The Classroom Project

"What do my students need in order to succeed this year?" was my thought Thursday evening as I was thinking about my next Donors Choose project. I began dreaming about all the nonfiction books I could ask for, magazine subscriptions for my students to help with their inquiry projects, or even money to take my students on a field trip we normally wouldn't be able to go on! The possibilities were endless and I couldn't let my dreams get ahead of me. I still had the next day to plan and prepare!

After a long day of school on Friday, I checked my email to receive a wonderful comment left on my post Choose Donors Choose! It seems that there are some wonderful people willing to help out teachers like me who are constantly looking for ways to benefit students without depleting our personal bank accounts!

So all weekend long, I thought about why I am deserving of more supplies in my classroom and how these additional funds would help me. After thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that it is not me that is deserving of more supplies in my classroom, it is my students who are deserving of more supplies in the classroom! Whether or not I win this contest, I can only hope that I continue to seek out a number of ways to get it for them. It could be another grant, Donors Choose, or even my personal money.

Sure, I hope I win something to help alleviate some of the financial stress of being a teacher. (Did you know that teachers spend their own money to provide some/most of the classroom supplies in a classroom?) But I will continue to dedicate my time and energy to the learning of my students, and will do whatever I can to provide the best education for them all!

Here are two pictures of our wonderful classroom! I believe that students learn best when an anchor chart is made with them. Students also have access to iPad Minis in our classroom and when we run out of room for all of the fabulous anchor charts, I make a QR code and post it on our walls so that students can continue to have access to them!


USC’s Masters of Arts in Teaching Campaign

Thanks for stopping by to read this post and helping me see that there are people advocating for us teachers! :)

Don't Judge a Book by its Cover

I love introducing new books to my students. Especially since our school librarian introduced this awesome way of teaching kids how to pick books based on the words inside and not on its cover. It's amazing how often we judge a book by its cover, no?

Mrs. M introduced the read around to our class. She found wonderful books that would captivate readers and placed two books in each spot around the tables. Students were given four minutes to get a glimpse into both of the books and if students were interested in reading the book, they made note of the title.

After many rounds, students were then given the opportunity to voice their opinions about which books to place on the book club list. We had twenty titles go up on the board, but were able to narrow it down to twelve books. The next day, I read a brief synopsis of each book and asked students to provide me with their top three choices. As I tried to fiddle around with the groups and its members while trying to provide students with their first choices, they wouldn't stop asking me if I knew the books they would read! Eager beavers!

We are reading these books in our book clubs...have you read them?

• Found by Margaret Peterson Haddix
• The Hypnotists by Gordon Korman
• The Journal of Scott Pendleton Collins by Walter Dean Myers
• The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate
• Wild Life by Cynthia DeFelice
• Word Eater by Mary Amato

What do you think about the process of choosing these books? Do you do something similar or is there another process that I could learn from?

But before we began our book clubs, my students had to learn some very valuable lessons in order to work in groups effectively and collaboratively. We really had to target some social skills because I had noticed that some skills needed some improvement. Here are the skills we practiced, in the order we practiced them!

These skills are pretty important to have when working in a group, especially when the group isn't formulated by friendships. We were able to practice these skills in non-risk discussions, such as having a conversation about our favorite movies, books, candy, etc... (This strategy is taken out of Harvey Daniels' Mini-Lessons for Literature Circles.)

Students will be in charge of creating their group's schedule of meetings and how many pages of reading will be due at each meeting. We have had one meeting already, having discussed the first chapter or first few pages in a written conversation! Hopefully, students will also notice the signposts that were taught to help them understand plot, theme, characters, etc... in a more meaningful way!

Stop! Notice & Note

Over the summer, I attended a Common Core conference with Understanding by Design guru, Grant Wiggins. (He is reallllllly smart! I wish I could have a conversation with him one-on-one and pick his brain!) One of the sessions I attended was about how to get students better at close reading and the speaker mentioned a book by Kylene Beers and Robert Probst, Notice & Note. The book was ordered and waiting on the shelf to be read! Seriously, it was probably fifth on my to-read list this summer and I finally got to it a few weeks ago. I wish I had read it sooner because I am gobbling up these signposts!

Before introducing these signposts, we started studying the theory of a character to help start us off in the right direction.

Here are the signposts that I made to hang around the classroom for students to see and use throughout the year!

We have been using these signposts in our read alouds and it is really causing us to think in a more meaningful way! Students' responses are really helping us make better predictions and inferences, and we are learning to comprehend in a deeper way than before!

Do you use these signposts in your classroom? Parents, have you seen a difference in the way that our students are connecting with a book?

Choose Donors Choose!

If you didn't already know, I taught in the Chicago Public Schools for three years before moving to St. Louis. And if you didn't already know, it's rough being a teacher in the CPS. Why? Well, I could create a long list of the reasons why, but I'll just tell you what I learned to do most.

I learned to advocate for my needs as a teacher in terms of resources. My first year of teaching, I received thirty-seven books ($324) to use as mentor texts in writing. My second year of teaching, I received a kidney table ($263) where I could instruct small groups in reading, writing, and math. My third year of teaching, I received an interactive whiteboard ($2,298) so that students could learn to use technology; I also received a grant that helped me purchase $500 worth of books for my classroom library; and I also received a $700 grant that would help pay for a field trip for my class.

Wow. That adds up to $4,085!

So when I moved to St. Louis, I wasn't about to give up on receiving free materials that would help my students succeed in the classroom! Have you heard about DonorsChoose.org? It's a website where public school teachers can post project requests which range from a writing utensil to technology and generous donors donate to these projects! It's where I received my thirty-seven mentor texts, my kidney table, and my interactive whiteboard! Some of my donors were anonymous, some were strangers, and some were family and friends! It doesn't matter if you know them or don't, because all of these donors have hearts of gold!

Well, my fifth year of teaching comes along and I thought I'd try asking again for a generous donation: I asked for twenty-five exercise balls to help students channel their innate need for movement on these ergonomic chairs! Since these balls require balance, students are constantly engaging their core muscles, and helps students focus at the task at hand! (Read more about my request here: http://www.donorschoose.org/mrs.gh) It has only been a couple of weeks, but we have already set up specific rules/norms on how to sit on the balls and when sitting on these balls might be more advantageous to our bodies.

We can't wait to reap the benefits from these wonderful resources in our classroom! And now I'm up to $4,547 in grant money! :)

The Best Buy

In June, I had an awesome opportunity to learn how to teach math from the incredible Kara Imm. She is a staff developer from Math in the City and taught middle school and high school math in her years as an educator. I could go on and on about how much I love learning from Kara and how she's changed the way I approach teaching math to fifth graders! However, I will spare you these details and talk about the math we did the past couple of days.

Before we dive into the math though, I'd just like to say that I had about twenty teachers from my district come into my room and observe my teaching and Kara's conferrals, as well as observe my students, so that we could do a whole lot of learning in our debrief. I was really excited about learning from the feedback of my colleague, but it wasn't until I started launching the lesson that I got really nervous. I mean, I saw the usual twenty-five faces of my students in anticipation of the lesson. But in addition to those lovely faces, I saw the eyes of twenty adults watching my every move. I'm prettttttty sure my face was flushed pink!

Anyway, enough about me! How about that math now? :)

Students were given this context to begin:

I noticed that Target and Babies 'R Us sold the same brand of baby food, but had different bargains. Target sold 12 jars of this brand of baby food for $15 while Babies 'R Us sold 20 jars of the same brand for $23.

I then informed students that I was trying to figure out which one was the better buy and sent them off to do the math.

Whoa, what an entrance into our fractions unit!

Here are some of the posters that students made to show their thinking:

Whoa, did you catch what some students were doing in the first poster? They dealt out the money amongst the jars in order to find the price of one. Did you catch a misconception in the second poster? Some students were able to do long division, but were unable to name out what the "R3" represented. What about the last poster? What do you notice here? They didn't have to start from the beginning once they found the price per unit at one store. They knew that they could compare the pricing of 20 jars at Target to the 20 jars at Babies 'R Us instead of finding the price per unit!

Trust me. This math isn't easy. I know I'm asking my students to do some hard work! But most of them are showing me what grit looks like in math and I am truly impressed! Keep it up, fifth grade rockstars!

Narrative Writing

I really need to do a better job of blogging while we are working on these things and not as an afterthought. :) But here is what we worked on during first quarter in writing! We worked really hard on learning what a narrative is and how writers write them.

In the beginning, students had a difficult time generating a narrative story. You can think of people, times [first, last, aha moments], places, and feelings of small moment stories. We also learned that writers live differently, by making observations, jotting down quotes or song lyrics that really make them think, or reading stories from authors as mentor texts and figuring out what they did to make their stories captivate us.

Once students got writing, we made an anchor chart to help us raise the level of our narrative writing. Some suggestions that were provided to students were: 

We also had to review the structure of a story, which will come in handy in our next reading unit!

Sometimes, students got stuck even before the story took off! We had to review how we might start our pieces without stressing out too much.

As we began revising and editing our pieces, we had to reorganize our sentences or thoughts so that it flowed and the audience would be able to completely follow the storyline.

AND, our stories would not have been revised without the help of a writing partner. They were the ones who listened to our drafts and provided feedback so that we could continue to grow as a writer. But before we could work with a partner, we had to make sure we had some strategies to help us be an effective partner!

#1 Fan

I was invited by a few students to come and watch their soccer game today. I knew it'd be difficult on a Saturday to make it, but I really wanted to be there. I want my students to know that I support them in the four walls of our classroom, as well as outside of our classroom.

Last year, I was privileged to attend a soccer game, a basketball game, and a musical/play. I unfortunately missed out on a concert and a dance recital last year, but hopefully those students have forgiven me!

Today, I made it out to not only watch one student of mine play, but SEVEN students happened to be on the same team! One couldn't play due to a recovery, but even he came out to cheer on his team! And it was cold today! I thought I'd be okay in my vest, but I should have brought a sweatshirt or my winter jacket! Brr!

Unfortunately, today was not a winning game day, but it was so fun to go out and cheer for my students in a different way. Hopefully, they know how much I care about them and want them to succeed in all arenas of their life!

Here's to many more "games" that I hope you win!

Love,

Your #1 Fan

Challenge Accepted!

Here it is: The 35-Book Challenge. Well, I'd like to think that it's something that students are voluntarily choosing to do, but let's face it...I expect my students to accept. :)

With the Common Core State Standards challenging teachers to be more intentional and purposeful, our fifth grade team is trying to push students outside of their reading comfort zone. Many students, even adults, read what they are comfortable at reading. But let's face it, we should all be reading fiction and nonfiction and have strategies/tools to help us comprehend both types of texts!

So, with the help from Fountas & Pinnell (Genre Study: Teaching with Fiction and Nonfiction Books, 2012), I created the following documents to share with my students:

Students will have until the end of the year to accomplish the challenge, but I will be checking in with them to see how they are doing throughout the year. Parents, please help me by asking students how their book challenge is going! I hope that by doing this, students have a wider range of books to read from and eventually love!

I am also sharing a list of Mentor Texts that students can pull from if they are in need of some recommendations that are at 4th and 5th grade reading levels!

Challenge?!?! Challenge Accepted!

Christmas in September

Yes, I know it's October. Yes, I know my post will be about what happened in my classroom in September. But trust me, it's been a crazy few weeks, and...honestly, I kind of forgot about this one.

But yes, we had Christmas in September in Room 201! Let me catch you up on the details...

In fifth grade, our team of teachers learned what it means to be a writer. (I am actually not a writer. Our team member, Mrs. Bearden, is a fabulous writer...so I am learning from her!) We handed out practice notebooks at the beginning of the school year. These were to help us learn more about what it meant to keep a writer's notebook and practice before we got our official composition notebooks. We learned how to make observations just by watching people. Seriously, it sounds creepy, but we are not at all trying to be! We even went outside during first grade's recess and just watched and wrote what we saw and heard on the playground. We learned how to look through magazines to find catchy titles or interesting captions or thought-provoking pictures to help us think about our own story ideas. We also brought in our own photographs from home to remind ourselves of small moments with family members and/or friends. Students also learned that quotes can be a great way to spark a thought or a story idea. These are only some of the ways that writers keep a notebook! And they have their writer's notebooks with them because we often forget what we see or what we hear. So we jot it as soon as a thought enters our mind! We even live differently now that we're writers!

I went for a long run while training for my half-marathon and could not believe my eyes when I saw:

I made my husband stop so that I could take this picture with my phone. I just had to take a picture so that I could put it in my writer's notebook and write about the experience! Ew, gross!

Now, we had been practicing in our small notebooks for quite some time. The question would be asked, "When are we getting our real notebooks?" And the answer would be given, "Not until you EARN them!" Well, the time came in September...

On an unsuspecting day, students arrived at school and found 25 gifts wrapped in wrapping paper sitting on my desk. "What's inside?!?!" Lo and behold! When they unwrapped their gifts, they found their composition notebooks! Such excitement and joy entered the hearts of these writers. We were now official writers with our new writer's notebooks!

Students have since been collecting ideas in their notebooks. They have been writing their narrative stories, whether based on true small moments or made-up ones. We've published our stories and will be finishing up this fabulous unit this week. We can't wait for what's in store for us and our writer's notebook this year!

Box Factory

What do you remember about learning math in elementary school? I remember sitting in a desk facing the chalkboard and all the desks were lined up in rows. I also remember that a lot of the work was whole-class and a lot of worksheets and a lot of quiet think time! I also remember my dad sending me to Sylvan Learning Center and other after-school math programs and/or tutors and doing a lot of skill drills and rote memorization.

Now imagine this: a classroom where students are working in groups of three or four, collaborating on a problem/project at hand. They are in discussion and using manipulatives (the 1' by 1' by 1' tiles on the floor or the 1" by 1" by 1" connecting cubes) to solve the different questions brought to their attention. The classroom has a slight buzz to it from all the conversations occurring at once and all students seem to be engaged in the task at hand.

Those seem to be completely two different pictures of a math class!

To introduce volume, our school curriculum uses Cathy Fosnot's Box Factory. I think that this is a fabulous way to get kids thinking about volume and surface area (and even multiplication) without even mentioning those specific math-content vocabulary words!

Students explored these questions on different days:
1. I have 24 items and I want to send them to a friend. How many different boxes are there and what are the dimensions? How do you know that you have all the possibilities?

2. How much cardboard is needed to make all the different boxes we found in the first question?

3. I have three different-sized boxes: small (2 by 2 by 2), medium (3 by 3 by 3), and large (4 by 4 by 4). How many items does each box hold and how much will the packaging cost if the cardboard costs 12 cents per square unit?

4. How many 4-inch by 4-inch by 4-inch boxes will fit into a cardboard shipping box that is 4 feet by 6 feet by 4 feet? How many of a smaller 2-inch by 2 -inch by 2-inch box would fit into the same shipping box?

Whoa! Now that is some different math from when I was in fifth grade! I remember getting the equation for finding volume that didn't completely make sense to me! Now it makes sense!

Here are pictures of our learning walls that students created on the last day, reflecting on what they learned throughout the Box Factory unit!

Now after this unit was over, I actually did have to go to the FedEx store to ship a box of running gear to a friend in New York City. And guess what I saw when I got there that made me chuckle?!?!

When I showed my students this picture, one delightful student asked, "Are you going to make us do some math with these boxes?!?!"