A Lenten Fasting Experience for Children

Lent can be a tricky time for adult leaders.  We want our children to grasp the full power of God's love for them.  We want them to know that He gave His Son so that we might be forgiven.  It's a powerful idea with some fairly graphic and not so child-friendly images.  At the same time, there is such power in understanding this incredible sacrifice, and many of us want our kids to be drawn closer to Him by developing a deeper understanding of this incredible, awe-inspiring love.

The beauty of childhood is that many children already have a bigger understanding of God's love than we realize, because they do not live with the knowledge of limitations that many adults carry with them.  For children, God's love being all around them can be a very real thing.

In my return to the classroom this year, I realized that a lot of learning takes place when the teacher sets up the environment and steps out of the way.  With that in mind, I've created this Lenten lesson plan for elementary children.  It is designed to be started on Ash Wednesday, if you are in a school setting, or on the first Sunday of Lent, if you are in a church.

Introduction:
Leader:  Lent is a time when we remember that Jesus made a huge sacrifice, so we could be forgiven.  One of the ways we can draw closer to God during this Lenten season is to fast from something.  Some people choose to fast from a particular food or food group.  Others fast from video games, TV, or something else they do or use daily.  Today, we are going to consider the idea of fasting.  If you were going to choose to fast, what might you fast from?

Work together with the children to create a chart of things you could fast from.

Activity:
Leader: These are some great ideas of things we could fast from.  Now, I want you to think about how you would like to draw closer to God during the next few weeks of Lent.  I'm going to turn on some music as we think about which of these choices might be a good fit for us or if there is something else we'd like to do.

As always, we begin with prayer.  If we are hoping to spend a few weeks drawing closer to God, we definitely want to begin with a conversation with Him!

When you know how you'd like to focus the next few weeks, pick up an egg & choose a piece of paper and a marker.  On the paper, write or draw your choice, then put it in your egg.  You can write your name on the outside of the egg, then spend some time in silence.  You can pray, think, or meditate.

At the end of the song, we'll bring our eggs together for a group prayer.

Turn on the music and allow the children to complete the activity.  Be sure to do the same.  A few music options are: Draw Me Close to You by Hillsong, How He Loves by David Crowder Band, and What Wondrous Love is This? by Chelsea Moon.  All are available through YouTube.

Closing:
Collect the eggs in a basket and form a circle with the basket in the center.  Hold hands and pray.  Here is a prayer idea, if you need one:
Father, we thank you for your unfailing love and presence in our lives.  We are so grateful for Jesus incredible sacrifice for us and the forgiveness of our sins.  We hope to spend this Lenten season drawing closer and closer to you.  Please help us to come to you in prayer each time we would have used whatever it was we are fasting from.  Help us to learn from you and know you more and more each day.  We love you, and we praise you.  Amen.

Easter Celebration:
When Easter arrives, distribute the eggs and reflect on how the fasting experience helped you draw closer to Christ.  You might consider spending some time drawing or writing about the experience.  In a school setting, this would be a great journal or free writing piece.

Here are a few reflection questions you could use in small or large group:
- Were you able to fast the whole time?
- What did you do when you REALLY wanted the thing you were fasting from?
- How did this help you grow closer to Christ?
- In what ways does this compare to Christ's sacrifice for us?

Alternate:
Of course, this idea came to me on Good Friday, so if you don't want to wait a whole year to try it, you might consider doing something big (no TV, no technology etc) just for the weekend.  Of course, it becomes important in this case to remind children not to fast from food, water, or any other basic needs for the whole weekend.  This would also be a great option for something to do as a whole family!

Morning Meeting

I have hosted a daily class meeting nearly every day since I started teaching.  This year, I moved to a new district, received some seriously awesome PD, and began questioning whether I was wasting time with my daily meetings.  I wondered if I would have more time for content if I removed the meeting.  After all, a quality meeting takes about 15-20 minutes, and my instruction during that time isn't necessarily standards-based.  

I experimented with having meetings only twice a week and using share time to cover specific content.  After about a month, I realized that my students weren't as focused on their work, and I wasn't as focused on teaching.  Sadly, we were focused on resolving conflicts, setting goals about using physical violence to solve problems at school, and handling social concerns.  Temper tantrums in my classroom were at an all-time high.

Enter the return of Morning Meeting!  I know this sounds crazy, but I definitely noticed a difference on the days we had our class meetings... So I brought them back.  I modified the content to better fit the meeting structure and returned to running the meeting the way Responsive Classroom suggests, with a few additions from Open Circle. 

My classroom is back to running smoothly, and I am no longer spending every waking moment trying to figure out how to solve behavior problems that I haven't ever experienced before.  It turns out, I was having a tricky year, because I removed some of the structures that helped the students learn social skills they were applying throughout the day.  Never again!

There's SO MUCH that I could say about Morning Meeting, why it's awesome, and how to run it.  Here are a few basics to get you started if you've never done it before.  Stay tuned for more specific details and ways I've started embedding content into our meeting in a way that is a little more authentic and effective for both the social skills and the content.

If you've never tried it before, please let me know how it goes!  I'm rooting for you! 

Here's the template I created to plan my meetings. Click HERE for the freebie.

Typically, I plan the meetings at the beginning of the year.  Once students get used to the structure and know a bunch of greetings and activities, I step out of it and allow them to choose what they'd like to do.  This is a gradual process, of course, and it allows them to take on leadership and ownership of some of our activities.

I also run the meeting at the beginning of the year.  This year, I led the meeting for the first month of school.  In fourth and fifth grade, I only run it for a week.  In Kindergarten, I ran it for the first half of the year.  Once we have our first class election, I invite the president to take over the meeting.  Other teachers I know have had the student of the week run the meeting.

Once the president takes over, I really only lead the message portion of the meeting.  Each day, my students enter the classroom and read the morning message, which is a letter I've written to them. 

At the beginning of this in kindergarten, the message looked like this:

Here's a letter I recently used in second grade.  We were working on stamina and reading the WHOLE way through something to glean all the information, so it's much longer than a usual letter.

As I said, I love Morning Meeting and teaching social skills, and I'd love to hear how it's working in your classroom!  Please share your wisdom (or questions) in the comments or shoot me an email and let me know what's working (or not) for you.

Peek at My Week and a Freebie!

I am looking forward to this week at school, because I feel like we are really back in the groove after Spring Break!  We've applied a lot of what I learned from my visit to Village Tech, and I'm looking forward to seeing them achieve their goals.

Here's a look at what's going on in our classroom:

We are having an absolute blast with our poetry unit.  This week, I'm looking forward to seeing their personal growth as poets.  It's at about this time in our unit that I start to see tremendous growth, so I'm really ready for the school week to begin!  If you need additional resources for your poetry unit, click the image below!

We are still using our daily income cards to track what we've earned for each part of our day.  At the end of the week, we find the total amount we've earned and make a deposit into our bank accounts.  Then, we reflect on our work and set goals for next week.

For our Afternoon Meeting, we'll be using several greetings.  Most of the time, I'll invite the students to choose and give them options to choose from.

One of the choices will be this Measurement Match by Unique Teaching, which will help us review units.  Students will find the person with the matching card and greet them with a handshake.



We will also use my Multi-digit Addition Match Up activity.  Click the image for a FREEBIE!



We'll also use some of our old favorites, such as dice roll, hola, jambo, and the 1 minute greeting.

Enjoy the week, and be sure to check out what's going on with everyone else this week!  Many thanks to Mrs. Wills for hosting the link up!

The bugs are here!

It's an exciting time in second grade... Our ecosystems are set up, and our bugs are here!  My scholars were so excited to share their observations and show me all their discoveries that I forgot to snap a picture.  I had so much fun supporting them as they touched worms and snails for the first time.  One child was so nervous, and two of his friends coached him through the whole thing...

"It's ok.  You got this."

"You can do it!  Just tell your brain - I'm ok!  I got this.  Now close your eyes and take a big breath in and out."

"Ok!  Now open them, and do it!"

"AAAAH!  It's so slimy!"

Seriously... Best.  Day.  Ever.

And I don't even like bugs!
 

In other news, I had the pleasure of visiting Village Tech in Cedar Hill, TX last week, and I loved every moment of it!  The best part was that the students gave the tour.  They did a fantastic job, and I learned so much from hearing from them. 

My students were excited to learn about the way they continue trying until they get a skill, rather than focusing on completing a task.  This has really had an impact on us this week.  I'm always hearing, "I'm done!" immediately followed by, "Do you need feedback?"  On Monday, they didn't want to leave school until they had achieved their math goals.  My teacher heart soared! :)

Here's the chart we're using to remind us how to give effective feedback before we try our next iteration.

Of course we're continuing our work on poetry.  Is this poem awesome or what?  She wrote this beauty after 2 days of instruction!  I was so proud to see her taking out the math tools and using them to check her spelling and gather shape names.

 In one of our guided reading groups, we are working on noticing when we stop understanding and taking action!  This is an anchor chart we created to help us remember the conversation.

I hope you're enjoying your week as much as we are!

The Bee Tree - A Review & Lesson Ideas

Patricia Polacco is one of my favorite children's book authors.  Her word choice is second to none, and she creates such vivid images for the reader.  I also love the way her illustrations perfectly capture the spirit of the text.  She is just brilliant!

Click on the image to buy a copy!

The Bee Tree is no exception.  In this story, Mary Ellen becomes tired with her reading, so her Grampa takes her on a search for a bee tree.  The entire town joins in, and after the fun is over, Mary Ellen learns that we must sometimes persevere to find the enjoyment in our tricky tasks.
 
This is an excellent book to use in almost any subject area.  It is a great read aloud and can be the center of a lesson on author's purpose or identifying the lesson in a book.

I also love it as a mentor text for writing.  Here are just a few possible teaching points:
- Using words other than said
- Relating the ending to the beginning
- Including a moral or lesson
- Using dialogue to drive the action

The Bee Tree works brilliantly for Guided Reading, as well.  Here's a lesson I've used.  In fact, I even used this as a Guided Reading demonstration lesson, because I knew I would be excited to share this book with others.  It went beautifully, and I'm loving my new job! :)

Peek at My Week & Poetry Unit

It's my favorite unit of the year in Writing Workshop... Poetry!  I just love seeing my young writers express themselves with poetry.  They have such great ideas and are able to create such brilliant poems.

We are using my poetry unit (click below to grab a copy), which I use and improve upon every year.  I learn so much from my students, so I change it and add to it based on what they teach me each year.

So far, we've used our sunglasses to look at the world through the eyes of a poet.  We remember that poets see the world differently, just like things look a little different when we put on our sunglasses.

They came up with some GREAT ideas for poems!  Please excuse our spelling... We never worry about it when we're just gathering ideas. After all, our lists are just for us! :)

This week, we'll continue learning about crafting poems and using repetition as part of the art of poetry.  Collaborative poetry writing is a new one lesson this year, and I'm really to try it.  This was a suggestion from one of my young writers, and I think it's going to be awesome! :)

Here's a little Peek at My Week!

I'm linking up with Mrs. Willis Kindergarten.  Be sure to stop by and check out everything going on in other classrooms around the country this week!  (Isn't it great to be able to learn from people across the country!?)

Classroom Economy

During my student teaching, I worked with two amazing teachers who masterfully incorporated a classroom economy into their daily routines.  It worked beautifully, and I was inspired to learn more about it.  There are quite a few teachers who have great resources; my favorites are Laura Candler and Beth Newingham.  Just click on their names to check out how they do it.

I've used various combinations of all three versions of the class economy each year.  One thing I particularly loved about how my cooperating teachers handled it was that they allowed the children to earn money for their behavior during various parts of the day.  This was great for students with unique needs, and I've found that it works really well for certain classes and students.

I always pair the class economy with class government, so in addition to applying for jobs, students elect class officers (President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer, and Representative... or a variation of that, depending on the grade level!)

Here are a few tools I've used to set up and run our class economy:

This one is our income sheet, and I'm trying it out for the first time this year (2nd grade).  We will update it throughout the day, then total it right before dismissal.  On Friday, we will total our income (great way to practice those addition skills!), evaluate our performance during the week, and set goals for the upcoming week.





I also use "The Classifieds" to advertise for class jobs & announce elections.  I modify it almost every year, based on student interests.  The amount paid for the job also changes based on what students are expected to master in math that year.  I used this version in both 4th grade and 5th grade.





In the upper grades, we are typically working on responsibility and planning for long-term projects.  In those cases, I set permanent deadlines for speeches and job applications.  Typically, they are due the last Wednesday of the month, and we vote on the last Friday of the month.  I will always preview student work and provide feedback, if it is given to me by the start of the school day on the last Monday of the month.  This becomes important to the children when they realize that I will select only students who have crafted high-quality letters to work in the classroom.  It is also the main reason that we reapply and reelect monthly.  I want each child to have the chance to learn from any mistakes they have made and see the positive results of their perseverance. 

This is a letter I've used to keep parents in the loop about how the process works.



In lower grades, applications and speeches are part of our centers or writing time.  This way, I can provide support and guidance along the way. :)

I love this process, because it helps the children take responsibility and ownership over their learning environment.  I've found that they transfer this over to their learning and become interested in asking more questions and seeking more information about the world around them.