Geometry Expectation 2.1

Solve problems requiring the greatest or least number of two-dimensional shapes (e.g., pattern blocks) needed to compose a larger shape in a variety of ways.

Here is a sample week in the life of my math classroom. (It is always changing. My weekly plan this week was quite different than a month ago and might be quite different a month from now.) – see my Math Planning Sheet – based on Mandy Gregory’s. If you’d like to see my (french!) SMARTboard minilessons for the week, please let me know (I can’t seem to upload them here…)

Mondays: Open-Ended Problem based on expectation of the week. This week I translated one of Marian Small‘s problems – Choose any pattern block. Use 20 of the same pattern block to create any shape. Now, choose a different pattern block. How many of this type of block do you need to cover the shape you created?As you can see, this question is extremely open so that all students can have an entry point.

We did an introduction to the manipulatives and reviewed the names of the shapes. Students then split off into teacher-selected partners* to respond to the question on chart paper with markers. After 25 minutes, we gathered together to share our learning. (Based on what I saw, I was able to form my groups for the week). *I choose partners for this activity to so that one person doesn’t do all of the work. I try to match them up with an “equal” partner the best I can.

Tuesdays/Wednesdays/Thursdays: We started with a SMARTboard minilesson to reinforce the curriculum expectation. After 5-7 minutes, we moved into our Guided Math groups. The expectation that I am working on will determine the centre activities the kids do. This week, one centre was working on the NLVM (virtual manipulatives) website creating different 2D shapes with pattern blocks (they have it in French – yahoo!), one was doing paper and pencil practice at their desks (I usually make up my own sheets as the math textbook is a bit too wordy/irrelevent – but sometimes the text) and the other was a tangram challenge with “real” manipulatives. Eventually I would like them to be able to choose which centre they would like to work on, but for now they are on a rotation. The kids do two activities during this block (20 minutes each). At the end, they come back as a whole class and different students volunteer to share their math thinking of the day.

One of the rotations is working with me on the carpet in a small group. For Guided math groups – just like in reading – I make sure I see my lowest group daily (this is usually based on what i see on Monday) – and then plug the rest of the groups in. When working with me, we either work together to build on the skill/concept of the week – this is done with a mini problem, question, activity – usually done orally with a small whiteboard and manipulatives.

Fridays: Independent assessment (taken from EQAO or a parrallel task or a quiz/test) – summative of the expectation of the week to see if they “got it”. This is done completely independently. This week I chose an old EQAO question for them to tackle. – Many of them did well! Yahoo!

The end.

(feel free to give me feedback – or ways to improve!!!)

French Poems

I am a self-proclaimed “obsessive self-PD’er”. I spend way to many hours learning new things about how to improve my teaching. This may at first seem like a marvellous thing – but in fact, I go a little bit crazy.

This weekend (besides writing progress reports, planning my math week – including creating my weekly SMARTnotebook lessons and open-ended tasks, marking writing and reader’s notebooks, gathering evidence for an IEP, help plan a parent literacy info night, ….) I have decided to research Poetry Workshops.

I have found a number of good blogs with poetry ideas (like this one and this one). I would like to teach them free verse/open prose because I think they’ll be successful, but myself as a student always loved the challenge of following the formula for different types of poems (ie. cinquain, haiku, acrostic, concrete).

My biggest challenge (as it is with all of my teaching) is that there are wonderful, wonderful mentor texts for poetry and tonnes of websites with great sample poems … in ENGLISH. I have a couple of French poetry books at school, and I have found some basic (and sometimes lame) French poetry sites and I  can copy some song lyrics from my CDs, but it doesn’t compare with the multitude of amazing resources en anglais. I sometimes wish I taught in English for the ridiculous amount of literature there is to use with kids. It would save me a lot of time. You can search for books based on your teaching goal for the day, you can get them from the book room or the school library or the public library and even from a real bookstore (Southern Ontario has a pitiful amount of French books in their bookstores – if any! I either have to order online or drive a few hours). If you wanted to teach a mini-lesson on visualizing or good sentence fluency or inferring, you can refer to a list or a website for a multitude of titles to choose from. In French, I have to read each book I have to see if it *might work for that lesson. <end rant> So…. to TRANSLATE SOME POEMS I MUST GO.

Reader's Workshop

<another excerpt from my weekly newsletters>

Every morning as a part of our literacy block, we have a Reader’s Workshop. Reader’s Workshop consists of a mini-lesson, small group rotation, independent reading and sharing time.

Mini Lesson (5 Minutes): Our Reading Block begins with a mini lesson that lasts approximately 5-7 minutes. Each mini lesson will focus on a reading strategy. There may be times where a strategy will be studied over the course of several days, in which case the mini lessons that week will be related to that strategy.

Rounds 1 & 2 (20 Minutes):
1) Mme Wright will meet with students in two different ways: in a small group or one-on-one
2) While Mme Wright is working with the above students, the rest of the class choses one of the following:

1. Lecture à Soi (read to self): Students practice a skill or strategy from mini-lesson or small group. The best way to become a better reader is to practice each day with a “good fit” book.

(sorry for the creepiness of the blanked out faces)

2. Lecture avec Quelqu’un (read to someone): Read and talk about a text with a self-selected partner. They may be reading the same book or different books. Partner reading provides opportunities to practice strategies, improve fluency, check for understanding, and hear your own voice while sharing.

Lecture avec quelqu'un

3. Écoute (listen to reading): Students listen to books or songs on tape. Hearing fluent and expressive reading expands vocabulary, helps build stamina and makes better readers

Écouter la lecture

4. Les Mots/Grammaire (word work/grammar): Students will work with grammar and words talked about in mini-lessons in a number of different ways, including magnetic letters, white boards and pipe cleaners. Expanded vocabulary leads to greater fluency in reading, therefore increasing comprehension. Becoming a more proficient speller leads to writing fluency and the ability to get your ideas down on paper.

Vocabulaire

5. L’Écriture à propos de la lecture (writing about reading): Students turn in reading response journals each week. They talk about their thinking while they read – and strategies that we’ve been working on. Writing each day makes better writers. Writing about our reading thinking makes better readers.

Écriture à propos de la lecture

Sharing (5 minutes):
During this time the class might: Meet as a whole group to refer back to the mini-lesson and think further; Meet together to think about and respond to questions such as:

What did you learn about reading today?

What did you learn about yourself as a reader?

Meet in small groups to have a quick chat about how the reading is going

Homework

I dislike homework. Some parents want it, some parents don’t. Some kids complete it regularly, some kids never do. Every year I have tried something different, and I still get the same results. Although our board still says that the expectation is that if you are in grade 3, you do 30 minutes of homework a night, and if you are in grade 4, you do 40 minutes a night, my principal happily approved this letter I sent home to parents last week…. YAY! Not only does it save me time to focus my planning on more “important” things, it also gives students to spend time learning with their families.

The Ontario Ministry of Education has updated it’s provincial Report Card – homework completion has been removed, and incorporated into the Learning Skill of Responsibility. Students are expected to:

1. Fulfill responsibilities and commitments within the learning environment.
2. Complete and submit class work, homework, and assignments according to agreed-upon timelines.
3. Take responsibility for and manage own behaviour.

For nightly homework, students will be assigned special personalized projects throughout the term. It is also the expectation that if a student does not complete an assignment in class**, they will complete it for homework that night. Incomplete classroom work will only be sent home if the student was clearly not using class-time appropriately. It will not be sent home if they do not understand the assignment, or if they worked hard on it in the allotted time.

For regular nightly homework, students and parents are encouraged to

• READ NIGHTLY!!! Students are expected to be reading every day at home. Have students read to themselves, read to others and be read to (either by an adult, sibling or audio book). Talk to your child about what they have been reading – try practicing the strategies we work on in class. Reading in English at home will help students with reading comprehension, fluency, accuracy and the love of reading. Extra reading (in any language) will strengthen their reading/writing in French. (examples: picture books, novels, magazines, newspapers, online articles, video game instructions, etc.)

• Write together – Create stories, make books, grocery lists, emails/letters, family newspapers…

• Play Board Games. Ex) Monopoly (reading, math, estimating, probability, social skills), Scrabble (or Boggle or other word games), etc.

• Visit the public library

• Talk about your day, ask each other questions (weekly newsletter might help remind students)

• Cook or bake together- reading, sequencing, fractions, measuring

• Do ART together – painting, creating music, dancing, acting games…

• Play/Work/Spend time in the outdoors – collect things, talk, explore…

• Explore interesting websites together (try geocaching or learn about a favourite author)

Not only will the above homework ideas increase your child’s achievement at school, they will also be fun, family-oriented and expose your child to a variety of different learning situations.

Reading is Thinking

We have been talking about Real Reading. A reader can read the words right and have great expression, but they aren’t real readers unless they are THINKING about their reading. Our first strategy on our reading strategy menu is “arrête et pense” from The Café Book, Boushey & Moser. A lot of my introductory minilessons for metacognition came from Comprehension Connections by Tanny McGregor.

In an email from a parent: when I asked B if she was thinking while she was reading her book last night she said that she only had to do that at school!  Good try silly girl!

Small Group Organizer

draft #4. One day it will be sorted out.

Grade 3 & 4 Teeth

Being the daughter of both a dentist and a dental hygienist, I tend to look at people’s teeth. A lot. I’ve noticed a lot of teeth of 8 and 9 year olds over the past years. Their teeth are the funniest. Their adult teeth have pretty much all come in – and they are rather large, but they just seem too big for their mouths and they haven’t really set. I totally have them in an awkward period. It makes me laugh.

This post is dedicated to the goofy toothy smiles of my grade 3s and 4s over the years.

Goofy Glasses

Every year on the first day of school I take a class picture. For the past 3 years, I’ve added the goofy glasses. I love them so much (and so do the kids). And this year was no different. Here’s to a great year!

Procedures...

in our classroom, how do we….

answer the phone? behave/sit in assemblies? go to the bathroom? get a drink? eat lunch/snacks? use agendas? use computer lab? use classroom library? listen to instructions? get dismissed? enter/leave the classroom? get attention? react to visitors? act during lit block/math block/etc? walk in the hallway? behave during indoor recess? listen to announcements? manage our lunchboxes? sharpen pencils? know where to sit/work? recycle? work in groups? make up work missed?

I went to school today. They were waxing my floor, so I cannot get in until next week probably. A little behind schedule this summer – new bricks, new walls, new paint job, new windows and SMARTboards for the entire school.

I have a lot of cleaning to do.

Doo-Wop

My life for 2 months came to an end last night. Over 85 kids involved. Painting. Constructing. Acting. Singing. Dancing. Laughing.  Amazing.

June

There are 22 days left of school. Ack!

So much to do in so little time. We started our alphabet countdown on Tuesday. So far we’ve had A (art extra), B (bonbons), C (cache-cache dans le noir) and D (dodgeball). Monday is E (English Day & EQAO)…. etc. (The last day of school is Z – zip les sacs à dos)

Things that need to happen between now and my champagne birthday (which also happens to be the last day of school this year – June 29th.)

– EQAO (3 days worth of provincial testing for my grade 3s)

– Submitting assessment data for term 3

– Our class trip to Medieval Times and the CN Tower in Toronto (with the English 3/4s)

– school Track & Field meet for junior/intermediates (I am co-organizing)

– board Track & Field meet (I am chaperoning)

– Primary Play Day (T&F for the primaries – and since I have a 3/4 split….)

– Our school production (Doo-Wop Wed Widing Hood!) – two nights (and final rehearsals and final prop/costume making!) (I am co-directing/producing/prop making/set design etc)

– Our  Medieval Fair (with the English 3/4s)

– a couple of Assemblies (including a going away assembly for Father Peter)

– a couple of masses

– I imagine there will be a talent show of some sort (my kids seem to think that they’ll organize it)

– class movies: stop-motion animations and math videos

– Father’s Day art

– one more math PD

– REPORT CARDS!

(oh, and do my regular subject teaching!)

What seems to be a crazy time of year (which it is), it is also my absolute favourite time of year. Everything comes together, the sun is shining and the kids are smarter. The end of the year is much like a giant culminating task at the end of a unit. Designed with the end in mind.

xo

Persuasive Letters

For homework this year, we have been doing weekly writing and math practice. I have homework mainly to appease parents – they don’t actually get marked on the content, but rather the responsibility. In mid-march, students wrote persuasive writing pieces for homework about how we should stop homework for the rest of the year (we are all getting tired of it). I told them if I was persuaded by 15 (the whole class) with well-written letters, I would listen to them. So far, 12 have stepped up to the challenge.

Check out some of the great persuasive letters – these are written by some of my grade 3s – unedited. It has been a long year in writing, but I am proud of them! You can clearly see that we have been working on organization and ideas (with details). We still aren’t the greatest with grammar and spelling…..

Two more grade 3 letters – Teagan’s letter and Danielle’s letter

The grade 3s & 4s came up with very valid reasons for no homework – no time for family, no time to play in the fresh air outside, home is not time to do school work, nobody to help at home in French, it’s a waste of time and it gives your hands blisters.

Once all 15 students have convinced me (I am really hoping that is soon), there will be no regularly assigned homework. Students, however, will still be expected to read nightly (in French and/or English) and are encouraged to contribute to one of our class websites (if they have Internet access at home) –Wallwisher, Bitstrips or Kidblog. I did introduce them to multiplication.com today – and they went crazy with excitement. I’ll bet many logged on tonight.

(ps. if you speak French and want to comment on our class blogs or if you just want to check out my classroom website, message me and I’ll give you to the guest password! They are just being introduced to blogging, so they aren’t so great yet….)

SMARTboards

Here it is – in all it’s glory. It isn’t exactly in the place I had asked for it, and now the kids have to sit on the cold floor instead of the warm carpet, but we’ll get over that. They sure did a number on the wall behind it though with those blotches…. but besides that…. I am in love (and so are the kids).

I’ve only had my SMARTboard for about  a month, and already it is a major part of my day. We use it for the pre-loaded notebook files like balloon popping and vortex sorting – and they love the random group generator and the applauding timer. There are thousands and thousands of lessons out there. Unfortunately (like most things in my teaching life), I have to translate the ones I like, but I am getting pretty comfortable at making some of my own. I love how my SMARTboard is hooked up to the sound field system in my room, so that when I show a videoclip or play some music, there is surround sound. I love how you can write on the board with the “markers” on any screen – especially good for working on revision and correction (and that dreaded EQAO).

In doing many internet searches on teacher blogs and SMARTboard lessons, I stumbled across a fellow grade 3 FI teacher who blogged about the wealth of support and teaching ideas that she found on twitter. Twitter?? The thing I swore that I would never use? .. .. . I decided to bite the bullet and sign up. Besides a couple of friends and three celebrities (Rick Mercer, Brent Butt, Rainn Wilson), my main followers and followees are teachers. And sure enough…. I have found tonnes and tonnes of amazing things to do on the SMARTboard. I don’t tweet about what I am doing on a regular basis (i’ll keep that to FB), I tweet questions to my teacher followers.

A couple of amazing techy things that I found via twitter…

Prezi – technically Rob told me about this, but I investigated further after reading more about it via twitter. A cooler way to make presentations. It is especially great because it is stored online.

glogster – a nifty poster-maker – thinking about having my kids make Medieval Times Glogs.

wallwisher – this is a fun little site (although slow if you use it via the smart board and kids have to wait in line – a perfect thing to put up during lunch). I posted a question at the top, and the kids add “sticky notes” with their answer or opinion. I will probably eventually incorporate this somehow into other subject areas, and have them post stickies on a computer, rather than the touch keyboard.

dropbox – I love my macbook pro, but I don’t really want to unplug my thinkpad from my smartboard to plug in my mac to show something cool. I downloaded dropbox on both my mac and my pc at school and I save all of my files and bookmarks easily – no burning CDs and no memory stick. Bliss.

—

I have been letting my kids stay in during recess to play with the SMARTboard and get used to it. I also shared some hilariously fun sites with them. They love to visit places around the world.