Math 101

Today is a complete SUCCESS for my math lesson- it's not that I taught the greatest lesson or was at the top of my game- the success goes to my STUDENTS!!! I wish that someone could have been in my room with me today to hear the group discussion and also a small group discussion I had as  I was challenging 3 students. Well, nobody was in here so I'm "bragging" about my students today!
In large group we did a 5 minute activity that turned into 20 because of GREAT Thinking!! We were looking at groups and making one or two less. The problem that turned into a great discussion was we had 6 dots. What number of dots would we have if we had one less? I let students think about it and the discussion just went on and on. When I asked students how they knew there would be 5 dots left the students told me because there will be a group of 2 and a group of 3 and that makes 5. Other students told me that there is a group of 2 another group of 2 and one left so that makes 5. I have attached a picture to this blog to show you the reasoning students knew there would be 5.

Later during the math lesson I was challenging a group of 3 students. We had to represent a number and then build/change that number. Each student had 3 ten frames. We had a discussion about counting by 10s and how many squares were in front of students. Students started with having to represent the number 20. They had to build off 20 to make 25. Students did that quickly and I thought hmm that's too easy. So I had students clear their ten frames. I then flipped over 23. One student said, "Mrs. Earle I could have kept 25 and turned it into 27 easier." My heart stopped at this moment and I held back the tears of pride and smiled and gave him a high five. As we continued, they had to change 23 to 17. The same student said, "I know two full cards is 20 and that's too many." He quickly pulled off 3 more cards and was done. This was the first day I challenged students with this instruction of this math activity-
I can't be happier or more proud of all 3 students for going the extra mile in math today.

This goes to show that students will do what we ask and what we expect- yes, they may be 5/6 but they CAN and WILL do what we push them to do!

Interactive Writing

In writing, math, and for our morning message I have put a twist on writing. Students have shown in reading group what great writers they are becoming by writing words we know and also sentences in their journal. I have put a twist on group writing. It is NO longer teacher directed!!! It's been great to have students help me with our writing ideas. It does take a lot longer for the whole group lesson model to get completed, but it's definitely MORE engaging for our students.

What am I doing differently? Simple! I am no longer writing the entire idea students have for our model sentence. Students are helping me! See the picture below to see an example. Students are helping me with beginning letters of words because of the sounds they know, they are writing sight words we have worked on, and they are writing the punctuation needed to end a sentence. What am I doing? I am helping fill in words that students aren't sure of how to spell. For example I fill in the e on likes because it's not a sound we hear. I also wrote the word named because it isn't a word that we know yet. I also ask questions as students write- for instance when we wrote likes in the picture, the first time we had a capital L. I asked the student if likes is the first word. The student responded, "No." I continued the discussion by asking if it's not the first word do we need it to be capitalized? He new it should be lowercase l. It was great to see him thinking and change his writing! We do make sure that words are spelled correctly when we do interactive writing, but as you can see, some letters are written backwards- I'm okay with that because that is developmental and will come the more we write.

Deciding to do more writing was a difficult decision to make because I knew it would take longer and wasn't sure students would sit for the amount of time it takes... Boy was I wrong! They LOVE it and can't wait to come up and have a turn helping me write a sentence!

Kindergarten Around the World

I'm so thankful that our media specialist told me about this project! Our class has a partner class with a Kindergarten in Canada. We have had a lot of fun learning about Canada. Students can tell you what the flag looks like in Canada, that they don't have a president but instead have a Prime Minister. They can also tell you that Canadians like to play hockey and their national song is O Canada.

Today we sent our first Tweet to the class from Canada to answer. We told them that we say the Pledge of Allegiance every morning- we asked if they say any kind of a pledge. We also made a video to send them of us doing the pledge- Unfortunately it didn't upload to my youtube account.... so my goal is to get that figured out by Friday- if it doesn't upload, I may just attach the file to an email to the classroom teacher.

Students are sad to see our friend Cole Cougar leave the classroom, but we are sending it to Canada. they are sending us a wolf. I'm excited for students to take turns taking the wolf home and writing a sentence about what they did with the wolf. We will use this as a journal for the project and I'm not sure if we will add this to a blog or how to share with the other class. I'm still trying to work some parts of my ideas out-

We are also graphing weather in Toronto, Canada and comparing it to our weather- we were a little surprised that it was  warmer in Canada than it was in Iowa the other day.

I know I'm going to need a lot of support with this project, but I'm very excited to get it rolling!

Thanksgiving

Well, I am very proud to say that I "recycled" something my daughter did in school about Thanksgiving. We made bracelets to help us tell the story of the first Thanksgiving. I first read the book The Very First Thanksgiving Day. The story was great because it would tell a little about the first Thanksgiving and then it would repeat during the story. We took that information and made story bracelets. We took a pipe cleaner and added 8 beads to the pipe cleaner. They went in this order and for these reasons:

White: represents the pilgrims coming over on the Mayflower
Blue: represents the ocean the pilgrims sailed on.
Black: The storms endured during the trip
Green: Celebrating a new land
Brown: eating Turkey
Corn: Indians helped them to grow corn
Red: Red berries they found together to eat
Orange: Pumpkin Pie

The best part of this project- is students could repeat the story and tell their parents the story of the first Thanksgiving.- This is definitely something I want to remember to do  next year!!

Reading:

We are really picking up on words when we are doing our independent reading. This week we starting writing all the words we recognize as we read on post it notes. Students stick them on the door when they are done to showcase what we found. Later in the day we read our words to the class. They are very proud of showing other students what they found. Some students are writing letters they recognize because they are not quite ready for words- But I'm glad they are showing what they know and can transfer reading/writing!! :)

Changes

The first trimester of our school year is wrapping up. I can't believe we have been in school for 12 weeks already. Where did the time go? Someone told me that there are 26 school days left until Christmas break- WOW! I can't believe it.

I'm going to be making changes to my blog. Since I feel that I have some experience and my toes are at least wet with the new change and new grade level, I'm going to start dedicating this blog to what is happening in room 111. I'm going to start showing projects that students are working on and making it more usable this way. I'm hoping by doing this that people will respond to some of my ideas and give me some feedback/suggestions--- that of course would mean I need more followers- so I'm going to work on promoting my blog to get more followers in turn getting more support and more ideas to help me on my journy.

One change that is being made in the classroom is I'm taking out the behavior chart that I originally started. I started the year thinking I had to have one in order to keep some structure in my classroom. Well, with trial and error of the chart, I'm going to take it away- I'm not sure how to completely remove it- but let's face it when a child isn't sitting on his/her bottom- is he/she really misbehaving? Or is that just something that annoys me? Should a child really be moved to yellow for this? How about the boy in my room that doesn't like lining up. Should he be moved? Or how does he handle being given a choice- "You can either line up in line or you can walk with me." Not all students enjoy doing the same thing. They all learn different and like different things. They also all respond differently in many situations. SO- instead of a one size fits all model it's going to be a model for 23 individuals and what they need to be successful.

So please feel free to give me any feedback on your thoughts about this.... more to come with more of what is really happening in the classroom.

Little Moments:

You know at the end of the day I have to stop to think what really matters? It is the little moments that I have decided matter the most.  We must all celebrate success and especially the little ones! As I'm working with students in small group- there are a lot of things we need to celebrate! When I think of one of my reading groups- they have made such improvements and progress in letter recognition! This is definitely a success! They have worked very hard in group and are so proud to come to the table and tell me letters they have identified. Another reading group is so excited to come and show me words they recognize in their independent reading. These are the little moments that we are celebrating in room 111.
In math we are working on patterns and how we can create and explain them. Today students were asked to create their own pattern. The patterns that students made were amazing! Some did AB, ABB patterns and some were able to create abbc patterns. We have practiced AB patterns with actions and to see the extensions of their patterns was amazing to see.
Little moments = BIG success and a positive feeling in our room.