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.

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!

Informational Texts

With the Common Core State Standards, there is an emphasis on informational text.  For elementary school, the split is 50/50 on informational text and literature.  As students move into middle and high school, the amount of instructional time increases in order to prepare students for the upcoming complex texts.

Reading literature and reading informational texts require different skills from readers.  Reading literature requires students to think about narrative elements, keep track of characters, make predictions, etc.  Informational texts tend to require students to keep track of complex ideas, analyze how events or persons are interrelated and understand how text structures lend themselves to 

In order to support this, we have been reading different articles on Monarch butterflies:

Students have been keeping track of ideas and text structures.  They're working collaboratively to read and analyze the text.

Here they are looking at different text features about Monarch Butterflies.

They did such a great job with this task!  They read a Time for Kids article and two other informational passages on the migration patterns of Monarch Butterflies.  We looked at cause and effect and my students did a great job with explaining how events in a passage go together.  Next week we'll watch a short video clip from Discovery on migration patterns, thus tying in that multimedia element.

I love when they're so excited about what they're learning :)

DENSI 2013

For the past two years, I've been working with Discovery Education as an ambassador/DENStar for my school district.  

We've adapted their Launch into Teaching assessments to measure students' academic growth, but we focus more on the tools on their website.  From video streaming and board building (similar to glogster)  to online tech books and virtual labs, Discovery has a lot of tech tools available for teachers.  They also have a plethora of audio clips and images as well as suggested lesson plans, which come in very handy! 

They also have the Discovery Educator Network Summer Institute (DENSI) each summer.  Last year, I attended in Burlington, Vermont and had an amazing time.  Once again, I was the sole representative for my state so I was a little overwhelmed at first but by the end of the week, felt right at home.

I was placed in a dorm with 3 other ladies, 2 who were veterans and another newbie from California.  

DENSI was a mix of key note speakers, hands-on sessions and break-out sessions.  I set up twitter for the first time at DENSI after learning about how this social media tool could be used for professional development and teacher networking.  I tried my hand at geo-caching and well, I'm not very great at it (yet?).  We learned about sustainable farming and I milked a goat for the first time. 

(That was an interesting experience to say the least.)

We played with different apps and talked about classroom application.  We learned about chromebooks and I learned all sorts of things my new GS4 could do!  We learned more about video streaming and using Skype in the classroom.

Besides being a techy's dream, it was a wonderful opportunity to meet other teachers from around the United States and Canada.  Here is the list of attendees and their prospective websites. 

I think what I enjoyed best was the time to sit in small groups and talk about best teaching practices.  One teacher was struggling with his math block, so we talked for over an hour about restructuring it for effectiveness.  Since I want to be an academic coach, it was a great, unexpected opportunity for professional growth.

Snapshots from the week are here in dropbox.

PLUS I got a sneak peek of Shark Week! I LOVE Shark Week...and my new beverage holder!

I loved DENSI 2013 and would highly recommend the professional development.

I can't wait for Discovery to release their applications for DENSI 2014!  As soon as they do, I'll post the link :)

Casey at the Bat

This week we read Casey at the Bat and after days of reading and re-reading this poem, we are done!  Here is a snapshot of some of my students' work:

We take our learning very seriously and are getting ready for our academic futures with lots of interaction with our text!  It's not enough to read the poem and answer questions, we dug much, much deeper.  We discussed the text structure of poetry, found examples of figurative language and rhyming patterns.  We looked at how the mood changed over time and how Casey was portrayed (as a hero).  

We summarized the stanzas, looked for themes and backed up our themes with quotes and evidence from the poem.

Then today we watched this school tube clip to analyze how the poem is similar and different from its multimedia counterpart.  

Next week as an extension (and because we need a little more practice with poems), we're doing Casey's Revenge.

Happy reading!

The Raven

We've been working on poetry, so in honor of Halloween, we read Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven.

I read the first stanza to them and they listened for alliteration.

Then, we watched two videos on teacher tube. 

The first was with an actor (Christopher Walkin?) reading aloud the poem with spooky sound effects.  The first video did a great job at establishing an eerie mood, similar to the true intention of Poe.

The second was the animated Simpson's version:

Students took notes on the video:

Then compared and contrasted the multimedia elements in the presentations.

They had a great time with the poems :)

Well, that was out of the blue

I want to believe that I am a good teacher. I know I love my job (most days) and I know I love watching students learn (all days).  It's been a rough year and I haven't felt super supported at school.  I know we took a hit last year in terms of standardized assessments and test scores, but I truly didn't think mine were that bad.  In fact, they weren't bad at all.  My students made growth and did all of them reach their goals? No.  But did they all show improvement? Yes. 

I've been a little frustrated with hearing about how fifth grade's scores went down drastically (19%).  It wasn't my class.  It wasn't 2 of my fabulous neighbor's classes because they worked just as hard and provided some amazing learning opportunities for their students.  I learned so much from them last year and I continue to learn from them now.

Today, out of the blue I got an email from a researcher.  He has a PhD so I'm going to assume he knows what he's doing in terms of assessments.  Here was the gist of his email:

"In my analysis, your students did exceptionall well, including the ELL and special education students. I would like to talk about your experiences and see what resources you used."

Bam.  I want to gloat about this to those that have been a tad harsh this year, but instead I'll just share my excitement here.  I know I did my job as a teacher. I know they all learned and made growth.  More importantly, I know I got them excited about inquiry and learning.

He wants to specifically discuss Discovery Education and the resources I used since I'm a DENstar and he's looking at the Discovery Launch into Teaching assessments.

Honestly, I used Discovery's resources mostly for science which wasn't reflected on those assessments.  We did a lot of video streaming and discussion prior to the CRTs and my students did awesome on their science tests.  (In addition to reading and math!)

So I hope this means I can stop hearing about test scores and negativity.  Fifth grade may have gone down drastically, but that was not my data.  I will be accountable to my test scores and students' growth.  

Do I believe that one test determines what a student learned in one year? No, absolutely not. But it's what we have and what I have to use, so I will take an honest look at the data.  My data looks pretty solid and I'm proud of my students' growth.  Numbers don't lie.

Notebooking examples

Today my fabulous grade level and I talked a little bit about notebooks and our expectations for our students.  So I pulled out last year's notebooks to see of the work we did last year and which activities I'd like to do again to challenge students.

Reading

For this one, we were working on text structure and how it impacts a story (RL 5.5)

So I had students glue in 1/2 sized sheets of a reader's theater script (I believe from a scholastic workbook).  We looked at the structural elements and dissected the script.  My students did a really great job at realizing there is more to reader's theater and drama than just simply the dialogue.

Next, here's an example of some of our Greek and Latin word work.

We do a few Greek and Latin roots a week, go over the word's meaning, examples and non examples, then decompose multisyllabic words to determine the word's meaning.

We also look at Common Core Exemplars, as with the poem New Colossus

Here we practiced a close read and were trying to determine meaning.  This poem did pose a bit of a challenge for my students because they were unfamiliar with harbors and the layout of New York City, but they did a good job with scaffolded instruction.  

I like to type up the poems for them and have them glue/tape the pages in their notebook.  While this uses more paper, it allows me to spend more time facilitating discussions and they don't have to mindlessly copy the whole poem.  Instead, they can talk about the poem instead of just writing it.

Here we are just starting a unit with a K/W/L chart.

(K: what I think I know about the topic, W: what I want to learn and L: what I learned (for after the unit) )

We also do a LOT of circle maps in fifth grade to help us organize our thinking.

Lastly for reading,

We do a lot of highlighting and recording our thinking both on the passage and in thinking maps below.  I stress metacognition and that good readers are thinking critically while reading.

Math

In math, we glue in our thinking sheets...a lot.

I also provide them with guided notes:

It helps keep everything organized and requires them to show their thinking multiple ways or with different strategies.  This helps them work on their number sense and aligns with the 8 math practices.

Science

For science, much of our material is provided with FOSS kits.  However, I like to go beyond the provided information and do an extension unit on land forms such as volcanoes.

We watch video clips from Discovery Education and do a lot of exploring.  I also provide copies of notes for students, but they must fill in the missing information.

This really helps with my ELL students and students with IEPs.  They can focus on the content and key words without getting lost with copying all the information.  Plus, it leaves more time for discussions and they're still held accountable for paying attention.

Happy notebooking!
Ms. Vice

Map-a-poluzza!

I might be the rare one here, but I love teaching geography, history, government and really anything to do with maps.  My grade level happily appointed that FOSS science kit to me (well, land forms) because for some weird reason, being a cartographer and making sand models only appeals to me and my inner five year old.

For fifth grade purposes, we go over physical, political and topographic maps.  We use post cards from around the world to examine different land forms, learn about the fifty states and regions of the US.  We use this map and the matching world version to go over political maps, focusing on state and international boundaries along with capital cities:

(Map is from FAO Schwartz, but the Discovery Channel makes a very similar one that is not only less expensive, but usually on sale at Kohls!)

We use our globe, atlases and old-school pull down maps to go over the physical features of the earth (land forms) and visit both using the different layers on Google Earth.

If you haven't played with the 3D buildings, I highly recommend it! We used it for looking at the monuments in Washington DC and for exploring the remains of the Titanic.  There are also premade tours on Google Earth, which you can access in the gallery or clicking the tour button under "my places"

The topographic maps are included in our FOSS science kit, but I extend the learning by printing out topographic maps of our area so the kids can make connections with our own mountains.  Mount Shasta, as nifty as it is, doesn't have the same connection as our own Mt. Charleston in Las Vegas. 

Besides exploring our surrounding neighborhood and US land forms, we also use Google Earth for virtual field trips.  A favorite is to visit the moon and Mars :)  

On the Google Tool Navigation Bar, select the planet and pull down to visit the moon, Mars or the sky.  The default setting is our own planet but you can go elsewhere.

Since I'm in charge of reviewing the solar system, it makes perfect sense for me to take my little astronauts on a virtual trip to Olympus Mons, Mars.  We talk about the name, make the connection to Mount Olympus (since they study Greek mythology in fourth grade) and they absolutely love it.  I often have to shoo them out of my room come recess time so I can eat.

When we talk about land forms, volcanoes inevitably come up.  While I'm not opposed to the traditional baking soda, red food coloring & vinegar "volcano explosion", that experiment is part of another science kit.  So instead, we visit the volcano builder website and play with virtual volcanoes.  

The students learn the vocabulary associated with volcanoes (viscosity, magma, etc) as well as the classification of types of volcanoes.  They make predictions about the types of explosions that will occur when the pressure and viscosity levels are changed.  We also watch volcanic eruptions and discuss the geological processes that are occurring   A tip I picked up from Discovery Education is to play the video clip on silent and have students narrate what is happening on the condition that they use the academic vocabulary.   We use Discovery Education and PBS video streaming, but teacher tube, you tube, National Geographic and other sites have similar footage.

To check their understanding of maps, I created a sort which is available on TpT.  Hopefully your students love earth science as much as mine :)  You've got to put the joy in teaching and if tech toys don't do it for you, find something that does.