Ignoring Others

One of the common sayings my students hear from me on any given day is this: “There is a secret to life that I want you all to know: You are the only person that you can control. You can’t make anyone else do anything. You can only make you do something.” I share this every time we talk about classroom relationships. Fourth graders are wonderful children, but they are still children. That means that there are going to be many times throughout the day that one student manages to annoy another student.

Another common saying in my classroom is this: “People are annoying. Accept it, deal with it, and ignore it!” As the end of the year swiftly approaches, my students and I have been talking a lot about how to appropriately ignore other people when they do something we don’t like. I decided to really focus on this during my social & emotional learning lesson this morning. I asked the students to think to themselves about what it means to actually ignore a person, then I had them talk with a partner before they shared with the entire class. (This simple procedure is known by the term “Think, Pair, Share,” incidentally.) I was really impressed by the maturity and depth of understanding the students showed in their comments. Some of the things they shared included the following:

• Ignoring others means that you stay focused on the task/assignment and not on the other “people” around you.
• Ignoring others means to avoid eye contact with the person trying to distract you.
• Ignoring others means that you walk away from a person who is trying to create drama. Walking away is not a sign of weakness or cowardice; it is a sign that you are in control of you.
• Ignoring others means to tell a person to stop and then don’t say anything else about it to them.

 

After sharing their thoughts, which I wrote on the board, we shared strategies for using these ideas as we wrap up the year. My hope is that we can end the year on a positive note!

Enjoy the weekend! I’ll be attending the 39th Annual Illinois Young Authors Conference in Bloomington!

The Wonder of Wonder

Before I say anything, I feel I should explain I am writing this quick post on my phone. Also, this post is going to be short because we are out and about and I don’t have much time. I will probably go back later and edit, putting in links and such.

As you may know, I finally read the book Wonder to my class. I love this story! I was so thrilled when I got to read it on my own and was excited to share it with my students. They loved the story, too, which was the first book I read to my class entirely on our lovely carpet.

We finished Wonder today. I admit, I got a little choked up at the end, but I made it through. It is a wonderfully sweet tale of empathy, friendship, patience, tolerance, courage, and love. If you haven’t read it yet, I strongly encourage you to do so!

Several of my students shared the same thoughts when we finished:

This has been th best book ever!

I am definitely going to read this book to my class next year, but they are going to hear it starting on the first day instead of the end of the year!

Double Assembly Day

As the end of the year approaches, we seem to have lots of assemblies. There are celebrations of students’ accomplishments, previews of the fifth grade musical, visits from the Public Health Department and the local police and fire departments about safety, visits from the public library, and special presentations showcasing some of the musical ensembles we have in our school.

Today was a double assembly day, featuring the last two mentioned above. The Urbana Free Library had originally scheduled to come yesterday morning, but they had to reschedule so they came today. The children’s librarians shared a skit of sorts about the library’s summer reading program, highlighted some of the new books they have, and generally tried to get the students pumped up about reading over the summer.

Then after lunch, we had the fifth grade band and strings concert. It was great listening to the students who were in my class last year, listening to them as they made music, and then realising that more than half of the students in band or strings came from my room last year. I don’t know that I can claim any credit for it, but I am thrilled to see so many of my former students pursuing music!

The strings performed first. They shared a small set of songs, and I was able to take a recording of one of them:

Following the strings, the fifth grade band performed a small set of songs, one of which I was also able to record:

The concert was wonderful! I am looking forward to years of listening to students practicing in the small spare rooms in our building, particularly when they are just down the hall from me. One of the great joys of teaching fourth grade is that I get to see my students again the next year as they grow as fifth graders and prepare for middle school. The fifth grade musical will be shared with the school sometime next week. From what I have heard, it will be absolutely fantastic!

Just Another Manic Monday

I like Mondays. They are crazy, they are busy, they are unorganised, but they are wonderful. Each Monday represents the start of not just a fresh new day but also a fresh new week. It is a day where we can say, “Look, nothing’s gone wrong yet! We’ve got a clean slate ahead of us!”

I said that Mondays are disorganised; that isn’t quite accurate. I have plans for every day, every week, every month, every quarter, every semester, and every year. So I know what I want to accomplish. But I never know what my students are going to bring to the classroom after the weekend. They are eager to share their thoughts, their activities, their accomplishments. This is part of what makes Mondays so wonderful, though!

Today was, as the song from the 1980s says, just another manic Monday. Our day started with writing in journals, then the students went outside for P.E. The boys played kickball while the girls played basketball or used the jump ropes. (Last Thursday it was the girls who played kickball and the boys who played basketball or used the jump ropes. There was a suggestion that we let them split up to let more people participate in the kickball games, which we are doing as training for the big students vs. teachers kickball game on the 24th.)

After P.E., we had about twenty minutes before Music, so the students worked on their vocabulary/spelling for the week or worked on the narratives or they read independently. I was very happy with how well they worked during this time. Following Music, we started working on our last arithmetic unit of the year: decimals. I introduced the unit by reviewing tenths and hundredths, and then I taught the students some of the more common fraction to decimal conversions, such as 1/10, 1/8, 1/5, 1/4, 3/8, 1/2, 5/8, 3/4, and 7/8. We also talked briefly about percentages, which the students caught onto very quickly! After doing some conversions together,  I let the students work independently or with partners until lunch.

Our afternoon was our typical literacy block: I read aloud from Wonder, then the students worked on their narratives or vocabulary until we went outside for a recess. Following recess, the students read independently while I met with one of my guided reading groups. We read a book about landslides which they all found very interesting!

And then our day was done! We cleaned up the classroom, stacked chairs, and then the students went home. I had  a staff meeting right after school and then I finished writing up my plans for tomorrow. (I’ll be gone all day, but I have an excellent teacher subbing for me.)

And that was my typical, manic Monday.

Teacher Appreciation Week

This week was Teacher Appreciation Week. At my school, the PTA provided a delicious breakfast on Monday morning and a delightful lunch today. In between, we were given small gifts, such as a candle with a quote about teachers lighting the path for children, a nifty “tingler” that looks like a wire whisk that you use to massage your head, and nice notes in our mailboxes.

My students also brought in gifts for me, some from them and others from their parents. I was given chocolate, more chocolate, soda, bacon duct tape, bacon cheddar pretzels, several handmade cards, and a brony t-shirt. (I recently mentioned to a student that I was a brony–a male fan of the children’s television series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic–and I have bombarded with ecstatic questions about the show ever since.)

Of course, Teacher Appreciation Week isn’t just about getting presents from parents and students. It is also about expressing appreciation for my own teachers. I have had many teachers in my life, and I have a great deal of appreciation for all of them, but there are a few in particular that I would like to thank here:

The top of the list is my own fourth grade teacher, Kathy McNamara. She is the reason I decided to become a teacher. She believed in exploratory, experiential learning before they were common practices. She encouraged her students to pursue their own interests and let us share them with our classmates. She also had us do a lot of peer teaching, which is how I learned that I was really good at teaching others! She is still teaching at the same school 20 years later, still inspiring students and serving as a mentor to me, even from afar.

Next up is my Sunday School teacher of many different years, Sandy Quinn. She was kind of kooky and she and her husband were convinced that my family spent our Sunday dinners planning ways to confuse them in the coming days, but she loved us and we knew it and loved her for it. My faith, which is not something I mention at school very often, grew under her guidance from the time I was five years old until I graduated from high school. (She taught us off and on for a total of seven years or so.)

No list of my teachers is complete without the mention of three men who taught me in high school: Jim Tallman, my band director who taught me to love music, have fun, and be proud of my geekiness; Gerald Madsen, my freshman English teacher who taught me to stand up for my ideas, to laugh often, and to walk around the classroom with a meterstick; and Dwight Hershberger, the man who taught me to use power tools and to operate a follow spot light. He also taught me how to build stage sets, how to measure twice and cut once, and the fact that Norm Abrams of The New Yankee Workshop was a better builder than the more famous Bob Vila of This Old House.

I had some fabulous instructors in college, like Michele Crockett, Mary Muller, Susan Noffke, Janice Sherbert, and Sharon Tettegah (all College of Education coursework instructors); Karen Gschwend and Yvette Long (my student teaching advisors); and Mats Selen, my Physics Made Easy or Elementary Education instructor and Daniel Kim, my East Asian Languages and Cultures instructor who made us watch Shall We Dansu?, which is a far superior film to Richard Gere’s Shall We Dance?

Finally, I need to thank all of the teachers (and our principal!) I work with at my school! They have mentored me as I have navigated my first two years of full-time teaching, have taught me and allowed me to teach them, and have become my friends and my peers.

Thank you, teachers, past and present, for all you have done. I love each and every one of you and can never thank you enough for your patience, guidance, and teaching!

Extended Learning

For the past nine weeks, I have had a small group of seven students stay after school on Wednesday and Thursday afternoon for 90 minutes for extended learning. This was a program that was provided through a grant that my school district received. Students were selected based on the criteria of those who would most strongly benefit from a small group setting. The goal was not to target students who were in an “academic warning” status nor those who are exceeding grade level expectations. Rather, we wanted to invite students who are right in the middle.

Of course, everyone in the class would benefit from a small group setting. If I could have my ideal arrangement, I would have my class divided into four groups and each group would stay after school one day a week, Monday through Thursday, for some guided instruction without any other distractions. It would be wonderful to get a grant that would allow such a program, but money is limited, so I don’t even know if we will be able to do this again next year.

Over the fifteen sessions we had, we have worked on math skills and literacy. For math, I focused on multidigit arithmetic and fractions. For literacy, we worked on reading and writing. The reading selection for the group was Bunnicula, a book I had never read before but had heard many great things about from many different people. The students also wrote fictional narratives and a descriptive opinion piece.

Today was the last day for my group to meet. I feel like we have had a very successful run of this special program. I think that my group of seven came together and have become a support system for one another, both during and after school. We have also been able to experiment with ideas that I have later implemented with my entire class, such as using twelve-sided dice to generate problems involving the multiplication of a fraction by a single-digit whole number.

I asked my group what they thought about the extended learning group. Here is what they said:

• It was not bad, but some days were kind of rocky and horrible. Overall, it was fun and exciting.
• I think we should do it next year!
• I like extended learning; I love it, actually! I want to do it next year!
• It was kind of fun, but sometimes a little too easy for me.
• It was good and we learned a lot and I want to do it next year. It was cool and fun.
• It was cool and I really liked it because I get to see what the school is like when most of the kids go home.
• It was pretty much good. I want to do it next year!

I think that their thoughts speak for themselves!

Motivation

As we get closer and closer to the last day of school, I am finding that it is not always easy to motivate my students to keep working hard every single day. Most of them want to get work done, but when it is 80 degrees out, it is really hard to focus. I’ve found this is true even in the morning when it is still cool outside. I have to be honest: I’d rather be outside, too, but there are more important things to do.

My students have been working on mastering the fundamental concepts associated with fractions for the past few weeks. One of these concepts involves adding and subtracting fractions with like denominators. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we have been repeating this mantra nearly every day:

When adding or subtracting fractions with like denominators, the denominator DOES NOT CHANGE!

I was talking to a retired teacher today who frequently subs in our building and I mentioned that I still had several students who were adding or subtracting the denominators, despite our oft-repeated mantra. She suggested an interesting way for motivating students to solve the problems the right way: give them a test ad tell them that if they change the denominators, they will get a homework sheet full of practice problems and then take another test the next. If necessary, repeat this process every day until the very last day of school. (This is, incidentally, a strategy that one of the first grade teachers has started using with her students.)

I had already planned on testing the students on this critical skill today, so before they started, I wrote the mantra on the board and then told them my plan. I then passed out the assessment and watched as the students got started!

It worked! Everyone followed the rule of adding or subtracting the numerators and leaving the denominators as they are. I was very pleased and now I am more hopeful that we will be able to wrap up fractions this week and get started with decimals next week!

Students as Teachers

My class is used to having student teachers in our classroom: college students from either the University of Illinois or Eastern Illinois University who are working through the teacher certification process. We have had an interesting mix of student teachers this year, but today my class got to experience something completely different: students as teachers.

The Title I teacher who works with my students for reading also pulls a small group a few times each week for math enrichment. They have been working on a variety of activities with her, all meant to supplement what we are doing in the classroom. She has also enlisted the help of the Teacher Collaborator from the Center for Education in Small Urban Communities who has worked with my class several times this year. Most recently, he had the students explore line graphs that represent movement and showed them some neat computer software that will generate the graphs using motion sensors. They decided it would be a lot of fun to share this with the entire fourth grade. So after a few weeks of planning and preparing, the students in the math enrichment group were ready to take on the role of teacher for about an hour.

They did a fantastic job! Everyone in the class was engaged and participating. They were having meaningful discussions about how to represent data on a graph and what would the movement look like that accompanies a certain graph. They discussed the idea of speed being represented as a distance over time, which means that it is impossible to attain any speed without also have duration.

 

 

 

It was a wonderful activity and we’ve already begun making plans for how we can expand this next year: teach the unit to the entire class and have them make graphs on the first day and then compare them to the graphs they make on the last day; integrate the concepts into the Next Generation Science Standards on waves and how waves can be used to represent motion and energy; using the graphs to make line plots of data with fractional increments. There is a lot we can do and I am excited to continue the collaboration next year!

Modeling the Water Cycle

One of the standards for fourth graders this year is to understand global weather systems and the water cycle. This is one of my favourite subjects to teach all year because it is just so interesting and exciting! We will be reading books and watching videos, but we are also going to be conducting actual experiments, which is something that we don’t get to do as much of when learning about our other standards. Most of the other science standards are taught through research and inquiry.

Last year, I had my students conduct an experiment to model the water cycle by placing a clear plastic cup with some dyed water inside a sealed plastic bag and hanging them from the windows. As the sun hit the window and the light was converted into heat energy, the water in the cups began to evaporate and then condense on the side of the bag before precipitating to the bottom. The students were to predict what would happen to the dyed water and record their predictions in their science notebooks. Then we made observations to see what was happening so that we could explain the water cycle better.

I have decided to have my students conduct this experiment again this year. Instead of using gallon-sized bags, though, we are using quart-sized bags. And instead of filling the cups half-way, I used my graduated cylinder to measure out 25 mL. We put the arrays together this morning and now they are all hanging from the windows in the classroom. So far, none of them have fallen off, so I am keeping my fingers crossed that the tape will hold this time! (We had a problem with the bags falling down frequently last year.)

 

 

 

 

Half-Day

We don’t have very many half-days of school these days. When I was younger, it seemed like it happened on a regular basis. As a district, we have monthly staff inservice meetings that go all day for the elementary grades, but the middle school has half-days. But at the grade schools? We just don’t do them that often.

Today, though, was a half-day. The students arrived at 8:10, classes started at 8:15, and then they were dismissed at 12:45, which was an hour after lunch for the primary grades and fifteen minutes after lunch for the intermediate grades. Despite having a much shorter day, we had a very busy day!

We started the day reviewing our week’s spelling/vocabulary words (all with suffixes -ful, -ness, and/or -less. Then we had our weekly spelling test. As soon as the spelling test was done, it was time for our monthly Coyote College assembly. The “Duct Tape Divas” shared a video about the upcoming students-vs-teachers kickball game at the end of the month, and the second grade classes did a fantastic dance that they learned with our music/dance/drama teacher.

Following the assembly, the students took a math test on equivalent fractions and comparing fractions. We have been working on these skills for a couple of weeks now, and I am glad that the class as a whole is making progress. After the test, we watched a science video about weather and climate, and then I read a few sections of Wonder until lunch. Unfortunately, we had to leave off at one of the saddest parts of the entire story, which is when the Pullmans’ dog, Daisy, dies.I felt really bad stopping at that point, but it was time for lunch.

The day ended with the students gathering their mail, cleaning up the room, and getting their things. At least, the day ended for the students. I, along with the other staff in the building, had an afternoon of inservice training on the Charlotte Danielson Framework for Teaching. I’ve been learning about the Danielson Framework for about a year now, but it was nice to sit down with my colleagues and discuss the domains and share ideas about what they look like in practice.

It was a wonderful day with quite a bit of work done by both students and teachers! Have a wonderful weekend!