Try It Tuesday: Genius Hour

I'll be the first to say I love new ideas for my classroom!  

I like to switch things up and try new strategies with my students.  We reflect on these strategies, talk about what went well and how to improve for next time.  After some modeling, my students do really well with these reflective conversations. I share with them the purpose for the activity or strategy because I believe in transparent teaching.  The honesty also helps with student buy in.  Most of the time, these activities go pretty well.  However, some of them have flopped and that's okay too.  I engage my students in the conversation about what didn't go well and how to improve for next time.  I think it's important for them to see the process of reflection and realize that trying new things is okay.  New things not going perfectly is okay.  Failing is okay.  Trying new things is good for you!

In the spirit of newness, I thought I'd share one of the new strategies I'm trying next year.  It's called "genius hour".

Basically I set aside one hour a week for student inquiry and research.  It's an opportunity for them to explore their side interests and inquiries.  Of course, this will be explicitly modeled the first few weeks of school.  I'm hoping to have this be the last hour of the day on Fridays, but I want to make sure my GATE & TAGS kids can attend as well.

This "genius hour" will blend researching, writing, reading, science, social studies, and math into student lead inquiry projects.  We'll be doing lots of open ended questions and I'll be modeling creating questions.

I plan to spend the first six weeks setting up inquiry notebooks, going over norms for researching, and doing a guided inquiry activity.  I want students to spend time really thinking about what they're interested in and exploring these topics.

I will have them present their findings to the class using various technology tools (prezi, powtoon, wordles, vokis, glogsters, etc).  I plan to let them work with a partner or triad for their first project, then have them work independently on the second.  I'm planning on two large scale presentations (with grades for listening, speaking) but am open to more depending on how well this goes.

I'm excited to carve out time for them to explore their passions.  I'm excited to see what they want to research!

mini-math

My students needed a little extra practice with fractions before our test.  I could have assigned them book problems to work on silently, but that wasn't what they needed. They needed to work with each other and learn from each other.  During this time, I pulled the students who really weren't getting it to the back table for some intervention work.

The novelty of having mini-math problems was extremely motivating for them.  I also like to include the "create your own" option.  I can see their levels of comfort with the ideas based on the problems they choose to create and then solve.

Since it's May, many of my fifth graders are plagued with the end of the year-itis.  Any new strategies that keep them engaged are always welcome!

How do you keep your students motivated in May?

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?

Engagement Strategy

I usually type my lessons for the day into a smart notebook.  While this takes a good twenty minutes each morning, I think it helps our day flow smoothly.  I like to start my morning with everything fully prepared and loaded, leaving my prep free to conquer any numerous tasks or handle unforeseen emergencies without panic.

However, sometimes when I have a lot of instructions typed on the board, my students zone out.  They're ten, I get it.  I still go over the purpose for each activity and imbed some spiral review to remind them what they're learning and why.

So I switched up my strategy:

I read what's in black font and they read what is in another color.  This way they're actively engaged in the directions and if they forget what to do, the key parts of the instructions or directions practically jump out at them.

Plus, by only giving them a few words or a phrase to read, they aren't shouting over each other and they are able to read together (most of the time).

Anchoring Our Learning

It's time for an anchor chart update!

My walls have quickly been overtaken by colorful anchor charts to guide our class discussions.  This year I'm trying something new and color coding my charts.  My math ones are pink, my reading ones are blue, my reading foundation skills (fluency, phonics) are yellow, and our read aloud mentor text ones (for The Lightning Thief) are white.

Our close read poster:

They're doing a really good job with this skill this year!

Day 5

I made it to Friday!  

I did start my morning with duty...I'm not a fan of the gate.  I picked up my kiddos, took them off to Art, then planned math with another teacher in my grade level.  We had a grade level meeting yesterday and split up who is planning what subject.  This is an adjustment for me. Instead of planning everything, I'm planning one subject, writing up super explicit lesson plans, and making the copies for the grade level.  So far, I'm liking it!  I still read over their lesson plans and put my own flair on them, but it's nice that collaboration and team work is the norm for my grade level.

After I picked my kiddos up from specials, we jumped right into math.  For our number talk, it's "fact Fridays" where I gave them their first timed multiplication test.  

Last year my grade level split up multiplication and division facts into "easy", "medium", and "hard" facts.  We made 3 different versions of each test and would give them a chance every other week.  Today they had 3 minutes to do the easy multiplication ones.

Easy facts: 1, 2, 5, 10

Medium: 3, 4, 9, 11

Hard: 6, 7, 8, 12

Of those, about 6 of my students passed their easy facts on the first round.  I'll be making a tracker to glue in their notebooks and a brag wall similar to this:

For them to sign off when they pass each level.  Granted, this is a third grade standard, but many of my students don't have these facts mastered (yet!).  We'll alternate testing and practice weeks.

From there, I had them compare notes on what a good mathematician is before adding their thoughts (on post-its) to our chart:

 

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We also went over the first math practice (make sense of problems and persevere in solving them).  I had them record it in their math notebooks with sticky labels and added the chart to the wall.  I didn't want to put up all 8 without going over them because then students have no connection to what's on the wall.

I also raided another teacher's classroom and found the rods I was looking for!  I modeled that the rods and units represent tens and ones in this case, but made it clear this won't always be the situation.

I had the table teams model 43-29 for me using the manipulatives and they did a pretty good job.  I think most of our math this year will be hands-on because there are some major gaps to fill.  However, after talking with my grade level, I'm not the only one who feels this way so that's nice we're all wanting to give them meaningful practice to help make sense of numbers.

In science, they finished exploring the mystery bags and we had a conversation about all the skills they practiced.  They did a really good job with their team building task.

In writing, they finished their final drafts (which I accidentally left at school...Wednesday problem).  In reading, they took their STAR test to place them for AR and worked on building their stamina in silent reading until everyone was done with writing.

From there, I modeled the importance of previewing a text, again using The Lightning Thief as my mentor text.  I jumped right in and read, without modeling metacognition or stopping to think aloud parts.  A few pages in, they were confused (as they're supposed to be).

We talked about strategies that good readers use, one of them being to preview the text.  What this means is they need to look at the front and back covers, as well as the table of contents, to formulate an idea of what the text is about.  

I then had them practice with a book of their choosing, modeling on a post-it.

We reviewed phrasing and went over rate, adding to our charts in our notebooks.  We'll go over expression and accuracy next week.  We'll also go over buddy coaching and have some fluency practice before we take our beginning of the year Aimsweb benchmarks.

With the bell approaching, they did their classroom jobs and I sent them on their way with this:

They o-fish-ally survived their first week! It's Labor Day weekend and we have a staff development day Tuesday, so I won't see them again until Wednesday.  

One week down!

(On a side note, I did have to write my first citations and lock myself out of my room on Friday. I also forgot to send home last year's CRT scores, so I stapled apology notes to parents and those scores will go home Wednesday.  There were definitely moments of frustration on Friday, mainly due to me forgetting things...so a nice relaxing birthday dinner with B at Red Robin was so deserved!)

Math training, days 2 & 3

After tackling my homework for math training, grocery shopping, and spending several hours leveling my library (such a daunting task), I didn't have the energy left to process what I'd learned.  

However, today I was home much earlier so I could reflect on yesterday and today's math trainings.

Days 2 & 3:

We talked about multiplication.  We talked about it...a lot.  Perhaps it's because I teach fifth grade and have taught inclusion, but none of the strategies mentioned were new information.  I grasped the concept right away and helped my neighbor make the same mathematical discoveries.

However, I did learn a few new things over the past few days.  Here are my "ah ha" moments:

The minuend is the first number in a subtraction problem and represents the amount you start with.  The subtrahend is the amount that is being removed or subtracted.  

This discovery raised an interesting question within our group.  Why is it that other math vocabulary terms (addend, sum, factor, product, quotient, etc) are well-known but minuend and subtrahend aren't?  Why can teachers (and hopefully their students) use the correct vocabulary for the other operations, but stumble on subtraction terms?  I know I'll be incorporating these terms into my math instruction!

"Give One, get one, move on" strategy

The page is divided into four sections.  Students solve the problem in the first quadrant, which is labeled "give".  After time to process the problem, students then will stand up and find three other people to "get" strategies from.  The students will work in pairs to explain their strategies to one another.  Not only does this allow for movement, but students can explain their thoughts to one another.  During this time, the teacher is monitoring as an informal assessment to see what students are grasping the content and which ones still need a little more practice time.

The next classroom tweak deals with these manipulatives:

Found in almost every elementary classroom, I always called these "ones", "tens", "hundreds" and so on.  Most teachers do.

However, in doing so, you're limiting students' understanding of the relationship (powers of ten) between the manipulatives.  

These will henceforth be referred at as units (smallest), rods (long ones), flats, and cubes.

By doing so, a teacher is able to stress the relationship between a value being ten times larger or smaller than the value next to it on a place value chart.  

Referring to these as units, rods, flats, and cubes also allows for the manipulation in upper elementary.  If my "one" is now the cube, I can use these manipulatives to represent a tenth (flat), a hundredth (rod), and thousandth (unit).  I can also regard the unit as a thousand, then have students prove the other values. (Rod would be 10,000, flat 100,000, cube 1,000,000).  

Finally, we played close to 100 (from Investigations).  While this game was not new to me, I did appreciate the discussion about its importance in the classroom.  In playing this math game (and others), students are provided the opportunity to practice many math skills such as estimation, reasoning, critiquing the reasoning of others, operations, and place value.  These games take minutes to learn, can be a good task for students if they finish early with an activity, and can be used as homework.  I know my students would much rather go home and play a math game as their homework then fill out a worksheet.  

Close to 100 also reminded me of another quick math activity:

What an easy way to get their brains working during the first few moments of the day!

Stay tuned for a recap of days 4 and 5!

Ms. Vice's boot camp, day 1

I had my first tutoring session with my third grader today.  She's adorable and loves learning, which is a nice change.  Her mom brought me data from her last report card and talked about what books they should get from the library.  It was so nice to see a positive family focused on school!

We read two passages on Helen Keller and set up her reading notebook.  We made a graphic organizer and talked about strategies.  She did really well!

We are going to meet on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for an hour and a half.  It's time to dig into my very unorganized guest bedroom (teacher closet) and find some fluency activities and reading games!

New Ideas for Rewards

I love trying new strategies in my classroom.  Each group of students is unique and what works for one group won't necessarily work for the next.

Homework was a struggle this year, thus I used Ursula as a motivator.  

She worked well for some students but not for all.  I've had conferences, phone calls, and sent notes home.  Some students just won't do their homework and nightly reading, which is frustrating because the only person they end up hurting is themselves by hindering their progress.  I also realize as an educator, there are lots of things I can't control.  I can't go home with them and make sure they read.  I can't control their home life, I can just provide a supportive educational environment.

I found this great idea today:

What a fun whole-class reward!  Using a free scrabble font and card stock, I can easily create free rewards.  I could use scrabble tiles or have the student of the week pick a letter to shade.  There are lots of different ways I could reward students to have whole class buy in.  I'm excited to try this strategy next year!

Tech Tip: Video Streaming and Notetaking

With the Common Core standards, the integration of technology is crucial for students.  We have been reading informational text about monarch butterflies so I was thrilled when I found a video on Discovery Education about the topic.

I wanted my students to be accountable during the video so I had them set up a T-chart to take notes.  On one side, they wrote information directly from the video.  This included facts and information they saw or heard.  On the right side, they recorded their reactions to the information presented in the video.

I think they did a great job with our new strategy: 

Another tip I tried was showing the video twice.  The first time, they focused on the content.  The second time, they focused on the note taking portion and vocabulary words.  

They really liked the strategy and I can't wait to try it again!

Tech Tip: Silence is Golden

We finished our FOSS kit last week and due to testing, I had two days after the assessment with my final science group.

(We departmentalized the science kits, so I taught the FOSS landforms kit to each of the four 5th grade classes.)

We tried a new strategy with our video streaming.  We watched "Thar She Blows", a short video clip from Discovery Ed on the eruption of Mt. Saint Helen's.  

The first time we watched, I had the students just watch for content.  The second time, they wrote down the crucial vocabulary words they heard.  After the second viewing, we made a list on the board:

The third time we watched, I turned off the sound.  Yes, we watched the video without sound.  The purpose was to allow the students to "be the expert" and narrate the video, using the vocabulary words.  They did a pretty good job with being the volcano expert.

I'll definitely be using this silence is golden trick again!

Somebody Wanted But So...

One of the strategies I've been trying with my small reading groups is "somebody wanted but so".  I create a chart with those categories and we collaboratively fill in the boxes.  It's a very guided approach to summarizing and my students are having a lot of fun with it.

Example: (the Lost Hero)

Piper (somebody) wanted to rescue her dad and stay loyal to her friends but she was worried how she could do both so she told Jason and Leo about her problem and they decided to help her.

I also found this on pinterest:

I like that it adds the "then" category for students to explain how the problem was solved.  This teacher suggests using post-its and I think that would be a great way to introduce the concept, but I wouldn't necessarily use it every time.

And...she's done!

For those that have been following the adventures of Ursula, I'm pleased to announce that she's done!

My students enjoyed chips and capri sun during our movie reward.  I'm pleased with the positive changes I've seen in most of them.  The strategy didn't work for all my students but it was nice to reward the students who are trying :)

Testing Strategies Recap

During our intervention block we've been working on testing strategies with a practice standardized test.

As a wrap up activity to a week of test prep, we made brochures:

Students got to be a little creative and design their own brochures to help with testing strategies.  They had so much fun with it!

Metacognition

One of the new strategies I tried this year was modeling metacognition for my students.  In layman's terms, metacognition is being aware while reading or thinking while reading.

We've had a lot of talks that reading isn't a passive activity and your brain should be actively processing and thinking about what the words on the text mean.

Our very first reading lesson was using 2 bowls to show what was occurring in the text and in my head as I read aloud.

As a teacher, I'm quite used to modeling my thinking for my students.  Granted, the first times I felt a little strange having a conversation with myself but I got over that very quickly.

I modeled reading the back cover of The Lightning Thief since that was our first grade level read aloud.  I pointed to the back of the book when I was reading the text and to my head when I was thinking about what I read.

I had my students keep track of the number of times I pointed to the text and to my head with different colored markers.  Not only did it keep them on task and engaged in the lesson, but it let my wiggly students have a purpose for moving their hands around.

At the end of the lesson, they had way more green "thinking" markers then red "text" ones.  

We talked about how as readers, it's more than looking at the words on the page.  We have to actively process and think about what the words mean.  This lesson spanned a few days and we refer back to our anchor chart often, but I'm really pleased with my decision to start the year off with this type of lesson (since I'd never tried it before).

I'm way more excited that my students not only understand the definition and purpose of metacognition, but actively practice it as well.  When combined with annotating their thinking with stop and jot strategies, they are reading rock stars!  

A week in small groups

I spend 1/3 of my day doing small groups for reading.

My 12 groups range from DRA 40-70 and are split up by both DRA level and students' interests.  My afternoon group also has all the fifth graders in GATE/TAGs (advanced course work for gifted & talented), so I have to make sure to never schedule their group meeting days on Tuesdays or Fridays.  I also had to group them in the same 3 groups for this reason.

When they meet with me, we do close reads of important parts of the passage, go over comprehension questions, zoom in on vocabulary and work on predictions and inferences.  Lately they've been running more of their small groups, which is awesome.

We have daily word work and fluency practice.  I have to RCBM two kids a day (fluency progress monitoring with AIMSweb), so during this time, they read our weekly flueny passage (leveled passages from reading A-Z).  During that time, they coach each other on the components of fluency (rate, expression, accruacy and phrasing) to help each other improve.  By doing the same passage over the course of the week, they practice repeated reading and their accuracy improves over the course of the week.  I get to use this time to progress monitor so I don't fall behind on my case load.  I love that we multi-task and it's not wasted time.  

We have been working on weekly "must do's" as well with the A/E/I/O/U strategy and our science readers.  I chose informational text because they struggle with main ideas and supporting key details.  In fifth grade, they are expected to pick out the main ideas and make connections within text, including scientific ones.  Our science CRTs (standardized tests) are up first on the testing calendar, so I'm utilizing old science content to not only review science material but informational text as well.  If I give them a task, there should be a clear focus!  (Or in my overachieving case, several)

Here are some snap shots of what they're doing when they're not at my kidney table:

Collaboratively adding details about the characters in their novels on their large graphic organizers.

Using fifth grade description cards to analyze characters.

Responding to a post on kidblog.

Referring back to the text for evidence in a written response

Keeping track of characters in a novel

Collaboratively recording information about the novel, including juicy words, character development and settings.

Happy reading!

Word Problem Wednesday

For our number talks, we switch up the focus each day.  Today's was a word problem:

We are working on critical thinking.  I let them use dry erase markers on their desks to solve the problem:

 

And they loved it!  I liked that I saw a variety of strategies being used (pictures, numbers, etc).  They really enjoyed writing on their desks! (My little rebels)

A/E/I/O/U Strategy

It's always best to try to stay one step ahead of these lively students, so I'm continually looking for new strategies.

I adapted one of Discovery Education's strategies for my classroom.  I'm keeping their name of "A/E/I/O/U".  

While reading our science readers, they had this task:

Write about:

One A ha! moment (something new and exciting)

One emotion envoking moment (curiosity? confusion?)

One interesting fact

One oh? moment  where they learned something new

One uh? moment where some new piece of information was "clunking" with them (not making sense).

We did 2 different passages this week and they did a fairly good job at adapting to the new strategy!

Quick & Easy Strategy for Students

I have some fifth graders who like to rush through their work.  I also have some kiddos who get overwhelmed by an activity sheet, so I found an easy strategy for both.

Take an ordinary file folder:

Cut the front side into several parts:

And viola!  

For fast finishers, they have to have the top part complete and correct before moving on. 

For students who are overwhelmed, they can only see part of the activity and tend to be less anxious about the work.

New (math) Strategy

During our intervention block this week, we've been using Discovery Ed testing to review previously taught math standards.

I had them using white boards & markers last week so I decided to switch it up. 

Each group got scratch paper and every student got a different colored marker (for accountability purposes).

I'd pose the problem on the board and they'd start working independently on solving.  Pretty standard procedure in a classroom.

However, I switched it up by having them rotate their papers at my whistle.  They had to jump right in and work on continuing how their neighbor had started solving...which wasn't necessarily their strategy.

I liked that this strategy stressed solving the problem different ways.

We switched a few times, then they discussed the strategies as a group.  I love when they can engage in such meaningful math discourse and model their thinking a variety of ways.

I'm thinking about trying this strategy next week with written responses as well.  Or perhaps as a quick write to warm up for writing.

There's something extra fun about using markers in the classroom.  The students are so much more engaged, which is wonderful.  Bring back the joy!