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End-of-Year Reflection: Top Five Classroom Success Stories of 2019

Teaching Reflections for 2019

One of the most important things we can do as teachers is reflect, and so that’s why I love this annual blog post.  It’s been my new year tradition for the past several years (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018), and choosing only five memorable teaching moments is always so hard, but here goes: My top five classroom success stories of 2019!

This year in review…

Teaching Gatsby for the first time in forever and writing the unit plan for it.  A little bit Disney Frozen on the brain here, but it works.   In the past, I had taught The Great Gatsby mainly in parts or just as a movie-viewing experience.  So this time around when I was able to teach the novel as a whole to my group of junior honors, I was very excited to unpack everything it has to offer.  Most students love the idea of the 1920s and the mystery of Gatsby, so I just played off of that enthusiasm. I started the unit with problem-solving questions and station rotations that introduced the time period and the novel.  Once we began reading, I loved having students track the colors, do guided close reading exercises, and analyze the characters. We closed with a “My American Dream” project, and it was really incredible to see what students aspire to become.  I was very pleased with the way the unit turned out. Check out my complete unit, my movie-viewing guide, and my escape game here. 

Teaching The Great Gatsby

Island challenges for Lord of the Flies.  I cannot even begin to tell you how much fun teaching The Lord of the Flies was after I decided to create the challenges. I had wanted to do something like this for a while with Flies, but never got up my nerve.  Finally, I just dove in and did it. I am SO glad I did.  Read more about all the challenges on this post.  Get my entire unit plan here. 

Teaching The Lord of the Flies

Teaching The Lord of the Flies

Teaching The Lord of the Flies

Vacation Bible School. It seems like VBS makes my greatest hits list every year, and that is fine with me. I enjoy the themes, the decorating, projects, crafts, and energy created by a week of studying the Word with kids.  This year’s theme was The Incredible RACE. We traveled all around the world learning about different cultures and God’s love for us.  We decorated our hallways like an airport and our classrooms like the inside of an airplane and the country we traveled to each night.  What an awesome trip!

Teaching Vacation Bible School

Teaching Vacation Bible School

First Chapter Fridays.  As soon as I saw this idea from my friend Lauralee over at The Language Arts Classroom, I knew I had to work it in somehow.  Each Friday, I would start class with one chapter, or a piece of a chapter, from a book that I thought my students would be interested in. I related the books to holidays as well.  See all the books I shared over on my Instagram, and I also took it up a notch by including pictures of our weekly destinations because my classroom library theme is “Books are an Adventure.”  See the video of me explaining my weekly process here, my classroom library set up here, and get my classroom library materials free here. 

Building a Classroom Library

Christmas Nativity bible escape games with the younger students.  If you’ve been reading my blog for very long, you know how much I love escape games for the classroom.  I create them every chance I get, and my high school students love them. This year, I was working with the PreK-4th grade students on Wednesday nights at church, and we were planning to study Paul’s escape from prison.  I was in charge of the activity rotation, so of course, I thought – escape game! Since it was December, it only made perfect sense to do an escape game for the Christmas Nativity story. I ended up creating two games: one for the PreK-K level and one for the 1st-4th grade level. It was completely worth it.  I always enjoy it when my high school students are playing, but I can’t even tell you how much fun it was playing the break out games with my “littles.” None of them had ever played one before, but they figured it out quickly and ran with it.  Grab these two games here. 

Classroom Escape Games, Preschool, Nativity

I would love to hear about your greatest teaching moments and classroom success stories this year. Share below!

Love this content? Join a group!  There are already tons of ideas, freebies, and fabulous teachers in my new groups, and joining is simple.  Just click over to the following links, answer a few questions, and voila! Thanks again for following along my classroom stories and small-business journey, and I really do hope you to see you over in my new “backyards” where we can chat and share all things English and Yearbook.

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Filed Under: bible themes, Christmas, Christmas lessons, church event, Creative English Lessons for Teens, Escape Games, Great Gatsby, literature ideas, Middle and High School English Lessons, novel, novels, secondary ELA, secondary English Teachers, secondary lessons, teacher ideas, teachers pay teachers, teaching ideas, teaching strategies, teaching tips, Vacation Bible School Leave a Comment

Trunk or Treat Ideas for Church with Bible Themes

Trunk or Treat Ideas for Church with Bible Themes

Hosting or participating in trunk or treat for church during the month of October for Halloween is pretty much my favorite event all year! My husband and I enjoy coming up with new sets each year that kids enjoy and that convey a bible theme, scripture, and message. We do usually go a little over the top, but it is SO worth it when we see all the trunk-or-treaters come by our trunk! Here are quite a few years’ worth of trunk or treat ideas for church with bible themes that will surely be a blast!

Farmhouse Fixer Upper with Chip and Joanna Gaines

That’s right! All the way from Texas and Magnolia Farms we brought the message “home” to kids that God does have the guts to take on a fixer upper! Even when we are a mess, He can make us new creatures. That little house — my husband is actually quite the handy man, so he built it for me. The before and after picture is also real!

Trunk or Treat Ideas for Church with Bible Themes
trunk or treat for church with biblical themes

Tacky Tourists

Aren’t we all just passing through? We didn’t have a full trunk this year because we hosted the event and were “travelers” to make sure things were running smoothly. So, these tacky tourist costumes were the perfect idea. We are jet-setters, but our true bucket-list destination? Well, that one’s easy! I ♥ heaven.

How the West Was Is Won

Cowboys and Indians are a classic, but we wanted a positive twist. We wanted to bring the “rivals” together. These cowboys and Indians were working and traveling together in the Wild West to help people find their way to Heaven.  Do you know how to get to heaven?

Trunk or Treat Ideas for Church with a Bible Theme
  • Trunk or Treat Ideas for Church with a Bible Theme
  • Trunk or Treat Ideas for Church with a Bible Theme
  • Trunk or Treat Ideas for Church with a Bible Theme
  • Trunk or Treat Ideas for Church with a Bible Theme
  • Trunk or Treat Ideas for Church with a Bible Theme

On the Lord’s Team

For this trunk or treat for church with a biblical theme we rounded up all the sports equipment and uniforms we could find. Everyone who accepts Jesus is a winner and HE is the real MVP! We also added a fun golfing game for trick-or-treaters to play as they came by. Whose team are you on?

Trunk or Treat Ideas for Church with a Bible Theme
  • Trunk or Treat Ideas for Church with a Bible Theme
  • Trunk or Treat Ideas for Church with a Bible Theme
  • Trunk or Treat Ideas for Church with a Bible Theme
  • Trunk or Treat Ideas for Church with a Bible Theme
  • Trunk or Treat Ideas for Church with a Bible Theme
  • Trunk or Treat Ideas for Church with a Bible Theme
  • Trunk or Treat Ideas for Church with a Bible Theme

Get a ready-to-go decor pack here!

Trunk or Treat Decor Pack, Sports/We Are on God's Team Theme

Jesus Is Our Super Hero

The real hero is Jesus! Sin is our kryptonite, but in this trunk or treat bible-themed set up we can marvel at His wondrous works and power of Jesus to cast our sins away.

trunk or treat for church with biblical themes
  • trunk or treat for church with biblical themes
  • trunk or treat for church with biblical themes
  • trunk or treat for church with biblical themes
  • trunk or treat for church with biblical themes
  • trunk or treat for church with biblical themes

  Get a ready-to-go decor pack here.

Laying Up Treasures in Heaven/Pirates

Ahoy, Matey! Yes, Jack Sparrow did make an appearance for this trunk or treat for church — in fact, meet Jack and Jewels! This one was Derek’s favorite one so far; in fact, it was his idea! I even had pirate music playing in the background.

trunk or treat for church with biblical themes
  • trunk or treat for church with biblical themes
  • trunk or treat for church with biblical themes
  • trunk or treat for church with biblical themes
  • trunk or treat for church with biblical themes

Get a ready-to-print decor pack here!

Trunk or Treat Decor Pack, Pirates/Laying Up Treasures in Heaven Theme

Old-Time Religion

This trunk or treat for church with a biblical theme brought together my love of Halloween and my love of antiques. We dressed as a couple from the 1920s, and I played bluegrass music. We used vintage songbooks, suitcases, and other treasures to decorate the trunk.

trunk or treat for church with biblical themes
  • trunk or treat for church with biblical themes
  • trunk or treat for church with biblical themes

Jesus Is Deer to My Heart

For all the hunters and outdoors men in your life, this trunk or treat theme is perfect! They will be right in their element. We dressed in camouflage and brought Derek’s deer mounts, leaves, etc. “Lady Bug” girl was just a bonus!

trunk or treat for church with biblical themes

Get the decor pack for Jesus is Deer to My Heart here!

Wizard of Oz

There’s No Place Like Home – I don’t have a picture of this set up, but we dressed as Dorothy and the Scarecrow from Oz. I had a piece of yellow fabric that I wrote out the Roman’s Road scriptures on to signify the “yellow brick road to home.” And I used a science fair board painted blue with cotton glued on it at the end for the sky.

So many churches are doing these types of Hallow Him or Fall Festival outreaches now, and I really think it’s awesome to have the opportunity to reach people in this way.  That’s why it has always been so important to me and my husband that we use this event to create a trunk with a biblical theme that we can use to start a conversation about Christ.  That is our commandment: to go out and tell.  Let’s do that: Let’s tell the world this October – with a little piece of candy and some costumes – how much Jesus loves them!

Also, do you teach Sunday School or Kids’ Church? Take a look at my Halloween Bible Lessons for Prek-2nd and my original children’s book for Thanksgiving!

Candy Corn Gift Tag | Candy Corn Poem with Bible Verse

Thanksgiving Bible Lesson "Sally Learns to Be Grateful" Children's Story eBook

Love this content? Join a group!  There are already tons of ideas, freebies, and fabulous teachers in my new groups, and joining is simple.  Just click over to the following links, answer a few questions, and voila! Thanks again for following along my classroom stories and small-business journey, and I really do hope you to see you over in my new “backyards” where we can chat and share all things English and Yearbook.

Written by Julie Faulkner

Filed Under: bible themes, church event, costumes, halloween, hunting, pirates, super heroes, superman, trunk or treat, wizard of oz 4 Comments

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Interested in a research-based vocabulary review game? My students love playing the fly-swatter game, so when I ran across this study, I was pretty intrigued. digilib.iain-palangkaraya.ac.id/2105/1/Shella%20Aprilia%201501121028.pdf ... See MoreSee Less

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