What Can You Do With Transparency Film?

     I know I'm a bit of a dinosaur, but my supply closet still has lots of transparency film.  Now that we're making the switch to document cameras as opposed to overhead projectors, we don't need that stuff anymore... or do we???  This week I have been contemplating how I could use this resource.  It's cheap and a little out of the ordinary.  And you know how kids get excited about something a little out of the ordinary!

     One way to use transparency film is to reduce the amount of paper you use.  Although I love me a good worksheet (read between the lines: addicted to Teachers Pay Teachers and Teacher's Notebook), I find copying off all those worksheet to be a waste of paper and my time.  So if you are using a program where the students do the same thing each day (such as Decimal of the Day shown here), make only one blank copy for each child.  Staple the film on one side of a file folder and slip the worksheet inside.  Students can then use a dry erase marker and a piece of felt as an eraser.  I was worried initially that the markers would not last, but most of my students have used the same marker since we started this in December.  For Decimal of the Day, I write this on the board so the students can complete the worksheet:

7.308

+  0.04

-  6.508

X  .35

/    9

_____ (this is the place to put the comparing symbol) 7.038 

     Another way to use transparency film is as part of a game or activity.  This week we have been rounding.  Rounding is very tricky for students because they have to know which place they need to start and what place they have to look at.  Using transparency film, I created a fun rounding game I call "Slap! Trap!".  To play the game, each student will need:  a dry erase board, a dry erase marker, and a copy of the Slap! Trap! transparency (see pictures below).

     Pass out the supplies and give your students a few minutes to use the transparency to practice making numbers that will fit inside.  One digit should to in each box.  After a few minutes of experimentation, write a number on the board, such as:

 

     You can use any size numbers that you are working on.  They can even be bigger than the two digit number shown in the example.  In fact, the transparency works even better with numbers with many digits.  Now yell, "Round to the nearest (place).  (Place) SLAP!" The students yell back, "(Place) SLAP!" and slap transparency down so the box on the left with the question marks is surrounding the digit in the place you said.  Check to see that everyone has placed their transparency correctly.  For this example, I would have said, "Round to the nearest whole number!  Whole number SLAP!"

     Next I say (in a robot voice), "Engage eyeballs!"  and the kids repeat with a shzzzzz sound after, and move their right index finger until they are pointing at the next place to the right.  Then I say, "Five or more go up one floor." The students repeat and add, "Going up!" or "Stays the same!" depending on what they are supposed to do.
     Finally I yell, "Remove trapper!"  and the kids repeat.  If they need to change the target place, they do that now and turn everything else into a zero.
     I will be uploading a video to my You Tube mrsc4jones shortly that shows this lesson in action.  In the meantime, can you think of another use for transparency film?  Please share in the comments below.

Our War on Pronouns and the Disappearing Main Idea

     I am a looping teacher.  This is my second year with this group of students.  In fourth grade I used the term "TTQA" ("turn the question around") to help students construct better answers.  As fifth graders, they started to get a bit sloppy about TTQA, so it was time for a new angle.  During a grammar unit on pronouns I introduced the term antecedent.  An antecedent is a noun that occurs before a pronoun.  Pronouns should never be used in front of nouns.  So I declared a war on pronouns without antecedents.  The student made the posters which are displayed in the front of the room which show pronouns are not welcomed here!

     Task cards are one of my favorite teaching tools.  They are flexible and great for small groups and centers.  Recently I purchased these summary task cards on Teachers Pay Teachers. Although the directions for them said "Summarize this paragraph in twelve words are less.", I wanted to do something a little more fun and challenging with my student who has difficulty in this area.  I had him roll the dice to determine how many words his summary had to be.  This made him work a bit harder.  He found that the less words he could use the harder it was to summarize and the more he had to use his own words, but that lead to some great conversation that helped him gain some insight in this valuable skill.

1, 2, 3: Gradually Releasing Responsibility

     The Gradual Release of Responsibility Model has been around for quite some time as a model of best practices.  I use it on a regular basis with my students.  But lately I have been thinking about how I have them be a part of this method.  I feel it's important to let students in on the "secrets" that make good teaching and learning.  For example, I already let students know when I am doing a formative assessment ("I can't help you with this assignment because right now I need to see what you can do by yourself.  This will tell me what and how I need to teach in the future.") and why I am using the results of that formative assessment to guide my instruction. (Today, friends, I am putting you into groups based on your score on that formative assessment you took last week...") . 

     The new Common Core standards ask us to increase the text complexity in our classrooms.  It is not enough just to have complex text for high stakes assessment.  Our students need to "wrestle" with highly complex text routinely in their classrooms.  We need to model how we attack a text that students have absolutely no background knowledge about.  We need to hold them accountable for the strategies we have taught them no matter what type of text they encounter.

     I decided the gradual release of responsibility model needed a catchy name and make-over.  GRR has become 1-2-3 in my classroom.  When I say:  "Today you have a 1-2-3 assignment."  or "Today's work in class is getting you ready to do a 1-2-3 assignment tomorrow.".  For a 1-2-3 assignment, students attack the text in three ways:

1-  Activate Thinking (gesture:  point to head with pointer finger).  At this point in the year my students know all the pre-reading strategies.  Instead of choosing one for them, I ask them to choose and share with a buddy.  Along with sharing the strategy, they also must share why they picked that particular one.  I also have them write this down.  It is important for students to remember that they must engage their brains before reading and that engagement can take many forms depending on their purpose as a reader.

2-  Read through the entire selection (gesture:  point to your eyes with two fingers).  Students need to read the assignment all the way through in order to get the "big picture".  Reading all the way through includes titles, captions, and headings.  

3-  Selective Reading (gesture:  left hand- hold up three fingers with one hand, "pick" them with the other)  Students should answer as many questions as they can.  Then they should look at the choices (if questions are multiple choice) and reread the selection selectively just to find the answer to these questions.  If you are asking the students to do short answer questions, have them start the answer (even if they don't know it) by turning the question around (also called TTQA).  Simply by writing down the words of the question, students will be able to know what key words they will need to focus on during the test. 

Comprehension Processes: An In-Depth Assessment

    

     I have long been interested in the work of Judith Westphal Irwin, an expert on reading comprehension.  She divides comprehension into five dimensions or processes:  microprocessing (chunking individual words into phrases), integration (connecting sentences and paragraphs), macroprocessing (the main idea), elaboration (making more of a text), and metacognition (the ability to know that your thinking has gone awry and how to fix it). 
     This week I got an opportunity to put her ideas into practice.  I have a student, I'll call him Russ, who has not made any progress this year in reading comprehension.  His IRIs reveal he can decode and is fluent using on-grade-level materials.  I have had him in several skill-specific groups this year, but none has made any difference in his reading comprehension.  During Daily Five he frequently abandons books.  He doesn't like to read and has no favorite series, authors, or types of books.  Even books like Calvin and Hobbes and The Guinness Book of World Records fail to interest him.  These behaviors show he is not able to comprehend enough to keep interested in books.
     I decided I needed to assess Russ in more depth to discover what was standing in the way of him making progress.  I used Irwin's books (Teaching Reading Comprehension Processes and Promoting Active Reading Comprehension Strategies) to create an assessment checklist with one generic question that I could use for any book for each of the sub-skills she lists under each process.  Then I found an on-grade-level leveled passage for Russ to read.  This week I had him read and answer the question with me orally.  As I expected, Russ lacked sub-skills in many different comprehension processes.  However, the area where he couldn't answer any questions at all was macroprocessing.  He did not have any sub-skills in this area.  So this week I have instructed him individually in finding the main idea.  We started with identifying the topic sentence in paragraphs. 
     The assessment is definitely a work in progress.  It has made a difference in this student's education and I hope, with some work, it will make a difference in the lives of others.

Fractions Squares: A DIY Math manipulative to teach Common Core standards

I have really been inspired this week by my fellow bloggers out there.  It just amazes me how one short post with a quick idea can get my creative juice flowing again!  It made me realized I should post more often, even if I only have one small item to share.
My students are finishing up with adding and subtracting fractions this week with a little performance task making trail mix using fractional amounts.  Next week we tackle multiplying fractions! I know that multiplying fractions is much easier than adding and subtracting them, but the Common Core standards are very clear and specific that students need to not just have computational accuracy, they need to understand the process.  I had to do a lot of reading up on this because, quite frankly, I was only taught to multiply fractions using a rote algorithm, so I never learned this important step.
      In books like Curriculum Based Assessment: Fractions by Michael Battista, the author uses squares to show the process of scaling.  I wanted to create a manipulative that students could use over and over again to demonstrate the process of scaling and truly understand that multiplying a fraction by another fraction results in a smaller number than your started with (which is, frankly, counter-intuitive to students' experience multiplying whole numbers).  The resulting do-it-yourself manipulative (which I called fraction squares) is explained in the You Tube video above.

Masterful Mini-Lessons

So when life gives you lemons...
This was a particularly tough week for me professionally.  I had a big term paper due in my Master's class.  At the same time I realized I had to make a major "course correction" in Math.  The students were just not getting the material and I knew that they wouldn't be ready for the test I scheduled on Friday.  So I spent several days scrambling to get more (and different) material to teach the topic in a new way and to fill an additional week of instruction.
At the same time I realized that I am unhappy with the quality of my reading and writing mini-lessons.  I am way too task-oriented.  I do too much telling them what to do and not nearly enough time showing them how to do it.
Squeezed in between all the professional reading I have do to for my Master's, I am also reading Lucy Culkins' A Guide to the Writing Workshop Grades 3-5.  This book is a breath of fresh air.  Her words really resonate with me.  It is not about doing more, it is about setting up our instruction and instructional time purposefully, and choosing our instructional language carefully.  I find myself actually quoting from the book when I conference with my students! Her book really gets you into the heads of intermediate grade students.  I realized, reading her book, how I could "beef up" my mini-lessons in both Reading and Writing.  So I created some scaffolding to get me started: a template to help me develop my lessons with care and thought.  I hope it is useful to you.  Please leave a comment if it is.

What Students Think of Questions

     A few days ago I had an interesting experience while questioning my students.  It started in Math class.  I had the following problem on the board:
Jack says 2/5 + 2/5 = 4/10.                                                                Jill says 2/5 + 2/5 is 4/5.
     I had the students sign their names under what they thought was the correct answer.  The first to sign up was one of my brightest students in Math.  She (correctly) chose Jill's answer. Other students rapidly signed up under Jill's answer.  Lastly, my behavior-disordered student signed his name under Jack's answer.  Suddenly, like a leak in a dike, one child after another moved their name to Jack's side, until about half the class had chosen the correct answer and half the incorrect answer.  I gave each child a personal whiteboard and asked them to find two ways to prove their answer was correct.  If this changed their mind, they were welcome to move their name.  More shuffling of names ensued.  Finally, I paired up the students that answered "Jack" with the students that favored "Jill" and had them explain their reasoning to their partner.  They could change their answer if they wish.  After one last shuffle, only three students remained on the wrong side.
     I asked the students, particularly the ones that changed answers several time, to examine why they changed their ideas.  What convinced them?  What failed to convince them?
     Later that same day (with a different group of students), I asked the class to evaluate the activities we had done over the past four days.  The students have participated in a "Mission to Mars" simulation in order to help them understand the journey of Lewis and Clark.  However, I have never mentioned Lewis and Clark to the students, nor told them why we were simulating a Mission to Mars.  I asked the class:  The past few days, have we been doing a Science or a Social Studies unit?  I used this question in order to determine if they understand that Social Studies is the study of human experience.  At first vote, everyone agreed it was a Social Studies unit.  As I questioned students about the reason for their choices, they began to doubt their choice.  More and more students became convinced that they were beginning a Science unit.
     Before the class became thoroughly confused, I told them about the similar experience I had had that day in Math.  That how asking students to clarify and explain their work caused them to question their answer, until many had gone back and forth several times and were very confused.  I felt on the verge of understanding something about critical about using questioning itself.  I asked my students:  Why do teachers ask you questions in school?  Why do we ask you the reasons for your choices?  Many students said that, when the teacher did that, they began to doubt their answer.  They assumed, if questioned, that the answer was wrong.  When they couldn't explain how or why they knew, that confirmed for them that their original "gut answer" was incorrect.  I emphasized to them that, when a teacher asks you to "prove it", he or she is trying to tap into your memory and logic skills that led to that (often correct)  "gut answer".  In fact, more often than not, if a teacher asks you to prove it, he or she means you are right!
     It is so interesting to me how teachers and students perceive things differently.  Is this the result of a lack of questioning?  Should I add more questioning into my teaching?  Or is this indicative of the age of the pupils or the impact of their home environment?  I would love to hear comments from you!