Kristy's Questions to Enhance Comprehension!

Some of you reading this already know the wonderful, inimitable, Miss Kristy. She is starting a TeachersPayTeachers store, and although she's just beginning to update, I highly recommend that you follow her  and do anything she says. I know I do, and I've never regretted it!

I'm super critical about curriculum. Not in a negative, naggy way, but in the traditional sense. I am very cautious about things that claim to be "Common Core Aligned" or that haven't been tested out with actual students. 

So when I say that Kristy is the real deal, I can't be anymore heartfelt. It's not just because she's been Teacher of the Year for her (VERY large) district (oh, yeah, she's awesome like THAT), it's also that she's thoughtful and thorough and practical and kind and inspiring. I learn something from her every. single. time. we are together for more than 20 seconds.

I just bought her Questions to Enhance Comprehension (for a dollar! what the!) to use with my parent conferences the week after Thanksgiving. I'm also translating it into Spanish because, hi, I need it. I'll send it back to her so she can add it to the download, so you'll get that too! I also got the Math About Me to add to their math journals....SO FUN! I got some other stuff too, but check it out yourself.

If you get a chance to look at their I Have/Who Has telling time cards, you'll see what I mean about being critical. So many times, you just see regular old clock faces and times, both in very standard form. It's nothing new or special. Notice that she includes a variety of language options on her cards....not just "who has 9:30" but "who has half past 9?" Those are the details that keep the cognitive demand (rigor) high and provide for rich discussions with even the littlest learners. {LOVE}

Writer's Workshop.....How do you feel about lesson objectives?

There are times when I am convinced that there is no more subversive, no more revolutionary act, than to teach.  Especially in a public school, where your unending goal is to provide every child (no matter their race, language, religion, sexual orientation, economic status, citizenship status....I don't need to go on, right?) the experiences required to be literate...to be critical....to be informed. It is, at its core, anarchy and rebellion. Forget everything you've heard about the "factory model", too, because I see great teachers, every day, pushing themselves and their students way beyond the meager resources they've been allotted.

All that to say this:  I know it's de rigeur to require teachers to start every lesson with an "objective" or to even post them in your agenda, but I kinda don't get it. I think anything worth learning can't really be learned in 50 minutes, so to say "At the end of this lesson you will be able to say that you can (insert anything substantial here)" is absurd to me.

One thing that's been made clear, in the quest to implement the Common Core Standards (in Math and Language, as far as I can tell), is that we need to rethink "grain size". In other words, at what level are we attaching meaning in the curriculum? It's not at the lesson level... or even the chapter level...but at the unit level.


So why do administrators and policy makers insist on these "lesson objectives"? (Rhetorical, btw, I don't actually care haha) We were talking about this at our instructional leadership meeting, and we were trying to figure out how to have collaboration, and coherence, without lock-step lesson planning and without pretending that mastery occurs in 50 minutes.

Our district focus this year is Writing, so we came up with the idea that we could create posters of the standards for, say, opinion writing. Our grade levels would agree on the focus and content of the unit, down to which linking words and organizers we would use. Since we agree that these handful of items is what we will be working on for the next 5 to 6 weeks, with a unit objective of being able to write an opinion, then for any given lesson, in any given room, we could just highlight the one we are focusing on with today's lessons and workshop time. Knowing, full well, that we would be coming back to each one, repeatedly, over the course of the weeks. It gives us the room to attend to the needs of our individual groups of students (what does this class need more of, that that other class may not?) and still know that we have identified (and are providing) the core of the Core, if you will.

 The clothespin just moves to our current focus, which you can see, today, was "Writers tell what they think about many topics." We had already used books and the "things we do" (science experiments, recess, etc.) to mine for "what we think" and today, we added "places we go" to come up with our opinions. 

It was such a lovely lesson, can I suggest you try it? I found different pictures (using Google images, though I suppose I could have taken pictures with my phone) of things around our school...the cafeteria, office, library, PE yard, jungle gym, soccer field, trees they love to climb, the slide area, even a toilet to represent the bathrooms (ohhhhhh did they have opinions about the restrooms! Holy.) I placed them on a poster in their approximate relative locations, and we partner shared different places we go in school, and what our opinions are of each of those places.  "Soccer is my favorite sport" or "I think the bathrooms are disgusting" or "We should be allowed to climb the trees" or "I think it's not fair to play 'ropesies' in tetherball". They simply couldn't run out of things to say!

I made an 8.5 x 11 version (even invested in some color copies) and they pasted them into their writing journals. So just like they had "a heart map" to generate their small moments stories, they now have "an opinion map" to generate their opinion stories. {LOVE}
Click Opinion Map to download the map I made (how different can your school possibly be? Just drag the pics around or add/delete pictures).

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!"

A Little Help Goes A Long Ways

One of my favorite number routines is, of no surprise, the Number Talk. But perhaps my SECOND favorite is a "number of the day" exercise we do in our journals during our calendar work. We count the number of days we've been in school, adding a sticker to a ten frame each and every day.

Oh! Quick bird walk. This is not my idea, by any means, but it changed my life, so just in case you don't do it yet, here it is....quick and powerful, and it requires no brain power from me. Could it be more perfect? I used to have the calendar set that had the straws? Where you'd count the day, and add a straw to the little pouch labeled "ones" each day...then when you had 10 straws you'd bundle those up with a rubber band and move them to the pouch labeled with "tens". Nevermind, here:

Okay but many years ago I switched to this:

And never looked back. Never once did my kiddos ever say "We're almost at ten" when I used the straws. We just kept counting them every day. Over and over. But with the dots on the ten frames, they suddenly started saying it spontaneously..."Two more days until ten! We almost have another ten! Here comes another ten day...let's see...four more days, and it's Thursday today....so we should have ten on Wednesday." I do not jest or exaggerate. And as for my teaching? I did exactly zero differently. These babies teach themselves. And, bonus time, when you fill them in side to side, you get to talk about odds and evens every day because the dots have a partner...or they don't.


Okay, back to the point. Number of the Day is another math routine that I love a lot. It's perfect for getting kids to use the properties of arithmetic...like commutative, associative, identity...you know, Big Ideas. Each day, the number of the day is the number of days we've been in school. We start with, "You have to make that number five different ways"...On the tenth day of school, you have to start making the numbers ten different ways....on the twentieth day of school, it's 20 days. Kids find patterns (plus one/minus one compensations for addition and minus one/minus one or plus one/plus one compensation for subtraction) plus what happens when you add/subtract zero, and whether the commutative property works for addition AND subtraction...it all comes up, even when you are just trying to make the number 1! Such a boon, I love it.

Here's sweet, hard working Alex. I spot check the journals the first few weeks of school (and then every few weeks after that, as comfort sometimes breeds laziness in these activities), and this is what I found in Alex's journal as he was recording the ways for day number 14...which means, he should have been making 14 over and over.

Oopsy! That won't do! So I showed him how to use unifix cubes (and keep getting another one for each new day, to add to his train) and then we practiced breaking the train into parts, counting those parts, and recording what we did.

 

He's currently recording it strictly as addition, but we'll work on relating what he's doing to subtraction as the weeks progress. Two great things came of doing it this way:

Here's his journal just a few days later, for day 17. {LOVE} And the second thing is a different student was having a similar struggle and I said, "Hey, Alex, why don't you show your strategy to Vineet?" So he did. And that moment, when he was showing somebody else what he could do, that  my friends, was a magical moment for The Boy Who Struggled.

 

Cheap Ikea Trays

I have had these Lakeshore plastic crafting trays in my room for the past 4 years, and they are going strong. They are $15.00 for 4 of them, which makes them prohibitive, in my opinion. At the time, I had gotten a wee bit of money for my classroom, and had purchased 2 sets on a hog-wild-whim. The remaining six sets (for $90 plus tax) were out of pocket for me. I loved them that much.

 Here they are in my math space, stacked up there on the left hand side. We use them very nearly daily, and we love them. Just you can see them in action here, and also, just about anywhere I talk about doing math with kids.

 

Whenever I'm sharing with teachers about doing math with little kids, these trays come up. They are so appealing! I used to use felt mats I cut from a roll of felt that was gifted to me. Those were free, and I used them for two years. (I cut them up and made them into whiteboard erasers since I retired them from being math mats, so I am very grateful for that gift!) The mats were good, because it defines your space. Nobody was allowed to touch your pieces once they were on your mat, so it created a nice culture in the classroom and kept others from "tidying up" your opus. It also helped with the management of 33 Littles, as they were able to move to any spot in the classroom (on the carpet, other work tables, a corner of floor) and they felt like (and acted like) they were at their own desks because of those mats. Here they are in action, with the plastic zip lock gallon bags that were our original "Math Bags".

 Then I got the trays and I saw that, really, there were some serious advantages... Case in point, this is J, and she wanted to show me this great idea she had. So she trotted it over to where I was, which she could not have done on the flimsy felt.

 Because teachers are so clever and resourceful, I've heard of lots of great ideas for having the "tray experience" without the outrageous price tag. The dollar store sells cookie sheets, for example, which I thought was super smart. There is only reason I was STILL glad to have my fancy trays after hearing that awesome idea, in fact, and that was because my trays are extra deep compared to the relatively flat lip of a baking sheet. That's not a deal breaker (especially for the cost savings) but there are many times when we have to set our math aside for the day, and the extra deep sides of the Lakeshore trays means that we can leave our math tools set up and still be able to stack them without worrying that they would tip over or not stay flat. Super helpful!

 But just this weekend I was at Ikea and found these Smula Trays. They are a frosted plastic, nice and deep, and almost exactly the same size as my trays. They are a nice hard plastic and I love them. And, they only cost $1.99 each! What a bargain for what I think is a very perfect math tray!

In Math...Using Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI) for Problem Solving

 We read our first problem together, with no numbers. Jose and Khazjon are students in our class, and I picked Lego Ninjagos as our math currency because it didn't take me long to figure out where our interests lie. Once we read the story, I asked them what was happening in the story in their own words. "Jose has legos!" Mmhmmm....do we know how many Legos? "No! I think he has 5." hahahahah so funny this always happens! I can't tell you how many times I write a problem just like this, then when we finish reading "How many Lego Ninjagos does he have left?" I turn to find a forest of little hands, waving in the air, wanting to "answer" the question. LOVE

So what else do we know about our story? "He gives Khazjon some of his Legos." Do we know how many he gives him? "No! But maybe he gives him 10, I think." Maybe! What else do we know. "Jose has some left." How do you know that? "Because we have to count them." And what will that tell us? "How many he still has." Who is he? "....." It says "he" still has....who is "he" in this story. "...Jose!" Yes, we are finding out how many Jose still has. Our school is two-thirds English Language Learners, and I have learned that these referent pronouns are tricky...it is not always obvious who "he" refers to...is it Jose? Or Khazjon? They can figure this out, but asking the question surfaces it for them, and they sort it out, before we get into problem solving.

Next, I put two numbers on the chart, under the story, and we reread the story putting the numbers in order as they come up. We did 8 and 3, then we did 12 and 5, then we did 14 and 6. I have a small tub with a variety of tools, similar to their Math Bags, and two students (first Jose and Khazjon, then students acting as Jose and Khazjon...boys and girls alike....good times, good times!) act out counting out the starting number of Legos, then act out giving some to the other person, then we predict what is left in their hand, and I always ask, "How can we prove it?" I get either "because 3 and 5 is 8!" or else "we can count them!" and we always do. "So we think there are 5 in Jose's hand right now, let's count and see if we are right!"

Once we understand the problem, I set them off on their own with two final numbers. Because I'm a masochist, I gave them the numbers 22 and 7.

 They did a spectacular job! They grabbed their Math Bags and a tray, and with the vague instructions to "show me what the problem looks like", they got right to work. Here we see Dontrell and Jossah using two different tools to build the 22 units, and then they broke off or removed 7 tiles/cubes and counted what was left. Nice solid CGI strategy.

 

Now, I have worked with third graders who lost their collective minds when they built their numbers with base ten blocks and didn't have enough units to give them away. I've seen some seriously crazy stuff. But this Little One (second grade) took it in stride. She built her 22, pondered it for a few minutes, and quickly changed paths to make 22 unit blocks so she could give away 7. Please to note, she did not "exchange" one of then tens for the units, which would have sufficed, but instead completely rebuilt the number using all unit blocks. I see that efficiency is not on her mind! Good job, Abbs, you knock my socks off!

Daily 5 - What the What Am I Doing?

I think I'm really going to like Daily 5...if I can ever figure it out! It just didn't seem that complicated when I was reading about it, but I'm not nailing it, just being totally honest.

Here's the nut of what I understand: Introduce a system of reading and/or working with words; build stamina in that system; use the Comprehension/Accuracy/Fluency/Expand Vocabulary (acronym: CAFE) to introduce strategies to the class; as students move to independence in these systems, use the time to create flexible groups and a conferencing schedule to support students in using the strategies we are learning. This appealed to me because I've always used a combination of Guided Reading and Reader's Workshop for the literacy block, but it wasn't as effective as I wanted (needed) it to be.

Here's what I've been doing: I made a poster (for myself) that is on the wall above my desk. It's not cute, it's not labeled, it's worthless to anybody who is not me. But when we are doing our whole group work on the carpet, I am facing that poster, and I use it to remind me of the steps of how to introduce a Daily 5 component. It's the system these ladies have created to foster independent work, and it includes a lot of modeling and feedback and modeling again. I have it all outlined on my poster. It went great for the first component, Read to Self, and my kiddos are up to 15 minutes of Read to Self every day. (Mostly) up to 15 minutes of Read to Self. What to do when you have one Buster who knows what to do (repeatedly models it incorrectly and correctly, per their instructions) but just needs a babysitter? A job, by the way, I am not applying for?

It's all fine, except I haven't had much conferencing or flexible group time. I still haven't done my running records. Ok, this week, I'm on it.

At around 11 or 12 minutes, it seemed like a good time to introduce the next component, Read to Somebody Else. Last Friday was our 10th day of school, so I'm probably doing fine, but I started Read to Somebody Else on Tuesday and it...was not smooth. Finally, on Thursday night, I went back and re-read that part of the book, and sure enough, I had totally botched it. On Friday, we backed up and did it like we were supposed to in the first place, restarting it. They did much better, and I have some hope now. Here they were on Friday, they are wonderful in spite of my incompetencies.

 I'm following their directions this week on Read to Somebody, and it will take the whole week to do it right. That's very different than the one lesson on one day I had gone with. And, let's assume, it's not just different it's also a lot better. 

Here are the things I've been doing that do not suck: The Pick a Book lesson with the Shoes....nailed it. I also went to the public library just a few blocks from our school and renewed my teacher's library card. This was an easy process that involved my school id, a driver's license, and a check to reimburse them for the 11 books I had out on the card from eleven years ago. You heard me right. Just because it's too freaky, I will add that since I got that list of truant titles...I've found 4 in my room! I did not even know that they were the library's. In my defense, I have a lackluster class library (hence needing the public library) that includes some discards from various libraries. Look, I'm sorry.

They were soooooo excited at the 80 or so books I brought in! We had read "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus" and "Knuffle Bunny" by Mo Willems, and they are among our most popular titles. Thanks to the library, I was able to introduce Elephant and Pig and "Elephant Broke His Trunk" rocked the room.

Everybody got to pick two new books. This took some time. First, we did the "I Pick" my "just right" books lesson from their book. Then they picked the two books that were interesting to them. Then they had to check if it was "just right" and there were some adjustments, not gonna lie, it took us a while to get everybody settled.

I scooped up the remaining books (affectionately referred to, in my head, as The Losers haha) and put them in a special basket  in the class library. In a few weeks, I'll exchange these for more books. I HEART the library!