Celebrating Ireland

Hi, this is Sandra from teaching Treks! With St. Patrick's Day just around the corner, this post is dedicated to celebrating the beauty of the Irish countryside. My daughters have been saving their pennies earned at part time jobs for years to take a magical trip to Ireland. I'd like to share just a few of their photos with you.

And to help bring a little bit of Ireland into your classroom, here are some free St. Patrick's Day resources you might like to use.  NO PREP Printables for the little kids and Thinking Treks for bigger kids!

One Simple Way to Teach Critical Thinking + a Freebie!

Hi Everyone! Kelsea here from Teacher Gems! Today I will be sharing one simple strategy for increasing your students' higher-order thinking skills.

Have you ever felt bogged down by the need to cover so many standards or to get through a particular curriculum? With so much expected of teachers to cover these days, this can become a reality for many! Unfortunately this can also lead our students to believe that their main role is to get the work done quickly and correctly. If they can come up with the correct answer quickly there is no need to think deeply or critically about what they are learning. 

Ideally it would be wonderful to incorporate critical thinking skills into each of our daily lessons but this is not always realistic. There are however several ways we can be purposeful about teaching critical thinking. I want to share one of those methods with you today. It is a method that I have found great success with my 4th grade students. It is a simple, fun way to teach critical thinking AND it can be a spare time activity and not take away any of your precious teaching time. Logic puzzles!

Logic puzzles are so much fun for students and can really help develop critical thinking skills! In my classroom I set up a tub specific for logic puzzles in my math center. I included several copies of each puzzle so there were enough for each student to complete at their own pace. I found that most students are self-motivated by the puzzles but a few will give up after trying one or two if they think they are too hard. To solve this problem I created a logic puzzle incentive program where students are rewarded for doing puzzles. 

When introducing logic puzzles it is important that you teach your students how to solve them first. I prefer to use the grid style logic puzzles because they provide students with a scaffold to use for process of elimination. To get you started here is a free sample from my Fall Logic Puzzles. I hope your students enjoy!

Thanks for stopping by!

Incorporating Logic Problems

Hello Bloggie World!  I'm Deniece from This Little Piggy Reads.

I'm a Texas Teacher with 10 years of experience.

If you aren't aware, Texas is totally different from the entire country.

TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) drive our instruction, not Common Core.

This year I was offered an amazing opportunity to teach 

Gifted & Talented Students across our district.  Each elementary school is bussed to our campus a different day of the week.  I teach a 4th/5th split class.  My students beg to be challenged.  I love my job!  

We start off every class period with a logic problem.  I've used a variety of them.  TpT has some great free and paid resources for logic problems.

How do logic problems help students?

Logic problems increase their reasoning and problem solving skills.

It is basically a mystery that students have to solve by sorting through the evidence.

Shown in Pic: Thanksgiving Jokes

Our district has pinpointed skills that all of our elementary schools have deficits in.  In reading, we know that they lack inferencing skills and in math we know that they need more exposure to solving multi-step word problems.  Logic problems marry both skills in a fun and engaging way.

When I say logic problems, you might automatically think of SUDOKU Puzzles or Logic Grids.  Don't forget about riddles, rebus puzzles or word games. 

Have you ever been in a room with all gifted students?  

It is surprisingly quiet (except for my Tuesday class).  I have to force them to talk!  I know teachers across the blogosphere are turning off their computers or yelling expletives at me.  If I give my students a SUDOKU Puzzle or a Logic Grid, they will take their pencil, move to a corner of the room and choose not to talk to anyone. 

Shown in Pic: Whose Grandparent is it?

However, if I give the table a baggie with a riddle or a problem to solve and offer an incentive for the table that answers the problem first (or within 7 minutes), I begin to hear chatter.  I enjoy listening as they discuss different solutions to the problem. They are highly motivated when I tell them the prize is 1 hour of gum chewing in class.  

Now, I'm sure all of you have morning work or bell work.  

I know I did in my inclusion classroom.  But, it was silent seat work.

Let's be serious, I needed to drink my coffee in silence.

If I reflect upon this practice, was this the best thing for my students? No, not always.

All of my students needed exposure to problem solving.  My ELL and RtI students needed to hear the process their peers were using to find answers.  My Gifted students needed to be challenged.  This activity helps build social skills, due to its collaborative nature.

Do you use logic problems in your classroom?  If not, I challenge you to incorporate them once a week and watch your students collaborate to find answers.  To get you started, I made a beginner logic puzzle with moveable pieces.  It's scaffolded with a chart that younger students might need to get started.