I survived my first Valentine's Day in middle school! There was a lot of ccandy, a lot of presents, and a lot of drama but we made it through. Here are some things I'm loving right now!
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💖 Interchangeable mini anchor charts
I only have so much room on my walls and I didn't have a good spot for my numbers this year so I made a desk mat instead. But I also wanted some interpersonal phrases that students could use to liven up their conversations. First quarter I had both taped down but they ended up so gross that I had to scrap that by October. Instead I used velcro and I can change them based on what we're doing in class that day. I'm currently working on making one for present tense verb endings.
Want to make your own? I make them in Powerpoint but Google slides would also work. Resize under design or Page Setup to 8.5 x 11 and then insert a small square about 1/3 of the page. Put in any images and text you want. Then print, laminate and add a velcro dot.
💖 Country competitions
Each row is a country in my room - Honduras, Mexico, Guatemala, Chile, and Colombia. Your whole row is quiet at the quiet signal? Your country gets a point. Your row is following directions first time asked? Point. Cleaning up quickly and thoroughly? Point.
I give points out to multiple rows if they're all being good, but the row or rows (if there is a tie) with the most points at the end of the class period gets a house point. All I have to do is go in and click their name in the app that we use at school (EOS.) My kids love house points because it helps their house in the house competition but also because it counts as currency on our PBIS reward days. It's basically Class Dojo but for middle school.
I have also seen it where teachers do it by class period. So the period with the most points at the end of the week they all get a jolly rancher or something similar.
💖 Sentence spinners
I've used these for years but a colleague let me borrow these huge magnetic ones and we've been using them to practice verb conjugations. Get your own from Amazon HERE. In 7th grade they are learning to describe people so I wrote subjects around one and adjectives around the other and then they had to write the conjugation of ser to make the complete sentence. For 8th grade I wrote the subject, the -AR verb, and then a place in the house. Again they had to conjugate the verb to complete the sentence. Way more fun than your traditional fill in the blank!
What is working in your classroom right now? Share in the comments below!
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