tabs

Friday, January 30, 2015

Double-Entry Journal Responses & Padlet

I have been reading aloud two amazing books to tie in Social Studies, Reading, and Writing this unit: A Friendship for Today by Patricia McKissack and The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis. Our discussions have been mainly about the civil rights time period because of the books, but students will be tackling the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and a lot about Missouri!

The really awesome thing about A Friendship for Today (and totally engaged students right away!) is that the story takes place in our very own neighborhood! Patricia McKissack attended Robinson as one of the very first African American students integrating into a public school and writes about an African American girl attending "Robertson" in "Kirkland, Missouri" in 1954, after the decision of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka banned racial segregation in public schools. Rosemary befriends a white girl who was her sworn enemy before she came to Robertson simply due to the differences of their skin color.

The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963 is about an African American family living in Flint, Michigan making the trek to Birmingham, Alabama during the crucial time of the civil rights movement, especially in the South. Students are learning about the unrest that occurred and how African Americans struggled for basic human rights. This book has been bringing about an open discussion of our rights and how the times have changed...or have they?

As I read aloud, students are taking notes in their reading notebooks with a double-entry journal response. The anchor chart we made last semester looks like this:

Once I finish reading aloud a chapter, students are asked questions that relate to that week's skill/strategy. When we first began answering these questions, students were writing incomplete sentences and very short responses. We then had a writing mini-lesson of revising and editing with the use of colors. [We've had to have many mini-lessons about nouns, verbs, and adjectives...more on that in a later post!] We use yellow to highlight the first word of our sentences [to add variety in our sentence starters], blue for verbs, and pink for adjectives. Students have noticed a growth in their responses, both in length and in thoughtfulness as we have continued to monitor what we write.
A sample of a student's writing to the question found on the label at the top of the picture.
Although writing in our individual notebooks is a great way to guide our thinking, it oftentimes is thought of as a private thing. So sometimes, students don't feel that they are kept accountable to their writing and their responses to the text. My teammate introduced me to padlet, a great way to view real-time responses. I placed some of the questions on padlet and students were able to see that their responses were going to be viewed by everyone in the room. It was a great way to be accountable for their writing and have a rich discussion afterward about the thoughts that were displayed.

Prior to the discussion, students had to read everyone's comments and then find one that they agreed with or disagreed with. Students had to provide evidence from the text or their own schema as to why they agreed or disagreed. What a great way to have a discussion while working on our skills of citing evidence and providing support!

Students have been enjoying this unit, as we have been learning about issues of social justice and the basic human rights of all. We hope to become citizens who respect the rights of all, within and outside the four walls of our classroom!

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

The Field Trip

When I taught second grade in CPS, I had students choose where they wanted to go on a field trip. Students decided to go to the Planetarium, the Museum of Science and Industry, Lincoln Park Zoo, and Shedd Aquarium. I had decided to provide subs for the students and this is what the distribution looked like:

Group #1 [Planetarium]
- 3 subs
- 4 people

Group #2 [Museum of Science & Industry]
- 4 subs
- 5 people

Group #3 [Lincoln Park Zoo]
- 7 subs
- 8 people

Group #4 [Shedd Aquarium]
- 3 subs
- 5 people

Now the question that was on everyone's minds when we returned the next day was:

WAS IT FAIR?!?

So, today, I decided to make my fourth grade students decide if on that day five years ago:

1) Was the distribution fair - did each person in each group get the same amount?
2) How much of a sub did each person get, assuming the pieces were cut equally?

Phew. My fourth graders went to work today! Oh, and did I mention that today was the first day of our fraction unit?

Some big ideas that will be discussed tomorrow in our math congress are:
- fractions can be seen as division
One student was able to find the pattern right away and didn't have to draw pictures to decide the amount each student from each group got.
- fraction equivalence
This partnership used connecting cubes called this amount 4/5.
This partnership used connecting cubes and called the amount 16/20.
- what to name a piece
Do you see the misconception that we'll address tomorrow?
1/2 + 1/10? I love it!
Students worked on a draft first, figuring out all of their math. I walked around at this point, lifting the work that students were doing, or addressing some ideas that students were using, but confusing. Then as students finished their rough drafts, they then began to work on their stand-alone posters [posters must speak for themselves w/ clear mathematical thinking] that will be critiqued during our gallery walk tomorrow!

I love me some Cathy Fosnot! I can't wait to see what our gallery walk and math congress will bring tomorrow! Stay tuned...





Marshmallow Challenge - Part Two

This always happens to me. Life gets a hold of me and I haven't blogged in forever.

Well, part of my [school] resolution this year is to get blogging, so here I am!

I love having my students take part in the Marshmallow Challenge twice a year: once at the beginning of the year in August and a second time in January. The second time around, I like to see how students respond to the challenge and what they might have learned from their mistakes last time. We talked about which base would be more stable, a triangular base or a quadrilateral base. (It's interesting to see which two structures were still standing after coming back from specials.)

Although the students participate in the Marshmallow Challenge to build the tallest freestanding structure, I have students discuss the process of collaboration and teamwork more so than their product. After 18 minutes of designing, building, redesigning, and rebuilding, students took a seat and we began the discussion of how we could collaborate better in Room 208.

Here are some of the bullet points we took away from our activity:
- communicate [listen to EVERYONE'S ideas]
- agree w/ your teammates BEFORE you do something
- it's okay to follow someone else's plan EVEN IF it's not your first choice
- work TOGETHER
- watch your BODY language
- let people TRY things out

We have learned so much about collaboration throughout the first half of our year, but we have resolved as a whole class to get better at it!