First Problem of the Month - PART THREE

So we started this POM with the Primary Version on Thursday, and continued with introducing Level A on Friday. We did our first work session on that same day, but I'm writing about it separately because, in my mind, it was a whole other animal. For those directed explorations and that introduction, I was very much at the center of those activities. (Evidenced by the number of times I say "I" in the last post *ahem*)  I'm not saying I don't engage my students, because I do, with questions and protocols and prompts for getting them talking and thinking. But it's just not the same as saying, hey, here's this situation....what would you do with it? The noise level (theirs) and aggravation level (mine) are proof that these are not the same lessons.

We read the problem together and I dismissed them to grab their math bags and a tray.  "You get what you get, and you don't throw a fit" when it comes to the trays people, let's keep moving. Roughly half the class got back to their desks and immediately started in with "What are we doing? I don't know what to do." Sigh.

I started to coach in with a kid or two, asking them what's happening in the story, can you make her acorns, but I gently reminded myself that that's not my job and instead, I ignored the escalating noise of the frustrated masses(save the occasional warning that "We do not swing our math bags!" Safety first, people, safety first)  and started trying to focus in on the students who were making sense (there were a few!) and what their strategies seemed to be.

After about five minutes (which felt like 4 months), I called for a "mid workshop interruption" and told them we would be putting our hands behind our backs because you're not allowed to touch anybody's work, and we would be walking quietly to look at other people's work to see if we could find any ideas that might help us get started back at our own trays.

Here is a picture of that. There are 20 boys in this class of 32.  Can we get a moment of silence for their teacher, please. (But don't feel TOO badly for her...she is charmed.)  In the interest of full disclosure, I had to put one child on a time out right after this for destroying a child's work, just until I could get over there and have a little heart-to-heart about what "we don't touch anybody else's work" actually means. I also had another student who decided to loudly announce, as he stood over each tray, either "LOVE IT" or "HATE IT". Which started a chorus of this in the class and required me to call for a moratorium on all proclamations.... just look people, and zip it for now. That's some solid teaching, right there.

But even with these nuisances, it was well worth it when we got settled back into our desks and we reached my magic number of around 75% of my students working hard on whatever their idea was.

Here is a thirty second video of me verifying that this Little One can articulate his first step.  We stand up and within seconds we are at a desk where his services are sorely needed. After he gets her started in counting her 17 acorns, I pull him to work with my other friend here on the carpet.

Both students started by making 17 acorns, but Andrew (on top) interpreted giving "each one" an acorn as giving away one acorn, whereas Junior, below, is correctly interpreting the problem. I love this kind of "match making" and use it on the daily. My only prompt was, "You two come down to the carpet, I want you to listen to each other, and see if you can understand how the other person solved the problem."

This is another student who used Andrew's idea (they were working together) but he is using his tools differently. This is so common, I see it every year, where students use these base-ten sticks as tallies or some other kind of unit.

I have no idea what they were talking about, but I love the spontaneous crowd that gathered around as she walked them through her thinking.

I like how a large number of students used these sort of "grouping" strategies to keep track of the different "parts" of the problem, being the 8 acorns Cevanna gave away first, the 5 she gave away next, and the four remaining in the little stack in the corner.

I also love little Rodrigo's use of color coding.  The red ones are the 8 squirrels and the yellow ones are the 5 squirrels, and the cubes are the acorns he's passing out.  Nice matching of the cube-to-counter also. And clearly, his way makes a lot of sense to Princess, next to him, who is co-opting it as her own. He was really good at explaining himself here, too. {LOVE}

It was bumpy, I'm not going to lie about that. But in the end, I was really pleased with their overall progress and attitudes. I know we will do this exact same prompt on Tuesday, when we get back to school after the three-day weekend (bless) so I wasn't worried in the least about who got what answers. My biggest concerns were around the culture I wanted to build in math class. By far, this class was the most aggressively negative in the way they generally dealt with each other (mathematically speaking) and it made me sad. But no way was I letting them see that! So I passed on a lecture and closed by making this quick poster:

I posed it as simply, "this is how mathematicians talk" and we found some words to replace the negative ones I'd been hearing during the workshop. My favorite is "Who wants to talk about the problem?" instead of "I'm done" because nothing goes straight up a teacher's back more quickly than a kid who yells that they're done 90 seconds into a carefully crafted lesson. Really now. Oh, and as for that final one... They made the cutest connection to this book which our Instructional Coach had come in and read to them the day before. When we replaced "I don't know what to do" with "Can somebody help me get started" they said it was just like the story, you just needed an idea that you could feed and grow. {LOVE}

I think I'll close by reminding myself that going slow helps you go fast. And then I'm going to remind myself that, really, they were pretty amazing. Then I'm going to take a nap.

First Problem of the Month - PART THREE

So we started this POM with the Primary Version on Thursday, and continued with introducing Level A on Friday. We did our first work session on that same day, but I'm writing about it separately because, in my mind, it was a whole other animal. For those directed explorations and that introduction, I was very much at the center of those activities. (Evidenced by the number of times I say "I" in the last post *ahem*)  I'm not saying I don't engage my students, because I do, with questions and protocols and prompts for getting them talking and thinking. But it's just not the same as saying, hey, here's this situation....what would you do with it? The noise level (theirs) and aggravation level (mine) are proof that these are not the same lessons.

We read the problem together and I dismissed them to grab their math bags and a tray.  "You get what you get, and you don't throw a fit" when it comes to the trays people, let's keep moving. Roughly half the class got back to their desks and immediately started in with "What are we doing? I don't know what to do." Sigh.

I started to coach in with a kid or two, asking them what's happening in the story, can you make her acorns, but I gently reminded myself that that's not my job and instead, I ignored the escalating noise (save the occasional warning that "We do not swing our math bags!" Safety first, people, safety first) of the frustrated masses and started trying to focus in on the students who were making sense (there were a few!) and what their strategies seemed to be.

After about five minutes (which felt like 4 months), I called for a "mid workshop interruption" and told them we would be putting our hands behind our backs because you're not allowed to touch anybody's work, and we would be walking quietly to look at other people's work to see if we could find any ideas that might help us get started back at our own trays.

Here is a picture of that. There are 20 boys in this class of 32.  Can we get a moment of silence for their teacher, please. (But don't feel TOO badly for her...she is charmed.)  In the interest of full disclosure, I had to put one child on a time out right after this for destroying a child's work, just until I could get over there and have a little heart-to-heart about what "we don't touch anybody else's work" actually means. I also had another student who decided to loudly announce, as he stood over each tray, either "LOVE IT" or "HATE IT". Which started a chorus of this in the class and required me to call for a moratorium on all proclamations.... just look people, and zip it for now. That's some solid teaching, right there.

But even with these nuisances, it was well worth it when we got settled back into our desks and we reached my magic number of around 75% of my students working hard on whatever their idea was.

Here is a thirty second video of me verifying that this Little One can articulate his first step.  We stand up and within seconds we are at a desk where his services are sorely needed. After he gets her started in counting her 17 acorns, I pull him to work with my other friend here on the carpet.

Both students started by making 17 acorns, but Andrew (on top) interpreted giving "each one" an acorn as giving away one acorn, whereas Junior, below, is correctly interpreting the problem. I love this kind of "match making" and use it on the daily. My only prompt was, "You two come down to the carpet, I want you to listen to each other, and see if you can understand how the other person solved the problem."

This is another student who used Andrew's idea (they were working together) but he is using his tools differently. This is so common, I see it every year, where students use these base-ten sticks as tallies or some other kind of unit.

I have no idea what they were talking about, but I love the spontaneous crowd that gathered around as she walked them through her thinking.

I like how a large number of students used these sort of "grouping" strategies to keep track of the different "parts" of the problem, being the 8 acorns Cevanna gave away first, the 5 she gave away next, and the four remaining in the little stack in the corner.

I also love little Rodrigo's use of color coding.  The red ones are the 8 squirrels and the yellow ones are the 5 squirrels, and the cubes are the acorns he's passing out.  Nice matching of the cube-to-counter also. And clearly, his way makes a lot of sense to Princess, next to him, who is co-opting it as her own. He was really good at explaining himself here, too. {LOVE}

It was bumpy, I'm not going to lie about that. But in the end, I was really pleased with their overall progress and attitudes. I know we will do this exact same prompt on Tuesday, when we get back to school after the three-day weekend (bless) so I wasn't worried in the least about who got what answers. My biggest concerns were around the culture I wanted to build in math class. By far, this class was the most aggressively negative in the way they generally dealt with each other (mathematically speaking) and it made me sad. But no way was I letting them see that! So I passed on a lecture and closed by making this quick poster:

I posed it as simply, "this is how mathematicians talk" and we found some words to replace the negative ones I'd been hearing during the workshop. My favorite is "Who wants to talk about the problem?" instead of "I'm done" because nothing goes straight up a teacher's back more quickly than a kid who yells that they're done 90 seconds into a carefully crafted lesson. Really now. Oh, and as for that final one... They made the cutest connection to this book which our Instructional Coach had come in and read to them the day before. When we replaced "I don't know what to do" with "Can somebody help me get started" they said it was just like the story, you just needed an idea that you could feed and grow. {LOVE}

I think I'll close by reminding myself that going slow helps you go fast. And then I'm going to remind myself that, really, they were pretty amazing. Then I'm going to take a nap.

First Week of Math - Exploring Tools

Over the first 5 days of school, we introduce, explore, and divvy up a set of math tools that the students will use during problem solving workshop for the whole year.  It starts on the first day of school. I start number talks on the second day of school, and it's always a "dot talk". This means that I need them to play with dots to exhaustion on the first day of school so I can protect my sanity when they need to use the dots on day two.

The first step is to lay down some ground rules. I'm not going to lie...this is a loud, sometimes crazy and explosive process.  My philosophy here has always been, "It's exciting to get an idea and test it!" As far as the students are concerned, they are pioneers!  Nobody has EVER thought to make a train of cubes that goes around the ENTIRE carpet before (everybody has thought of this haha but they don't know it) and thinking of this then doing this can be very exciting...which requires some hopping...and shouting.  I do try to minimize this, but I also ignore a lot of it during this free exploration period.

Before we start, we brainstorm what it "looks like" and what it "sounds like" when we are being responsible with the math tools. (They don't go in our mouths, up our noses, no throwing, we share, we ask if you are done with those before we grab them, etc.)  After we finish, we reconvene on the carpet and go over how we did....did it "look and sound" like the important and serious work that it is?  Here is where I will remind them that we should be using "level 2" voices, which is a normal voice, but not an outdoor voice.

Finally, before we walk through this, may I suggest a "shout out" call to attention?  Bells, chimes, sing songs....I do it all, as one must if you are serious about having their attention when it matters, but I have to admit, nothing beats a call and response shouting when the noise level creeps up.  For the last five or six years I've been (literally) yelling "yo yo yo!" and they (literally) yell back "yo what's up!" then everybody freezes and we have a window of opportunity to make an announcement, call for civility, and/or transition out of exploration.

We follow the same process every day. Set out a tray of one type of tool for each table group. Go! I walk around saying "yes" as often as possible. "Teacher, can I make the world's longest train?" Yes you may. "Teacher, can we work on the carpet?" Yes you may. "Teacher, can we have more red ones?" Yes you may. "Teacher, can I make a tower?" Yes you may. "Teacher, it got too tall, can I stand on a chair?" Yes you may. (Let me just stand here next to you though, how about that?) I also carry a clip board with this little checklist of observable behaviors, made by my dear friend and teacher extraordinaire Kristy. It helps me focus on the math that is happening amid the chaos, and it also lends an air of officiousness that is sorely lacking without it.

At the end of each work session, as a new tool is cleaned up and put to bed, each student gets their math bag (students are assigned a number that goes with their name - "a" kids start with number one and end with "z" kids at *cough* 32 when I'm lucky) from the hook and counts out a number of the tool to add to their bag.

(The tool bags started as gallon ziplocks, but I eventually repurposed a few cheap sheets and maxed out my sewing skills by make three straight lines for the seaming and one hem for the drawstring. The dimensions are still roughly those of a ziplock gallon storage bag, though taller....13" tall by 11" wide, give or take, finished dimensions.) (ETA:  Each bag has a number written on it in fabric paint, which matches the numbers assigned to the students, which matches a number on the wall behind the bag, not yet affixed in this picture.)

 At the end of this period, each student puts 25 red/yellow counters in their bag.

 At the end of this session, they add 40 unifix cubes to each bag.

 

 At the end of this session, they add 40 ten sticks (not 4, worth 40, but 40 actual sticks) and 25 units.

 At the end of this session each child adds 60 flat square tiles to their bag.

Other things that will no doubt likely end up in their bags include an expo marker, a die, and some hundreds flats.  In the picture below, you can see that MORE of each of these tools is available in this open storage. As we begin to solve problems using our tools, we may find ourselves in need of more of one thing or another, and we can always come here and get them. That basket of hundreds flats is always available too, but doesn't usually gain popularity for some time.

  On the fifth day, we don't introduce a new tool, but we practice taking our bags out, using the trays (seen above stacked up on the side) and practicing using our tools in whatever way we choose, but focusing on keeping OUR tools on OUR tray. After cleaning up and putting everything away, we also introduce the "I Found This!" bucket, seen on top of the stack of trays below. When we find ANY math pieces, at ANY time, on the floor, kicked under furniture, inside our pencil boxes, any old where at all.....we put it in the "I Found This!" bucket (named thusly by the number of students who walk up to me and say "Teacher I found this").  Make sure you are clear....no puzzle pieces, crayons, broken pencils, hair (!) goes into this bucket. Only math pieces! At the end of each week, it's somebody's job to sort everything back into those open buckets.

I used to spend time, every summer, counting out the tools for each child. Sometimes, I even had them in little plastic snack bags INSIDE the math tool bags. But then, to be honest, I was wayyyyy too invested. I needed to just divest from the entire process. When I tell them to count out 40 or 60 of something, in all likelihood, some number of kids will miscount. Don't care. Some number of kids will eventually find that their bags are empty and/or a certain tool is totally not accounted for. Don't care. That's what the open storage is for, go get some more of whatever you need.  But as you can see, by the end of the year clean up photo below, somehow it all ends up back with me. It's a zero-sum game from my perspective....they go out, they all end up back. What happens in between, I had to tap out. I have enough crazy to manage without adding "what's in your tool bag" to the list.

I'm including this as your end of the year clean up tip, even though I'm assuming you are MUCH smarter than I am. This system works...Each table group gets a small bucket for each tool type. They sort their own bags into those buckets. Those buckets get dumped into the five (10?) gallon paint buckets we use for chairs at our reading table and writing centers. Kids who get done early can start making ten trains out of the cubes, since they store better that way.  Every couple of years we take buckets of tools out to the playground and add a bit of dish soap and water. When they ask why we are cleaning the tools, I tell them it's because they like shiny things. They agree, and we carry on. Love second grade :)

Here are the kids the first year I taught second grade, when we dumped ALL our bags on the carpet at the end of the year and tried to sort them into the buckets from there. It took four days, and they had lost interest long before any serious headway had been made.

 And here's me, on day two of four.  Just saying.

Sticky Situations

TL/DR: Scroll down and make a set of glue sponges. You're welcome.
 
People of earth: I hate glue.

I hate the gooey white glue. I have memories of spreading a thin layer of elmer's on the palm of my hand, just so I could let it dry and then pick it off. That may have happened last week. *cough* Still, I don't like to deal with it in my classroom. Either I never did it at school, or my teachers were a lot cooler than I am. I hate the way it leaks everywhere...I hate the way it clogs up and dries out in the nozzle...and I hate the way it leaves bumps under the paper they are gluing down. I am full of hate for white glue.

This problem is not solved with glue sticks. Of all the unimportant things (and there are many) that make me  feel like I'm slowly going insane in my classroom, glue sticks have to be very near the top. They don't work (papers once tacked down pop off when the glue ages), they don't last (it seems that a single child can easily plow through three sticks a month), and the kids just absolutely refuse to take care of them (I am constantly finding the lids kicked under furniture as the stick dries in the materials box). Oh, I know, I've tried so many ways to manage the glue sticks. From numbering the glue sticks, to lecturing on the importance of caring for our materials, to even guarding them with the intensity of a mother lion protecting her cubs....I can never get over the fact that they seem to be eating these things. There is no other explanation for the vortex of glue in my classroom. Sometimes, I'll walk through the room, sprinkling new sticks into the material boxes like a benevolent Fairy Godmother. Other times, I have refused to release my vice grip on any new glue sticks. I have, I regret to inform you, sternly watched 6 kids try to finish their projects before the recess bell as they pass a single, half-dried stick between them, satisfied that they are finally beginning to understand what happens when we don't take care of our 15 cents worth of glue. Get the straight jacket, I've totally lost it.

I hate glue. I hate myself because of glue. Enter the glue sponge. I found a video of it here. It's a fine video. If you are like me, you will resist watching any instructional video longer than 90 seconds. It's nothing personal, just not my preferred method of delivery. So, go watch the video. Or, check this out:

 

Pour some white glue in the bottom of a disposable sandwich tupperware.

Place a sponge (and half of another sponge if needed) on top of the glue.

Pour more glue over the top. Make sure you secure the lid correctly.

 Set it aside over night (at least).

Students take their papers, pat it firmly but gently against the sponge, and press to their project. 

No. 

Seriously. 

You only have to do this once. Just add glue as needed to refresh. (I've not had to yet, and it's been a couple of months now). The boxes have changed our lives. Two tips, one I've used and one I have not: First, keep a spray bottle of plain water; before you put the lid back on the glue box, just spritz the sponges with plain water to keep them moist. Second, if they get smelly (SUPER looking forward to this, but nonissue so far!) dribble a few drops of mouthwash onto the sponges.

{LOVE}

Absurd

I love teaching. Super love with unicorns and rainbows and glitter everywhere, like LOVE teaching. Not because it's a snap for me, because it's not, I struggle a lot. But I love it because it's so interesting. It's creative, challenging, rewarding, and exasperating all at once.

There are so many things, in any given teaching day, that have a surreal quality to them. For me, none more so, then the number of times people try to hand me their teeth. At least twice a week, a small person walks up to me and tries to hand me a tooth. "Ooohhhhh goodness! Um...here, let me get you an envelope for this treasure!"