Wrapping Up The School Year {2013 - 2014}

We all know how insane and busy it gets the last 1-2 weeks, sometimes 3, of the school year. This one was no exception...in fact, to me, it felt like the last month was all about trying to corral my students and keep them entertained. Thank goodness we get the time off to always revamp ourselves!

Our district actually had benchmark testing the 2nd to the last week of school, so we had to make sure we still fit in some skills.  Of course, this meant, I had to come up with ways to not only teach my students but keep them completely and utterly busy in a higher-level thinking way.  At this time of year, it felt like quite the feat for me!

I pulled out my Plot Elements Choice Menu, which I did not get to use at the beginning of the year like I usually do.  But since they were being tested on plot elements, I KNEW this would be the perfect way to give them time to review, push themselves, and stay busy as well.  We did a museum walk around the room so students could view and read everyone's products they created.

{Sold on TPT | $6}

Maps showing change in setting and Award/Achievement Certificates showing theme

You can see part of an interview/broadcast script students wrote to demonstrate parts of the plot using the point of view of the story characters.

I was super happy to introduce a new product, an interview/broadcast script, I added to the menu when I created the version for TPT...and...my students who chose it did a really great job actually!  I was afraid it would be too difficult for them or they would not be interested, but quite a few kids chose it and kicked tail on it.  Thankfully, one set of partners accepted the extra challenge of recording it as a radio interview (ignore the video and just enjoy the audio).  

 Several students made movies-in-a-box to show changes in settings

Once the benchmark testing was over and done with, it was time to "celebrate" and do activities that would still challenge them but yet keep them busy enough so they weren't getting into trouble.  One of my favorite things to do (for the past couple years) is the All About Me Choice Menu.  I found it on Teachers Pay Teachers HERE a couple years back and have since slightly revamped it to fit my teaching style in my classroom.  

This group spent their entire time during the museum walk playing another students' board game.  They were crazy into it.  Even as they argued their way through the trivia cards, they all learned a lot of new information about their classmate.  Score! 

They got to make menus of their favorite foods and shields.

Included were also Me Bags and candy bars that matched their personality

And last but not least, was the awesomely action-packed End-Of-Year Math Project from the talented TPT seller, Teaching With a Mountain View.  It was all about planning a party through the CCSS math standards.  My students rose to the occasion despite being over doing school work.  So, it was definitely worth it!

Are you out of school yet?  What do you like to do with your students during those last days and weeks of the school year?

Differentiating with Area and Perimeter

Being on Spring Break sure does have its upsides doesn't it?!  One being the fact I am able to sit down and finally blog...AKA relax on my own terms.  I have a Lifetime movie playing in the background called The Grim Sleeper.  Did you get to watch it?  What can I say?  I'm obsessed with watching their newest 2 hour TV movies.  Reading my book here and there when I want, going to the bathroom whenever I want, and snacking on whatever I want is definitely the bee's knees.  It makes me look forward to summer break that much more!

As we all know (it's what nightmares are made of)...it's that time of the season.  Testing is just around the corner and the pressure is on!  With trying to fit everything on our district benchmark testing and the state test in to such a tiny time frame, it is that much more important I push that rigor and multiple opportunities for practice with my students.  So, bring on differentiation!

By first having my students complete a multi-level exit ticket (which ended up becoming more like a post test) I was able to figure out which levels of area and perimeter each student met in or what they needed more practice in.  As a gifted-cluster teacher, I try to do as many tiered differentiation lessons as possible.  In this case, it means I have 9 gifted learners while the rest of my students are mainstreamed. It can get pretty hard when I don't have as much time as I want to plan them out, but each year I end up with more and more.

Below you can see part of a screen shot of the flipchart I had up on our ActivBoard during the day's lesson. Every time we tackle a tiered lesson, I go over the Owl's assignment first so those students can get straight to work on their extension.  But I need my other students to sit and take it in because if they complete their activity and show mastery, they are able to move on.  That's why I love tiered lessons!!

Extension/Tier 3 Group

**Always works solo/independently**

My group of about 6-7 Owls worked in the library on their own and had quite a time with their activity. They were doing so well I only had to check on them a couple different times to make sure they were measuring the area and perimeter correctly, since this was something we didn't do with irregular polygons as a whole class (we only had to use grid paper).

Extra Practice/Tier 2 Group

**Always works with 1-2 other students**

My Eagles were able to gather in the back of our classroom on the strip of tile we have in order to practice identifying the perimeter and area using square units.  I found this idea for regular polygons on Pinterest, but needed to use it for the irregular aspect.  Many of my students were having trouble with larger figures where they had to count and solve for the formulas when there were upwards of 20 or so square units and multiple "irregular" corners.  By making it a bit more hands on for them and on a smaller (although larger...LOLOLOL) scale, that group of kids grasped on to the application of the formulas we had already discovered and practiced a lot easier.

Please ignore our dirty floor...the kids tend to bring in everything off our wet grassy field when they come in in the morning.  Sigh.

Reteach/Tier 1 Group

**Always works with the teacher and/or small group**

For this group of kids, it was a bit tricky.  Each set of students needed additional reteaching and practice with a different aspect of perimeter and area (i.e. area of triangles and parallelograms versus perimeter of squares and rectangles or even irregular polygons)

I decided to have them make flashcards for each formula, since many of the students in this group kept getting them mixed up between the different figures themselves or area versus perimeter.  Then, we went from there with some extra practice on identifying perimeter and area using those formulas.

My students crave tiered lessons because they truly appreciate being able to have the chance to not only move on if they are ready, instead of sitting through another reteach lesson, but they appreciate being able to jump to the next level when they are done working with me during the reteach.  Everything is very fluid and depending on the tiered lesson, kids are not always in the same group to start with.  I use exit tickets every time to determine which group students will be in.  Sometimes, I even find I have to reteach as a whole class.  All students are a lot more invested in the outcome of their learning and they enjoy some of the hands on and project-based opportunities to show their learning.  Sure, the planning can take a bit more time than regular lessons...but in the end, it is soooooooo worth it!

This summer, I plan on trying to put as many of my tiered lessons and choice/extension menus in my TPT store.  But if you would like to check one of them out now, I have had my Plot Elements Choice Menu pack up HERE for a couple months (all based on Bloom's Taxonomy).  It is starting to sell like hotcakes and that makes me so excited to know other students are able to partake in choices and extensions to show their learning!  Yay!

Time to Pass It On! Ratio, Proportions, and "Playing" with Dolls {STEM}

One of the things I love most about my district is the amount of consistent and in-depth professional development classes they offer us.  I try to sign up for classes often so I can hone my craft and really figure out ways to better my students' learning in the classroom...as well as keep myself on my toes. There is just no way I want to be one of those teachers who gets in a rut and that can be easy to do after 9 years of teaching.

Does anyone else have these kind of opportunities in their district?  How often do you take advantage of them?  Do tell!!

This past month, I signed up for a STEM professional development class that our STEM department put together alongside a grant via Arizona State University.  These awesome gals from the department (I've worked closely with several of them multiple times) attended a summer class in which they learned about the lesson I am passing on to you here.  They brought it back to our district and were even able to buy us supplies to take back to our classroom the next day.

Thankfully, I also got one of my first trainings in what STEM truly is.  THE biggest piece I walked away with (besides the super sweet lesson below) was the knowledge of knowing I do not have to use Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math in every single STEM lesson.  Phew!  Somehow, this is what I thought it was.  Remember how I said I try to hone my craft and keep on the latest and greatest? Since STEM came along long after I finished up my Bachelors, student teaching, and Masters degree, it is one of those huge elements of present-day education that I just don't know a whole lot about. But...I'm getting there!

Enough of the background...let me share this lesson already!  This was based on the Ratio and Proportion CCSS and it can be used in grades 5-8.  It also ties in measurement and data analysis. Score!!

The idea is to have students use measurement, ratios, proportion, and data analysis to see if they are in proportion to a Barbie or Ken doll.

I was nervous my 5th graders weren't going to feel comfortable enough with ratio.  Despite teaching it and finding the majority of my students meeting our state standard (we have not fully switched to CCSS yet), I still did not know if they'd be able to figure out whether their measurements were proportional to the doll's proportions using ratios.

But I modeled my heart out for the first piece of it in order to make sure they knew what I expected and we reviewed equivalent ratios as well.  They were seriously chomping at the bit to get started.

They worked in small groups since I only had about 8 Ken dolls and 8 Barbie dolls.  By the way...have you seen Barbie dolls lately?  If not, they are soooooooo cheap looking now.  Blasphemy!!  It was rough only having about 4 rolls of measuring tape.  So, many of my students improvised and used the yarn they used for the dolls on themselves and then had to carefully use a meter stick.  Part of this was also giving them calculators if they chose to use them.  The idea is, it doesn't matter if they are doing the computation on paper, it mattered to me if they were understanding comparing one measurement to another and if they were finding equivalent ratios to compare proportions.

I was given copies of a graphic organizer that asked students to record different ratios for things like head circumference to height and head height to neck height, etc.  Each student had to measure on both the doll and themselves.

Once they found an equivalent ratio for both, they had to indicate if they were in proportion to the doll or not in the last column.

As I was coming around to each group, I noticed some were having issues finding equivalent ratios with such large or mixed numbers.  But I did find they fully understood ratios and how they relate to finding proportions.  This was a HUGE success!  I love that with STEM students don't necessarily have to do everything correct or perfectly.  If they are grasping on to the concept and reaching it via discovery...then you know what?  I determine that to be successful in a big way.  

Once students have gathered the data, they create a graph from scratch.  I had quite the goose-bump raising moment when my students took to creating double-bar graphs without any prompting from me at all.  When I asked several groups why they chose to make a double-bar graph versus any other, they told me right away that it was because they were comparing two sets of similar data!  Yessssss!  What an amazing teacher moment.  Don't you just love those?!  

While I noticed they chose increments that didn't necessarily match the data, what I found was they knew exactly how to compare the data.  My kids also had all the pieces of a properly made graph. After creating their graphs, they had to look back at their data and analyze the bits and pieces to explain whether they were in proportion to the doll and why or why not.  This was another spot where I found they had a good understanding of proportions.  

All in all, this was a successful lesson in my class for multiple reasons.  Not only that, but my students enjoyed themselves and didn't complain at all about how difficult the math concepts were for them. They put both feet in and jumped right in to the measuring and comparing.  I'd say they are definite fans of STEM as am I!  

Have you used a lesson like this in your classroom before?  How do you implement STEM in your classroom?

{Saturday Sprinkles #2} A Back-To-School Remix

Welcome to this week's edition of Saturday Sprinkles, where I try to show you how we tried to stay awake and engaged all week.  LOL.  I am fairly certain all teachers who returned to school this week will agree, this was a looooooooong week! Monday was not easy for any of us.  In fact, I had 3 students falling asleep sitting up while I was teaching. Basically, I made sure to to get them up and out of their seats as much as possible, more so than usual in fact. That and I could have sworn I took way more pictures of our week than I actually did.  Perhaps, I was too busy keeping them wrangled in.  Whoops!

Once we got past Monday, I promise you, we actually got quite a bit done and by Friday afternoon, I felt like my students walked away feeling fulfilled and better about their learning.  

Join She and I (yes, we are the only ones enjoying this linky party so far) as we share snippets and quick snapshots of how much fun, engagement, and learning we had in our classrooms. Feel free to join up as well so you can reflect and look back on your week.  You'd be surprised at how it makes you realize you DID get a lot accomplished and your students DID enjoy themselves.  So what are you waiting for?  ;-)  The link-up information is down below.

We worked all week on probability in so many different ways, left and right.  Using the nicely made Probability Practice Packet from TeachersPayTeachers in Kalena Baker's store, I stepped it up a few levels in order to meet my students needs...which would be boredom due to being back after a long break and needing to cover higher-level learning with probability.  The pack from TPT is more for 2nd-4th grades.  One thing we did was use our ActivExpressions to send in class data so we could compare and contrast some of our theoretical and experimental probability with the dice experiment.  I can't believe I didn't take pictures, but we also used the vocabulary posters she includes as our own huge human-sized interactive scale across our back classroom wall.  I used a bag of colored tiles, figuring out the theoretical probability of each color in the bag, and then I asked them the following, "What is the likelihood I pick a __________ from the bag."  From there my students walked to either impossible, unlikely, equally likely, highly likely, and certain.  Not only did this give me a chance to see who was still stuck or confused about the vocabulary, but it also got them out of their seats.  Hallelujah!!

We also carried on with our levers experiments, although we didn't get very far due to an assembly at the end of the day.  My students were none to happy about it either because they had just begun to figure things out before we had to quickly start cleaning up for the end of the day.  

After giving my students room to build some background on levers (see my first blog post here), we began to get some of that juicy scientific vocabulary going in our writing and conversations...and boy is the word "fulcrum" hard to say as a 5th grader...and then it was time to start finally playing!  I gave them a quick 2-minute or so demo on how to use the supplies to build a lever.  We located the fulcrum together (the binder clip) and from there the inquiry-based learning ensued.  

In the very very short 5-8 minutes we had before the bell was going to ring, students' lightbulbs were going off!  I was able to visit with 3 groups who figured out to either move the fulcrum and/or load to level out their lever without any guidance or tips from me. Unfortunately, and any teacher will probably attest to this, we had to cut it short just as everyone was starting to feel like mad scientists.  So, it is another to be continued lesson...again.

If you'd like to link up and share your classroom sprinkles from this week or even last, head over to Sprinkle Teaching Magic and include your blog post link.  See you next Saturday for another sprinkling!  

Best of Halloween...in the Classroom!

Back on my very old blog I did one of my favorite posts on what I love about Halloween as a teacher. Christmas might be my favorite holiday of all time, but there is seriously something about the month of October within the classroom walls.

So, I bring you the best of Halloween in my classroom...

Pumpkin Math:

Made by yours truly and sold on TPT for $2.50

One of my pride and joys is the first product I made for my Teachers Pay Teachers store...and actually, my first personally created lesson straight out of student teaching.  PUMPKIN MATH!  My students become elated (as do I) over it every single year.  My kids get into their groups and each group gets a pumpkin.  They get to estimate the weight, volume (using cups of guts), and circumference of their pumpkins.  We carve pumpkins using dice and then go back to see how close the estimations were. I invite parents to help us carve and students donate the pumpkins.  Our room stinks of pumpkin the rest of the day, but it is well worth it.  I try to take the seeds home and roast them for the kids to try the next day, since many of them have never had this chance.  

Haunted House Expressive Writing:

Also made by yours truly on TPT for $5.00

Possibly even higher on my favorites list than Pumpkin Math, is the Haunted House Expressive Writing Unit.  I started using it in my classroom several years ago.  I was tired of reading my students lackluster writing and wanted to figure out a way to get them to become more descriptive.  Thus, was born this unit after finding a cool idea online that included sound effects.

They are allowed to make it gory and scary OR funny if they'd like.  I play Halloween movie songs and creepy sound effects to help them get inspired while they are writing.  We play around with the 5-senses to figure out ways to make our audience feel like they are right there with us in that haunted house.  The kids work on trying to use descriptive words for sounds since they can't draw pictures.

Last year, we even had ourselves a writing contest!  I decided to choose the top 10 stories and pass them off to one of the 8th grade classes.  They read and voted for the top 5.  You wouldn't believe how hard the kids worked to make their writing entertaining for those older kids.  They grew leaps and bounds just in those couple weeks.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark:

from Barnes and Noble

You know the variety.  Many of you who are children of the 80s or 90s know these books quite well.  I used to read them cover to cover as a kid and couldn't get enough of them.

When I am done with our regular read-aloud, all during the month of October, I read stories each day from the Scary Stories series by Alvin Schwartz.  Several years ago I struck gold and found the 3-book treasury from Barnes and Noble.  I especially love to read the stories that give me a chance to jump out at them. It is better if I get them to scream loudly...but these days are sadly gone as my students seem to incredibly desensitized due to being allowed to see all the scary movies in theaters   I'll refrain from getting on a soap box about this one.  

One story in particular (actually there are about 2-3 like it in the books) where the ghost or ghoul is asking for something that the protagonist has stolen and at the end the ghost screams to give it back or something…anyway, I hide a fake bloody finger in the book as I read. Then, when I get to the part where the ghost screams loudly I throw it across the room and scare the living daylights out of the kids. ha ha ha ha It works every time...or at least it used to.

For the next week following Halloween, my kids beg me to continue reading out of it. But I tell them it is an October only special. After that, the kids are found checking this book out of my library time and time again.

House on Hackman's Hill and Wait Till Helen Comes:

 

Both images are from Amazon.com

Not only do I thoroughly enjoy reading the Scary Stories, but I read one of these two books (I switch back and forth every year) as our daily read-aloud.  Both are tried and true in the classroom to freak out students.  Although, I've noticed they are less and less scared each year....which takes all the fun away for me.  But both stories are still great reads that put us in the mood for the Halloween season.  

House on Hackman's HIll by Joan Lowery Nixon is a fantastically creepy story and I prefer it over the other.  There are several scenes where Anubis, the half man half jackal ancient Egyptian god, jumps out or does something ferociously scary, like scratching and sniffling at a door. These are the parts I love to overdramatize to get the kids riled up.

Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn is one of those ghost stories where you know something bad is coming.  Even though it has a couple spine-tingling moments, it doesn't really have any of my favorite spots to jump out on.  Meh.  But no bother, it is still worth the creeps it gives some of my students.  

Halloween Picture Books:

I love to pull out my three favorite picture books as well, two of which I discovered as a student teacher and have stuck by since.  I have tried to read others and I always go back to these three.

Hallo-Weiner is by Dav Pilkey has a really nice theme to it as well as his hint of humor.  I can't resist doing a funny little German old lady voice for his mom.  The kids laugh and enjoy this one year after year.  

Piggie Pie by Margie Palatini is one of my all-time favorite picture books.  My copy has fallen apart twice and has been glued back together with glue.  My favorite part?  Doing the mean witchy voice, even though it hurts my throat every time.  Oh, and the very last page....you'll have to read it for yourself to see if the witch gets her Piggie Pie.  

The real photographs in Pumpkin Circle by George Levenson are gorgeous, colorful, and so detailed. I love reading this to students before we carve our pumpkins during Pumpkin Math.  It gets oohs and ahhs every time.

Garfield's Halloween Adventure:

You can even get yourself a vintage VHS copy on Amazon!

Even though we aren't allowed to show movies in class anymore, I still wanted to include this one in my Best of Halloween!  Garfield's Halloween Adventure is a favorite of mine from when I was a kid.  It used to scare the bejeesus out of my little brother and I.  The same scene that frightened us always gets my students too.  Can you say pirates rising out of the floor and then scaring Garfield in his hiding spot?...those of you who have seen it know what I mean!

This cartoon is never shown on T.V. any more, so I just love sharing it with them.  Since I can't show it in class this year, I'll just have to watch it at home by myself.  Candy, candy, candy, candy!

So, what are your Best of Halloween picks?  Do you love celebrating this in the classroom more than any other holiday?