only had 4 Kindles and couldn't have more than 4 students at a station).  Now I have a 5 day rotation which is the easiest given the 5 day week.

The colorful bins below the wheels are for students to turn in any work.  I love them because I can quickly see if students have turned in their work by counting to see if there are 4-5 worksheets in each bin (based on the number of students in that color group.)

How do you group students?
I group students heterogeneously.  The center work I use allows for differentiation regardless of student groupings.  I find it best to have a true mix of students within a group so that they can work together and help one another.  I also take into account who works the best together in each group.  I pull students for guided reading and math needs groups based on daily need regardless of what center group they are in.

How much time do you spend on centers?
We normally spend about 25-30 minutes separately on both reading and math centers.  In reading, we read independently and then begin centers after sharing as a group.  In math, students start their centers after they complete their exit ticket.  I use the center time to pull guided reading groups, conference with students, work with needs group and individuals.

How do you integrate technology into your centers?
We use Kindles, computers, and a Smart Board to integrate technology into our daily center rotation.  Students use the Kindles to play various free games and math fact apps.  On the computer they watch videos on Brainpop and Brainpop Jr, play math games on Hooda Math, and practice math facts on Xtra Math.  I use a variety of math games from Lakeshore Learning on the Smart Board.

How do you organize and store center materials?
I also have labeled bins spread around the classroom that contain center work and materials.  I like to spread them out so that when centers begin students are collecting their material in different locations and not bumping into each other.  It also helps keep our transition to center time quiet and organized.  I switch center materials every Friday.

How do you organize centers in your classroom?

Interactive Morning Messages

Hi!  I'm Jennifer and I blog over at Elementary School Garden!  I am in my seventh year of teaching 4th grade and am currently at home on maternity leave after giving birth to my first daughter.  I'm very excited to embark on this new blogging adventure with all these amazing bloggers at Who's Who and Who's New.

Today I wanted to talk to you a little about Interactive Morning Messages.

Our district uses a responsive classroom approach.  Each morning we have a morning meeting which includes an interactive morning message.

When I first started teaching I would spend my precious morning minutes creating a fun morning message that would often be ignored by distracted students as they arrived.  How could I save my morning time and present a morning message in a way that would catch students attention immediately as they entered each morning?

I decided to make my morning messages interactive!

How do I do this?  By adding a section at the bottom of each message for students to respond.  I keep a little bin of post-it notes and markers nearby.  I post my morning message up front by our door so it's the first thing students see when they enter our classroom.  They stop, read the message, and immediately respond.  Then, we read and discuss our morning message as part of our morning meeting.

To save time I bring the pad of paper home over breaks or long weekends and write out a months worth of messages all at once.  I follow a simple schedule:

Monday - Weekend Happenings

Tuesday - Social Studies / Science

Wednesday - Math

Thursday - Language Arts

Friday - Riddles, Jokes, and Fun Stuff

This schedule helps me think of new and creative messages rather than falling into a pattern of the same boring posts.

Here are some examples:

This is the message that I plan to post on the first day back from February Break.  This will also be my first day teaching after my long maternity leave.

You can underline key words to make them pop.  Use color to make different parts of your message stand out.  Place a post-it note on the message as an example of your expectations for students.

Here is another example.  This morning message ties in our math content.  I am collecting data about students' favorite colors.  We will use the tally chart to make a bar graph during morning meeting.

Notice how I left the day and part of the year blank at the top of the message?  I do this so I can reuse the message next year.  I'll just cut off the bottom and put a new piece of paper underneath it.  You can use post-it notes to add the date to the top of your message or have students help you fill in the date during your morning meeting.

Here are some helpful tips to make your interactive morning messages amazing:

Do you use morning messages in your classroom?  What tips would you share?