The Very Last Assignment You'll Have To Grade This Year Week 2

Good Monday To You!

If you tuned in last week, you know all about our little class flower shop.  This is the perfect year-end project when testing is over and you're not sure what else to do.  Use this time to have some fun, teach your students a lot of real-world skills, and be truly amazed at how awesome your students are! Peruse last week's post here to get caught up.  Good to go?  Great!  Now this week, your students have learned about Goods and Services, almost completed their business plan or plans, and thought about what type of flowers they are going to sell(fresh, cut, or paper).  This week, your students are going to get deeper into the nuts and bolts of their business.

Week 2

PBL Standards:

• Key Knowledge, Understanding, and Success Skills
• Challenging Problem or Question
• Sustained Inquiry
• Authenticity
• Student Voice & Choice
• Reflection

Academic Objectives:

• Constructing questions
• Writing cohesively about a topic
• Collect information from multiple resources
• Reading charts and graphs
• Understanding plant needs and how to provide them in an artificial environment
• Speak audibly and express thoughts, feelings, and ideas clearly.
• Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners
• Participate in shared research and writing projects 
• Collaboration with peers and other adults
• Participate in elections

We now return to that lovely business plan your students began last week.  Your students need to decide what specifically they are going to sell, either theoretically or in real life.  The best thing you can do is start with general questions and move to specific.

Question 1: Fresh flowers or cut flowers?

The best way to answer this question is through research.  Have students research the popularity of fresh flowers vs. cut flowers.  Again, depending on skill level, you may want to provide your students with graphs to evaluate.  You can break your students into groups or do as a class.  I recommend research in groups and debrief as a class.  After research has been conducted for 1 or 2 days, the class will vote on which type of flowers to sell.

Question 2: Which species of flower?

Now your students must decide within their chosen category, which species of flowers to sell.  Will they sell roses? Tulips? Lillies? Marigolds?  I would let them start research on their own before you help with this one.  Have them break into groups again and start looking through books.  You can have them search pictures on the internet.  Once they've found a flower they like, you can tell them what it is and have them copy the name onto a piece of paper.  If students are keeping a journal, they can dedicate a page to "Flower Brainstorming."  Another great research tool is a live person.  See if you can get in touch with the local flower department at a hardware store or a local florist depending on their chosen category.  Have your students break into groups again.  As a group, have them come up with 3 or 4 questions they need answered to make their decision.  Each group will write the questions on a piece of paper.  For younger ones, you may again want to do this as a class with you writing the questions.  After research has been conducted for 1 or 2 days, the class will vote on which type of flowers to sell.

Back to the Business Plan

Revisit the Financial Plan piece of your business plan.  Students need to research costs of different flowers and how many they will need to sell in order to either make their money back or make a profit.  They also need to take into consideration the average price a person would pay for flowers.  Obviously one flower can't cost $20.  Here again students can ask for help from your professional visitor, do research themselves, or potentially ask mom and dad.  If you can find them, provide students with charts.

Once this is complete, you can also write in the Resource Requirements.  What are they going to need to get started?  They need product.  What else?

Here is where you can go back and answer the question of Key Issues.  Your students need to figure out how they can access the flowers they want to sell.  You have no money for them and stealing is wrong.  What are some other solutions?  Do your best not to lead students or give answers here.  This is part of the problem-solving process for them.  They might surprise you with what they think of.  Maybe they have ideas you wouldn't think of.  Maybe one of them has a relative who owns flowers.  Take time to fill in the Key Issues section of the business plan.  From there, decide as a class what next steps will be to obtain these flowers.  If you are selling them 1 month from now, would it be a good idea to get cut flowers?  Probably not because the flowers don't have all they need to survive that long.  Will you be trying to plant the flowers and grow them in time?  Probably need to have a flower that grows fast.  Are you buying potted flowers from the store?  Where do they need to be kept to survive?  All of these things need to be taken into consideration.

I imagine if done thoroughly, and mostly student-led, this process will take all of week 2.  If it does not, have students carry out their plan to obtain the flowers.  Draft a note as a class to send home to parents explaining what you are doing.  Have students come up with key points to share and key needs that should be addressed.  Think of it as a proposal.  

That's all for now.  Great job on Week 2.  Are you getting excited as this project gets more and more real??  I know I am!  Remember to share your own progress and findings in the comments section below.

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5 Great Ways to End Your School Year PLUS Teacher Bonuses

Well good evening!  or morning, or afternoon depending on when you read this.  The end of the year is nigh and I know you can probably feel the warmth of the sun on your face as you open those doors and walk through them for the last time this year.  Although we've had nothing but rain and sweatshirt weather the past few days.  Now, before you get all wrapped up in those last day happy hour plans, you want to keep up the fun and learning until those kiddos leave your care.  Now I can already hear you saying But I don't want to...  Testing may be over and it's super tempting to find a bunch of videos to watch.  Here are some great alternatives:

1. Bee Poem and Craftivity

This is our shameful plug.  It's very cute, fun, educational, and engaging.  That's four adjectives, holy cow!  Drop the mic, I'm done.  Kidding, but seriously, this is great.  And for you, fine and awesome reader, we want to offer it THIS WEEKEND ONLY, for a mere fraction of it's original value.

Here are some fun pics of what you get:

Click the image below to purchase:

Now, if you're thinking, girl you crazy, I don't have any money, we have something for you too.  You can get our craftivity absolutely FREE!  Just click HERE.

2. Balloon Popping Countdown

This idea is super cute and provides a lot of fun for your students.  It's #22 on the list.  Here's a fun twist, have students take turns standing under the balloon as you pop it to catch the surprise for the day.  If you're still in test mode, fill the balloons with quiz questions.  Students can answer for a prize or special reward.  Also, to add a little fun to a warm day, you can hang the countdown outside and fill a couple balloons with a small(and I mean very small) splash of water.  Have students bring a change of clothes just in case they're uncomfortable getting wet.

3. Random Acts of Kindness List

The link takes you to the printable.  It's a boy with a missing tooth holding a piece of paper in the middle of the top row.  OR, you can do as we teachers do and have kiddos make and decorate their own!  Remind students that being a "quality student" as we like to say, or a good citizen is not something that stops when school does.  You can even offer it up as a challenge and give a prize to the first 3 students who write about it and show you the following school year.  

4.  Minute-To-Win-It

Here are some fun Minute-To-Win-It challenges for your last day celebration.  Encourage critical thinking and teamwork up until the very last minute(haha, no pun intended).

5. Candy Ball

Fun and sweet activity.  If you want to add an educational component, include pieces of paper with challenges or questions that students have to complete to win the candy.  Young ones may do better playing in groups.  Also, you can opt to not use gloves and just have students unwrap.

BONUS!!!!!!!

We can't forget about you and your needs lovely teacher friend.  Here are some links just for you:

End of Year To-Do List

We all have them.  See if you missed any items with this handy post!

Affordable Student Gift

Let's face it, we don't always have a lot of pocket change, even though we wish we could give our students the world(well most of them *winky face*).  Here's a cute idea and a great way to get rid of some extra stuff you have around the classroom.  If you want something a little more unique, check out this framed word cloud idea.

3 Boxes to Pack at the End of the Year

Get an early start on packing up to save your sanity.

8 Mistakes Teachers Make at the End of the Year

These are some really productive ways to make your last days easier.

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The Very Last Assignment You'll Have to Grade This Year

Well howdy and welcome back to Monday,

I know you're probably still reeling from the Teacher Appreciation Week euphoria and wishing you could just sit and be appreciated for the rest of the year.  You may be finished with testing or getting ready to start.  If you have not begun, here are some helpful hints to get you through.  If you are finished with testing...WHOO HOO FOR YOU!  I'm sure it's a huge weight off your shoulders and now you can move on.  So here's what I'm thinking, why not do only one project the rest of the year?  Your students get hands-on learning, practice "real life" skills, and they're exposed to numerous academic concepts.  What is this magic project, you ask? It's a class store.  This is the perfect year-end project when testing is over and you're not sure what else to do.  Use this time to have some fun, teach your students a lot of real-world skills, and be truly amazed at how awesome your students are!



Now this is no ordinary class store, because we're going to squeeze every ounce of learning from it.  I gave you a short overview in my post The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Project-Based Learning.  Now of course PBL, as they call it over at the Buck Institute for Education, at first seemed to be very daunting.  I wrote an ultimate beginner's guide because that's what I needed.  I kept hearing this fun buzzword circling around the academic world and thought, I'm pretty sure that's an awesome idea.  Then again, I didn't know until I did my research.  Boy was I right!





Essentially it's taking a real-life situation and turning into a learning experience.  You're showing students that many concepts they learn in school can be applied to life once they become adults.  This is a great way to not only engage students, but to help them take responsibility for their learning.  They see that what they are learning actually matters.

As I mentioned in my ultimate beginner's post, if you're a teacher of younger students you may be thinking, ain't no way my kiddos are doing that.  So, how do we make this effective for little guys?  Now by little, I do mean probably old enough to do some writing so maybe late Kindergarten.  You can always discuss in groups or as a class and have them copy a few sentences.  I suggest 3-5 sentences based on the age group.  If you have older kiddos, the sky is the limit.  See what they can teach you.  If you would like to stop here, and figure out your own project to do, here's a nice little search engine for you!


For the next few weeks, I will be taking you step-by-step through this class project and you can follow right along with me.  Please understand that my goal here is hands-on life application and may not strictly adhere to the PBL specifics listed on the bie website.  That being said, I will incorporate as much of this well-tested program as possible.  Ready?

Week 1

PBL Standards: 

• Key Knowledge, Understanding, and Success Skills
• Challenging Problem or Question
• Sustained Inquiry

Academic Objectives:

• Reading charts and graphs
• Constructing questions
• Writing cohesively about a topic
• Collect information from multiple resources

If you have not discussed goods and services already, do so.  You want something easy, fun, and already put together for you, and includes a fun song that they will remember? Hop over to our store for an entire Goods and Services Bundle you can do one week.
1.  If you have already taught goods and services, review key terms with your students.  Tell your students they will be putting together a store.  They will become producers and they are going to sell goods or services.  For the purposes of this step-by-step, we will be getting more specific.  Your students will be running a flower shop.

Buy the Bundle.  Click the image!

The first objective your students must complete for a successful business is a business plan.  There are a number of ways you can do this as a business plan is very involved.  You can:

• Split students into no more than four groups, present by category, combine most popular elements into one large class business plan

• Work on a plan together as a class

Choose the option that fits your class best.  Give them "brainstorming time" to sit and think quietly each time you ask for feedback.  You can get business plan templates on Powerpoint.  Here is a brief synopsis of each category

Mission statement: Describe in one or two sentences what your company wants to do.  It's actually good to not do this step first because the mission statement also sets your students apart from their competition.  It defines and differentiates their business.  They need to fully understand their business before they can provide a mission statement.  Our mission statement is:

Inspire students and teachers with cross-curricular, standards-based resources that create a lifetime of learning, discovery, and innovation.

It tells you what we offer and what ideals we adhere to as a company.  Tell your students to think of a statement that both gives a broad overview of the main goal, and highlights the qualities that make the business unique and desirable.

The Team: Pretty self-explanatory.  You would likely just say Mr. or Mrs. so and so's class.  You can list leadership if you'd like.  It all depends on your students' interest.  It's been my experience with children that they all want to be the boss!

Market Summary: Ok this can get very complicated.  For your sake and the sake of your students, just have them think about, or even research the flower-buying industry.  

Have them answer the following:

• Who buys flowers?  Who sells flowers?
• What types of flowers can be bought/sold?
• They will discover that they can either sell cut flowers or potted flowers
• Where are flowers bought?  Where are flowers sold?
• You might want to provide them with some graphs that show the most popular sources for people buying flowers
• Have them make lists of places they know flowers can be bought
• When do people buy flowers?
• Why do people buy flowers?
• How do people get flowers?
• Are they delivered? Are they purchased at a store?

Opportunities:  This plays on the "why" of consumers buying flowers.  A successful business always solves a problem.  Have students think about the problem their flowers are solving for consumers.

Business Concept:  This is just the basis of your business and again how it is different: You will be selling flowers, but what kind?  How will you sell them?  How do you stand out?

Competition: Again, have students look at those graphs you provided.  Which stores are selling the most flowers?  Now have students think about how they are different and better than those big stores.  Make a list.

Goals:  Every good business has goals.  The template will tell you 5-year goals, I would just set goals for the end of the project.  Then list smaller weekly goals that lead to the final goals.

Financial Plan:  You will have to skip this step because students will first have to determine the specifics of what they are selling and what it will cost.  I recommend this for week 2.  

Resource Requirements:  This will also have to be discussed once the financial plan is established.  

Risks and Rewards: Every good business needs to understand what they can gain and what they can lose.  This is a great way to show your students that failure is not always bad.  You can read more about that in our article 3 Good Reasons to Celebrate Failure.  

Key issues: Since you don't have an actual budget, there is the matter of obtaining the flowers.  Send home a letter with your students requesting that parents take them to the nearest flower retailer to request donations for your classroom.  Once they've decided on fresh cut or potted, they can decide which retailer to visit.

If this step doesn't take all week you can move on to flower research.  If you have time, it's best to be as genuine as possible.  This means real flowers and if manageable, a real selling platform, ie: night for parents to come and purchase, or give students throughout the school tickets to represent money.  They can start spending their tickets once the store is open.  If you don't have the capability for this, you can always make it theoretical.  Students can do the same research that would be required with selling real plants and just make paper plants for the sake of the project.  They need to know if they are selling cut or potted.  What are the plant needs?  How should they be stored?  Which are most expensive to care for and least expensive?  You have a short timeline, so which grow the fastest?  It would be great to have a local nursery expert visit your class and they can ask him or her questions.

Grading

The best way for you to create multiple grades out of this assignment is to have students keep a log or journal.  Many articles on business successes tout journals as a helpful and even necessary tool.  Have students write what they learned and then provide a personal application.  You can even have them keep all their thoughts in a notebook specific to this project and take them up at the end!

That is all for now.  Ready to kick your classroom into high, real-life gear??  I'm so excited for you.  Don't forget to share your experiences by commenting below.  If you do something different, or your students come up with an amazing idea, please pretty please share.  I would LOVE to hear about it.

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All done and ready for the next step??  Read WEEK 2 and WEEK 3 right now!

     

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5 Days of Teacher Treats

In lieu of the traditional candy or stationary, we would like to offer you our appreciation in the form of a few things we KNOW teachers need.  Tune in for a new treat each day!

Day 1: 

We are joining some friends to bring y'all an opportunity to win a TPT gift card! We are giving away 4 $50 TPT cards! Just clink on the link below to enter.

http://theprimarypals.blogspot.com/…/teacher-appreciation-g…

We are also offering one day $2 Deals!

Your kiddos will love making their busy bee craft and reading their poem about their busy year.  

My kiddos decided to make some scenery to help them act out with their busy bees:)

We love to build poems in the pocket chart!

 This is a sample of a student's poem that we put in our poetry folders after we build the poem in the pocket chart. They will also have this to help them with their fill in the blank sheets.  I thought this was so cute!

 Just click on this picture below to see more or purchase for $2!

All the other $2 DEALS Click HERE

Day 2: 

Happy 2nd Day of Teacher Appreciation to you!  As you may know, teacherspayteachers is having a sale!  Our entire store is 20% off and you get an extra discount at the register.  Just use the code: CELEBRATE.  This sale is only for 2 days, so make sure and stock up early.  Thank you very much for all you do and enjoy!!

We hope y'all will check out our Daily Concept Builders while our store is on SALE! All of these products work together to build vocabulary and sight words from the Fry List. We start our day with this calendar. There is a teacher Guide that explains how we use all these resources. Make your literacy centers fun and easy with these products!

Click on the picture to see more.

These are a few samples of the writing by students are doing at their word of the day center. They write about their concept words and their sight words every day!

These are the cut and paste sheets that the students do where they put their words in order to make a sentence about their calendar words and sight words.

Here are a couple of samples of what my kiddos did. 

These are question cards about the Words of the Day. The kiddos love playing this game!

This Memory game with real photos helps the students, especially the ELL students to connect with the words.  Click on the picture below to see more.

 I have the students start with one theme. This one is Memorial Day.

 This one is plant parts and plant needs.

 These two are Cinco de Mayo and Mother's Day.

 These cards are frog and butterfly life cycle.

Just click on the picture below to see more.

 My kiddos love this sight word center! They like putting the butterfly cycle in order. One of my students wanted to do another one when he finished his bag:) I love when my kiddos have fun learning!

We also have ELA books that are also songs.

This is a picture of one of my students highlighting their words. These books are great for their book baskets!

Check out the Cinco de Mayo Book for free! It is also in color:)

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week:)

Day 3:

And on the third day, the goodies kept coming!  Click the picture below for a link to some places you can get FREE stuff in your community.  Also, in celebration of the last day of the sale, our entire May Bundle is on sale for over 50% off!  That's a $27 value at only $12!!  Total steal, and lots of great content as you can read above.  So TREAT YO'SELF(anybody get the reference?)  You deserve it.

Click our cover image below to get our awesome May Daily Concept Builders™Bundle!

Day 4:

COFFEE BREAK!!!  That's right, we're giving you a chance to enjoy coffee on us.  Just fill out the Rafflecopter below, and while you're at it, browse our store for an EXTRA sale day, or head over to Educents, where our entire store is now 20% off as well!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Day 5:

One more day to sign up for coffee! and also it's FREEBIE FRIDAY!!!  Imagine marquee lights and crowds cheering.  Today we're hooking you up with a short list of FREEBIES from our store, a bonus freebie right here, and ANOTHER freebie just for being part of our newsletter!!!  Ding ding ding.  Act fast, because this freebie is only available when you sign up through the weekend.  It's a sampler of our

Remember this cute little guy from the pictures above??  Your students will love it!  Sign up below and it's yours:

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Don't forget to tune in Monday for the start of our new series.  If you're looking for reading material, check out our most recent series: How to Be an Educational Superhero.

Have an amazing weekend and to you mom's, happy early Mother's Day!