This week I listened to Jennifer Gonzalez' Cult of Pedagogy podcast about Mastery Learning with Khan Academy. I'm contemplating using the Khan Academy mastery learning approach more in my self-paced math time and/ or for kids that are a level behind to try to catch them up in a very to-the-point way. There are many subjects and topics to explore on the website but starting with math makes sense for me.
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Another Snow Day. More time to think about how to make the classroom structure better for learners. I created a plan for spiraling Math review in an interactive way for the beginning of each math block. I need to be intentional with this in order to make sure it happens.
Memory Monday Tens on Tuesday Wiggles out Wednesday Think it Through Thursday Fact Fluency Friday Also considering how conceptual math fact fluency is. Do I make Canvas modules for the Math Fact Fluency strategies and then meet with kids to play the games and practice? Last week I decided to try to split my math groups into 4 groups and meet with 2 each day. The kids are showing me they have the stamina to work at a math rotation for nearly 20 minutes and I would rather have quality time in my groups without having to rush. The only problem with this is that it's difficult to manage the core/ shared learning lesson when some students will meet with me that day and some won't. I'm going to try pushing 2 core lessons together in the first day of the cycle and then the second day either reviewing or doing a number talk, string, equality work or true/ false statements.
I'm really struggling with getting kids to COMPLETE the tasks on their literacy and math menu. The kids that are responsible, easily finish the work, but the other 80% don't and by the end of the week I'm left wondering what in the world they've been doing during literacy work time. I really don't feel like I'm assigning too much work and I feel like I've modeled the task that needs to get done but I'm really amazed at the lack of understanding (construction of knowledge?) and responsibility of the students. I'm going to try this week to have 1 item (any) due Tuesday, one Wednesday, one Thursday, and the rest Friday before last recess. We'll see if it helps if I give students some extra prompting and help with time management. With this menu approach, I'm REALLY seeing which kids are responsible, use their time wisely, and turn in quality work independently. I'm also going to add a piece of self-reflection to the bottom of their menu to begin to internalize those life skills. Dig Deeper
Read a great article about how to nurture emotional intelligence which connected for me because of responsive classroom. Thought this quote was very important, "Most of the time, once kids (and adults) feel their emotions are understood and accepted, the feelings lose their charge and begin to dissipate. This leaves an opening for problem solving." New Strategies The responsive classroom model of morning meeting has been life-changing! I may not be able to do all 4 pieces in one block of time, but I am able to get them all in early in the morning and the students are LOVING it! I am going to try rotating between a morning message letter and our song/ poem of the week as both are important I believe and can achieve the goals I have in mind. The Morning Meeting book is a must-have for every teacher!! There are SO many great resources out there to keep it evolving as the school year goes on too! While my mind was focusing on the meaning of a responsive classroom, I decided to invent an end of day wrap up also. The student of the week posts on facebook or twitter, gives us our social contract rating and evaluates the secret student. Then I start an end of day cadence and we make a big circle. At the end of the cadence I have 2-3 students use this thinking stem. . . "I'm glad I came to school today because. . . " We had the best week possible last week, my behavior problems were nearly 0. I'm going to contribute that to the students feeling more like they are a part of our classroom community. I also tried putting a writing and creative art project on the literacy menu as a task to do on the students' own and in their own time. I modeled how to create and the writing topic on Monday and then left my model up on the board all week. It was due on Friday before Fabulous Friday. This strategy informed me SO much about my students' ability to follow directions, be responsible, and problem solve. I will definitely continue using this format in weeks to come! This week I will do one about MLK Jr. and I'm also going to try having the students' listen to books about him on Bookflix as a Literacy Menu task, before they do the project. I want to make sure I bring out what to do if you have forgotten what to do or how to do it, how to ask others for help and look back at the model.
Another idea I had was to do this kind of format for writing, specifically for the Opinion Writing we are learning to write currently. Do a whole group mini-lesson using Shared Writing, practice in Guided Reading/ Writing groups near the beginning of the week, and then expect students to complete it on their own during the rest of the week and turn one into be assessed. This week I'm going to add; have an introduction along with the other pieces of opinion writing that we've been working on. I also want to create WITH the students, an editing checklist, that students could use, about the size of a bookmark and laminate them. Even when I quick whipped one up for guided writing time, each group did really well using it and checking for errors. I listened to a video from the Recovering Traditionalist when she had an educator named Graham Fletcher do a webinar about 3 Act Math Tasks. It was fabulous! I learned a couple strategies for making my story problems more engaging such as covering the words with sticky notes and only showing the question. Ask kids what what they wonder and slowly reveal the words. Graham's 3 act math tasks start with a very short video. He suggests doing 1-3 3-act tasks during a math unit, including at the very beginning as an informal assessment. With the videos you ask students what they notice and what they wonder. Then you pose a question and start with estimating. I will definitely use his website as a resource and want to try one next week while we are in the middle of our place value unit!
T - Can you say more?
T - How can you add more information to this to show what --- was thinking? On the floor write down an equation to show what was going on in the picture. T - I want you think about if there are any familiar patterns or relationships as we look at this next number pattern. Let Ss write!! Gray dot patterns on paper, two copies of same pattern so can have two different ways of "How many do you see and how do you see them" Create their own dot patterns Routines that are not Routinized
Visual Routines -Quick Images using dot cards, pictures, dominoes, dice -Ten Frames -Rekenreks Counting Routines Choral Counting, Start and Stop Counting, Count around the Circle, Organic Number Line
Ways to Make,Today's Number, relate it to 10, 100, 1000 Mental Math, Calendar and Data Routines Homemade Calendar - passage of time, lots of questioning Collecting Data Over a Long Period of Time Counting the Days in School - 0 - 180 chart |
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