Teaching is an Art, what is your unique style? FREE Lesson Plan.

Teaching is an Art!

What is your uniques style?

Teaching is an art! Just like each artist has a unique style, so does each educator. Like many, I’ve sat in lecture halls where I was engaged from the moment I step through the door until class was dismissed, no PowerPoint, no ‘fun’ activity, just the teacher and an agenda.  I’ve also been part of inquiry-based instruction where I could not bring myself to stop thinking about the question posed.  During professional development and at other times in my educational endeavors I’ve completed assignments that were project based and required me to apply my learning in a format that would someday be useful to my life.  At the same token, I have also sat in a room pondering any and every thought that crossed my mind, thinking I had NEVER been so bored.  As educators, we have to decide who we are in the classroom and the best fit for our personalities and students.   In my early years of being a teacher I discovered that while I LOVE to talk, my lectures would quickly put the rowdiest student to sleep.  Out of necessity for my own sanity and my students learning I had to find a new way of doing things.  It was in these desperate times I discovered who I was as an educator…

I’m a creative 'doer'!  I’ve been blessed with a gift, the gift of being able to turn learning objectives into engaging and interactive lessons.  In the classroom, I prefer to be a facilitator while my students participate in the learning process.    If you relate to my teaching style you may enjoy facilitating the lessons I write.  Each lesson starts with the national standards and student learning objectives.  Everything designed in the lesson after relates back to these 2 sections, student learning objectives drive my activities, presentations, projects, and assessments.

Each lesson has an introduction. Many of times these activities are formative assessments or bell ringers to get your students learning upon entry to the classroom. They are designed to ‘hook’ the students and set the tone for the lesson and student learning.

The introduction is then followed by an outline of detailed activities for content delivery, learning activities and projects, along with assessments of the learning process. Each lesson is designed with unique instructional activities and if appropriate formative assessments are embedded into the teaching and learning process to provide feedback to the teacher.

A review section is included for students to practice or apply their learning. From these activities, teachers may be able to make a judgment if the student(s) mastered the learning objectives at the beginning of the lesson.

Each lesson concludes with an evaluation/assessment section.  This section provides instruction on how to assess your students.  Activities may be a short quiz, exit ticket, project rubric or other appropriate tools.

 

At the end of the lesson a materials list is available to help teachers prepare for the lesson, sometimes materials require pre-assembly. 

Finally, a reflection box is at the end of each lesson.  This is a great place to jot down notes; What went well with the lesson? What would you change? Do you have a better idea? What did the students enjoy?  Just as we ask of our students to be reflective in their learning we too as educators should be reflective in our teaching.  Some of my early lessons were not great lessons nor were they effective, but through reflection, they developed over time and many of those lessons are now my greatest!

If your teaching style is a ‘doer’ or you are looking for something new try my FREE download, the STD lesson!  This is a great opportunity to learn more about my unique teaching style, if you enjoy the lesson I would encourage you to visit my Etsy Shop – Teaching Success FCS for additional great lesson plans and activities!

What kind of teacher are you?

Click here to download a FREE copy of the STD Lesson.

Want to receive updates from Teaching Success with FCS blog?  

Enter your email address to the right to be automatically notified!

New Year & New Semester of Child Development! Getting to Know YOU Activities!

In a world of student objectives, learning targets, an abundance of assessments, and high teacher accountability do you get to know your students?  Lesson plans, emails, and meetings can easily take precedence over the lives of our students.  As we begin a new year and new semester it’s important for us to remember to take some time to get to know our students.  As there is a wealth of research supporting the dedication of instructional time to “getting to know you” activities. 

Just in time for this transitional time in the school year, I’m excited to release my Child Development “Getting to Know YOU” activities in a package!  You can now purchase 6 fun and interactive activities in this bundle.  Each activity has intentionally been designed to help child development students learn more about their classmates and you learn more about your students.  

Below are the activities provided in the bundle, don’t miss this opportunity to get to know your students!

Do you have a photo booth?

Come one, Come ALL to the Carnival!  Lots of fun and lots of learning!

Play BINGO using the Child Development Ice Breaker……

Need a laugh?  Students will chuckle when they read their babies future birth announcement using this fun fill in the blank game.

Spotlight each student using the “ALL about YOU” poster….

Play 20 Questions, easy setup, and fun!

Introduce an old playground favorite, the cootie catcher as a new social game for learning!

I like to take the first week of my courses to learn more about the attitudes and minds of the students I’ll be teaching the next several weeks.  These activities help me better understand my learners and the audience that will anxiously await my lessons each day in the classroom. They help me to design and select appropriate instructional activities, manage the classroom and teach to their learning needs.  

Click below to purchase this awesome bundle from my Teaching Success with FCS Etsy Shop for only $6.00 until the end of January!  

Child Development "Getting to Know You" Activity Bundle

What do you do to get to know your students?

Tis the Season for Child Development - 10 Holiday Activities

In follow up to my Holiday Career Planning post last week I thought I would share some fun child development activities to help bring in the New Year. 

Here are 10 ideas of how to incorporate the season into your lessons while keeping the focus on Child Development.

1.   Winter Wonderland!  Host a winter party with snacks, preschool activities, and a few fun games.  Ask students to bring a gently used or new toy to donate to a local charity or host a hat/glove drive.  What to do at the party?

·   Decorate Cookies – Let the students take a few to share.  In the past, the foods teachers baked the cookies and my students iced them. 

·   Allow students to bring in snacks or purchase simple snacks such as a cheese and fruit tray, pre-made Chex mix, holiday cookies, etc.

·   Craft.  Students love to craft.  Let them make a personalized ornament or a candy cane out of a pipe cleaner and beads.  There are plenty of ideas on Pinterest!

·   Sponsor a few games such as Jingle Bell Toss, Christmas bow relay, or Candy Cane fishing in addition to a lot of other ideas on Pinterest. You can modify these games to be challenging by asking the students to use their opposite hand or feet to complete the task.  This will help students understand how these games foster growth, can be challenging for kids, and how easily a preschooler may become frustrated with an activity. 

·   Play Christmas Bingo, again plenty of free downloads on Pinterest.

   

    2. Holiday Decorating!  Let students make ornaments for the class tree.  There are a lot of great ideas on Pinterest.   Have students complete the task with their opposite hand our 2 fingers on each hand taped together.  For this activity focus on fine motor skills and how challenging and frustrating they can be for toddlers and preschoolers to develop.

 

3.  Holiday Shopping!  Have students create a shopping list for a toddler, preschooler, and or school-aged kid.  The student must identify age-appropriate toys and explain how they would benefit the child’s growth.   If your time is limited and you don’t have time to complete the project consider using it as a bell ringer each day.  Put a picture of the “hot” toys of the year up on the board or projector.  Start class by talking about if the toy encourages physical, emotional, social, moral, or cognitive growth?  The benefit of the toy versus the cost?  Any potential harm to a child’s physical, emotional, social, moral, or cognitive development?

    Download a free worksheet - Click Here!

    4. Secret Santa.  Team up with a Kindergarten or First grade class.  Have elementary students write a letter to Santa and your Child Development students can be the “Santa” that responds.  This activity will help your students focus on vocabulary that is appropriate to this age group and their language skills. 

5. Stockings hung by the Chimney.  Print stockings to color and decorate the room.  Explain the importance of coloring and all the benefits before starting class.  (color awareness, improve fine motor skills for writing, special awareness, improves eye/hand coordination, stress relief, self-expression, etc.)

  

   

 6. Catch me if you can! Read ‘The Gingerbread Man’ story to your students and reinforce the importance of reading to children.  Then explain how to build, support, and improve active comprehension strategies.  Allow the students to work in small groups to determine a way they would help support cognitive growth and reading comprehension.  Examples may be to build gingerbread houses out of graham crackers, make a trap to catch the gingerbread man, rewrite the story, etc.  Once students find/create an activity allow each group to lead the class in these activities. 

7. Holiday Memories.  Ask students to share memories from their childhood by answering the following questions.  This would also be a great small group activity using the colored jumbo sticks in the Formative Assessment Tool Kit.

          Click on the image to download and print!

8.  Around the World with the Holidays!  Have students write  a  children’s book focused on educating American children  about the holiday season in another country.  You could also focus on the different religions and how they celebrate. 

   

9. What do the theorist have to say about Santa?  Have students respond to the prompt below, their responses should be from the perspective of a child development theorist.  Students can either pick or draw.  Theorist could include Piaget, Skinner, Vygotsky, Erickson, Gardner, and/or Freud. 

Click the image to purchase this activity from 
Teaching Success with FCS.

    10. Holiday Wish List.  Have students list 10 things parents could do with their children during the holiday season to give them the greatest gift, nurturing their growth and development. 

    

What activities do you facilitate in your classroom with your child development students around the holidays?

Like what you see?  

Visit my Teaching Success FCS Etsy Shop for 

great lesson plans & activities.  

Follow me for updates!

Child Development Planning Guide

I love writing curriculum, read my profile!  Designing, linking, assessing, and planning are all words that excite me.  The journey for me is like a large puzzle.  Before I design lessons I always have a guide that focuses on the standards I'm aiming for my students to master.  

The guide is driven by state/national standards along with community needs.  The contruction of a guide begins with printing and cutting the standards into strips and laying them out on a large table.  This process allows me to arrange them into "like" learning groups.  These groups then morph into units.  Once I have units with standards I start to look at the topics or major themes within each unit for lesson ideas.  The question I frequently ask myself during this process is what 2 or 3 standards may be grouped together for a lesson or are relevant to each other?  It is from here that my planning guide is created.  A future post will cover more about how I then design student learning objectives, lessons and assessments using the planning guide, follow me to receive updates!

Below is a copy of my Child Development Planning Guide.  Please note that this guide is based on a full years curriculum, if you opt to use this guide for a semester class you will need to modify.  You can purchase lesson's I have designed for this course by clicking the links on the document.  

Click the image to download your copy!

How do you create your planning guides?

Great Deal! How can you use these Tumbling Tower's in your Classroom?

Check out this great deal!  Tonight while shopping I came across these small “Tumbling Tower” games at Dollar Tree!  I instantly began thinking how these would be an awesome addition to the Formative AssessmentTool Kit to be played in small groups.  This game is versatile and can be used in the classroom to engage students in a variety of ways.

1. Review Game. Number the pieces 1-20, create 20 review questions and play!

2. Get to Know Activity. Number the pieces 1-20, use the 20 Questions about You then game on to learn about each other!

3. Vocabulary.  Label the pieces with vocabulary terms or kitchen equipment!

4. True/False.  Write facts about the topic, only pieces that relate count.

5. Want a fun lab?  Add an ingredient to each piece, you get to cook with all the ingredients that you are able to successfully pull out of the tower.

How could you use these in your classroom?

Want to make sure you are getting great ideas for your classroom?  Follow by email!

Mr. Holland's Opus Movie Guide FREE Download Today Only

New Release, Free Download Today (12/6) Only!

Expired

Mr. Holland's Opus is a 1995 film focused on a musician and composer who decides to embark on a career change into teaching.  The PG-rated movie is  2 1/2 hours full of career planning advice and inspiration.  This movie guide download focuses on the career planning aspects of the story presented in the film.  The guide has 10 reflective questions to get your students thinking about their own work values, interest, and passion when career planning!

Did you miss the free download?  Don't worry you can still purchase the movie guide at my Teaching Success FCS Etsy Store.

To be sure and not miss future free downloads, educational updates, newly released lessons and instructional tools, follow me!

Bee Movie, Career Planning & Popcorn

I’m not sure if the screenwriters knew it but when they produced the ‘Bee Movie’ they created a great tool for educators who teach a career planning course.  This movie is loaded with ‘teachable moments’ and several life lessons.  If you have not viewed it grab the DVD, some popcorn, and download this FREE movie guide.

Click here to download a free copy!


Do you want your students to focus on career influences?  

Purchase the study guide below at my Etsy shop – Teaching Success FCS.  The study guide includes 4 questions. Students are asked to write extended response reflecting on career influences both in the movie and relation in their own lives. 

Follow me for lesson plans, activity, 

& instructional updates!