It's almost Spring! Can you feel it. Changing is coming. It's staying lighter later. We've had a few warmer days here and there. I love Spring.
I bet your students can feel the changes, too. Are they starting to stretch and grow?
Every Spring, I always noticed a change in my classroom. It was subtle, but it was there. My students became more independent and our lessons became more in-depth, but it was more difficult for students to focus and pay attention. I had a difficult time teaching and students were sometimes not so kind to each other.
Here are a few ideas that can help with classroom management during the spring when you need to pull out all your tricks!
Use a Behavior Chart
If you have a couple students who are slightly out of control, consider using a behavior chart to check-in with them on a more consistent basis. You can customize a behavior chart to match your day and teaching style.
One of my favorite ways to build character in the classroom is through literature. Students can identify with a character in the story and build empathy. This is not a one-time deal. It's something that needs to be developed consistently every few weeks.
Often, students don't know what it means to be responsible, caring, or to show kindness. I know with my own boys at home, I'm often giving them the language to show empathy to someone else. It just doesn't come naturally for one of my boys and he needs clear examples of what it looks like.
Likewise, our classroom students need clear examples of each of the character traits we want them to reflect. I'm not sure who said it, but this quote always resonates with me: More is caught than taught. If we don't teach it, they won't learn it.
Sometimes all you need to do is have a little fun and do something different. There are many ways to enjoy the classroom with students and sometimes it only takes 10-15 minutes.
There you have it. Four different ways to refocus students' behavior this Spring. Do you have any tried and true ideas to help students focus during the changing Spring?
How do you do informational writing in your classroom? Do you teach it throughout the year? Or all within a couple months time period?
I go in-depth about the process we use in our classroom to learn how to write expository or informational writing in a blog post on What I Have Learned. We use animals as our topic and study each animal for about a week. At the end of the week, students write a paragraph about a particular attribute of the animal.
Informational Writing Process
Here is the basic process we use.
Day 1: Gather Information
Day 2: Work with the Information
Day 3, 4, & 5: Write About the Animal
You can pretty much see each part of the process in the above photos or go to the blog to see more photos and detail.
It’s a pretty simple, but repetitive process to give students experience with each stage of the process. We research and gather facts about the animal by reading articles and watching videos about it. To work with the information, I type out the facts students discovered in their research and students sort the facts into categories. Finally, we write about the animal using the fact sort as a reference to help organize our writing.
Each week, I’ll do mini-lessons on different aspects of the writing process, like writing an introduction, organizing the facts, expanding sentences, etc. However, the process is the same each week. You can read more about the mini-lessons by clicking on the links at the end of this blog post.
At the end of our unit, students have a full animal book that we then publish and send home with parents.
One of the animals that we have done in the past has been reindeer / caribou.
Animal Articles
I also have a variety of nonfiction articles and QR codes to videos that I use with students to help them research and gather information. I've developed a slew of articles that are available on TpT individually, by habitat, and as a bundle. Articles for African Animals, Rainforest Animals, Coral Reef Animals, Life Cycle Animals, and Antarctic Animals are available.
The Caribou article is FREE for you. If you’ve already taught about caribou this season, you can file it away for next year. Included is a two-page article with visuals, a duplicate one-page article with no visuals, QR Codes and a fact sort.
Since developing this unit, Informational Writing has been one of my favorite to teach students. I love seeing them discover new facts about animals and I love seeing their writing develop over the course of the unit.
Welcome to October! Okay, admittedly, we’re already seven days into the month. How is this year going by so quickly!?! It seems to go faster and faster each year!
This is one of the busiest times of the year for teachers. Students are settled into routines. It’s nearing the end of the first trimester (or quarter). Assessments are approaching and report cards will be due soon. Who has parent conferences in October? Oh, and what about those holidays? They’re sneaking up on us!
With our lack of time this month, I’ve decided to pull together a few October themed resources in one place for you. These are all previous blog posts from my blog, What I Have Learned or blog posts on Who’s Who that will assist you with some thematic teaching in October. Whether it’s bats, owls, Halloween, or Columbus Day, these ideas might help you will some upcoming lesson planning.
This is a post all about my favorite books to use during the month of October. There is a range of fiction and nonfiction and grade levels range from K-3.
This one describes a unit I did with my second graders to introduce nonfiction writing, including generating facts from several resources, creating a circle map, and writing.
This post focuses on some free math and language stations for the month of October as well as how we spend October 31 doing some engaging Halloween Centers.
October ideas from Who’s Who and Who's New
These are previous thematic posts from October that focus on the spirit of the season. You may get a few additional ideas for your classroom from these posts, too.
I hope have found some of these references useful for your October planning. October is one of this months that is filled with fun, but also so many assessments, parent conferences for some, and report cards. Enjoy the spirt of the month, the fall weather, and try to not stress out too much about the all the "to dos".
Have you had it yet? Is it next week? Or still a few weeks off?
Hi, I’m Jessica from What I Have Learned. How many first days of school have you had as a teacher? Do you still get nervous at the start of every year?
I remember my first day of teaching my first year. I started my career in fifth grade. I had butterflies in my stomach that first day. I had planned everything the best that I knew how, but really I had no clue what I was doing!
In came 28 fifth graders, most of whom where pretty close to my size! I don’t remember exactly what we did that day. Most likely some name games, getting to know you activities, and team building games. Fast forward 16 years and I can tell you my first days start way smoother than my first first day of teaching!
Regardless of whether your first day of school is, next week or a few weeks away, you'll want to be sure you few key things in place.
First Thing in the Morning
Have something for students to do when they walk in the door available on their desks so that you have time to greet each student and talk to parents.
If you teach kindergarten and your school allows it, I encourage you to invite parents in and help their child get settled. Making a good home / school connection is important and one way to get a good start is on the first day when parents are handing their children off to you.
When my students come in the classroom, they find puzzle piece on their desks with a box of crayons. I don’t put anything else on students’ desks yet. You’ll find out why in a bit.
On the board are a basic set of directions. Students are to write their name on their puzzle piece in large letters (sometimes I’ll write their name ahead of time) and color the puzzle piece so that there is no white space left.
This puzzle piece is part of my Community Building Puzzle. We don’t put together the puzzle quite yet, but since the pieces are not colored, we are ready to put them together later that afternoon or if we have some down time later on in the week.
Seating Arrangements (or the lack of)
I mentioned earlier that I don’t put anything but the puzzle piece and crayons on students’ desks. Why?
One, I let students sit wherever they want to on the first day. Shocking, I know. I do this because I don’t know the students yet, but for the most part, unless you teach kindergarten, they know each other. I want to see who students sit next to and choose to talk to. I want to sit back and observe how they choose to interact with one another. This gives me a pretty good idea of classroom dynamics and personalities. On the first day, students are usually so nervous that they don’t act out too much, but you can get an idea of the kinds of choices they make.
The other reason I don’t put things on students desks is that I want an opportunity to hand out materials myself. Partly so I can talk about how to use the materials and care for them, but also so that I can walk around and get to know the names and faces of each student. When I’m handing out pencil boxes, notebooks, folders, etc. I’m getting multiple opportunities to meet each student for a couple seconds as I drop of the materials I say each name every chance I get. By the end of the day I have all student names and faces memorized.
I also don’t want overwhelm students with too much stuff on the first day that we don’t necessarily need until later in the week. I hold onto supplies, like notebooks and folders, and hand them out as we’re engaging in the activity that requires that supply.
Play a Name Game
There are tons of name games. Play one. Any one. Just do one.
As I mentioned earlier, every opportunity you have to say and interact with students names will help you learn them that much better. Once you learn their names, your brain can move onto other things, like figuring out their learning styles and personalities.
Name games also help students learn each others’ names. For smaller students, make it simple. For older students, make it more complicated. Either way, make it FUN!
Don’t Forget the Rules
Go slow. Be deliberate. Very deliberate. Explain EVERYTHING. To the point where you think you’re going overboard. Every opportunity you get, go over how to do something both in the classroom and outside of the classroom. Chorally repeat them. Model them. Practice them.
Keep in mind those areas outside the classroom, like the playground, bathroom, hallways, etc. How do you want students to behave in those areas? Teach. Model. Practice. Repeat.
Cooperative Learning Activities & Icebreakers
Plan a lot of them. Plan more than you will need. You never know when you might have a little extra time to throw one in. The first couple days / weeks of school are all about learning how to get along together in the classroom. Use every opportunity to build community and teach students how to get along with one another. It will pay off in the long run, later in the year.
Below are some of my favorite books that walk you through setting up your classroom for the first couple weeks of school. The below links are affiliate links.
Keys to the Elementary Classroom I have used every year since I first started teaching. It is filled with awesome suggestions on how to set up your classroom, create a daily schedule, and what to do during those first few weeks.
Reaching All by Creating Tribes Learning Communities has excellent cooperative learning activities for all grade levels. It's much more than just cooperative learning activities, but those are what I use from it.
Are you an experienced teacher? What tips and suggestions do you have for the first day of school? I'd love to hear about them in the comments below.
Hi, I'm Jessica from What I Have Learned. It's great to be back here on Who's Who! Since I've posted here, I've gotten a whole new blog design.
At about this time last year, I wrote a blog post for Who's Who all about how I use sentence frames in Math. Click on the link or the photo to read all the reasons behind why I use specific sentence frames in my classroom.
In the previous blog post, I gave you examples using sentence frames in multiplication. Today, I want to give you a some more examples, but this time using fractions. Here is how we have used vocabulary and sentence frames in our classroom to learn about fractions.
Become Familiar with the Vocabulary
The first day in working with fractions, we made fraction strips. This activity helped students become familiar with the language of fractions though hands on cutting.
We also played a game called Cover Up, where students had to cover up their whole piece with the fractional amount rolled on a piece of dice. While playing, one of the "rules" was that students had to say the name of the fraction, which helped them practice the correct language.
With older students, I have them write their turns to see how like fractions can be put together and how, when it's all added up, it equals one. For my second graders, my main objective was for them to practice accurate fraction vocabulary.
Sentence Frames
After students were familiar with the fractional terms, I introduced the sentence frames.
We practiced saying the sentence frames though choral responses.
Application
After students had a decent grasp of the sentence frames, we practiced partitioning shapes into equal amounts.
We started with precut shapes and folding. As we folded the shape and labeled it, we also use the sentence frames to describe it. Since we were working on two skills here, partitioning and using the sentence frames, I didn't have students take it to writing yet. I really wanted them to get the idea of partitioning fractions and describing them.
The next day, students partitioned their own shapes. We started all together on chart paper. Again, using the chart paper with the sentence frames, we discussed how I was partitioning and shading in the shapes.
Students went back to their desks and, using their math notebooks, drew a large shape, partitioned it, and described it using the sentence frames. I gave students the sentence fames so that they wouldn't get bogged down with the writing.
Students had to draw one circle and one rectangle, although they were able to choose how they partitioned the shape (within halves, thirds or fourths) and choose how to shade in the shape. This last student needed a little bit of help describing her shape, but you can see where the drawing along side the sentence frames helped her understand the concept.
One other game that my students have been playing a lot lately to practice the fraction terminology is Fraction Go Fish. This has been a beloved game in my classroom. Who doesn't love a good game of Go Fish?
Do you use sentence frames in your classroom? How do you use them to help your students understand and use academic language?
For more great ideas on how to teach difficult math concepts and scaffolding learning for students, come visit me at What I Have Learned.
Valentine’s Day is right around the corner. Are you ready for it? I’m not quite ready yet! But I’ve got some great ideas for this next week.
Develop Self-Worth
I teach in a low-income school. Many of my kiddos don’t hear words of affirmation on a daily basis nor do they come to school with a positive self-worth. Even if they do have an excellent home life, I still don't think there is much self-reflection going on in children's lives.
One of the things that I did last year and really enjoyed was having student reflect on what they loved about themselves.
How often do you ask, “What do I like about me?" Umm . . . I don't do it often enough. There's so many negative messages that come at me throughout the day, and I'm sure my kiddos hear "you're not good enough" all the time, whether directly or indirectly.
Through this simple activity, students write about what they can do, who they are, and character traits that they have. Choosing one, students create a heart that tells what they love about themselves.
Forgive the grammatical mistake! Points if you can find it!
Here is our class brainstorm from last year. I did have to refocus students and emphasize that this is something they love about themselves, not something they have externally. I gave the example that I have curly hair (although I grew up hating my hair!). We also discussed that family and friends are external things.
We have outdoor classrooms, so I laminated the hearts and put them out outside our classroom. I loved that parents and families were able to see what students appreciate about themselves. It is such a powerful skill to be able to say, "I'm good at ____." and believe it!
This next one is a similar activity, where students reflect on what they love about themselves, but they also expand it to include what they love about their family and school. Students write and create a heart-shaped flap book. These flap books turned out so cute last year! And, it was a great keepsake for parents, too!
If that isn’t enough, I have a whole Pinterest board full of ideas to make this week extra special for your students. Anything from valentines, to crafts, to writing and math activities. It’s all about the month of February.
I hope you got some ideas that you can use this week in your classroom! Come visit me at What I Have Learned to find more good ideas for your classroom!
You're probably reading this post well after the Christmas holiday, so I'm going to focus on New Year's Activities you can do with your students. Have you planned your first week back from the long holiday break? Or are you a procrastinator like me? Here are a few ideas that might get your creative juices flowing!
Ideas from Pinterest
This is from Scholastic and is a great reminder on the need to "reset" your classroom in the new year. I needed this reminder! I totally need to refocus my classroom management and do some activities that reteach how we act within our four walls.
I highly suggest you click through to the article and see all the great charts and ideas.
Craftivities
Here are a few craftivities that are so cute. Some are great for the smaller kiddos and some for mid-elementary.
This would be an awesome one to receive as a parent:
And one more that would be so fun for students to wear on their first day back:
Science Experiments
I think my own kiddos would love this one!
New Year's Flap Book
Last but not least, this New Year's Flap Book will keep students busy for a couple days as they contemplate 2014 and their goals for 2015.
So, what do you have planned for your first week back from the long holiday break? Comment below with a link to the activity. I'd love to add ideas more to my repertoire.
Happy Back-to-School time. Boy am I exhausted! We started back to school on Monday. Students' first day was Wednesday. I'm always so tired as I get back into the routine of it all!
Here are a few tips for you first few days back, from my classroom, to yours. This post is a bit wordy . . . it's kind of a brain dump. I'm hoping you'll find some tips in it to help you with your own students over the next few weeks!
Go slow
very slow. So slow, it's almost painful. Slower than you think you should. Okay, maybe not that slow. But, serious, we spent the first hour going over classroom rules (in a fun and interactive way) and establishing procedures for pair sharing. I'm starting Whole Brain Teaching this year and it has been so fun teaching all the procedures! The next hour was spent establishing Read to Self (Daily 5).
Model, Model, Model
Model the right way to do things. Model the wrong way to do things. Then, model the right way to do things. This is established with Daily 5, but can be transferred to anything you want students to do. Walk in a line, put their papers away, etc. Model it. Have students model it. Have students model doing it incorrectly. Then have the same students do it correctly.
Stop
When you see incorrect behavior (or when something annoys you). Then model some more. Call out the behavior. Or students will think they can get away with it!
Keep it positive
I've decided this year to focus on positive behavior management (through the use of Whole Brain Teaching). I've realized (don't know how it took me 16 years!) that negative feedback doesn't really work for the students that I really need to reign in. For most of my students, just establishing good practices is enough to keep them in line with gentle reminders. My most challenging students don't need more negative feedback. They get enough of it at home and have had it in previous years. I've got one kiddo this year that is pushing all the buttons. It's been a challenge to catch myself and try to redirect the behavior rather than become negative and turn toward a punishment mentality. I'm trying though!
Admit your mistakes and your fears
Show students that you are a real person, too. There was a time this week when I couldn't find a set of papers. There were times when I said something wrong (learning new processes is hard). Admit that you don't know it all. It will ease their fears. We read Wemberly Worries on the second day of school this week. I admitted that I worry that I won't teach them well. I also admitted that I was afraid that they wouldn't like me. Just trying to make it real, people.
Plan more than you think you need
Overplan for the first couple days or even weeks, until you figure out the rhythm of your classroom. It's better to have more in your back pocket than you think you need.
Come up with some sponge activities or "fillers"
for those extra 10 minutes that you can't do a full lesson, but you can't do the next activity. Have those in your "back pocket" to use when you have a couple extra minutes.
Don't forget to sit down
while your students are engaged in an activity, sit down. Really take a seat. Watch them. See how they interact with one another. Observe the choices they make. Look at their personalities and see how they work together to make you classroom unique.
Breathe
Inhale. Exhale. Relax. Take some time for yourself. Treat yourself to a coffee, a massage, a pedicure, a cup of tea. Anything that allows you to breathe and reflect. I keep going and going and going, that I often forget about myself during the first few weeks at school.
I hope you're first few days of school go smoothly with few stressors and that your students are amazing little learners!
It's almost that time of year again! Can you believe it? We're nearing the back-to-school frenzy. I know some of you just ended your year and some of you have already started back again. Those of you in the southern hemisphere, of course, didn't get a summer break over the past few weeks. Crazy how quickly time flies!
I'm Jessica from What I Have Learned, and I'm here to share with you a fun back-to-school activity you can do with your students at any time of the year. I've used it in grades 1-5 and it's a fun community building activity.
It's a puzzle! What kid doesn't love a puzzle, especially one they create! I started out doing puzzles that were shaped like a rectangle, but saw some shaped like kids in a teacher-friend's classroom. I knew we had to change up our boring rectangle puzzles!
I outline all my shapes in black marker, although that step is optional. I tell students that they have to write their name large on it (names are blocked out on the image above) and color it however they want to. Then, I divide students up into the boy / girl teams to assemble the puzzle. Students work together to put all the pieces in place.
Several years ago, I made it into a product. Each year, I just print a new set of puzzle pieces on card stock, outline each piece in black (again, optional) and have students color them during the first week of school. I do cut out the puzzle pieces, just to make sure everything fits! I also label the back of each piece with with "B" or "G" to signify if it's the boy or girl puzzle. The labels are on the front side of each print out before cutting. I don't have my girls do the girl puzzle or the boys do the boy puzzle. They're all mixed up.
Actually putting together each puzzle is a little bit of a challenge for some kiddos. My second graders do fairly well. Last year one group got it and one group didn't.
Sometimes I leave the puzzle unassembled and have it as an early finishers activity. Other times, I put it up for display. Each year is a little different!
Hi, again! I'm Jessica from What I Have Learned. I hope you all had a great Easter and Spring Break!
Do your students struggle to express their thinking in math? Mine do!
I am so focused on developing my students’ math skills with the Standards for Mathematical Content
that I forget that I also need to implement (and assess) the Mathematical Practice Standards. That is until they sneak up on me and I realize I haven’t been effectively teaching them!
So, how do I help my (mostly low income EL) students express their thinking in math? With a lot of vocabulary development, sentence frames, and oral practice. This post will be on vocabulary development and using sentence frames. My next post will be on oral practice.
Vocabulary Development
We all know that developing vocabulary in math is important. Math is like another language. There are so many new terms and concepts that students need to learn.
There are two types of vocabulary words, New Labels (for a known concept) and New Concepts (where the concept is new. The label may or may not be new.). Each type of vocabulary word is taught differently, depending on your students’ background knowledge and grade level.
New labels are easier to teach and students just need to play with examples of the new label over many different situations. An example of this might be labeling an addition or subtraction problem. First and second grade students know that an addition problem looks like this: 3 + 2 = 5, but they may not know that the labels for the numbers are addend and sum. They only need to learn the new word, not the new concept. Having a matching activity or sorting activity will help with them learn the new labels.
New concepts are much more difficult to teach and require many more experiences and interactions with the concept. They cannot be easily learned through definitions and are abstract. First, there is the label, then there is learning what the label means. Often learning the concept before the label will be easier. Students need multiple examples over a variety of contexts to really know and understand the new concept.
An example is the concept of decomposing. This is a somewhat new concept with the Common Core and students explaining how they decompose numbers is a critical skill. The concept of decomposing needs to be taught with many interactions and examples of breaking numbers apart and putting them back together. Number Talks are a great resource for teaching students how to decompose numbers. Vocabulary might include: decompose, break apart into ___ and ____. A sentence frame might be There are ___ tens and ____ones.I can break apart the ___ tens in ___ tens and one ten. (after you have taught the concepts of tens and ones). The sentence frames will be specific to how you teach decomposing (more on sentence frames later).
I do have a product that works on decomposing and composing two-digit numbers to help students with two-digit addition and subtraction. This was perfect for my second grade students toward the second half of the year after we had done many number talks and examples as a whole class.
Another resource for Kindergarten and First grade students are Part-Part-Whole Dot Flash Cards. These are prefect for Number Talks and decomposing numbers to 20.
As for vocabulary cards and lists, there are a ton of vocabulary lists and cards both free and paid. Or, you can simply write the words on sentence strips and cut them apart. The important thing is that students have a written visual of the word, that they practice it orally, and that they know what the word means.
Sentence Frames
The other resource that helps students express their understanding is sentence frames. Sentence Frames give students a framework to use the new vocabulary they’re learning. The example above, There are _____ tens and ____ ones. is a perfect sentence frame when learning about place value or describing how a number can be broken apart.
Sentence Frames are very different from Sentence Stems. Sentence Stems or Sentence Starters start the sentence for the students, but require that students finish the sentence on their own. I use Sentence Starters when I ask a student to answer something in a complete sentence and they’re struggling to start the sentence. The Sentence Starter gives them a kick start, but students are able to complete the sentence on their own. They have enough background knowledge and language skills to finish the sentence.
Sentence Frames are used when students are unable to express their thinking because the sentence or concepts are too complex and they need additional support beyond Sentence Stems / Starters. Sentence frames have a complete thought and blank spaces for the vocabulary or phrases. Sentence Frames are very specific and work with the vocabulary and concepts you’re teaching students.
When using Sentence Frames, you’ll want to use them heavily at first, for new concepts, and then start releasing students from them and taking away the sentence frames, integrating more sentence stems / starters. This way, students don’t become dependent on the sentence frames and start applying their own semantic skills in working with the content. When to do this varies with each student and each group of students. It totally depends on their background knowledge, grade level, math skills, and level of English.
These are mainly sentence stems / starters, not sentence frames. They can be used once students have a solid understanding of the concept, but need some help expressing their thinking. Use sentence frames to teach the new concept, first, before using this discussion cards.
I print each Mathematical Practice Standard on separate colored paper, laminate them and stick them on a ring. Students turn to a certain color when I want them to practice a certain standard.
What does this look like in practice? We’ve been working on geometry for the past couple of weeks. Students use the new vocabulary (names of the shapes) to describe the angles and sides of two-dimensional shapes.
The sentence frame: ________ has ______ sides / angles. is perfect for students to express their understanding of a shape. New labels might be the name of the shape. New concepts might be the sides and angles and putting those together with the name of the shape to describe it. A complete thought (multiple sentences) might look like: The shape has ____ sides. It also has ____ angles. I know it is a _____. I would love for my second graders to be so articulate with their descriptions of shapes!
This week, we started multiplication and students use vocabulary such as row, column, array, sum, equal, etc. The sentence frames that we're using are: There are ______ rows and ____ columns. The addition problem is _____ plus ______ plus _____ . . . equals _____. (the ellipse is for the repeated addition. It varies for each model). Familiar vocabulary for students will be addition, plus, equals.
After we built each array, I had students say the sentences out loud as a group to practice the new language. Once students understood how to build an array, they built their own versions, wrote the number of rows and columns and the addition equations on their desks. Then they used the sentence frames to tell their partner about their array.
I put these on my whiteboard and was able to easily erase and write what went in the blanks for each sentence. I've also used sticky notes to change the content easily.
Although I’m focusing on Oral Practice in my next post, I do want to emphasize that it’s important that students practice the vocabulary and sentence frames before you expect students to use them consistently. Most students will need a lot of practice in a variety of contexts and situations.
So, how do you help students express their understanding of mathematical concepts?
