Rock and Roll Themed Classroom Transformation

I love a good classroom transformation, yall know that! When GYTO announced their first ever Rock Your School Day last year, I just KNEW I had to do a Rock & Roll themed transformation. Rock Your School is a day focused on creating an out of the box experience for the students in your class! You can do any theme, lesson, or activity you like, but I went with a Rock and Roll Transformation. For details about Rock Your School Day - click HERE. Ok- on to the ROCKIN' TRANSFORMATION!

First off - I always love to SET THE STAGE but giving my students some sort of ticket the day before the transformation. This gives them a clue that the next day will be something different and special and gets them SUPER excited about coming to school the next day! You can grab the ticket I made for free HERE.

Let's talk DECOR....

This transformation was very simple for decor, which I LOVE. It didn't take terribly long to set up and supplies were easy to find and grab.  For my tables, I purchased black and red tablecloths from Amazon, along with piano runners. I then sprinkled guitar picks down the tables. For my walls - I bought extra black tablecloths to hang on my back wall. I also hung a banner I found on Amazon on my back wall. I created a "stage" area at the front of my room with gold streamers and boxes I turned into speakers. I grabbed some of my moms old records and using fishing line I hung them from the ceiling. I also gave my students a special "back stage" pass that they wore all day. The pass can be downloaded for free from my TPT store HERE, and the lanyards I bought can be found HERE. I let my students take their pass home, but kept the lanyards and I have used them for many different transformations since then! They were worth the money for sure!

During the school day, I had the lights turned off, but so that you can see things better in pictures, I turned the lights on. When the lights where off, I had two disco balls going to really set the mood! I keep these up in my room ALL year and I used them for many different reasons! They are a great addition to any classroom!

Let's talk Content...

For content, we did a mix of reading, math, and STEM challenges, all of which were rock and roll themed. I will do my best to break down each activity so that you can get an idea as to what we did, but remember to do what works for your classroom! When I have students in my classroom, I don't take many pictures, so I don't have as many photos of these activities. Sorry! To start the day, students created an album cover for their group for the day. This gave me a few minutes to get attendance taken, etc. before we got into the content. 

Math: For Math, we did an around the school scavenger hunt. If you have been reading my blog posts for a while, you know I LOVE these. With clear expectations and directions, they are a FUN way to allow for math practice. I choose to make these math questions more difficult since there are only eight. For these around the school scavenger hunts I prefer to make the questions multi-step and I like them to include more problem solving. For this scavenger hunt, students receive a joke, and then they work through eight math problems, along with clues, to complete the riddle. It is always a blast! I have posted a 5th grade version for sale HERE, but you can also use the editable slides to create your own math problems if 5th grade ones won't work for your students.

Reading - For reading, one of my awesome coworkers created a digital
breakout using songs. Unfortunately I don't have this available to share with you guys, but hopefully it will give you an idea of something you could create yourself! Digital breakouts are easy to create using passages and a Google form! We chose to use song lyrics instead of passages on Rock Your School day and it was a huge success! 

Context Clues  - Another reading activity we do is practicing determining the
meaning of unknown words using context clues. My plan is to pair this activity with a fun rock and roll themed game! Any ideas? Ha! I'll report back when I decide what I plan on playing with them! Currently - I am thinking about doing a guitar pick "toss" game! Students will toss a guitar pick into a "crowd" aka a solo cup or something similar. Each solo cup will be worth different points. The purpose of this game is to mimmick what famous musicians do at the end of a concert! They often toss their guitar pick into the crowd for a lucky fan!

STEM Challenge - Build a STRONG STAGE!I can't even lie to you guys. This was my favorite activity we did last year. Students work together to build the STRONGEST stage. I was SHOCKED at how strong some of my students built their stages last year using only a few simply materials! You can purchase this activity HERE.

Map Skills - My goal this year is to tie in map skills to this transformation because it is what we are working on in social studies! My plan is to blow up a GIANT map of the United States and create a tour schedule that my students will manipulate in order to practice their map skills.

Overall - this was such a fun and simple first transformation and I can't wait to do it again this year. I'll report back with changes I make and things I add after September 19th! Let me know if you have any questions!