Why am I doing this again?

Back in August, I looked at my teacher badge and realized that my license is expiring soon-ish and that I should take more professional development.

So I looked at the schedule of graduate classes offered at UNLV in conjunction with RPDP and picked one that looked relatively interesting, but more importantly fit my schedule.

I convinced my work wife to take it with me (thanks Mrs. H!) so I'd have a buddy to carpool with.

I registered for the class, paid for it at UNLV ($45 a credit hour, which isn't awful), and went on with conquering the beast known as September.

Before I knew it, October was here and that meant it was time for the class. 

Once I realized that the class fell during a particularly hectic week, four letter words ensued.  One day of prep was taken up by school walk throughs (which were beneficial, but more on that later!), I had RTI, grade level meetings, my 1:1 with admin for beginning of the year goal setting, and observations (again, more on those later).

The class was Thursday night from 4:15 until 8 pm.  Not so bad, right?

Oh, it was also Friday night at the same time.  Oh, and again from 8-4 on Saturday.

Did I mention that it's on the other side of the valley and a 45 minute drive?

Why do I do this to myself?

Oh yeah, because I like to learn.

I went into the class with a positive attitude and I'm pleased to say I haven't been disappointed.  Yeah, the drive is frustrating, but I'm a tad spoiled that I have a ten minute commute to work.  I guess I can drive a little longer on these few occasions.  

The classes have been extremely helpful (at least the first two.  The final one starts in a matter of hours.)  We've zoomed in on nonfiction and how to best support the Common Core anchor standards.  The content has been useful, the strategies are immediately applicable to my classroom, and having Mrs. H there means we can bounce instructional  ideas off of one another.  

Most of the time, I feel like this during professional development:

(Unless it's the DEN. Love the DEN)

I was pleasantly surprised to feel more like this:

I'm glad we're taking this course, even if it means I've got a limited amount of fun this weekend.

My pile of grading is overwhelming.  I'm looking at five different assignments to grade, two powerpoints to finish, and a good dozen other tasks to knock out before a friend's goodbye party on Sunday evening.

Naturally, the night before the final day of training, my overactive brain decided that sleep truly wasn't necessary.  

It's going to be a long day...but at least I'm learning!

Curriculum Must Haves! {Week 2}

I love reading Diane's blog posts on {Fifth in the Middle} and {Fancy Free in Fourth}.

This week's blog challenge is about curriculum must-haves. 

Our district, perhaps like most, is in a state of turmoil.  We've adopted the Common Core State Standards without curriculum to match, expect teachers to make due with out dated text books (seriously, the books are older than my students), and expect teachers to do more with less...including less money.  Yup, we took a pay cut and an insurance hike, so double whammy to the bank account!  To make matters worse, new to state teachers are given a several thousand dollar hiring bonus and to make up for the teacher shortage, retired teachers are invited back.  I have no issue with (qualified) retired teachers returning to the district, but I do have a problem that they receive both a salary and their retirement accounts.  Yup, they're allowed to double dip into funds, yet current teachers all took a pay cut.  

We also adopted the standards (which I have no problem with), but then rebranded them the Nevada Academic Content Standards (NVACS).  Why?  To deal with the critics who are outspoken against the Common Core.

From what I've read of the Common Core (which is not the whole thing, just the elementary portion), I don't really see a problem.  Are the standards perfect? No, of course not.  But the depth of what is expected of our students is much deeper then previous standards,  Seeing how Nevada is consistently at the bottom in terms of educational testing for a wide variety of reasons, I think challenging our students is a good thing.  When you're close to the bottom, you can only go up!

Long story short, we have no provided curriculum and have to rely on collaboration to create our lesson plans.  There are lots of inconsistencies across the district, but at least everyone in my grade level (and school) are pretty much on the same page.

So let's dive into this week's blog challenge and look at some curriculum must haves:

I can't say enough good things about this book.  We start each math lesson with a warm up that focuses on building number sense. 

We've tweaked it a little to roughly follow this format:

Mental Math Monday: The focus is on decomposing and composing numbers for computation.

Ten Minute Tuesday: The focus is on logic puzzles and brain teasers.

Word Problem Wednesday: The focus is on multi-step word problems and making sense of the problems.

Thinking Thursday: More logic puzzles and "tricky" problems.

Fast Facts Friday: Timed tests to focus on multiplication and division facts mastery.

Must haves:
Teachers pay Teachers products!

My novel guides are a life saver! I'm trying to keep track of several different novels at once with my small groups, so it's nice to have all my notes and homework questions in a nice, organized fashion.  

I've also founds tons of free stations that are great for independent and partner practice during RTI time!

As an added bonus, most stores are having their back to school sale right now! I know everything in my store is currently 20% off!  Go get inspired.

 

This book was truly a life saver.  I struggled with knowing how to teach phonics, phonemic awareness, and fluency.  I felt pretty good about my comprehension strategies but struggled with foundation skills.  This had great strategies and graphic organizers.  My copy is well loved:

Finally, one of my go to websites: FCRR (Florida Center for Reading Research)

This site has graphic organizers, centers, and games broken into grade level bands (K-1, 2-3, and 4-5).  They've recently added the Common Core State Standards to the center activities so it makes it even easier to find what your students need.

What would you add? Join the conversation!

A Year in Reading Anchor Charts

I was *really* bad at uploading pictures of anchor charts this year (sorry guys).

As a result, y'all get the mega post with all of them! I took pictures so I'd remember for next year.  We make the charts with the students, so we don't reuse them over and over again.  I'll also upload the images to the "anchor charts" page with the blog.

Most of my anchor charts use multiple colors.  The black part is the part I read during a choral review on the carpet, the colorful words (key words) are what students read.  It's too overwhelming for them to read the whole poster together, but it's too boring if I read all of it.  It's our compromise!

Also, for the most part, my anchor charts are color coded.  This strategy helped my ELL students.  

My reading ones are blue.

Metacognition and Annotating for Close Reads

RI 5.2

RI 5.3

This standard focuses on relationships between people, events, and ideas.  We modeled with Dr. King, Rosa Parks, civil rights, and the bus boycotts.  They had a lot of fun with this standard!

RI 5.5

The large poster in the middle is a copy of the graphic organizer that was in their notebooks.

RI 5.6

RI 5.8

This standard focuses on evidence, so I like the acronym.

Writing

Narrative Writing

Some of these ideas are borrowed from Being a Writer, which is one of the resources at our school site.

Expository Writing

 
Word Parts

This technically fall sunder reading, but I chose to make all my RF (Reading Foundation) standards yellow.

I made this with my RTI group.  We also used magnetic word parts to compose and decompose words.

Oreo Reader

One of our strategies was teaching kiddos to be an "oreo" reader.  Basically we spent a lot of time modeling what it means to savor the text and really examine all the parts of a tasty book.

Inferences

Enjoy! 

Digging into History

One of my favorite eras in history is the American Revolution...which so nicely ties itself with some of our informational text standards (RI 5.6 and RI 5.8).  These standards examine multiple perspectives, author bias, reasons, and evidence--perfect for looking at this era! 

Over a week and a half, students analyzed many different accounts, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, Paul Revere's account (available here), and multiple accounts of the Boston Massacre.

I gave each table team a different combination of the primary source documents from Colonial Williamsburg (here) to closely read and annotate.  

From there, students did a gallery walk to see how other groups analyzed the documents.

What is great to see is the different ways students dive into the text.  Some make meaning by drawing pictures to narrate what is occurring in the text.  Some highlight reasons and evidence.  My job is to teach them multiple strategies, then let them take ownership over their own learning. 

How do your students dive into history?

Teaser Tuesday

Sometimes my insomnia is beyond frustrating, but sometimes it yields exciting new classroom ideas.  I'm thankful it's the middle of winter break and I don't really have anywhere to be until around noon tomorrow because my brain simply will not shut off.

I have a million ideas bouncing around in my head for the new year.

I have my next bulletin board picked out.  They're going to write constructed responses about the themes in their latest novel.  We're going to type these responses, thus giving extra computer practice for those who need it.  

I will then take the two novels that we've read as a class (Esperanza Rising and The Lightning Thief) to model comparing and contrasting how the authors arrive at similar themes (family, loyalty, bravery) using the characters. (CCSS/NVACS RL 5.9.  Yes, we've renamed the Common Core Standards the Nevada Academic Content Standards for well, in my humble opinion, ridiculous reasons.)  

I'm excited to start using music for transitions in my classroom, especially at the end of the day.

I'm excited to start teaching more mapping skills, geography, earth science, and most importantly, the return of the map:

Oh yes, we'll build it up again from scratch.  There was a disagreement within my grade level about how to approach maps.  I understand the idea of starting with the 13 colonies, but I also stand by my approach of teaching regions.

We're going to start with what they know: Nevada.  From there, we'll do the surrounding southwestern states.  We'll talk about things these states all have in common and I'll introduce the concept of a region.  From there, we'll explore the other states in a quasi-reverse Westward Expansion kind of way.  We can also connect the map with the settings from Esperanza Rising and The Lightning Thief, which will bring in an exciting literary aspect.

But perhaps the idea I'm most excited about shall be called Teaser Tuesday.

I'll take fifteen minutes or so after lunch to read aloud the first chapter or two of a book.  Read alouds are a pretty common thing in my fifth grade classroom, but here's the new twist: It'll be a mystery.  I'll have the book cover and title hidden.  I'll read just enough to get them interested and of course, stop at a good part.  From there, I'll have them do a written reflection on whether or not they'll want to continue that novel independently.

I've already brainstormed using the following novels:

Tuck Everlasting
The Giver
Number the Stars
Hatchet
Al Capone Shines My Shoes
The Bad Beginning
Steal Away Home
The Red Pyramid

Any other ideas fellow teachers? Must read novels that are super interesting to ten year olds within the first few pages or chapters?

But...that was intentional...

It's okay to disagree with a fellow teacher.  It's okay to not want to deliver a lesson the same way as another teacher. It's okay to put your own spin on things.  Some things should be the same (the assessments, the vocabulary, the definitions), but we aren't going to teach the same way.  That's okay. I have a difficult time following instructions or lesson plans verbatim, even when I'm the one who wrote them.  Don't get me wrong, I am always meticulously prepared for my day.  I just also take advantage of teachable moments.

However, I do get a little frustrated when it seems almost every instructional decision I make is questioned.  I've got a lot of background working with special ed kiddos and with the pacing of units.  Things are sequenced intentionally to help students make connections between background knowledge and new content.  The use of manipulatives (hands-on materials) during the first few days of a unit is quite necessary.  Students, even my fifth graders, need the concrete examples to investigate a concept.  They need experience in the concrete before moving to representational and abstract understandings of content.

We are starting division on Monday.  The standards quite explicitly state do not teach the standard long division algorithm. This is not to be introduced until sixth grade because students don't have the number sense nor mathematical understanding to reason through what is occurring.  

Here it is, straight from our professional development department:

I'm not really sure how much more clear this could be, but there were still debates about what it means.  

The first few days in our math unit has a lot of investigation by the students.  I'm giving them a bunch of paper clips to sort into smaller groups.  Some problems will divide evenly, some won't.  

I want them to tackle it. I want them to struggle.  Some kids will count those 48 paper clips into the groups one at a time, driving their partners bonkers in the process.  Some will make the connection to multiples and give away larger groups.  Some will use their multiplication facts to estimate the quotient.  Some will see division as repeated subtraction while others will see it as repeated addition up to the dividend.  

That's okay.

I want my students to understand what they're doing.  I want them to make connections.  I want them to discover how division is related to the other operations and take ownership over their strategies.

My math unit is scaffolded intentionally.  The first day is exploration.  The next introduces vocabulary terms, goes over making sense of the problems (hello math practices), and has student generated strategies.  Direct instruction doesn't begin until day 3 after students have had ample time to investigate sorting and making groups with paper clips and cubes.  From there, we'll move to hundreds grids and talk about regrouping.  We'll make the connection from the physical orange flats, rods, and cubes to the paper versions and drawings, thus moving from concrete to representational. From there, we'll move into number based strategies that build upon other operations, powers of ten, place value, and multiples.  Again, scaffolded from representational drawings and grids to strictly numbers (abstract).  There's a plan.  It took hours to design, but I'm really excited about it. The plan, which spans thirteen instructional days, scaffolds so students will feel successful and anticipates common misconceptions.

However, another teacher entirely disregarded the plan...and told me about it, gleefully.  She had them try one problem with manipulatives and then gave them the algorithm.  I'm so disappointed and feel sad for her students.  I'm sad they lost the opportunity to make their own discoveries. I'm sad they lost the chance to feel ownership over the concept. I'm sad they lost the opportunity to have a meaningful struggle with the tasks.

Her justification? They'll learn it next year and she's doing the sixth grade teachers a favor.  Besides, the standard algorithm is just faster.

I'm aware it's faster.  Faster yet? Whipping out my phone and using its calculator function.  But what's the point in that?  What do they learn when they're just handed the short cut?

I'm standing my ground on this one. My goal is not to teach math.  Yes, you read that correctly.  My goal is not to teach math.

My goal is to have my students understand math.  I want them to know what they're doing, why they're doing it, what happens to their numbers, and why their problem works out mathematically.

I'm making critical thinkers and problem solvers, not robots.  I'm aware it takes more time, but this mindset also encourages stronger students and that's my ultimate end goal.

Bulletin Board Ideas for next year

I get to be creative again with my bulletin boards!

In high school, I was class vice president. (Vice for Vice, see how well that campaign worked out?)  At Arizona State, I was a RA/CA (community assistant) with Residential Life.  This month marks year six of teaching.

So I've spent a lot of time with bulletin boards over the past decade(s).  This is a good thing...because I love them.  I love making them cute and showing off student work.

I'm at a new school, which means I can recycle old bulletin board ideas for a new audience!  This minimizes my prep work and well, who doesn't love that?

(I've also included the Common Core State Standards that I'll be teaching/assessing with each bulletin board.  You can read more about the standards here)

September

I was thinking some sort of Harry Potter themed "word wizards" display with types of syllables.  I don't know how much phonics instruction has been given in the past, but I like to start phonics instruction with going over the six types of syllables.  By knowing how to break apart words, students will get to practice reading those larger multisyllabic words.  They'll also get practice looking for affixes and roots, which aids in their comprehension.  I'm thinking some sort of foldable where they break apart their own names and justify the syllable types underneath.  I'll add a written component about how this helps them as readers, so they have to justify their thinking.  I'll also have them find words from their own novels to break apart as well, thus giving them some ownership.

CCSS RF 5.3a, L54b

October

By this point, we should be editing and revising our written pieces with Being a Writer.  I will do a mini-lesson on dead (zombie) words.  For those not in the know, these awful words like to pop up in fifth grade writing samples.  These words belong in primary writing samples, but have no business in upper elementary!  Zombie words include transitions such as first, next, last.  Zombie words are dead words that just keep reappearing.  I'm sick of said.  I'm sick of reading "good" and "bad".  We need more alive words!

So I'll reuse this idea (mainly the drawings...those took a while!):

To make this bulletin board more rigorous, I'll display their final drafts with copies of their rough drafts underneath.  That way, viewers can see that writing (like learning) is a process.  They'll be able to see authentic student work that has been revised and edited with the purpose of eliminating dead (zombie) words.

CCSS W52d, W53c, W54, W510, L52e, L56

November

By this point, my students have hopefully finished several novels, making my theme work bulletin board an appropriate choice.  Given that November is full of three day weeks, this would be an easy writing/reading project that students could finish at home.

I'd have them compare two novels within the same genre, focusing on how the author reveals the theme through characters' actions.  This would be guided at first, but then students would write independently.  Since I don't think I'll be doing full novel read alouds, I'd probably model this with poetry and have them practice with novels.  I'm hoping to have students that have read the same books so they can bounce ideas off of one another.  I'm also fully aware they might not be ready for this yet and my November bulletin board will become March's instead.

RL 5.9, RL 5.2

December

I haven't made my long range plans yet, but I can safely assume that by December, we've covered figurative language.  Most likely several times.

Which means a bulletin board all about idioms!

Since I assume many of my students will be English Language Learners, explicitly teaching figurative language is crucial.  I can even have them find examples of figurative language in their text, thus allowing for an opportunity to not only practice quoting accurately but also justify their thinking with a written response.  (Or a typed response, we'll incorporate technology as well!)

RL 5.1, L5.5a, L5.5b

January

"What's Your Problem?"

Yes, time for a math bulletin board.  I will give them a solution and they have to come up with appropriate, reasonable questions that would yield my answer(s).  This ties in with the eight mathematical practices and would have students use a variety of models and strategies to defend their questions.  This would be easily differentiated and I could have those fast finishers come up with a second problem.  This could easily be a spiral review of concepts where I could strategically differentiate based on which domain students need the extra practice.

CCSS: most of the math ones :)

SMP: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
(Rigorous math activities should use most, if not all, of the 8 math practices...just an FYI!)

February

I'm torn.  I have two ideas for February, both holiday-related...ish.

The first: book crushes

Students would use a Venn Diagram to compare and contrast two characters (their book crushes).  They would write a written response about both characters, using evidence from the text(s). 

RL 5.3, RL 5.1, W59a

The second idea: persuasive letters to George

(graphic organizer (by Ginger Snaps) and mentor text)

By now, I hope we've covered both persuasive writing and the American revolution.  I'd have students examine a historical view point and write a letter to either King George or General George Washington.  Students can choose to be loyalists or patriots and choose which leader they're writing to. I'd push the higher kids to pick a less popular perspective or to write from a neutral perspective.  This would incorporate informational texts, quoting accurately, persuasive writing, perspective of the narrator, and a bit of research.

CCSS RI 5.1, RI 5.3, RI 5.4, RI 5.6, RI 5.7, RI 5.8, RI 5.9, W51  (plus history & civics/government standards)

March

Mad Scientist March has a nice ring to it...

I know we are rolling out the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), so I'm not entirely sure what this will look like.  I know my new coaches mentioned going to lots of trainings and researching our school's science options before picking these green boxes.  I'm excited to learn more about NGSS and STEM :)

Perhaps this is where they could display their own inquiry projects and scientific proposals?

April and May...TBD. 

Maybe bookopoly again?

 I planned out eight months worth of bulletin boards...I think my brain can safely shut down for the evening.

What are your bulletin board ideas for next year?

CRT Data

Confession:

I rarely check my work email over the summer.

I deleted the app from my phone and since I'm not in my new school's system yet, I don't see much of a point to log in daily only to delete spam and teacher coupons (looking at you Lakeshore). 

I saw my (former) principal post on Facebook that not only were CRT (Criterion Referenced Test) scores in, but she was excited about the results.  So naturally I asked to see the fifth grade data because well, I'm a numbers nerd!

I was at my new house painting so I figured I'd check the data in a few hours.  Well, my grade level beat me to the analysis part.  In a matter of minutes, I had six texts from my former grade level sharing their excitement about particular students.  

While I'm sure I'll get official reports with the break down of each class, I couldn't wait.  My insomnia got the best of me and sure enough, I was up at four am crunching numbers and making graphs.  I couldn't be more pleased with my class results and know that I didn't accomplish this feat alone.  It took our entire grade level working tirelessly, together, for ten months to achieve these results.  For those at my school who did not approve of our quasi-departmentalization experiment, I'd like to waive this data in their faces...but I won't...because I am a professional.  

I had the privilege of working alongside some of the most inspirational fellow teachers.  I will miss being able to pop into their rooms and the amazing collaborative mindset we all shared.  For various reasons, we are all starting at new schools and collectively represent third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and special education.

Math

(I didn't teach math besides our intervention block and number talks, so these scores are due in a large part to the amazing effort of my two neighboring teachers.  Well done ladies! I trusted that my students were in very capable hands each and every day.)

I'm a visual person, thus the graph.  Here is my class data for math:

1 student exceeded
22 students met standards
3 students were approaching
6 students were emerging


Science

We shared students for science and I taught the FOSS Landforms kit four times before getting my own class back for CRT prep.  When my homeroom wasn't with me, they were with my fellow teachers learning about environments, mixtures and solutions, force and motion, as well as variables.  We broke our year into four seven week rotations and started switching the third week of school.  We didn't switch right away because we wanted to set up science notebooks and go over the scientific method with our homeroom classes.  

Our rotations ended about two weeks before the science CRTs, so we used that time to incorporate Discovery Ed video streaming into our reviews.  We also practiced taking notes from multimedia presentations, a valuable skill they'll most definitely need in middle school.  However, we did this with the Magic School Bus videos and they did an amazing job.

Here is my class science data:

Numbers wise,
6 students exceeded standards
17 met standards
6 students were approaching standards
3 students were emerging on science standards

I'm quite pleased with my little scientists!


Reading

If you are new to my teaching blog, know this: I love reading.  I love discussing books with my students and watching them fall in love with literary worlds.  I love watching their excitement when they learn more about the world around them from informational text and seeing them become self-motivated to learn more by reading more is simply wonderful.  

I broke my reading data into two groups: my small groups and my whole class.

I had the higher half of the grade level for small groups, so naturally these numbers are expected to be more in the meeting category.  My job for small groups was to push these fluent readers to become more critical thinkers.  

Numbers wise,

23 students exceeded standards
28 students met standards
7 students were approaching
2 students were emerging

I'm quite pleased with my small groups!

For my whole class, which is inclusion, here are my results:

7 students exceeded standards
13 students met standards
4 students were approaching
8 students were emerging (of these 8, all were either students with IEPs or in the RTI process and still made growth over their previous scores)


I'm thrilled with my students' performances.  Did they all meet standards? No.  Did they all make growth? Yes.  

With my data analyzed, I can emotionally bid this past school year adieu.  I did my best.  I taught them strategies and how to think critically.  They learned and proved their knowledge on these tests.  It is time for a much needed, relaxing summer.