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Number Name Sorting Cards

My third post on sorting cards! I love sorting cards! I think they should be used much more often in schools for so many reasons. You can read about some of them in one of my two previous posts on sorting cards:

Biomes Sorting Cards

Idioms Sorting Cards

Math is a place where sorting cards can be especially helpful. In fact, sorting is a part of math. One reason I think sorting is so powerful in math is that some kids have a lot of math anxiety. Sorting takes away a lot of that anxiety because all of the answers are on the table. Kids can also work with a partner which takes away some stress as well.

In second grade, students are expected to name numbers using numerals, number names, and expanded form. These sorting cards have all three of these forms. These would actually be a great way to introduce these number forms because kids will be able to sort even if they don't know the term "expanded form". Once they have some experience, later lessons will make more sense.

Here is a video of the sort in action.

You can see how much fun these girls are having. Sorting numbers! It is crazy!

You can purchase the cards at Teachers pay Teachers.

Idioms Sorting Cards

Sorting is such a valuable tool in education. I have many thoughts on it. You can read some of them in my first sorting card post here:

Biomes Sorting Cards

Idioms are one of those things that I struggled to find a place for in my classroom. I always had a large cohort of ELL students in my room, and English language learners do not understand idioms. I don't think I would get them in another language either!

Adding the difficulty reading in English that a lot of these kids had, most of the idioms resources I had in my room just didn't cut it. Ha! An idiom!

This summer I started collecting pictures of idioms from Shutterstock to make into sorting cards. The cards have a cartoon of an idiom or a picture that shows what the idiom means. 

There are so many ways to use these cards. You could have an idiom of the week and put both cards up on a board. You could could laminate matching cards back to back so kids can flip back and forth to learn the meaning of cards. You could sort them yourself and have kids come up with idiom definitions. Kids could match the cards themselves. You could use a matching game as an assessment. Really, your options are endless.

Making these cards makes me so happy because they are a tool that will make life easier for teachers and give students a positive experience mastering a standard. Teaching and learning are both so hard, I want to support everyone any way I can.

There are 21 idioms in the set. If you would like to purchase the cards, you can do so at Teachers pay Teachers. I will list it on Teacher's Notebook soon.

If printing all this color is a challenge, I can also mail you the pictures printed on cardstock if you order it as a hard good. It is only $1 more plus shipping.

Biomes Sorting Cards

Sorting is such a valuable educational tool that (I believe) isn't used enough in schools today. Kids naturally start sorting at a young age because humans have an innate need to bring order to our world. Sorting is a way to make sense out of chaos.

Sorting also allows us to examine relationships between objects and ideas. It allows us to dig deeper into our understanding of a topic. Plus, sorting is actually really fun - especially when you get to do it with a friend.

With all of these benefits, why wouldn't we use sorting in school?

I realize that not every is familiar with the power of sorting, so I decided to make a few videos to show how the sorting works. I grabbed one of my daughters and her friend to help me. I am not kidding you, they loved it. They loved it so much they wouldn't stop sorting when I needed to end the video. 

This is not promotional talk here. They were having so much fun. It made me think of amazing it would be to have an entire classroom of kids this engaged with their work. 

I think one part of sorting that is important for kids, especially kids who typically struggle in school, is that it doesn't require them to write. You can write to record your thinking, but you don't have to. This takes away a huge barrier for a lot of kids. It creates a level playing field where everyone can have fun and feel successful.

Can you tell I love sorting?

Anyway, the video below is all about biomes. I have taught biomes for so many years! I have reading passages in my stores which I love, but nothing has been as fun for kids as these sorting cards.

So, the girls only sorted two biomes, but there are actually 7 biomes in the sorting set. You get cards for:

1. Freshwater Aquatic

2. Marine

3. Desert

4. Grasslands

5. Rainforest

6. Tundra

7. Taiga

Each biome has two environment pictures, a description of the biome, 3 animal cards, and 3 plant cards. You also get pictures of my sorts as an "answer key", but of course, there are different sorts that could still make sense. 

That is another part of sorting that I love. There are so many correct answers that require kids to explain their thinking.

Can you tell that I love sorting?! Oh, and I love biomes!

Five for Friday (September 30, 2016)

ONE

I am taking some time away from teaching this year, but I still wanted to help out at my daughters' school. Luckily, a second grade teacher needed some help with a couple of girls who were behind in math.

Both girls had a lot of anxiety about math and did not enjoy learning at all. So, I had a big task in front of me, but luckily I had the time to come up with some ideas to help them L-O-V-E math.

I assembled my tutoring basket with lots of treats to make math super fun. First, I made a sticker book for each girl. I took colorful paper, laminated it, punched a hole and connected the pages with a circle closure. In theory, the girls should be able to move their stickers on and off the pages. They haven't tried moving them yet, and I am a little worried that it won't work. 

The girls collect stickers in their sticker books by buying stickers from me. I give them Monopoly dollars for each problem they complete. Then, they can spend those dollars to buy stickers. Each sticker page has a different price. So far their favorites are princess stickers for $5 each. Since we are working on number sense, buying stickers and counting dollars is just more practice. Bonus!

Funny thing though - the girls are having so much fun doing the math that they forget to ask for dollars! 

I also have colorful pencils and markers. The girls have always chosen to work with markers because their work looks prettier. I know they can't erase their mistakes, but if they are happy, then I am happy. 

I knew we would need some counters since the girls aren't super confident about their numbers. I decided to get my daughter's little My Little Ponies - she has a ton of the ones that come in the blind bags. The two girls both love them. Best of all, after just a couple of weeks of working with them, they don't even need the ponies very much anymore.

In the back you can see one of the first pages we worked on together. The girls didn't understand number bonds, so we started looking at ways to break apart numbers and using number bonds to show our work. I made this set specifically for them, but it was so fun that I decided to list it on TpT.

There are 10 pages double-sided. One side deals with showing the numbers 1-10 using several different models, and the other side shows all of the number bonds for that number. The girls got so much practice with numbers and number bonds!

TWO

Speaking of staying home this year. This is my studio for shooting my products. I just wanted to share what a mess it is while I am working. 

I feel like my pictures are looking better and better, and they give the impression that everything is perfect at my house. Ummm... not so much!

THREE

One product I have been working on this week is an idioms matching activity. I feel like idioms are crazy! I have always had a large group of ELL students, and they really don't get idioms. I built on an activity I used to do in class to make this activity. It isn't up on TpT yet, but it is coming soon!

You can already get my idioms picture matching game. I love using pictures to introduce kids to new topics. They can really dig into it because they aren't limited by their reading abilities. I already tried this one out on my third grader, and she loved it!

FOUR

I tried to make some memes this week too. I have been reading all about how the brain learns, and I wanted to find a fun way to share what I am learning. I love them! That baby is so cute!

FIVE

Once Upon a Time is finally back! I am so excited to watch the first episode of the season! I am crazy about this show, but I am waiting to watch the first episode with my girls. We are going to record a podcast after we watch because that is super fun!

Well, that is some of my week. Thanks for making it this far. I hope you had an awesome week yourself! 

Memes for Today

I thought it would be fun to try out making some memes. Here is the first meme I made.

This is 100% true, and I didn't have room to add this, but of the two questions, the second is by far the most important. We can remember nonsense if it is meaningful to us.

I thought this was a great meme to start with because, as a teacher, I spent so much time trying to make concepts make sense and not enough time at all focusing on making things meaningful for my kiddos. I think it is just a good reminder for all of us - parents and teachers alike.

Also, isn't that boy adorable?! I don't know him, it is just a stock photo, but I love him!

Freebies

I learned how to make a new permanent page! You can see all of my freebies by clicking the "Freebie" link at the top of the page. I am super excited about making those links work! Enjoy!

Why I Quit My Job

Last year I decided to leave my teaching job. The teaching job that I literally worked years to get. I was frustrated and unhappy for most of the year. I thought I was leaving for a lot of different complicated reasons, but now that I have been home for a while I know exactly why I left.

I was exhausted.

Not tired, or sleepy. Not the kind of exhausted that can be fixed by a good night's sleep or even a long weekend. The kind of bone deep, perpetual exhaustion that you don't even realize you have until you are free from it.

Every morning I would wake up and get all four of my kids ready for their various schools. I would have to get everyone in the car by 7:45 or else I would be late for the day. I would drop off my two youngest (a toddler and a preschooler) at daycare. Thank goodness they served breakfast at the daycare. My two oldest would order from the McDonalds drive thru more often than I would like to admit. I would get into my classroom around 8:15 (most likely later since by this time we were usually running late). I would then spend a frantic 45 minutes making copies, printing, grading, writing notes, differentiating - trying to make the day perfect for my 25 other children.

While I would do this my two girls would sit in the classroom and practically beg me for attention. I snapped at them so many times.

Then the bell would ring. My two girls would run off to class (or be trying to run as I brushed the hair that we hadn't gotten to at home that morning), while my students rushed in.

The next 6.5 hours would be the normal blur of a school day. We had our successes, both small and big. I was a rock star at some moments and I failed in others, but we kept going. I gave it my all - all day.

When the afternoon bell rang, I often had a group of kids that would stay after school for weekly tutoring. Again, my two girls would come into the classroom ready to share about their days and I would hustle them into a corner - with a snack if I had remembered to stock up that week.

Our school doesn't get out until almost 4:00, so tutoring wouldn't end until 4:30. At that point I would have to rush back to the daycare to pick up the littles, so we could eat dinner at a reasonable time. Of course there were many days that I didn't get to the daycare until after 5:00.

Once we were home it was time to make dinner while four little people pulled on me. We did almost always sit down for dinner as a family. I know how important that is for children's development, so I always tried my best to make that happen. Of course, that part of dinner would last about ten minutes and then everyone was off to play.

I would have to wrestle my oldest girls back to the table to tackle the homework that hadn't been completed yet. The homework never took long, it was always the complaining that sucked up our after dinner time together.

Finally, everyone would be in bed, and I could collapse next to my husband. Then the little feet would come tiptoeing into our room. The requests for a glass of water, or one more story, or the insistence that a nightmare had occurred in the 30 seconds it had taken me to leave the bedroom.

Eventually, sleep would come. I would be rested just enough to be able to open my eyes the next morning when it all started again.

It sounds crazy as I type it out now. And, I should say I do have a loving husband that helps with the kids as much as he can, but he has his limits. He can't leave work early, he can't take the kids in the morning, he can't help with homework, he can't deal late at night.

I also worked at a job that let me bring my kids with me. And I worked from 8:30 to 4:30. I know that a lot of people work much longer hours, and they can't bring their kids with them. I always felt like I didn't have it that bad. That I should feel guilty for complaining when so many people would love to change places with me. I grew up with a single mom that had to get my sister and I up and to daycare by 6:00 a.m. every morning. She often wouldn't pick us up until close to 6:00 p.m.

And that inner monologue - that I was lucky - just added to my exhaustion. Because I never felt like I was giving enough to any part of my life. There were teachers at school working much longer hours than me. Teachers who had detailed lesson plans and data points for every student in every subject, color coded (of course). There were parents who weren't a hot mess. Parents who packed their kids lunches every day with healthy, delicious options. Parents who planned play dates and remembered spirit days.

I worried that I wasn't doing enough for my students. I worried that i wasn't doing enough for my children.

In the end, I didn't leave teaching because I realized that no one person could be everything I demanded of myself. I wish I had. I wish I had seen that the person I should have been worried about was myself.

Luckily though, I did leave. I had so many reasons for leaving, and the answer I gave often depended on the person who was asking.

Leaving was really scary, and I almost didn't do it. I was worried about who I would be if I wasn't Mrs. O'Donnell.

As I now wrap up my first month as an ex-teacher, I am starting to feel like myself again. The "me" I was before I was stretched so thin that I had headaches almost every night.

I have time to take care of myself, and so I have energy to take care of others. I had thought that staying home meant giving up on being of service. I felt like a failure. But I have found new ways to give back.

I know from personal experience that teachers can't do it all. There just aren't enough hours in the day to do everything "good" teachers do. Creating at TpT is one way that I can give back. I remember how much time I spent putting together lessons. I love that I can save that time for others.

I can also give back by sharing my story. I am sure that there are countless other women out there who are giving everything they have and still don't feel like it is enough. That they are not enough. I am here to tell them that they are. That we can't take care of anyone else unless we take care of ourselves. It sounds so simple, but it is easy to forget.

This is definitely not the post I was intending to write when I started typing tonight, but I am glad I have gotten it down. I have been so happy staying home these past weeks, but I hadn't taken the time to think about why I feel this way.

I think that I feel happy because for the first time in a long time, my life is in balance. For now.

Why Teach Geography?

It feels like there is never enough time to teach all of the Common Core standards. So, why should you spend time teaching geography in elementary school? 

There are so many reasons!

First, kids are super self-centered. It is okay; it is just who they are. However, we don't want them to grow up to be self-centered adults because self-centered adults have a hard time getting along in life. One way to show them that they are just a small part of a giant world is to show them that giant world.

Plus, once kids learn about all of the incredible places around the world, they will want to visit them. (Maybe not tomorrow, but someday.) Visiting other countries teaches people not only about the world we live in, but the people who live here. Getting to know different people makes us more empathetic and understanding of different cultures and customs. Traveling also teaches us about ourselves.

It is also important to know the geography of the world to understand history and current events. Where are the Olympics this year? Where did that war start? How far is it from this country to that country? Why does it take so long to travel from here to there? These are questions we want kids thinking about as they explore the world around them. Geography gives them a framework to explore and understand the world they inhabit.

Finally, can I just say that the Earth is really, really cool?! Learning about this tiny corner of the universe is fascinating. We want our kids to be fascinated in school. In fact, we want them to be fascinated outside of school as well. Teaching children geography gives them the keys to unlock to world around them.

Okay, that was a little corny, but totally true.

Teaching geography can be intimidating for teachers because most schools don't provide a "geography curriculum". But it doesn't have to be scary.

I developed lapbooks to introduce kids to each of the seven continents (Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America). The lapbooks contain an unlabeled political map of the countries on the continent, eight facts about the continent or the countries on the continent, and a cover. All you need is a big piece of construction paper to put everything together.

(I use a ruler to draw lines connecting the facts to the country they represent.)

You can see all of the lapbooks on Teachers pay Teachers by clicking below. If you scroll a little farther down, you will see the song I sing with my class to help us remember the name of each continent.

Here is the song! You can use You Tube to find the tune of Found a Peanut. I will also have my daughters sing the song soon and will link it up. I only sing for my students :).

You can get a printable .pdf of the song here.

Also, yes I know that in some countries (such as Japan) it is taught that there are only 6 continents, so this song would not be very helpful there.

How We Can Help Students Store New Learning

Do you have a student (or students) that just can't seem to remember anything you taught in class? I have had them. It is mystifying. One day he can do a skill perfectly, and the next day he looks at your like a deer in the headlights.

Well, after reading David Sousa's How the Brain Learns I can say that I am amazed that any of my students remembered anything I taught! I don't say this because I was a bad teacher, but because I didn't utilize brain science to structure my class to help their brains soak up information. I did some things right, but a lot was wrong.

Here is what I would do differently today. Hopefully you get a few ideas to help your students remember all that good stuff you are teaching.

1. In deciding what information to keep and what information to toss, your brain asks two questions. First, "Does it make sense?" It is hard to remember something that doesn't make sense. The second (and more important) question is "Does it matter to me?" You can actually remember something that doesn't make any sense to you if you think it is important to remember. This means that the first step in creating any lesson is to figure out why it is important for the kids to know the information you are teaching. Remember, it needs to be important to the kids. So, the high stakes test at the end of the year isn't going to be a compelling reason for the kiddos.

This is much harder than you would think! It brought to mind multiplying fractions. Why do we need to learn this? I use a lot of math in my every day life, but I have yet found a situation that required multiplying a fraction. So, I did what I always do when I have a question. I Googled it. Turns out engineers, doctors, nurses, and statisticians (just to name a few) all multiply fractions as part of their jobs. So, if a kid is thinking about one of these career paths, it should have a lot of meaning for them. It would be great to talk to someone with one of these jobs to find out how and when they need to multiply fractions.

Whatever you are teaching, remember that how meaningful the kids find it will determine if they remember it. So, if it is worth teaching, it is worth taking the time to find meaning.

Don't forget to ask kids why they think the information they are about to learn is meaningful to them. They might have ideas you never considered.

2. We all have a self-concept. It is how we see our own place in the world. We all see ourselves as good at math, a bad student, a class clown, etc... The way we see ourselves heavily impacts our willingness to engage with a new challenge. If we think we will succeed, we will try. If we don't think we will succeed, we will not try. In fact, we will block out all new information because we don't want to engage and then fail.

This means that it is very important to make kids feel like they will be successful if they engage in your lesson. The best way to do that is to give them lots of opportunities to be successful, so they begin building a new self-concept of themselves.

How do we get kids to try who have a low self-concept? It takes time, patience, and lots of planning. For these particular students (and maybe everyone), I would design a lesson in small chunks. The most simple information/assignment would come first. The student would have success before moving on to the next small chunk. By the end of the lesson, all students would have mastered the same material, but the low self-concept kids would have been able to do so in a much safer baby-stepping way. Trust me, I realize that this would be complicated in a classroom. I am already thinking of ways to create these scaffolds for you.

3. Speaking of baby-stepping. It is important to remember that kids can only hold 3-5 items in their working memories at one time. So, a lesson with more than 3-5 pieces of information is just setting kids up for failure. Also, they can only concentrate on new information for about 10 minutes before needing a break. This isn't to say that you should only work for ten minutes, but create some kind of break in the lesson around 10 minutes to give the kids a chance to refresh before jumping back to work.

4. As we covered in step one, motivation is the most important predictor of student success (or any success). The kids have to want to learn what you are teaching, or do what you are asking them to do. So, how do we get kids to want to learn something they think they don't want to learn? Explaining why the topic is meaningful is a start. You also need to give them work that they will enjoy. Kids love to create something new. Posters, dioramas, games, skits... You get the picture. Worksheets are probably the most boring thing, but even those can be made into some kind of game. I am working on ideas for that too!

5. Once you have gotten the kids engaged with the lesson, you want to make sure that they remember all of this great learning. Turns out that humans forget 70-90% of what they have learned within 24 hours. Yikes! To help your students store the important stuff, you will have to use the concept of closure. You will want to give them some time to synthesize what they have just been learning. You will need to give them direction to help them know what it is important. For example, "What are two ways you can show 7 x 6 = 42 using models?" The kids will go through the process of putting the multiplication fact into models in their heads. Then, ask for people to share what they did. Knowing that they will have to share their ideas, the kids will be more likely to actually do the work in their own heads first. Closure can happen anytime, but the most helpful time is at the end of a lesson.

6. Since we forget so much within 24 hours, it is important to wait at least 24 hours to test if new information has been stored in long term memory. We can't remember anything that hasn't made its way to long term memory. Don't tell kids that a quiz will be coming up. If they know it is coming, they will study right before the quiz. You will be seeing their working memory instead of the long term memory.

In order to keep self-concept high, make sure kids know that the quiz is just to see what needs to be retaught because it wasn't stored. Use the results to guide your future teaching.

I know that was a lot of information, but I hope that you came away with something that you can take into your own classroom. If you did, please share it in a comment. I would love to hear about it!

If you are interested in learning more about how the brain works, you will want to read David Sousa's book. You can get it at Amazon. The link below is an affiliate link. Buying through the link helps support my blog!

Math Models

One of my favorite topics in math is math models. I love them because you can use them throughout a grade level curriculum and from year to year. They can be an anchor for students as they are learning new material. I created this chart to help students (and teachers) remember/understand some of the most helpful math models.

What I really like about these models is that you can use them from kindergarten to fifth grade or older. (Okay, maybe the arrays and area models wouldn't be helpful until third grade.)

In order to give students chances to practice with the models, I also created this chart that you can use with any equations. The place value chart is only set up for whole numbers under 9,999, but the rest of the boxes will work for fractions and decimals as well.

Here are a couple of ways you could use the sheet...

The best part about these models pages is that they are free at my TpT store! You can get it here:

When It Comes to Reading... the More, the Better

It won't surprise any teacher that the more a child reads the better. We have all known it for years. We even know that it doesn't really matter what kids read as long as they are reading. Choice has become a huge buzzword in reading education.

But what do you do when you have a reluctant reader? At home or in the classroom.

This is a problem I never thought I would have - at least at home. You see, when I was a kid I loved to read. Not just a little bit, a lot. I loved to read so much that my parents would (!often!) tell me to put down my book. I was actually grounded from reading when I got in trouble. If you have ever been stopped in the middle of a great book, you know that is cruel and unusual punishment.

Given my proclivity for reading, it never occurred to me that I would have a kid that didn't like to read. I imagined my family sitting around the living room together reading away on a rainy afternoon. Or a sunny afternoon. Or the morning. You get the point.

Well, you can guess what happened next. My oldest daughter, entering third grade in the fall, does not like to read. She avoids it at all costs. She complains, she whines, she negotiates. She does everything she can not to read. What?!

When she was younger I didn't push her to read. I didn't want her to see reading as a chore. I was waiting for her to fall in love with reading the way I did. That plan was working for our family. She didn't have to read, and I could tell myself she would pick it up on her own soon.

Then, second grade hit. Suddenly, my little girl who had always been a good student, was behind in reading. What?! I seriously flipped out. Not at her teacher, of course. Or even at her. But inside I was going crazy. What had happened? 

Obviously my plan had failed. I was a failure.

So, after my mini-meltdown, I thought about what we needed to do. First, my daughter got on Lexia, a phonics computer program that I really like. In fact, I liked it so much I signed up my other children as well. Next, I needed to figure out how to get my kid reading... a lot.

I thought back to a Freakanomics podcast I had heard a few months earlier. It was about bribing kids. The question was, does it work? It turns out that the answer is complicated. Yes, it works, but... I can't remember the exact outline of the podcast, but what I have taken away from everything I have heard, read, etc... about bribing is that it will work at first, but over time the effect wears off. You have to keep increasing the bribe to keep the child's attention.

So, here was my plan. I would bribe my daughter to read. $5 a book. A chapter book. At her reading level. Interesting to her. All that good stuff.

And she totally went for it. She read tons of books and became an amazing reader. Just kidding. She was totally not interested. She liked the idea of getting paid to read, but actually sitting down and reading. Nah.

Then, I thought about what people say about reading with babies. (I also have a toddler, so I read a lot about that as well.) I can't remember where I saw it, but I remember very clearly that one of the most important reasons to read with a toddler is that she will associate reading with love and warmth. Sitting on mom's lap and reading together is a really comforting feeling for the baby, and she carries that good feeling into her reading as a child. (Now, I will just say here that I read a lot with my older daughter when she was a toddler. So, it isn't fool proof.)

My next step was to use what I knew about reading with babies and apply it to my eight year old. One night I invited her to bring her new book into my bed at bedtime. We cuddled up together and she read it to me. She read for a really long time. We were so cozy and happy. 

The next day she asked if we could do it again. My daughter asked to read! Of course, she also told me she was excited to finish the book and get her money. 

We are now on day three of cozy reading before bed. My middle daughter has also picked a book and made her way into the reading fun. It is a very calm way to end the day, and my girls are reading a lot. They don't want to stop. Probably because they don't want to go to bed, but I will take it.

Of course, this most likely won't work forever. In a few days or weeks, I will have to find some new way of getting my kids to read. I am not sure what the next step will be, but I will find it. I just want them to read until they fall in love with reading. I believe with all my heart, that if they read enough they too will fall in love with reading.

My point in sharing this (very long) story is that it doesn't matter what you have to do - just get your kids reading. Reading is not fun for a struggling reader. It just isn't. If I had to read Spanish I could probably muscle through some elementary stuff, but I would hate every minute of it. The catch-22 is that the only way to get better at reading (or reading Spanish) is to keep doing it... a lot. So, whatever you have to do to get your kids to read, do it. Bribe them, cuddle them, or try anything else you can think of. If it doesn't work, try something else. 

Being a strong reader is the key to success in school. Everything in school revolves around reading. A struggling reader is a struggling student. Luckily we know the solution. Read. A lot. 

* One last thing. I didn't talk about possible learning disorders in this post. If you think your child may have a significant problem learning to read or with reading talk to your child's teacher and/or pediatrician.

5th Grade Interactive Notebooks for Engage New York

I am very excited to report that I have started working on the fifth grade interactive notebooks for Engage New York. Some of you may be saying, "Hey, what about finishing the fourth grade notebooks?" Well, I have a guy who helps me digitize my ideas. He is working away on the fourth grade modules, so I decided to start fifth grade while I wait to get his work back.

I am having a lot of fun working on the fifth grade curriculum. I think I like it so much because I have worked with the second, third, and fourth grade units first. I can see the progression, and it makes so much sense! I highly recommend spending some time doing this, if you can. I will be posting about it as soon as I can as well. I just find it fascinating. Plus, if I have a student who is having trouble, we can just back it down to where he has a solid foundation and move up from there. I know this is something we should be doing anyway, but I often had trouble knowing the progression well enough to use it in a meaningful way.

So, fifth grade starts out with place value (same as fourth grade and third grade I think). The place value chart has expanded to show millions through thousandths. It has a decimal point in it. I think this was introduced in fourth grade. Students then learn/review multiplying by tens, hundreds, and thousands. They also work on dividing by tens, hundreds, and thousands.

If you look closely, you can see that when we move to the left we multiply by tens, and when we move to the right we divide by tens. This is the same as fourth grade, so kids should be able to stretch their thinking to include the tenths, hundredths, and thousands.

Something new in this first topic is exponents. I think Engage New York does a nice job of showing the kids that they have already been using exponents when they multiply by ten multiple times. However, some kids may need more practice with this idea. If I can, I will put together something. If you know of a resource already out there, please share it in the comments.

Finally, I really like how the last lesson or two brings everything back to the metric system. We can just layer the names of each unit of measurement on the place value chart and suddenly we are working with measurement and real objects. It makes so much sense to me. Again, some kids will get it really quickly, and others will need more practice. If you have a great resource for this, put it in the comments.

So, this is just Topic A of Module 1 for the fifth grade math unit. I have completed my notes for Topic B, and I will be putting them into computer form today. I might not get it all done because I am teaching some of my fellow teachers how to get started on Teachers pay Teachers, and I have an interview later today. I had been planning on just doing TpT and TN next year, but an opportunity came up that I just couldn't refuse. I will have a lot of freedom in my classroom to try out all my crazy ideas. Hopefully, it works out, and I will be able to share what I am doing in my classroom with you all. If it doesn't work out, that is okay too. I have a notebook full of things I need to be working on.

The fifth grade modules are not for sale yet, but stay tuned!

Self-Directed Learning

Growing up I loved the idea of school, but I hated actually going to school. I hated getting up early, and I spent a lot of my school day waiting. Waiting for kids to finish reading, waiting for the teacher to give instructions, waiting for the day to be over.

Now I was by no means good at everything in school, but one area that was easy for me was reading. I loved reading and read all the time at home (and I mean, all the time). At school we would all learn reading together - 30 kids at once. I remember listening to kids struggle to sound out words from a book we were all reading together. It was torture - all I wanted to do was race ahead to see what happened next, but I couldn't because I could get called on to read at any time. It was painful.

This is the image I always hold in my head when I am planning my own lessons. I literally ask myself, Will this be painful for anyone?

Lately, I have felt the need to take this belief even further. I started reading about a school called Acton Academy based out of Austin. They do a lot of independent learning using technology. One of the many things I admire about this school is that kids are working at their own pace, and on things that they care about. People always work much harder when they have chosen their task.

I began working on ways to implement these ideas into my own classroom even though we are not yet a 1-1 school.

I started by organizing the resources in my room, so kids could have access to anything they needed to learn. That included games in plastic shoe boxes, office supplies in a central location, and a file cabinet organized for student use.

Finally, I turned one of our bulletin boards into our "Hero's Quest Board". The idea of the student as a hero is something I borrowed from Acton. We study cultures in third grade, so I put up paper continents and then printed out a picture of a famous place from each continent. I labeled each picture with one of the seven most important things we would be learning this trimester - writing paragraphs, information writing, answering questions about what we read, reading fluently, fractions, and two more I can't think of right now. I will post a picture of the board when I get back to school. As kids master concepts their names are put up on that part of the quest. By the end of the trimester, every name should be up on the board.

My room was ready for students to make choices and get learning, but were my students ready? After all, these are eight year old who had always been in a traditional classroom where the teacher tells you what to do, and you do it.

I needed one more piece to keep students accountable. I decided on the standards that we would be working on during the winter trimester and typed them up in kid friendly language.

Next, I made student planning sheets. Students pick the standard they are working toward meeting and right it in the learning target column. Then, they decide what they will do to work on that standard and write it in the activity column. After they have completed the activity, they write a reflection thinking about what they learned and how they worked.

Before I make copies of the sheet for the day I write the mini-lessons I will be teaching the entire class on each sheet. I keep it to less than four mini-lessons and try not to spend more than ten minutes talking for each mini-lesson.

After a week of using the sheets I found that I also wanted the kids to reflect on their behavior throughout the day to give mom and dad more information about what was happening at school. Also, my reminders to kids don't seem to change their behavior as fast as their own reflection on it. So, now on the back of each student planning page is a behavior page.

I am really happy with how these changes have affected my students and my classroom. I feel like I am making a difference every day because I am spending less time on classroom management and more time helping kids learn. Plus, the kids are motivated to master concepts, and that motivation is the key to success.

Teaching Fractions

Third grade is a big fractions year. Last year my third graders came to me having a very solid understanding of fractions. This year... not so much. It wasn't that they had misconceptions - they just didn't know anything about fractions.

Luckily, they did come to me with very solid number sense. Our school is in its third year of common core standards and it shows with these kids. They have a deep understanding of numbers and how they can be manipulated under different circumstances.

I think this understanding is a big part of their success with this brand new concept. It is also my third year teaching fractions which hopefully means that I am teaching them better as well.

We started fractions last week with fraction strips. I have a magnetic set of fraction strips on the board and the kids were given paper to fold/cut. I let the kids who felt confident work independently. The rest of the class joined me on the carpet for some fun folding time.

First came halves. That was easy - fold the paper in half and then cut along the fold. We ended up with two equal pieces or two halves. Then we were ready for fourths. We folded a piece of paper in half and cut it again. Then we folded these two pieces in half and cut them. Four equal pieces or fourths. Repeat with eighths.

Then we get to thirds. That was tough. I did my best to show them how to place the ends of the paper on top of each other until they lined up in three equal pieces. Some of the kids got it, and some weren't ready yet. :) After thirds we folded sixths.

For homework that night they took home a worksheet from Super Teacher Worksheets on basic fractions - one piece out of six colored in means 1/6.

As a side note - I love Super Teacher Worksheets. I use them all the time for homework or class practice. They have worksheets on a ton of topics and fun worksheets for early finishers.

Anyway, once we were clear on what a fraction was (it took us about two days) we were ready to move on to equivalent fractions. We talked a lot about how equivalent meant the same size. They were able to find equivalent fractions using fraction strips. We have a class set of the plastic fraction strips from Lakeshore Learning. This was very helpful because we found that many of the students' paper fraction strips did not have equal pieces.

We used the fraction strips to compare fractions as well. In about a week and a half my students went from knowing basically nothing about fractions to being able to find equivalent fractions and compare fractions using the fraction strips. Unfortunately they can't use the fraction strips on any testing, so we would have to move away from these manipulatives.

We spent some time drawing fractions (halves, fourths, eighths, thirds, and sixths) on rectangles. We haven't done circles yet, but we will. Rectangles alone are very difficult for my students. They always have to ask me if they have equal pieces. It makes me wonder, can they not see if they are equal or not? My best guess is that they know it isn't very equal, but they want to know if the pieces are equal enough. :)

This week we moved on to numbers on a number line. I am embarrassed to say it, but this has been a weak point in my teaching the past couple of years. Both years I thought the kids would understand it right away, but they didn't. Then, it was really hard to figure out where they were having trouble. I just gave them too much at once I think.

So, this year I was really careful with how I introduced fractions. We started with an organic number line. I don't know where the original idea came from for the organic number line, but it is something we borrowed last year during a planning day. I had already started teaching fractions on a number line before we had the planning day, so we only started using the organic number line after struggling with fractions.

The idea of the organic number line is that the students build it. I strung a piece of string across a bulletin board in the classroom. Then I talked about how the number line is a model to show our thinking about fractions. I related it to a rectangle as we placed 0/2 and 2/2. Then a student placed 1/2 right in the middle.

We were ready for a challenge, so some students placed the fourths as well. It was amazing to hear the comments from students as we worked. They were making connections between what they already knew and the number line. They made predictions about where other fractions would go. They were able to kindly explain why a specific placement was right or wrong. They were incredible sticklers for having equal spaces between the numbers. I may have created some monsters.

Our number lines continue to go well. I skipped the first lessons in Engage New York (or Eureka Math) for Module 5 (Fractions) because I didn't think they made a lot of sense. The number line part of the module is really strong, so we used lessons 14-20 to study number lines in addition to the organic number line.

Next week we will continue with the Engage NY lessons - we need to cover lessons 18 - 20 - and then we will start working on comparing fractions and finding equivalent fractions using number lines. I personally think that the number line is the easiest model for students to draw well (and quickly), so I think this will be an important step in our fractions unit.

One other thing I did for the fractions unit was to make a fraction mini-book for every student. It covers every standard that they are expected to know under common core.

You can visit the product page my clicking the picture below.

Well, that is where we are with fractions right now. We have also been playing some games. I will post about those another time.

Have a great weekend!