Fables, Folktales, and Myths Reflection

Our kids had such a great time with our fables, folktales, and myths, unit that we had to share their final reflection day!

Over the past two weeks our kids have been working on this tic-tac-toe menu as an engaging way to read more and more of these books. Feel free to print a copy of this menu yourself :) 

On the day their work was due, we decided to host a museum walk as a way to share all of their projects.  We started by brainstorming all of the skills they learned throughout this unit.

Then we had kids reflect on their work and which piece they are most proud of.  Students wrote this message on a large piece of construction paper.

Then we gave directions. 
1. Students stayed with their teams.
2. They added a comment to each student's construction paper sharing something they liked supported a reason.  The reason had to be focused on achievement of a skill.
3. Groups rotated when the music stopped (about every five minutes) so they could see everyone's work.

You would be amazed at how engaged (and quiet) the students were in seeing everyone's work.  This was so much more effective than a standard 'show and tell' presentation and each student left with comments from everyone in class as well as comments from the teacher.  They knew they were prepared for the test (and as an added bonus, we didn't spend all weekend grading this practice work!)

Standards-based Grading

I have been doing a TON of work with standards-based grading and finding ways to manage assessments to give students a fair grade.  There are so many great resources out there but I think my favorite book is Ken O'Connor's Grading for Learning. It gives real tips for making grading simple and fair. 

As part of the district SBG team, I have created glogs to help teachers understand the philosphies behind this new system of grading.  It's no longer about collecting points, it's finally about the learning!

Here are a few checklists you can use to help you collect data on your students.  I like to use these for formative assessments but you could easily use these to collect trend evidence to determine a student's final grade too.

Below are some resources to help teachers explore the philosophies behind this new type of grading.  Let me know what you think!
Want to learn more about including other traits into a grade like effort or late work?

Want to learn more about allowing students to retake a test?

Want to learn more about using trend evidence to determine a grade instead of averaging?

Want to learn more about including homework in a grade?

Want to learn more about multiple assessment opportunities?

Want to learn more about the use of a zero is standards-based grading?

Do you use standards-based grading in your district?  What are your thoughts?

Valentine's Day

I love teaching on the holidays! The kids are always so excited and it makes for such a fun day. The challenge we've always faced on Valentine's Day is that it is right before our state test! Yikes! This year, I have put together a Valentine's Day fun pack that will help kids review important material in a fun, "lovely" way. Feel free to use this fun logic problem with your students this Valentine's Day!

The best part of this plan, is our economics simulation. Kids will actually buy and sell items to decorate their Valentine's Day boxes! They love this so much that they hardly realize that they're learning about high demand and low demand items (isn't that the best? When you can squeeze a little learning into their day without even realizing it!)

What are your favorite Valentine's Day activities?

Enter to Win!

Test Prep Linky!

Cartoon is thanks to Larry Cuban’s article on School Reform.

Yikes! State assessments are right around the corner and the funny thing is that we’re not really that nervous. This year more than ever, we feel like we’ve done a great job preparing our students for testing situations through our day-to-day teaching. In the past two years our students have scored almost 100% proficient and advanced on our state tests and we wanted to share some of our secrets as well as secrets from other top teachers.

To help students with constructed response questions, we teach them through using a metaphor of a great constructed response. This free ice cream packet will help your students write complete constructed responses. Be sure to use this model throughout the year and not just right before the test for the most “delicious” results.

To help students write prompts throughout the year we love our community journals. We try hard to stick to a traditional writing workshop model throughout the year and have it found it hard to tie in prompt writing without these journals. Kids write to a different prompt each week and then give each other feedback. Each journal is unique so we always keep our students on their toes! Our teammates love to use these as homework while we prefer to maintain a testing environment during this practice. The possibilities are endless! Download this packet here.

To help our students use math vocabulary effectively, we use the common core words as our word wall. It’s fun to tie in math vocabulary games to keep our students engaged while learning these words. Download this packet here.

We do the same thing for literacy vocabulary! Download this on TpT here.

Finally, our secret to helping students practice literacy skills throughout the week is a week-to-week bulletin board program where students practice ten different skills. These skills get harder and harder each week so our kids are well prepared. We usually do this during word work time as a “must do.” It is available for purchase on TpT here.

Check out more test prep secrets below!

Listening

"We have two ears and one mouth, so we should listen more than we say.”
― Zeno of Citium, as quoted by Diogenes Laërtius

I probably say "I am looking for good listeners" a hundred times a day! Listening is such an important skill that is so often overlooked in our lesson planning. Today's blog post is dedicated to helping students become active listeners throughout the day. Here are a few ideas...

1. Teach students what it means to be an active listener. Make a chart defining it.
2. Give your students three step directions and tell them that you are only going to repeat the directions one time. If they know this in advance, they are forced to listen. Do this frequently in all activities and follow through!
3. Model what it means to be an active listener by showing this to your students when they are speaking.
4. Hold them accountable for listening. If you give them all of the notes and directions in writing, they don't need to listen! Be sure that they are expected to be an active participant in the lesson.
5. Surprise them! Make sure you have a classroom environment where students know they might be called on to talk at any time. There's no "zoning out" in these types of rooms!

Download this FREE Christmas Listening activity to help your students reflect on their listening skills in class.

Holiday Math

Racing through the halls,
With a teacher yelling “hey”
O’re the crazier we get
Laughing all the way!

Does this sound like your students this time of year? Sometimes it feels so hard to do any meaningful teaching when the kids are all consumed with the holidays. If you can’t beat ‘em…join ‘em.

Instead of teaching our regular math workshop for the last week before break, we planned fun holiday themed review math games and projects to keep our students engaged and help maintain our sanity! We play holiday music, play the games, and we just might even make some hot cocoa. Time to make it memorable!

Here's one of our favorite activities. Planning a holiday shopping spree is a real life application of math... it doesn't get any better than this!

You can check out our complete math pack for only $3.50 or just print the image above and bring a fun holiday math activity to your classroom this year.