Busy Busy!

I have been super duper busy at school and sort of overwhelmed. I haven't had much of an opportunity to visit the blog world and so for that, I apologize. We recently studied the American Revolution and read, "The Revolutionary Swamp Fox," by Idella Bodie. It is a biography about the life of the infamous Swamp Fox. If you have ever seen "The Patriot," starring Mel Gibson, that movie is based on his life, although not entirely accurate. Anyhow, the students got really into learning about him because he was from South Carolina. After we read the book, the students created Bio Bodies. They had to draw him and write what he would think, say, do, feel, and where he would go. Here are some really cute examples.

We have also learned about habitats and animal adaptations. We made some cute habitat lotus diagrams (another quality tool to be blogged about later.) Here are a couple of the better examples. We discussed the types of animals and plants that live in each one and how they have special feature and adaptations.

This time of year always makes me feel stressed out, but I really hope to work on posting more fun things going on in our classroom. You other teachers out there are so inspiring and you all doing such amazing things that it inspires me to want to be better about posting the things I am doing as well.

Stay tuned...more to come soon...

Tool of the Week: Affinity Diagrams

So, I realize I was supposed to do another quality tool last week, but I got busy. Such is my life. Here is another example of how you can use a consensogram in your classrooms. I think it's really important to track student progress and growth throughout the year and this is a great way to let kids see their growth. We take the MAP test three times a year. It tracks Reading and Math progress throughout the year and then gives us correlations for how our kids will perform on the state standardized test at the end of the year. Anyway, the picture below shows our first MAP scores of the year in red and our mid year scores in green. Look at how all of those dots moved! Well, most...

Another quality tool that I have just fallen in love with is called an affinity diagram. An affinity diagram is a great tool for sorting and grouping things based on common characteristics. Here are a few examples.

It's important to have your kids come up with all of the information, but you guide them in the sorting and grouping. You also help them name each group based on their commonalities.

I hope everyone is well! I will try to be good and post again soon!

Quality Tool of the Week: Consensogram

Our school has recently taken the initiative towards implementing Quality Tools into our teaching. If you aren't famliar with quality tools, they are also commonly known as the Baldridge model or continuous improvement. The idea is to use these quality tools to help improve student achievement, motivation, goal setting, and ownership of student learning.

I have decided to share a tool each week for you to possibly try in your classrooms. There are so many tools you can use, so I recommend trying to implement one at a time until you feel comfortable using them in many ways.

There are various ways this model can be used in the classroom, but I won't bore you with all the details. Today, I am just going to share my favorite way. It is called a consensogram and it can be used in a variety of ways and it is the easiest one to implement into your daily routine. A consensogram is a tool used to gather data quickly to gain a group's perceptions, knowledge, effort, or understand about a particular subject.

Here are some examples:

I use it most often to have students select their reward of choice. I write several different options on a piece of chart paper, and students put their sticky dot on their choice. It's clear to see the class choice.

Other ways you can use the consensogram:

*Surveying the class by asking questions to learn about them
*Gauging whether or not students are prepared for a test.
*Behavior
*Pre and Post Test knowledge
*Learning what students favorite topic learned was
*Letting students determine what they want to learn next
*Reflecting on activities such as field trips, lessons, assignments, etc...
*Determining which vocabulary words students know
*Displaying data (grades, MAP test scores, standardized test scores, etc...)
*Assessing which skills students need more work on
*To identify student motivation (or lack of)
*For student views about classroom/school environment
*What worked well-wrapping up a unit

There are so many other ways you can use this tool. The sky is the limit! Please share if you have any ideas of how you use the consensogram or how you would use it if you never have.

Integrating the Content Areas and Reading

There is a lot of push and shove these days for Math and Literacy over the content areas of Science and Social Studies. I have refused to cut them out like some teachers have been forced or "urged" to do. This is one of my favorite things to teach and so I have found ways to keep them in my daily plans.

One thing I have been doing for this Science Unit on Animal Adaptations is using the textbook to teach all about text features. We discussed headings, subheading, pictures, captions, diagrams, etc... We filled out a text feature chart as we read through the section and wrote how that text feature does for us while we are reading. Here is the chart we used. You can adapt it however you want. You can also choose to discuss the table of contents, index, and glossary.

Another activity you can do is use the textbook to help students learn how to summarize. Teach students to pick out the most important word or words in each sentence and write those down. I would start with short paragraphs that students already have a good knowledge about to help scaffold their learning of the strategy. Then move to the textbook and do small sections. After they have written down the heart of each sentence, have them use the words to summarize that part.

This strategy takes a lot of work and practice. I wanted to give up after the first couple of times, but I promise you that the practice will pay off and be worth the wait. My third graders were experts at this by the end of last year. Once they have mastered doing a single paragraph, have them practice with multiple paragraphs. Teach them to pick out the most important words or ideas from each paragraph and then use those to summarize the main idea of each paragraph. There is no miracle amount of time that it takes. One day, it will just make more sense. Have them continually turn to a partner and summarize using the important phrases. I model alot and do it with them alot at first. Then, turn it over to them and let them start working on it.

You can also have students work on their ability to ask questions while they are reading. Many of you are probably familiar with the QAR model for questions. This model says that there are four types of questions you can ask. Here is the breakdown.

As students are reading, model asking questions and then have students try. I always like to start with Right There questions because they are the easiest. Teach one type of question at a time so they don't get overwhelmed. Once they have mastered one type, then move on the next. Here is a bookmark I give my students to use whenever we are reading to help them ask questions. It has great prompts for each type of question.

Of course these aren't the only things I do to teach the content. We do experiments and other fun stuff as well. But I think Science and Social Studies lend themselves well to learning strategies for reading. The material is also often more interesting than reading nonfiction from basal reading texts. There are tons of fun fictional stories that you can find to go along with whatever content subject you are learning about.

What We're Up to This Week

This first week back to school has been great! I didn't realize how much I missed seeing my babies every day! I couldn't be more happy with my sweet class this year. They have their issues, but they certainly are good kids.

This week, we are learning all about plant and animal habitats. We started the unit Monday with a Book Pass. Procedure: 1) Gather enough content related books for each group or table. I have 4 groups, so each table had 6-7 books to choose from. 2) Distribute the Book Pass sheet. (Book Pass Sheet Link) 3) Tell them that they will choose a book from the pile and write the title and author in the left column of the sheet. 4) Set the timer for 3-5 minutes for them to preview the book by looking at pictures, captions, headings, and reading a few words here or there. The goal is for them to learn something from each book by browsing through. 5) In the right column of the chart, have them list any questions, comments, or learnings they got from the book. 6) Have them choose a different book at their table and repeat steps 3-5.

I have them do this 4 times. I love this as an activating strategy for a unit because it gives kids a preview of what they will be learning about and after it's over, all the kids have learned at least something about the unit! Have them share their books, questions, comments, or learnings!

Another activity we did this week was a little game to help students better understand division and practice writing number sentence fact families for multiplication and division. Procedure: 1) Give students centimeter grid paper and a numbered or regular die. 2) Have them roll a die. The number on the die tells you how many rows there will be in the array. Have students use X's to make the number of rows. 3) Have them roll the die again. This is the number of X's they will draw in each row. For example: If a student rolled a 2 and a 5, there will be two rows of five X's on the grid paper. 4) After they draw the array, have them write one relatedmultiplication and division fact. This isn't technically a game, but anything with dice involved is much more fun and exciting!

I think it's all finally starting to sink in! Division can be a tricky thing.