Extended Response...... A Fun Way to Practice!

Well hello there, it's certainly been a hot minute since I last blogged. More like months actually.... *GUILTY*

Life gets hectic, school gets crazy... blog gets thrown on the back burner. I have really been wanting to get back into it, but I have been waiting for a good topic to post about! And I think I finally got it!

So I have been kind-of, sort-of neglecting extended response practice this year. My kids have done an OK job on them so far this year and I have really been trying to hustle through content (which seems NEVER ending when it comes to 5th grade math). This hasn't left a whole lot of extra time to practice these- either modeling or working on them together.

I went to the KCM math conference a few weeks ago and heard a teacher talk about students giving each other feedback on written responses. It kind of sparked a trigger in my brain and I thought I could maybe make it work, in a fun and engaging way. In the end, I sacrificed TWO WHOLE DAYS for this activity- however it was well worth it.

So I started by modeling an extended response type question with the help of my students. We analyzed the problem, pulled out important information, and answered it together. We talked about restating the question and showing all of our work.

Here is the problem we did together:

Oliver always has to make an appearance one way or another :) 

After that, I gave them another problem to work on, which was similar to this problem, and in their table groups they solved the problem together. They have to record their answers on big chart paper with a Mr. Sketch marker, of course! :) They had to take turns writing, making sure each person had a chance to put some part of the answer on the paper. In their groups, they were able to work together to brainstorm, solve, and make sure they had a COMPLETE answer. 

Here was the problem they worked on in their groups:

That was what we got done in Day 1 (which I have a strict hour math block- I teach three classes of math). If you have more flexibility in your schedule, you could just keep working. 

Moving on to Day 2!

We came in and I let them look over their responses for 2 minutes, with fresh eyes, seeing if there was anything they wanted to adjust or add! 

Then came the fun part! I explained how they were going to "gallery walk" and read the other groups' responses. I proceeded to give each group a pack of post-its and explained that they were going to give feedback to the groups about their response. We talked about positive and negative feedback, and we also discussed how the "negative" feedback was something we wanted to give in a "positive" manner. They kids were great with coming up with ways to go about this by saying things like, "Well maybe if you added a model your answer would be more clear" or "If you restated the question with the answer it would be very obvious where your answer was on the page". They also came up with a great rule- if they thought of something they needed to improve on their answer about, they MUST FIRST give some sort of positive feedback- one for one! (My teacher heart about exploded with their kindness!)

I gave them about 5 minutes at the first one they got to, for them to get the kinks out. Then when the timer was up, I explained they were going to rotate to the next one. Here the catch was they could not repeat anything that was already given as feedback. One student explained immediately, "The last one is going to be SO HARD!!" We all laughed! I simply explained they were going to have to look with careful eyes! 

We continued rotating and leaving feedback until they had seen every groups' response and returned to their original groups' response! Here are some photos of the fun!

Once they returned, they looked over the feedback and were very responsive! They took their classmates critiques to heart and it has definitely showed! The last test over 85% of the whole fifth grade received a 4 (the best you can get) on their extended response. I was so pleased and definitely felt like this activity contributed to their success! I will DEFINITELY be repeating this activity again as we get closer to KPREP testing! 

I hope you can adapt this for your classroom! For example, younger grades could do short answers instead of extended responses, and you could use this for ANY content area! I also thought about the kids writing their own responses and doing this as a table activity- each person gets a different colored pen/marker/colored pencil and then writes on their table maters' paper. Then, have them pass the papers around the table till they get their own paper back! May have to try that next! 

And here's to hoping I stay on the blogging bandwagon! :) 

Brit

Classroom Library

So for the past six years, I have struggled with setting up my classroom library. Books everywhere in tubs, racks, and a complete disorganized mess.

Nothing was more frustrating than a week into the school year seeing all the precious books you had spent days organizing being put in the wrong tubs. I would try to get on to kids and rationalize with them: if it's an animal book, put it back in the animal tub. However, that seemed to fall on deaf ears. By about October, I gave up each year. "I'll deal with it next year." I told myself.

Well, six years later I decided to tackle this problem as school let out this year. I was DETERMINED.

So when I was packing up my room this year, I took an inventory of all my books and tubs. I counted every tub and the number of books in each tub, once they were all back in their proper homes. I ended up with 65 book tubs and too many books to total.

I created book tub labels for each book tub. Some people sort by lexile levels, genres, authors, etc. Mine are by topic and authors. This one happens to be "Girl Fiction".

Notice the brown dot on the side? That is the lexile level. A couple summers ago I went through and lexiled every book in my library. Longest. Task. Ever. And then we created a color coding system at my school so it would be consistent from room to room. When our kids MAP test, it gives them a lexile so when they do independent reading, they read books on their level. By leveling all the books, the kids can chose whatever they want, as long as it's their "dot" color. I stick with telling them their dot colors and not focusing on numbers, that way the kids can't really tell too much about each others levels.

I then took this to the next level. I printed matching labels for each book in each tub. Obsessive. Crazy. OCD. Yes, yes and yes. But I am *hoping* that this will make it super easy for the kids to just look at the number and put it right back in the correct tub.

This took HOURS. But I am so glad I did it! Hopefully this will keep my classroom library under wraps this year and many more too come! All 65 books tubs are complete and I am feeling good about it!

How do you organize your classroom library? I'd love to hear your ideas!

Brit :)

Volume? I Want YOUR Ideas!

Hey everyone! Hope y'all had a great week and your weekend is off to a great start!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am taking a big leap next year and moving from 3rd grade to 5th grade! We are semi-departmentalizing next year, so I get to teach all the 5th grade math!

So of course I have ZERO self control and am already freaking out about next year, so I ran to school the other night and searched through all my packed things looking for some of the common core book resources.

I've been looking through Buckle Down, Crosswalk Coach and Ready Common Core. Also, my goodness. See that book right there, Two for the Dough. It's book #2 in the Stephani Plum series by Janet Evanovich. Please tell me WHY I haven't read these books until now. SO GOOD.



Anyways, back on track here. I'm looking at the standards, the books and the unit outline for my first unit and it's volume. And I'm a little bit freaking out. I have taught area to my 3rd graders before, but volume is a completely different story.

So I need your help. If you have had some experience teaching the 5th grade volume standards or volume in general, what were some fun lessons you taught? Were there any resources, websites, games, etc that were extremely helpful in teaching volume? Hands on way or real world experience type stuff/explorations with volume?

Leave me the ideas in the comments and I will choose one person on Wednesday July 2nd @ 12:00pm and for the winner: I will personally create one thing just for YOU for your room next year! Desk nameplates, labels for tubs, book tub labels, schedule signs, ANYTHING you want! I will make it for you! You pick the design, clip art, anything!

Thanks! I know the best ideas come from other teachers so help a girl out!

Brit :)

Giveaway Time! :)

Hello there everyone!

So after my post the other day I realized that I was getting super close to 1,000 hits on my blog which is exciting! :) I'm really trying to be a better blogger and I'm working on some posts about stuff that I did towards the end of the year and never got around to posting buuuuuuuttttt I thought it would be fun to do a GIVEAWAY!

So here's the deal:
You have two ways to enter. One: Leave a comment below telling me one fun thing you have done so far this summer (and your email would help as well!). Two: Share this blog post to Facebook.

That's it. Simple. In the words of my students, "Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy". The winner will get to pick one thing from my TpT store! Your choice- whatever you want! :)

Do both and double your chances to win. Be sure to use the Rafflecopter to add your entries!

a Rafflecopter giveaway I will choose a winner tomorrow night at midnight, so technically 12 am on June 27th!

Good Luck!

Brit :)

Summer Fun

Happy Tuesday everyone!

I don't know about you guys but I am having a *GREAT* start to summer vacation. After a few days of training, packing up the room and cleaning it up, I was officially on SUMMER BREAK! Wahoo!

But, back up: We had to do some training at the end of the year, which turned out to be awesome! I work at seriously the best school and our administrative team had such a great idea. We had a lot of new teams next year, myself included on a new team, so they decided to do one morning of team building. Which *insert eye rolls and groans here* but seriously, it was a-ma-zing. I won't go into too many details or give incriminating information, but we did a variety of things which included an obstacle course in the gym with blindfolded people and an Amazing Race style challenge around our town. It was so much fun and I know my team laughed so hard! What a great day! Here is a picture of our team pyramid in a park by our school:

So much fun. AH! It made me really jazzed for the upcoming school year!

So then I headed home to the parent's house and spent a few days relaxing with them! I celebrated Father's Day! I took my Dad golfing- it was my first time ever- and it was alot ofun! I also made these bad boys for my Dad- I like to call them a Reese Peanut Butter Cup Cupcake! My dad is a sucker for anything Reese so these were perfect and he loved them!

I worked a couple of days at my serving job and spent yesterday dealing with a busted hot water heater and now that leaves me to today. I'm currently watching Vikings reruns on my DVR and drinking coffee. Spiced Pumpkin coffee to be exact. I hoard that stuff in fall and then my mom gave me a box that she had hoarded for my birthday in April because I was out! So so good. I like ration it. But it's so good. So good.

I have been working on a little summer reading- I started the Stephanie Plum series and read the first book in like 2 days. I'm waiting for the 2nd one in the mail so I've been tackling the summer reading for school, which is "The Leader in Me". If you haven't read this book, do it now. It's an easy read and so good.

 
We are implementing this program in my school next and I am really looking forward to it. We are needing  little extra "something" and I think/hope this will be it. I am excited to teach my new students about leadership and great skills in order to be a leader. I have been thinking about my room and how I want to set things up, reinforce those qualities, etc and I thought about a simple reminder on the desks. And then I was like "OH! I'll just put the 7 habits on their NAMEPLATES."

So this was born:

I can't wait to put these on my desks. And what a better way then to have the 7 habits right there on the student's desks to remind them constantly. The 7 Habits are: 

The 7 Habits

1 Be Proactive

2 Begin with the end in mind

3 Put first things first

4 Think Win Win

5 Seek first to understand

6 Synergize

7 Sharpen the Saw

The 7 Habits are explained in more detail in the book so I completely recommend that you check them out! If you want to purchase these nameplates for your classroom, head over to my TPT store by clicking here!

They are chevron (duh, I love me some chevron) with coordinating labels, black with multiple colored labels and grey with multiple colored labels as well. There are 15 pages of nameplates in all so you can mix, match, and use them however you want! They work best when you print them on cardstock first. Then using a white-out pen, silver shaprie, chalk, or neon sharpies, write the names on them. Then laminate them and you are good to go! If you need additional colors for labels or backgrounds, feel free to e-mail me and I will see what I can do! 

Now, back to the coffee and putting together some of the things I got from IKEA last week. This item for sure has been "cat tested, mother approved". :) 

Have a great day! 

Brit :) 

 

Hey You Guys!!!!!!!! (Yeah, it's me. I'm alive.)

So I may just be the worst blogger on the planet.

I took a little *break* from the blogging/TPT world the past couple months. I had a lot going on with my family, friends, school, testing, ETC. This just fell to the back burner. And now that it is summer, *ta-da* I have returned. Technically we are not on summer break yet, well I mean,  today was our last day of trainings.  So TOMORROW is the first official day of summer for us here! I do have to go clean out my fridge at school, but other than that, I'm FINISHED! I've decided to treat myself to a nice mani/pedi tomorrow after that- I think I deserve it after all this packing.....

I will say that even thought I wasn't blogging, I was taking pictures and jotting down post ideas in a notebook as I finished the year. I can't wait to share some of those ideas with you. Also, BIG NEWS, I'm moving to 5th grade next year. I have taught 3rd grade for my entire teaching career (except that one year in second, but I knew I was looping and going back to third....) so this is big for me. It's a huge jump and I will  be teaching my own class reading/writing and then I will be teaching math to all the 5th graders. This was something along the lines of what I probably looked like when my admin team approached me about the idea....

I am excited though and I LOVE teaching math, so look forward to a TON of math posts in the coming months because my summer is going to be spent learning all this 5th grade math content and figuring out how to teach math in one hour. And do it 3 times.... HOORAY!

I do have lots to do this summer: reading, gardening, painting, visiting some places around here, and re-organizing the house. I hope to spend a lot of time blogging and uploading stuff to my TPT store that I created this Spring. I also have to take the GRE so I can start Grad School AGAIN in the fall. It'll be a busy summer and go by QUICK since we only have 8 weeks. 8 weeks. MEH.

I'll leave you with this. :D

March Currently!

Super pumped that my friend Kenz at Webster's Little Dictionary shared with me how to do this! :)

I am linking up with Oh' Boy 4th Grade for this month's currently: check it out! Her blog is AWESOME and I already wasted more time than I want to admit looking at past blog posts of hers....

Listening: "The Vikings"

I'm *such* a history nerd. I missed this show when season 1 was out and saw that they were re-playing every episode before season 2 started on Friday so *naturally* I recorded them all to watch now....

Loving: "Gone Girl"

I am way behind the times in getting started with this book but I have heard from so many people that it is a good book so when I was getting my hair done on Saturday and had about 30 minutes to kill under the dryer, I started it. So far, so good!

Thinking: Winter Storm Warning

Yeah I see this... but nothing is falling *yet*. They say we could end up with 4-8 inches of snow... well I will believe it when I see it.

Wanting: Coffee, a new computer, and a new suitcase!

It's cold, I love coffee, I could drink it any hour of the day. :) A new computer is in the near future- this one is driving me NUTS. It took 3 hours to back-up my new phone yesterday and transfer everything. THREE HOURS. Suitcase is needed ASAP- I head to London in 25 days. 25. Holy cow.

Needing: Lesson Plans

Need to do those lesson plans just in case. Because when they are finally done, that is when it will actually start snowing.....

??? What do you think? :)

Brit :)