St Paddy's Day Goodies

Goodies!

I LOVE Saint Patrick's Day. I am probably more Irish than I am Mexican. I don't know much of my Irish roots, but I do love St Patrick's day. We're going 1-1 next year, and the tech team has been working ridiculously hard on getting everyone ready. As a result, I made these little "goodie bags" for the team, and a few other people who have made my first year at this school amazing.

Each of these lucky co-workers will get:

• A Green Martini Glass (you could substitute wine, or a normal drinking glass, but these just looked so pretty!)
• Green Easter Grass (used to fill Easter baskets)
• A St. Paddy themed pencil 
• DoubleMint Gum
• A Gold Chocolate Coin
• Andes Chocolate Mints
• A Gold Mini Reeses (for the ladies in ring form modeled in this picture) 
• A green accessory
• For the boys it is a green fake mustache
• For the ladies a green shamrock necklace

Different Colors!

These were easy and fun to make. Most of this was just separating different goodies into the green glasses. The rings were handmade and SUPER easy! I made a bunch of these so I could use them with my students as well. In the photo on the left I am showing off three different ones I made.

• The green are for St. Patrick's Day
• The yellow are as close as I found to gold (also St. Patrick's Day).
• The blue are because my school colors are blue and gold.

I don't think these are quite as cute as the rings I made with Hershey's kisses (seen on the right) but I like the taste of Reeses better anyways, and you can use the same method with either candy.

You have THREE different ways of making these rings:

1. With TWO pipe cleaners
   
• Cross the pipe cleaners on a flat service 
• Put the candy in the middle 
• Pull the pipe cleaners up and over the candy and cross the pipe cleaners again  
• Wrap the pipe cleaners around your finger and wrap the excess below the candy 
2. With ONE pipe cleaner cut in half


• Put the candy in the middle Cross the pipe cleaners on a flat service. Make one the cross asymmetrical so that two of the sides are shorter than the other two.  
• Pull the pipe cleaners up and over the candy and cross the pipe cleaners again. Make the shorter sides combine with the longer sides.   
• Wrap the pipe cleaners around your finger and wrap the excess around the other pipe cleaner 
3. With ONE pipe cleaner
• Put the candy in the middle of the pipe cleaner.
• Twist the sides together.
• Rotate the pipe-cleaner and flip to the other side.
• Twist the sides together
• Wrap the pipe cleaner around a finger/magic marker
• Secure the ends 

You don't work well with my descriptions? Don't worry, I am not offended. Check out the video below (only for the one pipe cleaner)!

So those rings, and my dollar store decor get my students festive.

How do you get in the Saint Patrick's Day spirit at your school? 

My Cat is getting into the St Patrick's Day Spirit

Pizza Project (Paragraph Writing)

I am all about playing with words and enjoying a pun, so when I began my unit on Julius Caesar, I immediately wanted to implement this pizza project using Little Caesar boxes.

What is the Pizza Project? I've seem them done a few different ways. With my high school students, I use them as a way to practice finding concrete details (or specific examples) from texts.

Essentially, students were each given a Little Caesar's pizza box. I think technically these cost $.45 cents each (plus tax), but if you politely explain that this is for a school project, then you may get your boxes for free.

"Project Pizza," as a call it, is composed of three distinct parts:The Pizza Box, the Pizza Slices and the Pizza Presentation.

The Pizza Box is the part with the simplest directions. Students decorate the pizza box ti reflect the themes and characters they choose to discuss on their pizza slices. 

Since, these boxes are from Little Caesar's and we were reading Julius Caesar, most students chose to keep at least some of the box visible.

Clearly, if your topic was unrelated to the name of your pizza chain you would have them cover all of it, but you can get creative. Pizza Hut could be used for The Painted House, The House on Mango Street. Da' Boys for The Body, or any other book about a group of boys.

The next part is more complicated. The Pizza Slices of course can vary based on your preferences and the level of your students.In this case, Each group received eight slices. They had to create individual slices of pizza. Each slice has a crust (the topic) and toppings (quotes, pictures, and other general facts).

As for topics. I have students choose from themes, characters, motifs, conflicts, the setting, and anything else that interests them. In the case of Julius Caesar this could be anachronisms, fashion, battles mentioned, historical inaccuracies, or anything else in the story that intrigues them.

I don't grade my students on artistic skill, but I do let them know that they will be graded on effort and appearance.

Finally, my students had a Pizza Presentation. For this students chose three of their slices of pizza and shared the information with the rest of the class. The topics were pre-approved to avoid listening to the same concept over and over again.

This acted as a great review and a way for my students to practice presentations.

You can make this more specific by having students replicate paragraphs more closely.

Hopefully you're inspired to have your students make their own pizzas!

If you want to see exactly what I did, I'll be sure to upload some worksheets later, but for now, here's a  Pizza Graphic Organizer: Only $.80

Vocabulary Mobiles

My students always really struggle with vocabulary despite my many different attempts at helping them learn.

This semester I've decided to give them some help. We'll be making vocabulary mobiles to hang from the class ceilings. These will not have the words on them, but may help them remember words which are on the tip of their tongue during the test.

This is the first time I've done this, so please let me know if you have any ideas I should add! 

Right now I plan on assigning each student a different word. We'll have one presentation per class where students look at the mobile and try to guess the word. Then we'll hang the mobile on the ceiling where it will remind until the test.

So far these are my directions:

You will need:

• A wire coat hanger
• Old Magazines / Advertisements / etc.
• Construction paper / Colored Paper
• String / Yarn
• Glue
• Scissors

If you need help finding any of those items please let your teacher know as she can loan them to you for the project.

Using the previous mentioned products you will create a mobile for one vocabulary word from the Walrus and the Carpenter.

You MAY NOT have words or letters on your mobile.

Otherwise, you can use anything you like. Here are some ideas:

• Use pictures which remind you of how the word sounds
• Use pictures that remind you of the word’s meaning
•  Use pictures of the word’s antonyms and draw an X through them
• Use pictures of someone you think acts like the word
• Use small light items: key chains, origami, pens, pencils, etc. Remember it has to hang from the ceiling, so nothing heavy
• BE CREATIVE!

Example: What does the mobile here describe? It has: a wallet, a pink square, ocean waves, and a picture of a lot of animals.

A walrus! It is a pink animal that lives in the ocean. The word walrus sounds a  little like wallet and rust.

Can you think of any other ideas I can give them besides the ones listed above? If so please leave a comment or tweet me! Thanks so much! I'll be sure to take pictures and let you know how this goes!