Math Journals!

Math has been a struggle this year. So as I thought about what my students needed, I thought about last year. What was I doing differently this year that might be affecting the learning?

And with that came an "AHA!" I wasn't using a math notebook as I normally do! So, even as late as we are in the year (Quarter 4 to be exact), I introduced math notebooks to my friends! On the left side of the page, we write down: 1) Learning Goal (before the lesson), 2) What I Know (before the lesson), 3) What I Learned (after the lesson), 4) Proof (after the lesson), and 5) Reflection (after the lesson).

The Proof is something that they have to prove based on what the lesson was that day. For example, "Show the differences between a polygon, a nonpolygon, and a regular polygon." Students would then have to either draw or write the differences between these three categories. Reflections will help students reflect on the process as well as some content!

Here are some student examples!

Hopefully taking notes and making foldables will help students remember the knowledge/skills learned!

Marble Mazes

My wonderful fifth graders plunged into a GLAD (Guided Language Acquisition Design) Force & Motion unit where everything science was embedded with literacy! Students read about force and motion while writing about force motion while speaking about force and motion and listening about force and motion! Phew! That's a lot of force and motion.

Then we came to the week everyone was waiting for: Marble Mazes via Simple Machines! The task was to design and build a marble maze using three of the six simple machines we were learning about. Students picked their partners and began the project by designing a model before building it. We brought in materials like toilet paper rolls, rubber bands, foam noodles, straws, cardboard (in various forms), and so forth.

Students had a whole week to imagine, innovate, and implement their designs! Here's a video that brings that week together with the students' marble maze runs at the end.

How do you let science grow in your classroom? We are looking for more science experiment/project ideas if you are willing to share! Drop a comment below! :)

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!