Teaching Tuesday: Elf on the Shelf Week

Tuesday, November 20, 2018
 As a specialist, I do a lot of 'big theme days' for the whole school, but I have to be sensitive (or try) to the 'rest' of the schedule.  In August, I had all these grand plans for an Elf on the Shelf week complete with a Santa's Workshop.  Enter, district scheduling and it turns out there are about 543,122 test going on this week.  I don't know why.  So, I adapted.  My teammate and I used some of our budget last year to purchase this book for the different grades.  I made a powerpoint with an award winning poem (insert sarcasm) about there being an elf at our school that spends December catching kids being kind.  I then bought some green bowls at Walmart that I added vinyl to and I'm going to place all over the building.
The PTA graciously donated a ton of little candy canes to the project, and I made a 'caught being kind' note and printed off enough for every student.  I'm giving each teacher a baggie with the notes and candy canes so that the elf can 'catch their kids' being kind throughout the week and leave notes on their desk to find in the morning.  The PTA is going to come up and pull pranks throughout the school each day, and on Friday all the teachers are going to dress up like elves.
I put some fun things on our school drive like 'finding your elf name' that I found online for free by just googling.
In a week filled with testing, this should be fun without causing too much interruption.

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