Hollywood Squares Review Game

I was looking through my teacher files this week to try to come up with a fun games for my kids.  It is still cold with lots of snow on the ground here in northern New England.  Although Easter is around the corner, spring hasn't sprung yet.  The kids are pretty anxious for that to happen.  When it gets above freezing they try to ditch their winter coats.  I know many of you are starting "test prep" season.  Our high stakes test is in October, so I don't have to worry about that until the start of school.  So maybe a fun game is good for all of us. :)
One of my favorites is Hollywood Squares.  It combines two things kids love:  competition and whiteboards.  You can use this game to review anything, but it is particularly good for vocabulary,spelling and math computation because the answers will be short enough to write quickly on a whiteboard.  Set up the front of your room with three student desks in a row and three chairs in front of them.  Lay one whiteboard, marker and eraser on each desk, chair, and one in front of each chair.  Having one child sit on each desk, one in each chair, and one on the floor in front of each chair gives you a three by three tic-tac-toe board.
Divide the rest of the class into two teams:  X and O.  Usually I do boys verses girls, just like Hollywood Squares.  The teams take turns picking a person holding a whiteboard.  I ask the question and the person with the whiteboard writes their answer and shows it.  Now, here's the great part.  The person with the whiteboard doesn't have to get the answer correct.  The person who picked them has to decide if the answer is right or wrong.  If they choose correctly, they "take" the square.  If not, the other team gets it.  Just like tic-tac-toe, the object is to get three in a row. 
My students love this game, and I hope yours will, too.

Teaching with Technology: Build Your Wild Self!

I'm always looking for ways to integrate technology into my teaching.  I recently came across a great website run by New York Zoos and Aquarium.  Children can create their own "wild self" using all sorts of animal parts.  They can then print or email the picture.  We are using the pictures for descriptive writing and to talk about animal adaptations during our Science unit.  Here is my sample picture I used to get the kids excited about the project:

 

Then I had my students write about their picture using the following prompts:

What are you?  ____________________________________________________________________

1.      What’s "wild" about you?  Describe each “wild” part, including the part, the animal it comes from, and how it is used.

2.     What habitat are you ideally suited for?  Why?

3.     Look at the other pictures created by students in the class.  What other animal might be a predator to your animal?  Why?

4.     Look at the other picture created by students in the class. What other animal might be prey for your animal.  Why? 

5.     Email your picture to your teacher.

Notice and Note

     Jenn Jones over at Hello Literacy recently wrote about a new book Notice and Note:  Strategies for Close Reading by Kylene Beers and Robert E. Probst.  If you haven't read it, I highly recommend that you add it to your professional reading.  It gives a very clear picture of what close reading of fiction texts should look like in an intermediate/middle/high school setting.  I found ideas that I can implement in my classroom immediately. 
     The book explains six "signposts".  These are common literary devices that authors use to get the reader to stop and think.  When students see one of these devices, it is time to take notice and jot a few notes.  I knew this is just what my struggling readers need.  They know how to use reading strategies.  They can predict and infer when I ask but, left on their own, they don't use these strategies because they don't know when and where to use these them.
     I love the idea of signposts.  Poor readers often speed through texts, never slowing down and savoring the moment.  They are "plot junkies"- always rushing through text to find out what happens next.  By showing them where authors have intentionally put  stop signs, yield signs, and Rest Areas, I hope I can improve their overall comprehension.
     And so on to today's freebie!  I have made graphics of the six signposts to use in my classroom and I want you to have them, too!  They are medium size (2-4 per page) for use on anchor charts or with teaching small groups of students.  Enjoy!

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.