Pumpkinheads and Signposts

I just read a great, great book today: Pumpkinheads by Rainbow Rowell and Faith Erin Hicks. I loved everything about it: the storyline, the characters, the setting. it completely transported me to fall, even though I was reading it by the pool in the middle of summer.

When I’m not reading excellent YA or middle grade books of all types, I have been catching up on some professional reading. I buy all of these great PD books, and then never read them. But not this summer! This summer, I have diligently read about 1 book per week or so, so I have crushed my PD library.

The PD book that I am the most excited about is Notice and Note: Strategies for Close Reading by Kylene Beers and Robert E. Probst. I have never sunk into a PD book like I did with this one. I actually looked forward to reading it every day and was savoring it so that I didn’t finish it too quickly. I loved their writing style and how easy it seemed to try out their ideas. (I actually did try out some of their ideas in my virtual summer book club with good results.)

So, as I bask in the afterglow of a reading such a good book in one sitting, I am thinking about the Notice and Note Signposts and how they appear in this book. (Mostly I just want to spend more time with this book.)

Brief summary before diving in: Josiah (Josie) and Deja are friends finishing up their last season working at a pumpkin patch. It’s their last day together, and they decide to try all the snacks and find the girl that Josie has had a crush on for four years.

Note: There are 6 Signposts and each has a question that the reader is supposed to think about after recognizing a signpost.

Contrasts and Contradictions: Despite being Most Valuable Pumpkin Patch Person (MVPPP) for five of the last six months, Josie breaks all sorts of rules to get to his crush, including skipping his last shift of work.

• Why would the character act this way? Last day to talk to his crush; if he doesn’t do it now, he will never get the chance to.

Aha Moment: When Josie, after finally talking to “the girl”, realizes what he really like about working at the pumpkin patch. (No spoilers here!)

• How might this change things? You’d have to read to find out. 🙂

Tough Questions: Deja asks Josie if they will see each other after the season.

• What does this question make me wonder about? Why don’t they hang out outside of work? Is Deja sad about it being their last day together too? What kind of friendship is this?

Words of the Wiser: Deja tells Josie that he is not going to miss out on talking to his crush today, because it is his last opportunity. “You’re going to take your shot.” (p. 11)

• What’s the life lesson and how might it affect the character? Josie definitely seems like a cautious person, so maybe he will learn to take more chances and put himself out there more, be more confident.

Again and Again: As they hunt for Josie’s crush, Deja and Josie kept getting sent to different places where she is supposedly working. Every time they go to a new location, they are told that she isn’t there. This happens again and again.

• Why might the authors bring this up again and again? To give the characters time together, to see all the sights one last time, to give the characters time to talk about their friendship

Memory Moment: The book opens with one! Josie is looking at the MVPPP wall (with lots of his pictures on it) and gazing sadly at his nametag, thinking about how much he likes work and all of his successes so far.

• Why might this memory be important? It tells us a lot about Josie without any words: he is sad, he likes his job, he is good at his job, he has been there for several years.

That was fun. I can’t wait to recommend this book to someone. Thanks for analyzing the book with me!

A Math Moment That Mattered

I listen to a podcast called, Making Math Moments That Matter, by two math educators, Kyle Pearce and John Orr. It is an excellent podcast full of tips, strategies, and interview with other math educators/innovators to help you make your math class into something that students are excited about and remember.

They always start their interviews by asking their guests about a memorable math moment they had as a teacher or a student. Sometimes it’s a negative one, sometimes it’s a positive one. Until yesterday, if I were a guest on their podcast, I would’ve shared a negative one about something my 8th grade algebra teacher did when he handed back quizzes and tests.

But now, I have a positive one that I would share, and it’s mostly because of the way that they ask their listeners to interact with problems with their students.

I put up this problem (from our Math in Focus textbook) for my 6th grade class.

Then, I sat back and let them get started. I was amazed by what I saw/heard:

• Genuine collaboration (students were walking across the room to talk to students in different groups)
• Multiple mathematical representations
• Aha moments
• Students teaching each other
• Excitement
• Engagement
• Mathematical language
• Checking their own work

We spent almost 30 minutes on this problem, and it was worth every minute.

Hopefully this is a math moment that mattered to them, too.

Reflecting on a (Half) Year of Teaching Writing

So I found this post in my draft, with all of these questions just waiting for me to answer them. Since it’s closer to the middle of the year than the end of the year, I thought I would reflect on the year so far.

• Name three successes from your half-year of teaching writing.

  • I have one fifth grade student who genuinely wants to write and share with me. This student did not want to write at all at the beginning of the year.
  • I have one sixth grade student who went from not knowing how to analyze her text evidence to being able to do it for a whole paragraph on her own.
  • All of my fifth graders are able to write for more than 25 minutes without needing a break. Most of the class couldn’t even write for 10 minutes at the beginning of the year.

• List three things you want to change about your writing instruction for the rest of the year.

  • I want to do more small group minilessons with my fifth graders. They don’t thrive in whole group lessons, and frankly, there aren’t very many lessons that they all need.
  • I want to give my sixth graders new vocabulary words to take their writing to a new level linguistically. They are generally pretty good writers already, but there is so much power in good word choice.
  • I want to offer all of my students more choice in the format of their final published piece.

• How often did you teach writing? (Daily, 3 times a week, etc.) Did you feel this was enough time?

  • I teach writing 2-3x a week. It is definitely not enough time, but I give as much time to writing as I can.

• Where could you add more writing time for the rest of the year? (Beginning of day, transitions, content areas, etc.)

  • I have already brainstormed some ways to get more writing into their science and social classes, and that will help.

• How would you describe the level of student engagement in your writing classroom?

  • I would say over 90% of my students are engaged with their writing at any given time. Some days it is actually 100%.

• What writing activities did your students find most engaging?

  • Free writing, but there does come a time when they get bored with it
  • Sharing their work with a partner
  • Writing together

• What writing activities failed to engage your student-writers?

  • Whole class lessons

• What were some of the most important writing lessons you taught?

  • Just write
  • Keep writing
  • The more you write, the better writer you will be
  • Just get something on the page; we can fix it later
  • How to analyze evidence
  • How to use advanced punctuation and formatting
  • Writing a good introduction/conclusion
  • How to take prose and turn it into a poem

• What writing lessons needed more time?

  • I actually feel that I have been able to give enough time to all of my lessons. I just wish I had more time to give them to just write.

• What writing lessons did you not teach yet this year, but want to include later this year?

  • Sixth grade: poetry, fantasy, narrative
  • Fifth grade: nonfiction, persuasive, journalism

• What writing lessons/activities/projects do you want to be sure to include again next year?

  • So far all of my projects have been keepers. 🙂

• What were the major genres you taught this year?

  • Fifth grade: poetry, narrative
  • Sixth grade: nonfiction, persuasive

• What is a current writing project you want to change for next year? How do you want to change it?

  • I would change the fifth grade narrative unit to include writing more stories and not focusing on just one story too earlier on in the process.

• How did your students write for an authentic audience (someone beyond just you, the teacher)?

  • I haven’t done that yet this year, other than with each other.

• What skills did you see your student-writers struggle with the most this half-year?

  • Fifth grade: paragraphing, length, explanation, topic sentences
  • Sixth grade: repetition, run-on sentences, not explaining evidence

• Describe the pace of a typical writing unit. In general, were the units long enough? Too long?

  • My units are generally 8ish weeks in length, but we only work on a writing project for about 6 of those weeks (with about two weeks for independent writing projects).
  • I would say that those seem about right.

• How did you see students living the life of a writer?

  • I have a few students this year who have started a writing practice at home.

• How did you celebrate the efforts of your student writers?

  • My fifth graders really like private feedback from me. They can turn in their notebooks after writing time, and I will give them a piece of praise and a piece of feedback to help them grow.
  • My sixth graders like writing conferences, where I meet with them while they are writing.

I would say that it’s been a good half-year of writing!

 

Book Comparison Debates

This week, we spent most of our language and literature time on oral speaking skills. One objective that we need to focus on is comparing and contrasting features within and between texts. I felt like we hadn’t spent enough time with that (or with oral speaking skills, for that matter), so I decided to put my money (classroom time) where my mouth is.

I like offering some options, so students could present individually or in a group as part of a debate; most students chose the debate. They picked two books that they had read to compare and contrast; the debate groups needed to pick two books that everyone had read (which was definitely more challenging!). 

On Monday, students made a Venn diagram to compare and contrast the two books, through our key and related concepts (creativity, character, and point of view).

On Tuesday, they decided which side to argue (the books are similar or the books are different), and I taught them how to write short bullet points on a notecard to use during their presentations. They also had time to practice what they were going to say, starting with a model, where I showed them how to take their notes and turn them into a full speech, with explanations for each bullet point (because nobody wants to listen to a presentation where the speaker just reads off of his or her notecard!).

On Thursday, they presented. The debate groups gave their initial presentation and then had a few minutes to craft a rebuttal to what their opposing group members had said. The presentations took more than 45 minutes, so we needed a whole class period. In general, the students did a great job with them! They had a lot of good comparisons and contrasts, many of which went beyond the obvious (characters’ genders, ages, etc.). Most of the students spoke well in front of their classmates, looking up and only using their notecards as a reference.

In the future, I would spread these presentations out over several days, with one or two groups presenting each day because it was a lot of sitting and listening, which is hard for everyone. I have had students present in small groups before (so students only have to listen to a few presentations), and I like that and know that my students do too. The problem is that then I can’t watch all of the presentations, which I need to do to assess them. I could have one student in each group record the presentation. I bet that if I asked the students, they could help me figure out a way to make it better for everyone.

All in all, a great way to discuss books and practice speaking in front of a group.

The Unit You

Really big and really small numbers are tricky for people to “see”. So what better way for students to visualize big and small numbers than by using something that they already know a lot about: themselves!

For this activity, from Jo Boaler’s Mindset Mathematics Grade 5 book, students worked in groups to figure out what 1/10, 1/100, 1/1000, 10x, 100x, and 1000x one of their heights is. If one student is the unit, what are other items that represent fractions or multiples of that one unit?

We spent several days on this, as it was really hard for students to find something that was 100 or 1000 times as big as one of their heights (they were much more successful with the smaller units). They had to take abstract numbers and assign a very concrete representation to it.

I would say that this lesson was engaging and definitely pushed their thinking. I probably would give them less time to do it in the future, because I think there were diminishing returns the more we worked on it. I always like a good Jo Boaler activity, and this was a fun way to introduce our work with multiplication and division of whole numbers.

The Number Venn Diagram

I love activities that appear simple but end up launching a deep classroom conversation. The Number Venn Diagram (from OpenUp Resources) was that kind of activity.

My students were wrapping up their study of absolute value and negative numbers. I gave them several pairs of numbers that they had to sort into one of four categories, represented in a Venn Diagram:

• is the greater number
• has the greater absolute value
• both
• none of the above

In pairs, my students had to show their understanding of absolute value by comparing the two numbers in each pair and putting each number where it fit in the Venn Diagram.

Then, we discussed it as a class.

The discussion we had was dynamic, with everyone engaged throughout, even though there were plenty of wrong answers. Negative numbers and absolute value are a topic that I feel like my students are pretty solid in, and I know that it is partly because of rigorous and thoughtful activities like this.

It promoted reflective discussion, good thinking, and it fueled our brains for the rest of the class. It was a simple warm-up activity that ended up being so much more.

Student-Centered Planning

As a new MYP (the IB Middle Years Program) teacher in a new MYP program, I did a lot of learning and reflecting over the summer.

As a PYP (IB Primary Years Program) teacher, my students created their own units, choosing the key concepts that would guide the learning and writing the central idea (the focus for the unit) and the lines of inquiry (how we would learn about this focus). It was full of trial and error, with lots of bumps along the way, but overall, it was successful. It created a curriculum and classroom that was student-centered, with students who were deeply interested in what they were learning, from the first day to the last summative assessment.

As I moved up with my 5th graders into our new MYP program, I was thinking about what our classroom would look like, with everything I was learning about MYP unit planning. It sounded so teacher-centered. I understand the logistics of why a middle school teacher would need to plan all of the units for his/her many classes of students, but I thought I could do it differently.

I work in a small school with small classes and a lot of teacher autonomy. This puts me in a unique position to try something new. I know all of the students (especially my 6th graders, since I was their teacher last year; 5th grade is also part of the MYP at our school), and I have a good reputation with administration, parents, and students. So I’m trying student-centered unit planning this year too.

This is what it looks like at the beginning of the year:

• My math classes started by putting chapters together from the textbook that they thought fit together. My 6th graders mostly followed the order of the book, but my 5th graders planned to jump around a lot.
• My language and literature (language arts) classes picked the order of the reading/write content that we are going to do for the year.
• My math classes picked the key (same for all of MYP) and related (specific to subject area) concepts for each unit, as well as the global context (the lens through which we will learn the content), for the whole year.
• My sixth grade language and literature class did that as well. My fifth grade language and literature class started with just the first unit. We will pick out the essential elements for each unit as we get to it.

It took us awhile to do, but they are excited about the units and I am excited that this seems to be working.

As the year progresses, students will do even more planning with each individual unit: statement of inquiry; factual, conceptual, and debatable questions to guide our inquiry; and our assessments.

This is fun to do because I don’t know any other MYP teachers who have this level of student-agency in their unit planning. I’m excited to see what it looks like throughout the year, and where we end up with our unit planning.

What actually is a thousandth?

With my 5th graders today, we looked at decimals. Specifically, we looked at what decimals actually look like. I like getting concrete with my 5th graders because they think they are so “over” manipulatives. (insert eye roll here)

We took a piece of paper and established it as one whole. Then we cut it into ten pieces. We identified one piece as one tenth of one whole.

Then we took one tenth and cut it into ten pieces. We identified one of those pieces as one hundredth of one whole.

Then we took one hundredth and cut it into ten pieces. We identified one of those pieces as one thousandth of one whole.

We did a lot of talking about those pieces. How many tenths are in one, how many thousandths are in one tenth, how small those thousandth pieces are. (Some intrepid mathematicians created ten-thousandths, 0.0001, and those were really small.)

It was fun to think about math this way. And hopefully it will give us a good foundation to look at decimals in a more abstract way in the future.

(P.S. I promise all of my posts won’t be about math. We have done some great language arts things as well this year, like start Front Desk by Kelly Yang as our first read aloud.)

Back to School

Yesterday was not a good first day of school. There were several things outside of my control that overshadowed a lot of good things that I did with my students. Sigh.

But today was a new day (I just love that about teaching…everybody gets to start fresh every day, including me). And today was much better

Two students experienced great success in my 6th grade math class today. Neither of these students particularly like math, but they were the only group to actually finish today’s task (they were the only ones even close).

The task was from Jo Boaler, looking at different 2D views of a 3×3 “city” of different colored columns that were different heights. They had to create in 3D the images that they saw in 2D.

These two were the only students to look at proportion and actually assign numbers to the different heights to help them build it. They were the first group to see this as a 3D “shape”. They completely collaborated and finished so quickly they had time to work in the other direction: draw some of the views that weren’t originally represented. They were 100% focused, doing 100% good math, thinking in both 2D and 3D.

Pretty good for the second day of school.

Help!

Why aren’t they getting better at them?!?

We’ve been running book clubs since the beginning of the year. This group did book clubs in fourth grade. And in third grade. Their discussions are flat and boring and short. This has been a problem all year, so I have tried many different ideas to increase engagement.

I started the year with a lot of student agency (these things haven’t changed over the course of the year):

• Students could pick their own books.
• They could pick their own reading schedule (with a pre-set end date).
• They could talk about whatever they want without having jobs or writing post-its or answering comprehension questions.

When they met with their groups, they could only talk for 5-10 minutes. This was true whether they were talking about one chapter, a group of chapters, or the whole book (I tried all three groupings).

The depth and length of their conversations have not increased, even though we have done several rounds of this, with different variations:

• Bigger groups (4-5 students)
• Smaller groups (2-3 students)
• Writing questions on a notecard right before the meeting.
• Reflecting about the meetings after
• Having meetings more often
• Having meetings less often
• Nonfiction books
• Fiction books
• Narrative nonfiction books

I just don’t know what else to do! I don’t feel like they are learning anything during these meetings. I don’t feel like they are growing as readers. I don’t feel like we are using our time wisely. I don’t feel like they are looking at their books more deeply. I have talked about this with them (several times), and they don’t have any good ideas, but they agree with me that they aren’t really working.

Help!