The Learning Tree Studio is excited to announce its very own New Year's Workshop!!

New Year, New Classroom will be exactly what teachers need to keep them pumped and energized to finish the year strong with activities that students will keep begging for.

The morning will start off with teachers completing a variety of tasks ranging from 3rd to 8th grade and from all subject areas. What can you do with a hula hoop in a 4th grade Science and a 7th grade Texas History class? How about speed dating with some dead presidents and endangered species? You should come and find out!

The best part about The Learning Tree Studio's workshops? After a relaxing lunch, teachers head back to dig into their lesson plans and curriculum to add in the activities from the morning. That's right! Who doesn't love time to actually plan and create something that they learned at a workshop? 

So, sign up today! Spots are limited and going fast!

We can't believe we had over 750 tickets in our first giveaway. We truly are delighted to see so much support pouring into our dream of providing quality, hands-on training to teachers.

We have some awesome news to share!!

Because our clients loved this giveaway so much, we will hold one each month!! Continue to check back on our website blog for more tips and ideas from The Learning Tree Studio that you can use in your classroom. Sometime in November, we will host another giveaway!!

The last post about using everyday items in the classroom, I talked about paper plates. Boy, do I love my paper plates! Today I wanted to share with you another one of my favorite things...paper airplanes. Wait, what? You allow your students to make and fly paper airplanes in the classroom? You bet!

The other day I had some notes that my students needed to know about how to write a really awesome body paragraph in our essays. It was a lot of information to front-load on them. I knew that if I had just given them the notes and talked about them, they were not going to retain anything I taught them.

I had recently attended a workshop from the Writing Academy. If you haven't gone to it, you totally should. In our training we used a paper airplane to write our notes on. First, we made the airplane and put our names on them. We wrote down one thing from our notes page that we thought was interesting, and then that's when the fun began. After they had their sentence written, my students chunked the airplanes into the air and it was mass chaos for a few seconds. We found an airplane that was not ours and read what the first person had written. We then added a second sentence from our notes that was different then the first. We did this about five times before we tried to find our original airplane back.

Not only were my students engaged in the lesson, but they also had read over their notes quite a few times. They read what the other students had written, and they also had to read their notes page over and over to find new information to add.

My kids had so much fun doing this activity, and based on my observations the next day, they totally understood what they needed to include in their essays. Have you ever used this strategy before? We would love to hear about it!

I can't believe how much support The Learning Tree Studio has received in such a short amount of time. When I decided to start out on this journey of opening my own business, When I set out to pursue my PhD in Curriculum and Instruction, I was at a loss of what I would do with it. I prayed and prayed...and prayed and prayed...and God spoke to me. He said that I should take all of my knowledge and love of training others and the excitement I have for education and children and spread that with others.  

To say thank you for all of everyone's support, The Learning Tree Studio will be holding a giveaway to help us grow even more! The contest will start today and end on October 25th. Keep reading to find out how you can be eligible for this awesome prize!

Here is how to enter:
​1. Go to our Facebook Page: The Learning Tree Studio and tag as many friends as you can on the Giveaway post encouraging them to Like the page. Once your friends have Liked the page, they can head on over to the blog to enter themselves!
2. Earn points through the Rafflecopter !! Just log in with either Facebook or your e-mail and complete the steps. It's that easy!!
3. I will announce the winner on Sunday, October 26th.

The other day I had a student come up to me in tears. I mean those big, huge crocodile tears. No matter what I did, I couldn't calm her down. Do know what set her off? She was worried about her spelling quiz. I don't even count spelling as a test grade! It's just a daily grade! But for some reason, one of my favorite students was having a complete melt down. 

Eventually, I was able to calm her fears. We talked about it and we both realized that I had a "Worry Wart" on our hands. The next day I invited my student, with a few others I could tell were just like her, to my classroom for a friendly lunch. We talked about what was going on in our lives and if anyone had anything that was "stressing them out." Did I mention I teach fourth grade? I gave them some advice on how to handle stress and what they can do next time they start to feel the anxiety coming up. We decided that we could start doing a monthly lunch group where we can just talk about everything from school, to home, and friends.

This encounter with my sweet child had me really thinking about all of the other "Worry Warts" out there. My son is definitely one. He can make straight A's on all of his assignments, but as soon as he hears the word quiz or test? It's all over. His teachers always tell me that my kid freaks out in class because he is so worried about how his grade will be affected if he does bad. And then he bombs the test!!

So, I decided to share with you a few tips I have learned over the years to help out with your "Worry Warts."

Provide a Calendar
I know it sounds silly to provide a student with a calendar of dates for tests, but it really has helped my students. It takes the scariness out of the not-knowing when a test is coming. They feel they are prepared and it doesn't just "sneak up on them." I usually include tests dates, tutorial times, field trips, and any activities going on at the school.

Lunch Groups
This one is my favorite by far. I love getting my "Worry Warts" together for lunch in my classroom. I just let them lay out all of their worries on the table and I can see the relief pouring out of them. Not only am I there to help provide support for them, but it also makes them feel better to see that other students are feeling the same way. Sometimes I just sit there with my lunch and they run the whole thing. It's a safe environment for them to let all of their worries go.

Provide a Calming Atmosphere
I know that I'm the most stressed and worried when my house looks like a disaster. I hate coming home to having dishes in my sink, socks all over the living room floor, and dirty laundry piled up on the bathroom floor. Your "Worry Warts" feel the same way. If things aren't where they're supposed to be, that's all they can focus on! I try really hard to make my classroom a welcoming place for my students. I include pictures of my own family in picture frames, I have comfortable pillows and rugs, and I love having lamps around the room. If you asked my students what their favorite part of my room is...they would have to say the couch. They love relaxing on the couch while reading a good book.  

Calming Exercises
A few years ago I was introduced to a website called Go Noodle. I was teaching a group of second graders and we couldn't go outside for recess because it was storming. "Put on Go Noodle!" they all chanted. Guys, if you haven't been on this website, you should totally check it out. There was a section that I loved to put on where the students, second graders mind you, did yoga. Yep, you heard me. Yoga. It was so awesome to see their little bodies and faces just release all of their tension when I put on the yoga sessions. It created such a calming atmosphere for the rest of the day. I eventually started to put these yoga sessions on right after we got back from recess or PE, just to get their minds back in focus. 

I hope that you were able to get a few new ways that you can help your "Worry Warts." I know there are a tons more things I could write on here, but that would be a really long post!

Comment below if you have any strategies you like to use in class. We would love to hear them!

Every teacher has them...even if we don't want to admit it all the time! It happens when you least expect it and sometimes you aren't sure if it actually happened, or you question if you're in the twilight zone. You know what I'm talking about...that "aha" moment that students get, but it's actually you, not them. This was me the other day in class with my 4th graders. 

Because I believe in backwards design, I knew that my 4th grade students would need to understand why poets include repetition in a poem. It was going to be a question on our upcoming unit assessment, so I planned to read a poem that had that in it. I decided to read "Boa Constrictor" by Shel Silverstein because it was funny and involved repetition. I already had the answer in my mind when I asked why Silverstein had repeated the line "Boa constrictor, Boa constrictor, Boa constrictor." Honestly, I was only using that to point out that it had been repeated, but even I couldn't figure out why it repeated. I mean, the answer I was looking for is that he was trying to draw attention to something because it was important, but that may not be the real reason why he did it. I've never asked him myself!

So, when I presented this sentence stem: Shel Silverstein repeated these lines in his poem because.... I was shocked by the responses I got! One student replied that it could be read like he's scared of the snake coming closer to him and even read it in a shaky, scared voice. Another student said that he could be talking to someone else and then she read it like, "A Boa constrictor. A Boa constrictor? A Boa constrictor." I even had another student say that it even sounded like an echo response. Like maybe this guy is an a room that echos. My final student said that the guy could be yelling it out to warn others around him. 

Ya'll...I was blown away!! That was not the response I was looking for...or was it? I really had an "aha" moment right there in front of my students. Did I need them to know that sometimes poets repeat words or phrases to draw attention to something important? Yep. But isn't that kind of what they were saying, just in their own way? Yep! 

In that split second looking at my student's smiling faces, I had a decision to make. Do I break their little hearts and tell them that these were not the answers I was looking for, or do I tell them my answer and applaud them for being so creative? I thought back to my junior year of high school. I will not mention any names, but my English teacher had us reading from a book, can't remember which one, and she said that the tree in the very first pages symbolized Jesus on the cross. Now, being the wonderful and diligent student I was, I decided to not agree with her. I told the class that I felt there wasn't any symbolism at all and it was just a pretty tree. Can you guess what she did next? Yep! She chastised me in front of everyone! I was wrong and she was right! There was no reason to continue the conversation. Ya'll...almost twenty years later and I still think about that stupid tree.

So, I had a decision to make...do I behave like my junior English teacher? Or do I praise them for being so clever? My "aha" moment was to praise them in all of their glory. What smart kiddos I have!! I learned that day that teachers have so much pull in how students look at education. Are they worried about being told they are wrong in front of the whole class? Or are they praised for thinking "outside of the multiple choice questions?"

Have you ever had an "aha" moment in your classroom? If so, let me know in the comment below!!

If you were to ask my mother, who is a math genius by the way, if I was good at math growing up, she would have a mixed reaction. She would start off to say that I am not too bad at math because I struggled a lot after about sixth grade (fractions are the devil). But then she would continue to say that I claim to be horrible at math even though I am great at teaching someone to do math. She always pushed me to be a math teacher because I was that kid who struggled and had to overcome a lot of insecurities. I always got such a rush when I was helping her students during tutorials because I could see that "light-bulb" moment when they finally figured out how to compare fractions (again with the fractions). Maybe that's why I eventually became a teacher.

It's so important for your students to think of themselves as "Math Ninjas." I am in my mid thirties (man I feel old) and I still have insecurities about math. Think about how your students are feeling right now sitting in your class. Do they feel like they are "bad at math" or are they ninjas?

Here are a few suggestions I have found over the past few years:
1. Make it something they can relate to- How can your students see this math problem or concept in the real-world? Do they bake with their parents? Do they buy clothing out of the clearance section? I know I do! I always try and explain how careers they might have when they grow up could use a specific concept. 
2. Break it up- Maybe just showing them a portion of the problem instead of everything at once will help them not freak out.
3. Add a manipulative- The best thing my mom did for me was breaking out a bag of fun-size Skittles. Who would have thought a yummy candy would help me remember fractions (Yep, fractions again).
4. Ask your students for help- Even just by asking your struggling students to help you because you don't understand something can change their whole outlook on something. Being the "teacher" is a great strategy because it makes your students have to think about how to solve a problem. Plus, you as a teacher get to see where they are having difficulty without them even knowing it!
5. Make goals- Everything is all about goal setting right now. It's like the new trend. However, If I have a goal to do something better, I usually try and accomplish it. The say we shouldn't reward students for reaching goals because they aren't trying to get better at the subject, they are just trying to get a reward. I'm sorry, but I think that is not true for everyone. I always reward myself with a manicure and pedicure when I do something good and I'm not doing it just for the reward...well...maybe...

I hope some of these suggestions will help you plan some stellar math lessons. I also hope you think of me and those stupid fractions when you plan as well. How can I teach those Laura's out there that would rather have her teeth pulled than do word problems?

If you have any other suggestions that could help out math teachers, just drop them below in the comments!!