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!