The Metric System

Ahh, the metric system.  Usually students either have an easy time with this or they think it's the most confusing thing, ever.

My students this year, however, did fairly well with the metric conversions.  I think a large part of this success is because we spent so much time in the beginning of the year building number sense and working with powers of ten.

I also modeled exactly what a meter looks like and passed around a meter stick:

                                              

As with every math unit, we did a gallery walk with challenge questions before the test:

We also did some sorting activities and used our "I have, who has" cards in small groups.

I also sent them on a scavenger hunt in their own fridges to find items that were listed in the customary system but that were also labeled with the metric system.

How do you teach the metric system?

Math Taboo

One of my favorite math centers is math taboo.  It's a great way to practice vocabulary, incorporate movement, and get the students talking about math.

My fifth graders loved this fun challenge and it's nice to know that others enjoy it as well.  Since my dream team from last year is all going our separate ways, I made versions for their new grade levels for their upcoming students.

 I made fourth and third grade sorts as well, which you can snag here!

Choices

It's the end of the year. I'm moving both classrooms and into my first home.  The students are becoming increasingly squirrely with each passing day.  We have one more field trip and a lot of loose ends to tie up. There is simply too much to do and not enough minutes in the day. It's frustrating that I want to give my students emotional closure on their novels and give them time to finish their books, but I'm at odds with others on this view point.  I want to keep teaching as long as possible, but that's not being supported.

Our last day is Wednesday, June 4th.  In my mind, that means I can realistically teach up until Friday, May 30th. I can finish novels with students, retest on assessments, and allow them to do some project based learning about their novels.  With everything wrapped up by the 30th, that would allow me the weekend to grade their final projects and have scores in by Monday the 2nd.  We'd use the last week of school to present our novel projects, sign  yearbooks, attend our awards assembly, and reflect upon our learning for the year.  

However, this is not what I'm expected to do.  Every assessment is supposed to be done, and graded, by the 28th.  The 28th is a full week ahead of when report cards go home.

When I expressed how busy the fifth grade has been, my words were shrugged off.  In the past few weeks, we've had CRTs (standardized testing), the writing proficiency, field trips, Discovery Education testing, KIC (science inquiry project), Aimsweb end of the year benchmarks and I DRA'd seventy children.  Plain and simple, fifth grade had the most work to do.  Not complaining, just a statement of fact.  We've been quite busy. We were not given assistance like other grade levels because sadly, blatant favoritism exists.  I wish it didn't, but the favoritism is running rampant these days and I somehow found myself on the other side.  Perhaps it's because I'm leaving schools.  Perhaps it's because I speak my mind and stick up for myself.  I am not being treated fairly at my work and it's one of the contributing factors for my change in school location.  Regardless of how I'm being treated, I'm doing my best to focus on making the best instructional decisions for my students.  All my choices are made to best serve the interests of those thirty one rowdy fifth graders whom I teach and adore to the best of my abilities.

I wish there was more understanding.  I'm asking for time until the second (which is still days before report cards go home) not because I'm lazy.  It's not because I'm being a procrastinator.  It's because with everything going on, we didn't want to over test our students.  We, as a grade level, felt we would get accurate results by spreading out the assessments (as best we could) and not overwhelm them by testing all day, every day.  I'm asking for more time to allow students to finish their novels and give us the chance to meet about the endings.  I'm not okay with just taking away their books and saying we ran out of time.  That's not fair to my students.  I'm not okay with depriving them of an opportunity to share about their novels and reflect on their learning throughout the year.  I 'm not okay with skipping the "how we've grown as learners" end of year reflection.  

My choice is to keep teaching as long as possible, even if it means I give myself an extra long weekend of grading.  

My choice is to provide emotional, literary closure to my students.  

My choice is to allow them time to share about their favorite books and engage in conversations about reading.

My choice is, to the best of my ability, wrap up our year together with discussions and reflections to help them grow as readers and learners.

My choice is to provide them time to think, write, collaborate, and discuss how much they've grown this year.

My choice is to allow them to feel accomplished and share their learning with others.

My choices are not approved by certain staff members.

It's disappointing that I'm not supported by fellow educators when I'm trying to make the right choices for my students.  

 In the end, my students are the reason I'm a teacher. I'm standing by my choices.

New Novel Unit: Al Capone Does My Shirts

As I previously wrote about, the time has come when I have extra homework for my small groups.  Granted, this homework is to read the novels with them, so that doesn't really feel like much work.

I just finished this Newbery honor:

I really enjoyed it.  One of the main characters, Natalie, is a child with autism.  This is never stated outright but clues are dropped throughout the novel.  It will be an interesting discussion with my students to see if they can put the pieces together.  I teach in an inclusion room and my students are fairly accepting of all people, so I'm excited to see the maturity in which they handle these discussions.  (They're just starting the novel).

While reading, I took diligent notes on vocabulary words and comprehension questions.  I turned these into a 27 page teacher's guide, which you can snag here on TpT.  I've included everything I will use to do this novel with my own small group.  

Happy reading!

Reflections on Mockingjay (spoiler alert)

If you haven't read Suzanne Collin's Mockingjay, I'd advise you to stop reading this post and start reading that novel!  (That is, of course, if you've read Hunger Games and Catching Fire already. I'd never advise someone to pick up a book out of sequential order!)

My students just finished Mockingjay and were doing a quick write response.  I had them write a letter to a character and express their feelings.  I didn't realize they had such angry words to say to Gale:

At least they're passionate about their reading.

We had long conversations about the choices that were made in the book and how those aren't necessarily the choices we would make in real life.  We also talked about how sometimes book characters have to do things they don't want to do in order to survive.  Not to worry, we also talked about how killing book characters is not acceptable.

This group is now getting ready to tackle the Series of Unfortunate Events!

Happy reading :)

Novel Guide: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Yet another product has been revised and posted on TpT!  Like my other novel guides, this product has suggested spelling and vocabulary words, pre and post reading activities, homework questions for each chapter and comprehension questions with suggested answers for each chapter.

I've truly done all the prep work for you! (Since I love reading and the Harry Potter series, it wasn't really work.)

Snag yours here!

Stations

For my intervention part of the day, we've been working on multiplication.

I had students work on two different stations while I pulled individual students to practice fluency or work on math misconceptions.

The first station they worked on was "I have, who has?" place value center.  This great TpT freebie was designed by Quintessential Lessons and is wonderful!

What I love about it (besides that it's free and challenging) is how great of a job it does at having students see the relationships between numbers in our base-10 system.

You can snag a free copy here!

The second station is one I created called "Strategies Sort".

While students can solve the multiplication questions, the point of the center is to discuss which strategy would be most effective as a mathematician.

This station is available here on TpT.  I'd recommend printing on 2 different colors of card stock for convenience.

Our station bucket:

Working on a variety of strategies:

Hooray for math!

Anchor Chart for norms for small reading groups

This anchor chart will be remade and posted in my classroom.

I love that it stresses to students that it's okay to politely disagree with one another.  In fact, it's encouraged.  Yay for discourse :)

I needed this poster last year during some heated literary discussions.

They would continue the Peeta vs. Gale discussions long after I dismissed them from our group.  It was quite the topic at recess!

May the odds be ever in your favor.