DIY Magnetic Words Activity for Word Work

Magnetic Words make a great Word Work activity for intermediate students.  Some of the things they can do are:

• create poetry
• put words in alphabetical order
• practice Spelling rules, like changing the y to i and then add er or est
• change words into adverbs using -ly
• changing words from singular to plural
• sort words by parts of speech

This simple magnetic activity in inexpensive to make and is just the right size to sit on a child's lap anywhere in the room.  The sides on the pan minimize losing pieces.  You will need:

• a cheap metal pan (I used a $2 "brownie pan" from Wal-mart)
• GLAD Mini-Round containers (8 in a package)
• magnetic words (I bought two different-colored sets that were less than $1 each)
• duct tape (you can get creative here but I just used gray)
• scissors
• hot glue and glue gun (optional)
• Sharpie marker (optional)

     Either glue or tape the container in the corner of the pan.  Pull a strip of duct tape off the roll but don't cut it off yet.  While it's attached to the roll, cut it lengthwise down the middle.  Then cut it off the roll (way easier).  Take your cut piece and wrap it around 1/2 the container.  Place the container in the corner of the pan, taping it in place.

Separate your magnetic words and put them in the container.  I hot glued the last two rows (alphabet and numbers) to the top of the pan for decoration.  If you are a primary grade teacher adapting this activity, you will probably want to keep those letters and numbers in the container.  You may want to label the activity "Magnetic Words" with the Sharpie on the side of the pan so kids can see it when it is on a shelf.  You can also draw columns for word sorts with titles above.  I choose to leave my blank so students can use them for any purpose they want.
In this picture, I wanted to show how to store two activities.  Since nothing should fall out, they can be stored one on top of the other (the top one upside down), like shown.

If you want student directions for the activities that fit into the container click here.  Just copy, laminate, and roll to fit in the container.  
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Seymour Simon: One Book- Many Uses

One Book: Many Uses

 Wildfires by Seymour Simon

     Seymour Simon's books are great to use in the classroom.  Simon has written hundreds of books on a variety of non-fiction subjects.  His pictures are engaging, and he writes without using typical non-fiction features.  This type of non-fiction writing mirrors what my fourth graders are expected to read and understand during their high-stakes state testing.  Because of this, I decided to use this book with both my entire class and two of my small groups.  By using the same text in small group, I save time by skipping the actual reading of the text.  I also find it easier to elicit critical thinking when using a familiar text.

     First, let me explain a little about how I use small groups.  For my reading structure, I use The Daily Literacy CAFE which is a combination of Gail Boushey and Joan Moser's Daily Five (which is what the children do independently) and CAFE (their assessment to instruction model for teacher-directed lessons and small group work).  All of my groups are based on skills, not reading level.  Currently, my Monday-Wednesday- Friday group is working on main idea and my Tuesday-Thursday group is working on cause and effect.  

 

     The "Main Idea" group started with taking copies of the text and dividing it into sections, based on the main idea.  In order to show this process clearly, we they literally cut and pasted the text into sections.  Then each section was given a title that reflected the main idea.  There work is in green in the above picture, with key words highlighted and circled.

      The "Cause and Effect" group underlined causes in red and effects in blue. 

Cooking vs. Teaching

Variety is the Spice of... Education

     A great teacher is like a great chef.  A great chef has favorite recipes, tried and true, that are their signature dishes.  They are everyone's favorites.  They work time and time again, because the chef has worked hard to create the perfect balance to please the palate.  Great teachers have their instructional strategies, tried and true, that combined become their instructional style.  They have developed this style to maximize the learning of the students they teach.  I have several programs that I have used for years that I have found to be highly effective.  They are my "go to" programs that I start with every year I set up my classroom.  These include Whole Brain Teaching, CAFE Menu, Shurley Language, and Rocket Math.

     A great chef does not only have their signature dishes.  They can create a dish unlike anything they have done before.  A great teacher knows when to change their instructional strategies because of the needs of the learners.  This year I had eighteen boys and six girls in my class.  Because of the extreme imbalance of boys and girls, I found that I had to have more hands-on activities in my class.  I had to have opportunities for movement.  I also needed to use competition more in class.

     Great chefs can create dishes from scratch without the use of a recipe.  They don't follow others- they are leaders.  A great teacher is a leader, too.  Great teachers lead their profession by mentoring, blogging, attending and presenting at national conventions, leading grade level or department teams, and becoming involved in district, state, and national policy.  I have served in district level leadership positions and helped to write my state's ELA assessment.  I have worked formally as a mentor and have created protocols that are now widely used in my grade level.  My current goal is to have more of a web presence to reach out to other teachers digitally.

     Teaching is a dynamic and ever-changing job.  The only thing constant is change.  Even if you stay at the same grade level in the same school, students have unique needs each year, new programs are adopted, principals and superintendents have different agendas, and standards change.  If you cannot adapt, you will cease to be effective because, just as a chef is only as good as his last meal, you are only as effective as you were yesterday.

For more about different instructional strategies, see:  http://teachinglearningresources.pbworks.com/w/page/19919560/Instructional%20Approaches

More Classroom Organization

This week I have been on an interview committee for a position at my school. I've had a chance to start on my room arrangement. The room is next door to my old room and was the former Title One room. You wouldn't think it would be much different, but it totally is!
For one thing, every thing is facing the opposite direction. I know this doesn't sound like much, but it is driving me nuts! The wiring in the room was upgraded because of the number of computers Title One had, so I have lots of outlets unlike most rooms in our old building. Because of the number of outlets and their height on the wall, when the two cubbies were replaced they were not put together in one unit. In the middle I put the students mailboxes. I hope this will be a very handy place for them. Since there is also one of those four outlet junction boxes, I am going to put a rectangle table there (sticking out into the room) so when we borrow the laptops, we have a place to put them that is right near an outlet.
I am using the floor plan that was chosen by the class last year as the culminating project for a Math unit on area and perimeter. I quickly realized the winning entry was missing several pieces of furniture. So, I plan on moving these items out of the classroom next door to the multi-purpose room. On the first day, I will ask the students what is missing and where we might put those things. It will be a great learning experience to get us back in the mode of working together.

I started working on the main "teaching" board. Yes, looking at the picture you can see it is just a whiteboard clumsily attached to the old chalkboard with the sides of the chalkboard still showing. I wish our school had the time and money to do things right the first time. Anyway, at least I have a whiteboard. I'm allergic to chalk dust! The teacher names on the left side of the board are all the teachers at my school. Fifth grade is the first year they switch for a subject (Math), so this is where one designated student from each class can write the homework assignment from that class.  The right hand side has a graphic of the Olympic Motto as the Olympics is our theme this year.

I have a small class this year (only 20) so there is extra room..... and desks.  I want to help students be more responsible for classroom supplies this year.  Students will also be doing a lot of notebooking and lapbooking in Science, Social Studies and Math, so having those supplies in one central location doesn't really work.  Each group will have an extra desk in the middle of their group.  On it will be a caddie of supplies for the group to share, such as colored pencils, markers, highlighters, glue, and scissors.  Each child will continue to have their own pencils and crayons.  This way, if they leave the cap off the glue, they have no one to blame but themselves!
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Are Tests the Only Measure of Student Learning?

Are Tests the Only Objective Measure of Student Learning?

Howard Gardner speaks about multiple intelligence and testing.

     The simple answer to this question is yes.  Objective assessments measure correct and incorrect answers.  Assessments of this type are common in education because they are quick and easy to arrive at a numeric score or "grade".  Numeric scores are easy to rank and compare, which makes them extremely popular in this age of heightened accountability for teachers and schools.  However objective assessments can, by their nature, only assess the lowest three levels of Bloom's taxonomy.  Those levels are:  knowledge, comprehension, and application.  The higher three levels (often called "higher order thinking skills") cannot be assessed in a right or wrong format, since they involve the skills of analysis, evaluation, and original creation.  The assessment of these skills is subjective in nature.  These are the types of skills we want our students to have in the twenty-first century.  These are the skills they will need to get and keep a high-paying jobs or to change from one career to another.

     Facts and figures are just the jumping off point for higher order thinking.  And as teachers we should be in the business of evaluating this cognition, not just the recall of facts and figures.  We can leave that for the creators of our high-stakes state testing.  In other words, we should evaluate students using a range of assessments.  These assessments could include: testing, performance tasks, projects, and observation to name a few (Buzzetto-More and Alade, 2006).

     Even that is not enough.  These evaluations need to be part of a "Continuous Assessment Loop" (Martell and Calderon, 2005) in order to improve student learning.  A Continuous Assessment Loop contains the steps of analyzing the assessment, discussing the results with stakeholders, identifying ways for students to improve outcomes, making instructional changes, and re-identifying goals.  I know I have posted her video before, but Jennifer Jones (one of my teacher-heroes) of Lake Myra Elementary in North Carolina and blogger at  helloliteracy.blogspot.com demonstrates that CA Loop so vividly in this video:

     Technology can make this Continuous Assessment Loop easier for teachers to manage and maintain.  Technology is most useful in tracking and analyzing data over time, rubric creation, and storing digital artifacts (Buzzetto-More and Alade, 2006).

References

Buzzetto-More, N.A. and Alade, A.J. (2006) Best practices in e-assessment.  Journal of Information Technology Education, Vol. 5, pags. 261-269.