Wise Guys, Author at Wise Guys

Distance Learning Resources to Help Intermediate Teachers

April 18, 2020 by Wise Guys Leave a Comment

This has not been easy. Learning new ways to reach our students has been difficult. Online learning is not the same as being in the classroom, plain and simple. But, as educators we are always willing to step up our game.

We have been hard at work creating Google compatible resources for our students over the past month. But we just didn’t want to make them plain and boring. We wanted them to be engaging.

So, over this past month we have been hard at work creating a editable daily schedule for students, a bingo activity for bored students at home, reflection journals for reading, writing and social studies, and en end of the year memory book.

We know teachers are struggling right now not only with teaching, but finances as well. That is why we are making our Distance Learning Bundle over 35% off its total price if you bought all resources separately.

Here is what you will get in the bundle:

Genius Hour (28-pages)
Daily Distance Learning Plan (3-pages)
Bored BINGO (11-pages)
Reading Journal (9-pages)
Writing Journal (14-pages)
Social Studies Journal (15-pages)
Memory Reflections (12-pages)

Now is the time to step it up for our students. You can do this now with this amazing online bundle of resources.

We are still taking suggestions of resources we have in our Wise Guys store that you would like to see become digital. Please email us at: wiseguystpt@gmail.com for any requests.

Do you and your students need a vacation?

April 14, 2020 by Wise Guys Leave a Comment

I bet that question has you thinking, right?

With the safer at home orders stretching across the United States, teachers and students would give anything to be able to be back at school, or to be able to go anywhere. But that is not reality.

So, we got to thinking. Wouldn’t it be great for our students to plan “A Vacation of a Lifetime” from their homes. To be able to dream about a destination that they would love to go to during this time of isolation?

That is why we have created our Google Drive compatible “A Vacation of a Lifetime” resource. This project will allow your students to use a pretend budget of $10,000 to travel anywhere in the world!

Sounds fun, right? Well, it will be! Students will get to research transportation, lodging, destinations and so much more. They will be using their math, reading, writing, researching, and technology skills to plan out their dream vacation. Take a look at our opening scenario below!

This is perfect for distance learning, and best yet, everything has been created for you. We have detailed teacher tips, student online handouts, certificates and even a rubric to use. This project could take a week or two for them to complete, so is great for an end of the year project too. Take a look at some student pages that are included in the resource below.

We have included a vacation helper document that will guide your students through the process too!

There is also an easy to use teacher rubric to assess your students!

Don’t miss out on this great opportunity to let you and your students dream about “A Vacation of a Lifetime.”

Make sure to share this blog post with your colleagues to make their jobs easier too!

Why Book Club Needs to Happen in Your Classroom

December 8, 2019 by Wise Guys 1 Comment

If you are not implementing Book Club in your upper elementary or middle school classroom, you need to do so now!

Traditional reading class in elementary and middle school has usually consisted of teachers self-selecting books for students to read. Whether it be a whole class novel or leveled books for guided reading, the choice has always been with the teacher. Yes, finding books at students’ reading levels is important, but by taking away choice, you are taking away student interest and engagement. Book Club is a time when students self-select books to read and discuss in small groups. And this should be happening in your classroom now!

How to Start Book Club

Before starting Book Club in our classroom, we select about 6-7 books that we feel are good titles for the students to choose from and that have a wide variety of reading levels. We can use our school and district libraries to find multiple copies, besides our own classroom library. Once we have the titles, we like to read the book jacket aloud to the students so they know what the book is about. Often, other students will chime in if they have read the book too.

Next, we have students sign up for Book Clubs. See our Editable Book Club Group Template handout that is included in our Book Club unit for helpful organization of groups. We like to have at least three students per book. If there are only two, and one student is sick, that Book Club group would not be able to operate. Before starting Book Club, we also send a letter home to families so they know what Book Club is all about.

How to Engage Students

After we have gotten the students excited about their books and are ready to begin, we show them the Book Club Introduction Slideshow. It talks about the purpose, expectations, tools that will help them, and how to experience success. This is a perfect lead in to the Book Club contract that we want them all to sign.

We then hand them out the bookmarks. The students get into groups and decide on the number of pages to be read each day. We try to have all book clubs finish around the same time (about 12 days). This allows for differentiation and flexibility with all groups. As teachers we tend to help out students with a lower reading level decide on pages to read. You will want to use the Editable Book Club Schedule to record the pages the groups select so you can track what groups are reading daily. Below is an example of the bookmark your students could use.

What to do for Daily Work

We have included some different options for daily work that you can pick and choose from. The daily assignment and daily assignment reflection allow students to reflect on their reading. You will want students to have the Author’s Craft and Reflection Guide handout to help them. We also have a Main Character Study activity to help students dive deeper into the main characters in the book.

How to Assess Students

We have included multiple forms of assessment for you to choose from. We have a daily grading rubric, a discussion rubric, a group self-assessment rubric, and an end of book club reflection. It is important to hold the students accountable for their work. Below is an example of our daily grading rubric.

How to Work with Struggling Students

Book Club should provide motivation for your students, but like any activity, there will still be some students who have a hard time getting started and working each day. These students will need your guidance. Here are some tips on how to connect with your struggling students:

It will be important that you are as excited as you can when helping these students on their daily tasks. Showing them that you care about the book they are reading will hopefully help burn a fire within them!
Check-in with your struggling students daily. They may need guidance on where to begin and how to work each day.
Allow your struggling students to do partner reading and work with a classmate to do the daily requirements.
Be there for them through the entire process. Your struggling students will notice the interest that you have in their learning!

We highly suggest your start implementing Book Club in your classroom. Our Book Club resource will get you on the path to higher student engagement and success with your class!

How Genius Hour Social Studies Will Transform Your Classroom

November 18, 2019 by Wise Guys Leave a Comment

If you are not implementing Genius Hour Social Studies into your social studies classroom, you need to do this right away!

Every student has a passion, and it is no different in social studies. Each grade level has a different focus when teaching social studies. Most curriculum are focused on a time period such as: Early America up to the Civil War, or just Geography. Students in these classes, for the most part, like social studies because it is not reading or writing. (Sorry that is not a knock on you ELA teachers, just a truth we have found over time). However, each student’s interests can be very different and staying focused on only one aspect of social studies can become boring for students.

This is where Genius Hour Social Studies comes into play. Students get to choose a passion that they have in a social studies category. It can be history, culture, economics, government, geography or any other social studies topic. You just need to carve out time during the week for students to work on their projects. It could be 5-10 minutes at the end of each class period. Or it could be once a week during class. That choice is up to you.

We have five reasons why you should implement Genius Hour Social Studies below.

It promotes choice.

Choice is key in school. When students are provided a choice, they “buy in” to what they are working on. There are so many options available and the students are the ones that get to pick their project. It is a “win” for both the student and the teacher.

It helps develop critical thinking skills.

When students dive into their projects, they will need to use critical thinking skills to answer the tough questions they have developed about their topic. There will be roadblocks, but the students are more motivated to tackle them because they have an interest in the topic!

It engages the learner.

Since the topic was chosen by them, there is an intrinsic motivation to find answers to their questions. The students are engaged and can’t wait for time to work on their projects. Because of this increased excitement, you will probably see interest in your general social studies class soar as well!

It is differentiated.

As educators it is often difficult to meet all students’ needs in the classroom. But this project is totally designed by the student. Now you may need to help with guidance for some students, but each individual student is creating their project based on their interests. You will be surprised at even what your lower level students can accomplish when they are given a choice!

It is fun!

Plain and simple, Genius Hour Social Studies is fun! Your students will be begging you for more time to work on their passion projects. You will notice a positive change in student behaviors as they are now excited to come to class because they know that they will have a choice of what to work on.

Genius Hour Social Studies has been a game changer in our classrooms. We hope that you can implement this soon!

How Genius Hour Will Increase Student Engagement

November 7, 2019 by Wise Guys Leave a Comment

If you haven’t heard of Genius Hour yet, it is time!

Genius Hour is a time set aside each day in a classroom for students to spend time learning about something that they are passionate about. It can be as little as fifteen minutes or as long as an hour or more. The key is to allow students to spend time learning about something that they are passionate about.

We have some key observations that we would like to share with you after implementing it in our classrooms.

Students are excited to come to school.

Yes, you heard us correctly. After introducing Genius Hour to our classes, we couldn’t believe the excitement that they had each day when they knew that they would have time to work on their projects. It was usually the first thing that students would ask us when walking in to the classroom in the morning.

Behaviors will start to change.

We all have those tough students each year. There is no getting around that. But what we found when implementing it is that these “tough” students now had something to look forward to each day. Their behaviors started to change and all of the negative ways that they were seeking attention mostly were gone because they knew they had a time during the day reserved for what they wanted to do.

Student confidence and self-esteem will rise.

When given dedicated time to learn about their passions, students will take more pride and ownership of their work. It is great to see the shy students, or the students who are unsure of themselves get this twinkle in their eyes when they hear it is Genius Hour time.

Genius Hour is intrinsically motivating.

Since students get to pick their passion projects, students are invested in their learning. They can’t wait to dig in each day! There are no bells and whistles to get students to work.

It encourages collaboration.

As students work on their projects, they are talking and sharing ideas with others in the classroom. Students will want to share their work with others. It is great to see how they all work together and share ideas.

There are some great resources on the internet that are ready to use right away in your classroom. Here a few listed below.

Genius Hour
This is the #1 seller on Teachers Pay Teachers! It has everything you need to get started in your classroom.

Genius Hour Math
This is perfect for upper elementary, middle school and even high school. The focus is to give time for a project during math class or a resource/study hall period.

Genius Hour Reading
This resource is for reading classes in elementary and middle school. It provides ideas for both literature and informational text. Your students will not only still do standards work, continue to practice reading strategies and comprehension. But they will also be engaged in their learning!

Genius Hour Google Slides
Now you can access our popular resource on Google. Check it out!

Signs for the Classroom
Now you can get 40 signs to display in your classroom as students are doing their projects!

Make Genius Hour a priority in your classroom today!

How to Help Struggling Writers to Succeed

October 7, 2019 by Wise Guys Leave a Comment

We are going to cut straight to the question, do you have struggling writers in your classroom?

If you are honest with that answer, I am sure you can think of at least one student that you can say “yes” about.

You are not alone. Struggling writers are in every classroom.

In fact, we are finding that we are answering “yes” more and more each year. Do the students just hate writing? Do they just not try? Or is there an underlying deficiency that these students possess?

Whatever is the case, we all know that engagement is key to success. We want to give you some tips, a free resource, and a huge deal on a bundle that we just created that is going to change how you teach writing today!

Here are some tips for writer’s workshop that have worked with our struggling students.

1. Connect with your students
Students will not work for you unless they feel a connection. You must establish that early on in writer’s workshop. We do this by showing them that emotion drives all writing. Whether it be a happy or sad moment. The memories that they have to write about are centered around emotion. All of us have emotion, so it makes it easier to focus.

2. Model your own writing.
Students need to see the writing process modeled in order to learn. It is OK to make mistakes in front of them. This shows that your writing is not perfect either! Students also get to see your thought process and how you go about getting your writing started. They will feel more connected if they see you struggle too.

3. Give them time to share their writing and ideas daily.
Make sure to establish partners so they can not only share their writing, but can get feedback as well. This will help them grow! Being able to talk about writing is just as important as having time to write. Make sure that you assingn partners that will work well together and are at about the same level of writing.

4. Celebrate their achievements.
One of the best things you can do is to help boost a struggling writer’s self-confidence. This can be as easy as whispering “great job” when walking around. It can also be where you have the struggling writer share a small snippet of his/her writing in front of the class. Showing that you are noticing improvements in their writing is huge.

If you are looking for a creative packet of writing ideas for students to use, we have our Great Writers Race activity for free. This is a great resource to use to get students writing on a daily basis in a fun way. There are 40 writing choices for students to choose from to help them stay engaged. It has been downloaded over 15,000 times! You can get it by clicking here.

Also, you are not going to want to miss out on our Writing Workshop Bundle that we just listed on TPT. This contains 10 different resources and over 150 pages of engaging activities to do with your students in writing class. It features:
-A Writing Workshop Escape Room
-A Grammar Detectives Activity
-Nouns, Verbs, and Adjectives Flip Cards
-How to Write Complete Sentences Activity
-Sentence Structure Activities
-Paragraph Structure Activities
-Topic Sentences Activities
-and more!!

Writing should be engaging. Take advantage of our free resource and our writing workshop bundle today!

Struggling writers should be given a chance to succeed right from the start. Make sure to use our tips to help all writers experience success this school year!

Teaching Empathy in the Elementary Classroom

September 11, 2019 by Wise Guys 1 Comment

Teaching empathy has become a “have to” in schools across the United States. We realize this and have created a resource that will help you teach empathy in an engaging and educational way.

The goal of this unit is to develop your empathy sills. Empathy is a key ingredient in developing positive behaviors and interpersonal problem-solving skills. If you understand emotions, you may be less aggressive, more accepted by your peers, and better able to use general social skills.

Our empathy resource will keep your students engaged. Students will learn how to respect and show empathy for their classmates and other people. Students will use a booklet which contains seven lesson concepts. Those concepts are: Empathy, Emotional Support, Cause & Effect, Predicting Feelings, Fairness, Active Listening, and Accepting Differences. The booklet is easy to print and assemble. It makes for a great handout for students to keep throughout the year.

This is the cover of the booklet students will receive.

Here is a sample of what some of the inside pages look like for students.

We also will include our toothpaste activity. It is guaranteed to make a difference in how students treat each other in your classroom. We don’t want to give too much away here. We will tell you that this activity involves squeezing out a tube of toothpaste! Your students will love this lesson. Then you will hit them with the main message of the activity.

Let’s help our students understand how important empathy is in today’s schools. Download it by clicking here.

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Back to School Writing Workshop Escape Room

September 3, 2019 by Wise Guys Leave a Comment

Fasten your seat belts! We have a game changer for your Writing Workshop classroom!

We all know that at the beginning of every school year our students come to us with gaps in what they should know in regard to writing. For example, they forget the steps of the writing process. They are terrible at conventions (periods, capital letters…). They do not know what figurative language is, much less the difference between a simile and a metaphor. And getting them to write a structured paragraph, much less identify a topic sentence are out of the question.

Well, after a combined teaching record of over 50 years, we finally realized that students need these basic skills and concepts front loaded to make it a successful school year in writing.

So, we have developed a Writing Workshop Escape Room that is sure to be a hit with your students. Your students will try to become Writing Wizards through 6 different challenging missions.

In order to be admitted to the Writing School of Wizardry there are some requirements.

Students will have to:

figure out the order of the steps of the writing process
use flip cards to identify nouns, adjectives, and adverbs
be able to identify the different types of figurative language
find errors in punctuation
identify topic sentences
determine the structure of sentences in a paragraph

Below are some examples of the missions students will need to complete.

This School of Writing Wizardy resource will have your students begging for more! No longer does the teaching of basic skills and concepts for writing have to be boring!

Watch student engagement soar with this Writing Workshop Escape Room!

Oregon Trail Simulation Activity: Become a traveler on the Trail.

August 21, 2019 by Wise Guys Leave a Comment

Do you remember as a kid playing the Oregon Trail simulation game on the computer? It was probably a highlight of school that many adults remember to this day. We wanted to create that same excitement. but on a bigger scale. So we designed an Oregon Trail Simulation Activity with lesson plans, resources, and worksheets where students become travelers on the Oregon Trail!

This 34 page interactive lesson plan activity and game will directly involve students in the Oregon Trail experience. Students begin their journey in Independence, Missouri by forming their wagon family. They then have to purchase supplies at the general store before leaving. Below is the introductory scenario that the teacher could read out loud and an example of some supplies that will be needed on the journey.

On the Trail

On their journey they are rolling dice to see what happens along the trail. They also have a food log they have to keep track of as well. Beware of the river crossings. They can be dangerous too. Students are actively involved and each wagon member has a specific job that s/he has to do in the process! Watch your students have a blast while trying to make it to the Oregon Territory before supplies run out or before something tragic happens. Below is an example of the trail journal and food log that students will complete.

The pages include an introductory scenario, a detailed lesson plan page for teachers to follow, pre-teaching activities, a vocabulary worksheet and so much more.

This packet also includes health, hunting, river crossing, and random events cards. An example of a hunting card would be: “You shot at a buffalo. If you roll a 5 then you got it and can add 200 pounds to your food supply. If you roll a 1, 2, 3, 4, or 6 then you missed. Subtract 6 bullets from your “Bullet Tracker” sheet also”. Below are a few examples of the hunting and random events cards that students could draw.

Included in the packet are some extra credit project choices (including an iPod Touch activity that would have been helpful on the trail).

Below is an example of the Trail Bucks that students will use on the trail.

This is a very comprehensive packet that can easily be adapted and used for math as well. This is an experience that my students have really enjoyed. You can find our Oregon Trail simulation by clicking here.

Please subscribe to our newsletter for monthly tips, strategies, and free resources to help boost teacher morale! We want to make a difference!

15 Clever Call and Responses to Use in the Classroom!

August 15, 2019 by Wise Guys 85 Comments

When we were students, we can remember teachers yelling, turning off the lights, or even slapping a ruler on a desk. Not the most friendly ways to get attention. Actually, they were down right frightening when the sound of a ruler cracked across the desk.

In recent years, we have learned about call and responses. For those of you who are not familiar with this concept, the teacher calls out a phrase, and then the student completes the phrase. It is a great way for students to refocus their attention back on you, the teacher!

Popular Call and Responses

Below are some of our favorite call and responses:
1. Gangham….Style
2. Mine….Craft
3. Do You Want to….Build a Snowman!
4. Peanut Butter….Jelly Time!
5. We Are Students….Bump, ba bump, bump, bump, bump, bump (from the Farmer’s Insurance commercial).
6. Harry….Potter
7. Click it….Or Ticket
8. Zip it Lock it….Put it in Your Pocket
9. Echo Clap (teacher claps a pattern and students repeat it)
10. Shake Shake Shake….Shake Your Milkshake

Here are five more!

11. All Right Stop….Collaborate and Listen (From Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby”)
12. Sportscenter Theme: Da da da….da da da
13. Hey Class….Hey What (say it in different voices and they mimic)
14. Insert school name and mascot: Moorehead!….Mustangs!
15. And probably the funnest one of all, make one up with your class!

We would love to hear what call and responses you use. Please comment below so you can share your wonderful ideas with teachers across the world.

Please subscribe to our newsletter for monthly tips, strategies, and free resources to help boost teacher morale! We want to make a difference!

If you want increased student engagement check out some of our favorite resources below:

Brain Breaks (over 50!)

Random Acts of Kindness Activity

Student Engagement Task Cards

Here are five more call and responses!

16. Star….Wars

17. Watch me whip….Watch me Nae Nae

18. Are you ready kids… Aye, Aye Captain!

19. Hocus Pocus… Everyone focus.

20. Can you do it? … Yes, we can!