Common Core Conundrum

Common Core... it strikes fear into the hearts of teachers everywhere. We hate NCLB, but CC seems so complicated that it's hard to embrace it right away. What's a teacher to do??? 


We are departmentalized, so our principal is having each department present our anchor standards to the other department. We're not sure if we love her or hate her at the moment. (I wouldn't say that unless I loved her all the time!) Here's our Prezi to show to our comrades in math. 


I'm hoping to add music if/when I figure out how. I'm thinking some Bob Marley "Don't Worry". 


http://prezi.com/z7gfgedfkseo/common-core-reading-reminders-for-mathmatic-masters/

8 Ways Not to Say NO

Love this!! So many times I hear adults, parents, teachers saying "No" to kids. I see the deflated look on their faces. While I'm a FIRM believer that kids need limits and adults need to follow through, I also think that school is the only place where a lot of our kids get any kind of love, respect, structure, and guidance. Dry tears here- my heart breaks for some of my kids.


I saw this on Pinterest and just had to save/share it!  Thanks to Minds in Bloom.com and she who pinned it first!!


8 Ways Not to Say No

I Can Infer that...

One of the most challenging things for my fifth graders in the dreaded inferring/drawing conclusion task that looms on the lovely upcoming assessments. All year I try to do as much of this as I can, but it's always a struggle- for them and for me. 


At last week's KEEN conference several presenters demonstrated and showed pictures of their kids (mostly middle and high schoolers) doing various verbal/kinesthetic dances, chants and songs to make sense of all sort of content. While I do tons of kinesthetic activities in my classes, I haven't done a lot of this sort of stuff. 


Soooo... after lots of web browsing and other investigating (AKA begging, borrowing, stealing) here's what I came up with to help my students grasp & practice this business of inferences. 


Great video I found on youtube:

Power Point I made to do with students:
(I put in one slide at a time, feel free to snip and insert into your own document)

Finally... a poster I put in my room. This is based on some posters that other teachers shared on Pinterest. I guess this is the borrowing and stealing segment of our show.  We also made up a rythmic chant with motions to help us remember the 3 steps of inferring. 

Here's hoping that none of my students will be "left behind" (insert sarcasm here) and that they'll all demonstrate their knowledge of inferring or at least be able to get those questions right on the test.  Hopefully I will draw the conclusion that I'm finally on the right track!

Funny

Krazy for KEEN

I just got back from my first KEEN conference- fabulous!! For those of you non-Kansas dwellers, KEEN = KS Exemplary Educator Network. Not only did my 2011 class of NBCT's have a great recognition dinner, but the presenters, discussions, and learning sessions were great! First thing to do: WORD WALLS!


When I signed up for that session I was thinking of sight words and Eric Carle's Hungry  Caterpillar unit I did years ago with my first graders. How wrong I was. A group of NBCT's and Horizon award winning teachers from a high school in Salina showed how they used word walls with their high schoolers. There are so many things you can do with words on construction paper and one of the best things is that it's so CHEAP to do!


Today (Saturday) I got right up to school and generated a list of vocabulary words we have been discussing with our newspaper project in my reading classes. I put them up in their own zone and didn't label them in any way. Monday I'm going to have the kids figure out what the title of the display should be and to categorize and connect the words in different ways.  This word zone will stay up throughout the period when we're doing our newspaper projects and we'll keep adding to it as we focus on new vocabulary terms and concepts. Great stuff! I'll toss a picture in later and share some more of the great ideas I got from KEEN.

Pyramids and Spoons

Another goodie from the KEEN conference via those amazing teachers from Salina: 


$20000 Pyramid was one of my favorite game shows growing up in the 70's. They use it as a vocabulary game. It's simple- one player can see the vocabulary word, the other has their back to it. Player 1 gives clues to help Player 2 guess the word without actually saying the word. We played at KEEN- so fun! There are a lot of other games with a similar format. I'm going to find a template online to put on my Promethean to do this. I also found some old clips from the show to show the kids. Fun stuff! 

They also showed us an adaptation of the game SPOONS. Put all your vocab words on small, passable cards with words on some, definitions or characteristics on others. Put one less spoon on the table than there are players. The dealer gives everyone 2 cards then begins to pass a new card around. Each player can have only two cards at a time so the passing continues. When someone gets two cards that match they grab a spoon and everyone else does too. He/she who doesn't manage to grab a spoon is out. Each time a player goes out another spoon is removed. 

SWBST & PIIYOW

Another goodie, not my own creation, but worth saving & sharing! I use a similar idea for a graphic organizer to help my students take ideas from Social Studies material, retell and summarize it in their own words before they use it in a glog or other project.