Today was a sad day in my classroom. Without going into many details, we learned that a member of our classroom recently suffered the loss of a parent. It came as a complete surprise to everyone. I am very grateful for the support of the principal, social worker, outreach specialist, and school psychologist, who were all on-hand to talk with students who were coping with grief. We also learned that another student had recently lost a close family member, so the grief was compounded.
Despite this tragic loss, I had the responsibility to continue to teach today. I told my class how important it was that we acknowledge the sadness, but that we needed to come together as a classroom family and support each other as we worked through the remainder of the day. The students did a great job of doing just that.
In the afternoon, our social worker came in and helped the students create sympathy cards for their classmate. The cards were very touching, very sweet, and far more sincere than what I would expect to see from an adult. I think that we, as adults, have been socialised to treat so many topics as taboo that we are unable to fully express how we feel to others. My students, on the other hand, have not yet learned to put up these walls, and they were able to express sympathy to a classmate in a very real, honest way.
As we continue to move forward, we will grow closer together as we help support one another during this difficult time. I hope that all of us, and especially our classmate, will remember the good things.
Shortly after the school year began, I made a decision to divide my class into two groups for math. Both groups are working on the standards for fourth grade math, but one uses the traditional Houghton-Mifflin Math series, while the other is using Houghton-Mifflin Math Expressions. The two groups worked mostly independently of each other through the first semester and most of the second, but I essentially merged them together near the end of the second, when we started focusing on multiplication.
Now that we are done with our major focus on multiplication, we have begun our work on division of whole numbers. At the end of last week, I decided to reboot the math groups, and have come up with a new strategy for how I would work with them. I began this strategy today, and I am glad to report that it seemed to have worked pretty well.
For about an hour or so before lunch, I had one group work with a tutor in the library while the other group worked with me in direct instruction. After lunch, the groups switched places, except that I didn’t have a tutor to work with one of the groups. Still, I was able to work with both groups in direct instruction and allow them to work independently at opposite times.
My goal will be to follow this pattern each day (except Friday, when we use the time after lunch for Read, Write, Think. Friday’s will be a spiral review day, which is an idea I got from my very awesome Title I partner. I am excited to see how math instruction improves as a result of this grouping and scheduling. There may be times that I vary what the groups are doing, or which students are working with me or a tutor, but the goal will be the same: ensure that every student has an opportunity for small-group instructional time and independent practice each day.
After a busy morning of researching the weather using a variety of books in our classroom, I decided to use my clothespins that have students’ names on them to randomly select students who wish to use the computers in the classroom during Read, Write, Think! this afternoon. This seemed to work rather well, as I am hoping to get a wider variety of content from students who wish to update this blog. The following is a joint-effort by two students in my class:
Today was Friday and we are in Read, Write, Think. Earlier in the morning Mr.Valencic told us that we are going to do another project, this time independent. This project will be about the thirteen colonies. Each student got to pick a colony to research.
On another note, today was mix and match day. Mr. Valencic claimed to have mix and matched something, but not many of us know what. Mix Match is about mixing the way you wear your clothes. Today I forgot it was mix match and I didn’t wear mixed clothes.
Here are some examples of what was mix matched: socks, shoes. hair, jewelry, and clashing designs for the shirt and pants. We also had a few kids wearing clothes backwards.
Today was the first sun in a long time.
For those students who may be reading and are wondering, I was wearing a brown belt with my black shoes today. That was my mix-match. The colony research project will be the first time the students have done a completely independent project in my class. We created a list of questions to be answered, which I will use for the students’ rubric. I am excited to see what kind of reports we will see!
By the by, for any parents interested in viewing students’ storybirds, please send me an email and I’ll set you up on our class account!
There’s this story of Greek legend about a dude named Narcissus who spent all of his time staring at mirrors to see his reflection. Or something like that. Today I realised that there is a certain level of narcissism inherent in my job. This is especially true on teachers’ birthdays.
I actually had a very good birthday. My students were able to watch some videos about early American settlers in the morning as part of their fun day to celebrate filling the large vase of pebbles. (Sadly, though, some students did not think that this should count; their idea of a fun day is coming to school and doing nothing of value. They have apparently not yet internalised our classroom expectation of having fun with a purpose.) We also spent the bulk of the afternoon playing Around the World with my Fourth Grade edition of BrainQuest. The fun had by all was definitely purposeful.
Some highlights of my day included: the giant tin of cookies in the teachers’ lounge that I left there for all to enjoy; the second grade class that, entirely on their own, decided to make birthday cards for me and deliver them while my class was in P.E.; and having students and teachers wish me a happy birthday as I walked the halls of my building.
Of course, the most narcissist aspect of the day came at the very end. I started with a quick review of the meaning of the parts of a multiplication problem, having the class hark back to the lesson using cheeseballs. We talked about the number of items in a group, the number of groups, and the number of items in all. I asked the students to figure out how many cheeseballs I would have in all if I had 12 cheeseballs in a cup and 23 cups. The answer was 276. I then reversed the problem: If I have 276 cheeseballs and 23 cups, how many cheeseballs will be in a cup? I then passed out the cups (we had some students who were absent today) and the class sang Happy Birthday to me. Definitely narcissistic, although I didn’t ask for or require it. I also got a few birthday presents: several books, a bag of mixed chocolate candy bars (fun size), some truffles and other exotic candies, and the gift I told I wanted from each student: a commitment to work hard and do their personal best every day for the rest of the year and the rest of their lives. (One student actually made something for me with that written on it; there is a strong likelihood that this will be laminated and permanently saved on my desk.)
Since my birthday happens to coincide with Australia Day, something that makes me very happy, I am going to leave you with this most excellent of videos:
Yesterday I wrote about how I introduced my class to Storybird. I was surprised at the positive response, but I didn’t even begin to think the students would be as excited about it as they have been.
After writing my post last night, I started reading the storybirds that my students had been writing. I noticed that several students had written more stories throughout the evening and others were reading and commenting on them. It was really fun to see them participating in a literacy project outside of school, especially when I realised that some of them were students who are reluctant to participate in class.
When the boys and girls arrived this morning, several asked if they would have the opportunity to go into the computer lab to write more storybirds. I checked the schedule and found an opening. They were very excited to write more. I had to attend a meeting during that time, so I had a substitute teacher come and supervise them as they worked. I told each student that I expected them to write at least one story and comment on at least one classmate’s story. When I came in forty-five minutes later, I witnessed something I have never seen before: every member of my class was sitting at a computer, quietly writing.
To add to my elation, several students talked about writing more at home or going to the library to write. I have shared this with some of my colleagues and they have expressed a great deal of interest in using this in their rooms. I am definitely going to put this in the category of “Stuff That Works!”
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend one of my monthly Literacy Across Content Areas inquiry group meetings. For those who have been playing along, you may remember me talking about this group back in November, December, and earlier this month (like I said, we meet once a month). At these meetings, I am able to share ideas with other teachers about how we are using literacy instruction in the classroom, and specifically ways we tie literacy into different content areas (math, social studies, and science, particularly). The folks from the Center for Education in Small Urban Communities (unfortunately abbreviated CESUC, which is why they usually just call it “The Center“) also share ideas with us.
One of the ideas shared at these most recent meeting was the use of Storybird.com to get students to write. The idea is quite innovative: teachers set up class accounts, and then set up individual accounts for each student. The students are able to browse through a vast collection of artwork that has been submitted by artists from all over. Using these images, they create their own stories. They can then publish the stories online to share with the rest of their class members (and teacher). Those within the class account can read the stories, comment on them, and “heart” the ones they like the most.
As has happened in the past, I didn’t actually present a lesson on how to use this site. Instead, I got my students logged on and they immediately began browsing, learning, and then writing without me telling them to do so! That alone is pretty awesome. I had hoped that each student would be able to complete at least one “storybird” by the end of our time in the computer lab but, alas, that did not happen. However, we did get ten stories by eight students written. I would share them here but you have to have an account with our class in order to do so. I will be inviting parents to join our class so that they can see what their children are writing, though!
One of my favourite comments from a student, upon learning what he could do on Storybird, was this one: “Hey, Mr. Valencic! This is like Facebook for kids!”
Yeah, I guess it is. They can create content and share it, but only with their friends. And it is totally safe, secure, and there is no personal information about any student anywhere. However, students can choose to make a storybird public if they so wish, and they can also have the stories downloaded to an eBook reader or printed (both for a cost, though). Another great aspect of this is that students can access Storybird from home or anywhere else with a computer and access to the Internet. (I just discovered that some have been doing this already!)
I hope to really connect the writing across content areas by having the students come up with specific stories, such as math problem stories, historical fiction, and personal narratives. And I think that some of my more reluctant writers will be more excited to write using the computers and the artwork that has been made available. I do wish the site had a spell check built into it, but we can work around that by having students switch seats and edit each others’ work, just like they would in the classroom! All in all, I think this is going to be a great addition to our classroom tools for writing, sharing, and celebrating!
For one, we had two birthdays to celebrate: one for a girl whose birthday was today and the other for a boy whose birthday was roughly six months ago. (Because he has a summer birthday, his parents have him celebrate his half-birthday at school.) This week is going to be fairly full of birthday celebrations, as it turns out. In addition to today, we have birthdays on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Since the current tradition for classroom birthday celebrations is to bring in cupcakes or donuts, my students are going to be ingesting considerably more sugar than perhaps their parents would hope.
The other major reason for celebration was that the class finally filled our small vase with glass pebbles for the second time. The students earn pebbles for meeting class expectations throughout the morning, throughout the afternoon, for completing restroom breaks in under three minutes, and for receiving compliments from other teachers. We actually have two vases in the classroom. The small vase gets pebbles added to it each day for the above-mentioned reasons.
When that vase is full, the students earn a bonus Read, Write, Think! in the afternoon. After the small vase is full, we pour all of the pebbles into our second, larger vase. I measured out the glass pebbles specifically so that the small vase will be filled twice in order to fill the large one. So now that the large vase has been completely filled, we will have another, larger, celebration in the classroom. I have a few ideas about what this celebration will look like, but I haven’t locked on to any specific idea yet. I will make a decision tomorrow and act on it quickly (before the end of the week, for sure).
It was kind of crazy this afternoon, with donuts, Read, Write, Think!, and then cupcakes before recess. However, the students did fairly well today and I am looking forward to starting over with our glass pebbles!
I guess it really is true what they say: absence makes the heart grow fonder.
At least, that is my only explanation for why my class was so wonderful today. It would seem that the past two days were fairly difficult days, although I didn’t have much information from my sub to verify this. Most of the details I got came from fellow teachers before the day started.
I wanted my class to know how important it is to start each day fresh. So I began the day by telling my class that today was a wonderful, fabulous, phenomenal day. I then asked why they thought I was saying that. Some suggested that it was because today was Friday, so it was the end of the week. Others said it was because it was my birthday. (I explained that my birthday is actually next week.) After a few more guesses, I explained that the reason I was so excited about today was because today was not Wednesday or Thursday. Even though I had an amazing two days at the PBIS Conference, I knew that there had been some rough spots while I was away, but I didn’t want to worry about that. I wanted to worry about today.
I think the class understood what I was saying. They all seemed relieved to see me in the halls again even before the day started. Then they were relieved to see me start the day the way we usually do. I was impressed with how well they entered the classroom and got started to work right away on their independent assignments.
As the day went on, I could see that the boys and girls were anxious to show that they could do what was expected. It wasn’t a perfect day, but it was a good day. My class worked hard, accomplished much, and showed that they were glad to have me back.
And, you know, I was glad to be back, too. I’m looking forward to looking through all of their work over the weekend and then getting back to work on Monday with a full week ahead of us to implement more of the strategies I learned at the conference.
Today was Day Two of the Illinois PBIS 2012 Winter Conference. I spent two days receiving training on how to better implement the best-practices rooted in the philosophical construct of Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports. It was really awesome learning, networking, and training.
There was a great deal of information shared over the two days. So much information, in fact, that I feel like it will take me several days to even begin to synthesise it all and begin to start using these ideas in my classroom. However, there are some ideas that I will start using right away.
Coming out of the conference, I find that I am in agreement with Susan Barrett, who gave the keynote address this morning on the PBIS Blueprint: it is great to gather with hundreds of fellow professionals who are passionate about what we do. The term she used to describe this excitement was “geeking out” and I agree! She also shared this video clip as an example:
(For the record, I don’t care for the title of the clip.)
I’ll do a weekend post to really debrief on the PBIS Conference. For now, I am going to spend time with my wife, who I haven’t seen in two days.
My students are working with a substitute teacher today and tomorrow as I attend the 2012 Illinois PBIS Winter Leadership Conference in O’Fallon, Illinois. I’ll be writing up a post tomorrow to share what I have been doing and why I have been doing it.
Today, though, I want to add my voice to the millions who are protesting two bills before Congress that can potentially cripple the Internet as we know and allow for gross violations of free speech in the form of censorship. The bills are known as PIPA and SOPA and both purport to put an end to online privacy.
Except that neither will.
Much has already been written about these laws. A vast array of websites, notably webcomics, blogs, Wikipedia, Reddit, and StumbleUpon, have all blacked out their sites in protest. Because I am short on time, I am going to refer you to three sites for more information:
As an educator, a blogger, and a former business owner, I understand the need for copyright protection, as well as the fight to stop copyright violations. But I also recognise the need for the freedom to freely exchange ideas and share content via the Internet. In an effort to do the former, Congress is set to stop the latter instead. Please, take the time to call or email your representatives or, at the very least, sign the petition on Google’s site.
After nearly a week of making my students work independently, I decided it was time to bring back partner work.
I started by talking to my students about my weekend with Operation Snowball, actually. You see, a big part of Snowball is learning to work in small groups and understanding how a group works effectively. I then asked the students to think about what traits they think would make for a great group. Some of the ideas they gave were working together, focusing on the tasks, working hard, having discussions, cooperating, and using quiet voices. (There were other ideas, but those were the main ones.)
After making a list of what partner work looks like, I led the class in a lesson on multiplication and then let them work with partners.
I would love to say that it was an astounding success and that every partnership was doing exactly what it was supposed to do the entire time.
But, as anyone who teaches surely knows, nothing happens the exactly right way the first time. It takes time and, more importantly, it takes practice. Lots and lots and lots of practice.
That being said, the class actually did a rather good working together. When we reviewed our expectations at the end of the day, they were able to give themselves five points for each expectation, earning all of their pebbles for the afternoon for the first time in a long while. (My students tend to be very critical of themselves, but I allow them to determine how they do on meeting expectations, which means sometimes they rate themselves lower than I would rate them!) So, even though they did well, they also identified areas of improvement, so we will continue to work on perfecting partner work.
Of course, I am going to be gone for the next two days attending the PBIS Winter Conference in O’Fallon, Illinois. So we’ll pick up briefly on Friday and then really focus on this skill set starting Monday.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was not the only Civil Rights Movement leader in the world, or even in the United States. He wasn’t the first. He wasn’t the last. Yet his life, cut down by a man who feared what he could not understand–that freedom is only possible when all are free, not just some–has become a symbol for many of what the Civil Rights Movement was about. There is much to be debated about how freedom looks, what role the government plays in ensuring freedom, and the role of private citizens. But one thing is sure: I cannot be free when my fellow beings are not.
I may not have the power to change the world, but I can make changes within my sphere of influence. And as those changes take place, others will seek to make similar changes and the sphere of influence will grow and grow and grow, like a ball of snow rolling down a hill. I don’t think it is just a coincidence that my high school’s Operation Snowball weekend falls on the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend. What better symbol of what Operation Snowball is all about than the Civil Rights Movement, which truly created a community of caring throughout the nation?
So on this day that we honour the work of Dr. King, may we also strive to keep that work alive.
Today was my school’s Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration. MLK Day is on Monday, but tomorrow is a teacher institute day, and there is no school on the actual holiday, so it was decided to have our celebration this afternoon. Students throughout the building have been working for months on music, art, and the spoken word in preparation for it. All of their hard work came together in one 55-minute celebration of the Civil Rights movement, jazz, spirituals, freedom, liberty, and justice.
This was my first MLK celebration, but it was amazing! It was so much fun watching the students get up to sing in front of the whole school as their accompanying artwork was projected on a screen. Members of the community were invited to attend, including parents and the news media. I haven’t been able to learn if the students’ presentations have made it onto any local news sites, but I would be delighted if they do!
In addition to the fabulous preparation done by our music and art teachers, I spent a considerable amount of time today discussing the life of Dr. King with the students and sharing some biographical information. I have a copy of I Have a Dream, which is the text of his famous speech given on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, illustrated by 15 winners of the Coretta Scott King Award, that I read aloud to the class. As I read, we discussed what the words meant, and what we could learn from it.
One student posed a very interesting question: What would it be like if we still had slavery today? Here are some of the responses from the students (paraphrased, not verbatim):
I would become a judge and put the people who have slaves in jail! And if the jury doesn’t convict them, I’d fire the jury! (I explained the role of a judge and the idea that if slavery was legal, you couldn’t arrest people for it, so the student who said this then said she’d fight against slavery anyway.)
Many of us wouldn’t even have slaves because we don’t have big farms.
No one in our class would know each other because many are of African or mixed-race heritage.
I thought that was pretty cool for the kids to be up in arms about it. When I told them that slavery still exists in the world, they were appalled, and wanted to know why Dr. King didn’t fight to end slavery everywhere. I suggested that he wanted freedom and justice for all in his own nation first. I think some of them understood that. We also talked about how there is still inequality in our nation, but it is much better than it was in 1963. We wrapped up the discussion by sharing our own dreams for the future. I asked each student what his or her dream was, and how that dream could make the world a better place.
One boy said he wanted to be a rapper, but he didn’t know how he could use that for good. I told him about my friends Javier Sanhez, Shaun Derik, and Speak Williams, who all work for R.E.A.C.H. Communications to spread messages of hope and encouragement using a variety of musical and spoken forms, including rap and hip-hop. Another boy said he wants to be a football player, but he didn’t know how he could make a difference by doing that. I asked him, “Well, do you want to be the kind of football player that people look up to, or do you want to be the kind who goes crazy and crashes his car into someone’s house?” He immediately responded, “Oh, I want to be the good kind!” A girl in the class wants to be a sign language teacher to help parents learn to communicate with their deaf children. And several students said they didn’t know yet, which I assured them was totally okay.
It was a great end to our week! I’m looking forward to the long weekend, most of which will be spent in Washington, Illinois, as I attend my high school’s 35th annual Operation Snowball weekend!
Several months ago, my students began their research projects on the European explorers. The projects took much longer than expected, but I finally managed to get everything wrapped up so that we could move on to a new science unit.
In the midst of the explorers project, though, we did a side project involving the Southern Ocean and writing professional letters to two scientists, one at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the other at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. I was pleased to receive a package from one of these scientists, Dr. John M. Toole, Department Chair of Physical Oceanography at WHOI. Not only did he write to the class as a whole to answer their query, he also wrote individual, personalised notes to each student who had written to him.
From European exploration to oceanography, we are now moving on to meteorology. The awesome thing is that the subjects transition wonderfully together, since the letter from Dr. Toole mentioned the impact of his research on climate research, and studying the climate is directly related to studying the weather.
I was able to share this research project with my Literacy Across Content Areas inquiry group this afternoon. They thought the project was very cool, especially the fact that Dr. Toole actually wrote to each of the students. It was also agreed that we could all use this project in other scientific inquiries. I may use local researchers, such as those at the University of Illinois, the next time we have an inquiry project, which would then allow us the opportunity to bring a special guest into the class, as well!
Way back when, during my university training, I remember a professor sharing a book with us. I don’t remember if this professor was a content-area instructor for math or literacy, but I remember the book. It had to do with how integral mathematics are to our day-to-day lives. The book illustrated this (quite literally, since it was a picture book) by showing what various everyday items, such as newspapers, houses, and street signs, would look like without any numbers. Unfortunately, I cannot for the life of me remember the name of this book! What I do remember is being struck with how true it is that math is a part of everything we do.
Now, sure, most of us don’t solve differential equations in our heads or figure out logarithms while shopping, but math is all around us. When we drive our cars and we notice our fuel gauges, tachometers, and speedometers, we are using math. And when we adjust our speed, we are actually performing some really impressive mathematics without even realising it! For our day-to-day purposes, we can probably get by with knowing basic arithmetic. So why do we have to learn so much complex math? After all, nearly every college graduate has to take a quantitative reasoning course, and that is almost always met by taking calculus.
The answer, at least the answer I give, is simple: it isn’t about the numbers; it is about the process. Just as with everything else we do in school, the end result is only part of the equation. The most important part is the process; how we learn, how we think, and understanding both how we learn as we think and how we think as we learn. The big fancy word for this, which I tell my fourth graders on a regular basis, even though most of them, if not all of them, are unable to fully process what it means, is metacognition. (On a completely unrelated note, I would hate to try to diagram that sentence. Way too many clauses!)
So even though I am sure my students think I was being really mean today by making them do math almost all morning and afternoon, there is a reason behind it: I want my students to learn how to think long, think hard, and think well. If they can do that, and if they can read literately, then they can accomplish anything they set their minds to. They may need to think of creative ways to do it, but I have no doubt that they can. And it surely beats being the guy or girl at McDonald’s who cooks the fries all day long!
Today was a day full of questions in my fourth grade classroom. We started the morning off with questions about why European explorers did what they did. I asked the class to think about what they learned about the explorers. They told me information about who, what, where, when, and how, but we hadn’t spent much time discussing why.
In discussing this, the boys and girls talked about exploring to find gold, spices, and wealth. They also listed ideas such as knowing what was “out there”, going on adventures, seeking power, spreading religion, and learning about the world around them. One student also mentioned that the explorers were xenophiles, and we discussed what that meant. I also told them that my wife had mentioned to me that the explorers were not lovers of foreign people.
This led to a discussion about the dichotomy of explorers learning and discovering new places in the world while also doing horrible, terrible things, especially robbing, murdering, and enslaving. I wanted my students to especially understand that the explorers came from a society that said that those who did not look, dress, talk, or act like them were not really “people” by their understanding, but we know better, and can learn from their mistakes.
Then we moved on to the next question: what next? What happened after the explorers did what they did? We didn’t really get into this, although we got started on the idea of colonisation (or colonization, as I kept reminding myself to spell it when teaching). Someone wanted to know what colonization meant, so I led them through a breaking-down and repiecing-together of the word, as I call it. The students identified the root word, colony, and the two suffixes, -ize and -ation. Using other words they were familiar with, they were able to come up with a definition of colonization as “the process of making a settlement.” We wrapped up the lesson with a quick exploration of other words, and then, because they asked, I showed them how, by knowing the parts, they can figure out what any word means, even really big words like antidisestablishmentarianism. Some of them thought that was really cool. Others were quite lost. But I like planting seeds of ideas that I am sure will come back to them at another time.
Other questions we explored during the day took us away from social studies and into a new science unit: meteorology (which is not, despite what it sounds like, the study of meteors, unless you are using the broader definition of a meteor as “a thing high up”). I’m excited to get started on a new science unit, since we haven’t done much work with science this year! I won’t spend every day asking as many questions as I did today, but I felt like today was a good day to learn through questions. Other days will see different methods, different strategies. But today was a good day, full of good questions.
After several days of reviewing multiplication concepts with my young charges, I administered a pre-test yesterday afternoon to see how well they would do. Some of the students did really well. Some did okay. Some didn’t do at all. This is fairly typical of any class anywhere in the world, but it gave me a decent snapshot of what I needed to review.
So this morning I decided to have some fun with the math. I didn’t even tell the students we were doing math. Instead, I asked, kind of out of the blue (which is something they are used to me doing), how many of them considered themselves good guessers. I think I had all of the hands in the class raised, except for maybe one or two. So then I said, “Okay, let’s see how good you are! I’m thinking of two numbers. Can you guess them? Okay, I’ll give you a couple of hints. The product of the two numbers is 24. The difference is 2. Who can guess the numbers?” The students thought it over for a couple of seconds, then I had a few hands raised. I waited. Then a few more hands. When I had about half the class, I called on a few students. The first student suggested 8 and 3. We checked: 8 times 3 does equal 24, but what is the difference? 5. Okay, not that. Something else, then. Someone suggested 12 and 2. We checked again. Yes on the first condition, no on the second. Finally, a student suggested 4 and 6. Check and check. “Good job! How about another one?”
We did this game for a while, with several variations. Then we did some multiplication problems. I told the students that they could use any strategy they wanted, and I picked a random problem multiplying a three-digit number by a one-digit number. One student had her numbers off, and I pointed out that she made an error by doing repeated addition rather than using her multiplication facts. This gave a great opening into why the students need to learn the basic facts and why they need to stop relying on repeated addition. I encouraged them to use one of the three strategies we worked on all week: the traditional method, the expanded notation method, or the lattice method. Then we tried a few more problems.
After everyone was revved up and in math-mode, I handed out the post-test. The students were confident, excited, and eager to do it. They used white boards instead of notebook paper to work out the problems, and they wore earmuffs so that they couldn’t hear anyone mumbling to him- or herself while solving the problems. It went really well!
In the afternoon, we reintroduced “Read, Write, Think!” to our schedule. Below is the blog entry that two students wrote:
We have had an awesome Friday, considering both that it is the end of the week and that it is a lovely outside day! Though we are having fun inside, it is hard not to look out the window. Today it is summer in winter and a lot of kids are saying that. Being the first Friday since Winter brake, we all have gotten used to school. I bet that lots of kids are exited about coming back to school! Frankly, it is hard not to be a bit bored during Winter brake. Yay!
The writing is verbatim; no editorial changes this time. the “summer in winter” phrase was in response to the 55ºF temperatures outside in January! This is totally crazy weather for East Central Illinois! I am expecting a blizzard to hit right before the ISAT tests to make up for it. But I am happy to see that at least some of my students are genuinely happy to be back at school. As they wrote, “Yay!”
As a self-contained general education classroom instructor, I am responsible for providing my students with instruction in math, literacy (reading and writing), social studies, science, physical education, health, and social/emotional learning. But I feel like I spend the vast majority of my time working on literacy and math–what used to be called the three R’s: Reading, wRiting, and aRithmetic. I try to cover all of the subjects on a regular basis, but, at the same time, I find that the basics are still just that: the basics.
Students have to have a firm foundational knowledge of the basic concepts before they can delve deeply into the vast wonder that is our universe. I don’t want students to spend so much time on the fundamentals that they miss out on the wonders, but I also don’t want them to spend so much time in the wonders that they become disconnected from the world.
It is a tough balancing act, to be sure.
This whole week has been a return to basics kind of week. We’ve focused almost exclusively on literacy and math, while the students have also been working on completing their European explorers project. I am fairly certain that we have to finish tomorrow, or at least conclude what we have done, and then just move on. We’ve spent far more time on this than I initially wanted to, and now that we are in a new semester, it is time to wrap it up and move on. Maybe when those few who are not done with their contributions realise that everyone else has finished, they will have the motivation to get their parts done. Otherwise we are just going to have a few holes in our alphabet book.
We spent a lot of time today working on math, especially multiplication of whole numbers by a single-digit number. Next week we begin multi-digit multiplication. My hope is that we can get through multiplication and dive straight into division, but we’ll see how it goes. We still need to cover fractions, geometry, and probability, and the days are quickly rushing by! But we also need to dive into science and social studies. Many of this topics will be integrated into literacy units, but I want to make sure my students have plenty of time to explore, experiment, and experience what we are going to be learning.
I know that it will all come together somehow; it always does. It reminds me of something my parents once told me when they were planning Cub Scout Pack Meetings: If you over-plan and have those present actively participating for the entire time, none of them will know what you didn’t accomplish; they’ll only know what you did!
Several months ago, I don’t remember when, it was mentioned in some meeting or another that the reading curriculum we use in our building, Houghton-Mifflin Reading, has companion CDs for each of the stories in the basal reader. It was further noted that, despite what one would intuitively think, the stories in the basal are not meant to be read independently by the average fourth grade student. That is, the stories are at an instructional, not independent level.
I, being a n00b, was not made aware of this fact, and so I spent most of the first half of the year reading with the students or having them read independently or in small groups, and then having them complete the assignment that correspond to the text. Some students, particularly those who read independently above grade level, had no problem with this arrangement (no surprises there). Others were able to get through it with help, but there were several who really didn’t fully get it. We worked through most of the assignments together, though, so I didn’t quite catch how difficult the reading was when the students were left to their own.
Shortly after learning about this quirk of the basal readers, we moved away from using them to concentrate on literature circles using level-appropriate chapter books. I wanted to get the class used to working in literature circles before merging the basal with the circles. I finally broke out the basal readers again today and decided to use the companion CDs for the first time. Each CD has several of the stories on them as individual audio tracks. The idea is for the students to read along with the professional reader. At first, several students were off-task and not paying attention, so I stopped the CD, redirected the entire class, and then started again.
It was nearly miraculous what happened! I had 26 fourth grade students reading along with a story. No one was talking to a neighbour, drawing pictures, playing with puzzles, or doing anything else that they were not supposed to be doing. They were focused, listening, reading, and staying on task for the entire 22 minutes it took. Then we were able to work through one of the assignments that goes with the story. Now that I have had one success with this, I plan on using this resource more often. Later on this week, the students will listen to the story again, this time listening for specific details to use as they summarise the beginning, middle, and end of the story. They will also be able to re-read the story on their own while working independently, now that they are familiar with the text.
This has also made me wonder if I can get my hands on a CD player and a headphone splitter so that I can hook up multiple sets of headphones and have my literature circle groups can listen to recordings of their books. It would be a fun use of technology and I think it would definitely help my students keep on task and become even more engaged with the text. I have no idea if anyone has done this, although I would imagine that they have. I suppose I can Google it. Or I’ll just ask a colleague tomorrow. Or both.
There are some days that I stare at my teacher plan book and find myself wondering, “What on earth should I be teaching tomorrow?” I typically plan out my classroom schedule a week at a time. I know some teachers who have their schedules planned two or even three weeks in advance, and others who have whole quarters or semesters planned. I admit, I am not one of those teachers. I find myself rearranging my plans even from one day to the next; my weekly schedule is more of a guideline to keep track of general goals.
The week before the end of the semester and the week at the beginning of the semester are both so full of transitions, though, that it is hard to really plan much. At least, it is for me. I spend a lot of the time building community in the classroom, establishing routines, and carrying out the business of making sure that the important things are getting done. So this week, just two days into it, is one of those weeks where I am definitely trying to figure out what I want to teach next. What do my students remember from before the break? What have they forgotten? What routines do we need to reinforce? What routines need to be started? How should I change the schedule? All of these questions are going through my mind as I contemplate where we’ve been, where we’re going, and how we are going to get there.
I am trying to establish some more regular routines with my class schedule. I would like to get to the point where my students can, with a large degree of certainly, look at the clock and realise that, since we have finished a particular lesson or activity, we will most likely begin working on math, or literacy, or science, or social studies, or whatever. At the same time, I know that my teaching needs to be flexible enough to change as the currents lead us, and my students need to be flexible enough to not have a complete meltdown when the currents change our course.
One of the things that helps me maintain my sanity and sense of control of my life is the leadership training I have both received and provided through my work with Operation Snowball, Inc. and the Illinois Teen Institute. We teach young people about the markers of a successful team, and we teach them about the stages of group development. One of the phrases we use to teach this is “storming, forming, norming, performing, adjourning.” Storming is when the group first gets together and is rather chaotic. Forming is when they begin to establish guidelines. Norming is when they are following their self-established guidelines and are beginning to act as a cohesive unit. Performing is when they, as individuals and as a group, are truly achieving success. Adjourning is when the group is ready to separate and move on. The goal is for a group to get to the level of performing before eventually adjourning, but the reality is that groups move all around through the stages, and that is perfectly normal.
There are days when my class is storming. There are days when they are performing. We keep returning to the forming and norming stages, and, since we just got back from a break, we are going through the storming stage, as well. I have no doubt that we will reach our goals, but I often wonder if my goals are the same as my students’ goals. I think this is going to be a mini focus-unit where we can discuss goals, set goals, and then help one another reach those goals. This will require us to rearrange the schedule some more, I am sure, but it will also help us rearrange things in such a way that we are ready to move forward and learn together. We’ve done it before, and I am confident that we will do it again!
Today was our first day back after the two-week winter break. However, I only had 18 of my 27 students in class today. I had received emails from a couple of parents letting me know that their kids would not be back for various reasons, and the others, apparently, forgot to call or forgot that school was starting up again. I will note here that I checked the school calendar about 20 times over the break to make sure that I was, in fact, supposed to be back today. I also had a few colleagues note that they had forgotten about the return to work until they caught numerous posts on Facebook about it. So I am not at all surprised that several students and their parents forgot, too.
Because I was missing a third of the class, though, I had to adjust the plans for the day, since anything new taught today would have to be taught again tomorrow. We started the day with a showcase of several of the items I had received for Christmas for use in the room, including a wooden block puzzle, three versions of the ever-popular BrainQuest series, and a book of brainteasers. I also showed them the nutcracker my dad gave me that looks a lot like me, and a few other items I got that are not-for-students.
After having the students read silently for 30 minutes, they worked on a writing project that involved writing about what they did over the break and then finding pictures from the various Concierge magazines that my wife (through the company she works for) donated to illustrate the quite essays with collages. The students had a lot of fun doing this, and it got them back in the mode of writing and thinking and doing all of those things that are oh-so-very-important to being in school.
I didn’t want to cover any new material in math with so many students missing, but I did take time to do some reviewing. I started by sharing the incredibly difficult math problem that I got from a friend of mine. It is a theoretical physics problem that has an answer, but nobody knows what it is. (At least, this was true five years ago when he first shared it with me. I don’t know if it this is still the case, but I assume it is. I should probably check with him and verify this.) It is, of course, mathematics that is far beyond what any of my fourth graders are capable of, but that was kind of the point. I want them to think about what they may be able to do in the future if they master what they are doing now. This is a regular theme in my classroom, and I wrapped it up by explaining that the person who solves this problem will probably win a Nobel Prize, and I would be delighted to know that, someday in the future, one of my students was the recipient! Then we did some basic multiplication review before breaking for lunch.
The afternoon was spent on projects, including the morning’s project, the European explorers project that we really need to wrap up, and the letters to pen pals that, for some reason, several of my students had not finished. The students kept busy, had fun, and then they were off to art before we wrapped up our day. We will finish the explorers project tomorrow, and then we will finally be ready to publish our book! So, after two weeks of vacation, it is right back into the swing of things! I haven’t started a countdown to the ISAT yet, but it is definitely there at the back of my mind. But before that is the countdown to my 29th birthday–just 24 more days!
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