Calming the Chaos

Welcome to the Calming the Chaos Blog Hop hosted by 2peasandadog, an awesome middle school Canadian blogger (here in Ontario, even). A group of bloggers have come together to share our top tips for making the last month (or two) of school run smoothly. Visit each of our blogs to learn something new and pick up a freebie or two!

Enjoy hopping through the blogs listed below, and be sure to scroll down to read about my freebie and some tips.

Upper Elementary + High School Grades

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While teaching Core French, I've tried a few different options to keep students focused as we near the end of the year. One of my favorites is to have students create a review game. There's not much point in continuing to cover new material when students know that assessment of that new content isn't likely to make it on the report card, AND many of them would benefit from revisiting concepts already taught earlier in the year.... help avoid the "summer slide" before the summer even arrives!

Here's a rubric that I've used to assess students' products at the end of this project. It's a Word document so that you can adapt it to meet your students' needs. (And also because I used this before Growing Success was released in Ontario, so you may need to adjust the qualifiers a little bit.)

Another option that has worked out well for French, depending on what else you've taught and used as projects through the year, is a media-based unit.  I've used some current year articles from the series of Scholastic FSL magazines to create such a mini-unit, along with resources from a variety of other sounrces.  Didn't know Scholastic had such a resource?  Check out Allons-Y, Bonjour, ça va?, and Chez Nous through these links. Each has some articles available online for free as a sample, and here's a little money saving tip if you don't have much classroom budget left...

Thanks to The 3AM Teacher and Alicia Mac for their graphics!

Of course, rewards... something to look forward to... can certainly have a place in the classroom as well. This is why I'm bringing back the classroom auction in my own classroom.  I thought about sharing the classroom currency that I'm using here with you, but it's not really all that special. So, why reinvent the wheel?  Here's a free printable that you can use from another seller on TPT. 

Of course, if you're not into "paying" for positive reinforcement, I totally get that!  How about just letting Mother Nature provide your incentive? Friday afternoon, I took my class outside and we sat in a circle to read aloud an article for which they'll need to answer some questions. We actually intended to head to the outdoor classroom, which is a circular set up of large, flat rocks that serve as seating, with a few small trees set around them. Unfortunately, I wasn't the only teacher to have had that brilliant idea (ha!) so we made do and just enjoyed sitting on the lawn instead!

One last thing - if you're just not into being outside in the scorching sun during a particularly stubborn heat wave (and yes, we DO get those up here in Canada!) why not consider a movie study at this point in the year?

If you follow me regularly, you've already heard about my Ant Bully unit, so I won't plug it to death here, but my grade 7s really did enjoy the opportunity to sit back and relax... yes, while reading subtitles... while watching this and other animated feature films!  I've got a set of true-false questions as a freebie if you just want SOMETHING to keep them focused, and a full package of differentiated activities (at a reduced price right now!) if you're looking for a little more rigour, or to stretch the film viewing from 2-3 periods to a full week or two.

Keep an eye out for something new & exciting to be posted in my store as well! At TeachersPayTeachers, click on the red star with Follow Me beside it to get an email notification about new products the day after they are posted.