"Pause and Think"s

We use Singapore Math at my school and it can be tricky. Especially our "mental math" strategies unit. Last week we worked on learning mental math strategies for addition and this week it was on scary subtraction mental math strategies.

Well, while teaching today I would work a problem and explain how we get the answer using the mental math strategy. I would then ask if anyone was confused. Of course I had some who were. But today, instead of saying it over again or trying to think of another way to explain it, an idea popped into my head. I decided we would all just pause, stare at, and think about the answer on the board and look at the process we did to find the answer.

So, we stopped. Everyone thought. (You could see their little brains turning!) And then after about 10 seconds light bulbs started turning on! Those who were confused said, "OH! I get it!" and those who got it right away were even more sure how to do it.

This is probably Teaching 101 and I'm not sure why it never occurred to me before. But praise the Lord it did today!

I know I'm the type of person that needs a few seconds to stop and just process the information presented to me, so why did I never consider this for my students?!

At the end of the math lesson everyone was in a good mood too. The students got the time to process each problem as we did it because we started doing "Pause and Think"s after every problem since it was helping. And I was happy because 1) my students understood and 2) I didn't have to stand there and re-hash over and over how to get the answer hoping and praying my words would sink in.

I will be using "Pause and Think"s a lot more now!

100th Post!! and "The Friendship Project"

I cannot believe that this is my 100th blog post! I know this may seem like a very small amount to those of you who are pro-bloggers, but I feel quite accomplished at posting 100 times over the past year. :-)

I wish I had something amazing to give away to all of my followers to celebrate this moment as so many of you do....but alas, I do not have one due to a tiny budget and student loans to pay off. And, as a second year teacher I don't have too many great activity packets that I could make available to y'all either. BUT! I would love to share with all of you what I have been up to this last week. And, I would like to make all the handouts I have created for this past week's project available to any one who wants them!

A couple of weeks ago God laid it on my hear to create "The Friendship Project." Our reading unit right now is on Friendship and of course, since it is the beginning of the year, we have been talking about making new friends and being a good one. The Friendship Project was designed to be the culminating event of our unit.

Here's what was involved in it:

1) Students were divided into groups. I asked them who they thought they could work the best with and tried my best to make sure everyone had at least one person they wanted to work with in their group. I ended up with 6 groups - 5 groups of 3 and one group of 2. Boys with boys and girls with girls.

2) Students worked together to write a definition of friendship.

3) This was my favorite part! Students interviewed teachers around the campus about friendship!! They took a video recording device (I let them use my iTouch) and they recorded their interviews!! It was so much fun. They learned some valuable communication skills from this! The teachers were just as excited as the students I think. All the teachers commented how "professional" the 3rd graders were as they came in to conduct their interview. Too cute! 

My job this weekend has been to put together the final copy of the interviews. I made them all into a movie! As I was watching the final product on my DVD player I just laughed and thought, "Wow! I can't believe this actually worked!!" 

(In fact, I'm burning copies of the DVD now to give to all the students and teachers who participated.)

4) Students also conducted at home interviews with a parent. They then came back together in their groups and wrote up an article for our Friendship Magazine based on these interviews.

5) And the final thing we did, was to make posters representing friendship through drawing. They turned out so cute!

This was such a great project that really made the students think a lot about what good friendship looks like. We had some very deep conversations going on in each of the groups. This will be a great project to keep referring to throughout the year when arguments or tension may surface between friends.

It was also a good project because it had at least one aspect that every student loved - writing, drawing, speaking, group work, and individual work.

They will get to see their movie tomorrow! I can't wait to see their little faces when they see what they made!

If you want any of the handouts I made for this project, leave a comment with your email address and I will send them to you. :-)

Classroom Management Success!!

It is the fourth week of school and I am seeing awesome results of classroom management we have been working on for the past weeks!! I'm just so excited I have to share!

Every morning at 5'til the bell rings signaling that we have 5 minutes until school begins. At this first bell, I begin playing a 7 minute song (the End Credits to the movie "Up" - so cute!). This signals that students should now be in their seats working on their morning "Wake Up Your Brain" journal. When the song ends I always ask the pledge leaders to come up to the front to lead us in our morning pledges.

Well today the song was playing like normal and when it ended I was in the middle of answering a student's question. When I turned around to ask the pledge leaders to come up, they were already standing there (quietly!) looking at me, ready to go!!! WOW! I praised them up and down and just went on and on about how wonderfully they did their job. I was so happy to see such positive results of this simple classroom management technique. I was hoping we would get to this point by 2nd quarter, but they surprised me greatly!!

I also use songs to signal that we have one minute left before a transition and a song to signal that students need to line up. They love all these songs! The first week and a half of school I would show a powerpoint slide with each song's directions on it. But now I just hit a button and transitions happen smoothly. My students hear the "one minute song" (an short instrumental piece from "Finding Nemo") and they finish their work, clean up the activity, move back to their seats, and sit waiting for me to tell them what comes next. The "line up song" is also a short instrumental piece from "Finding Nemo". Students hear it and move quickly to the door. We are now working on getting into a 4S line as soon as we line up without having to be told to stand in a 4S line.

OH! I have also been using some Whole Brain Teaching techniques!!! I use Class Yes to get their attention. I tried out Mirror and Teach Okay with great success too! I will write another post about these later.

YAY classroom management! :-)

First Week of School

This past week was our first week of school! :-)

On Monday night we had a school-wide "Back to School BBQ". It was so fun to see all the school families and great to see former students (it is weird saying I have former students!).

Tuesday we had Open Classrooms for our students to come by and drop off their supplies. This was good one-on-one time with parents. When my students came to drop off their supplies I greeted them with a handshake at the door and handed them their first "third grade assignment". They were so excited! The assignment was just a list of steps on how to put away the supplies they brought.

I set up a "Parent Station" for this in order to give the parents something to do hoping this would allow the students a step in responsibility of putting their things away by themselves. I had a parent survey with questions about their student and also a class roster sheet to fill out. Most of the parents loved the first assignment and enjoyed watching their student follow the directions.

And then Wednesday was the first day of school! So exciting. I felt much more ready this year for it than I did last year. I think I'm going to enjoy this whole "second year of teaching" thing. ;-)

I have 16 students this year. 8 boys and 8 girls. They are fun group of students and we are going to have a great year! One of my students brought me an apple on the first day! Isn't that cute?!

As much as I love being back to teaching again, I am so thankful for weekends. I forgot how exhausting it is to be consistent every minute of every day while trying to explain something to 16 different personalities! ;-)

Technology Ideas!!

I just got back from a two day technology conference. Today, the second day, was the best! I got a lot of great ideas and learned about some valuable resources. Because of the great value of these resources I wanted to share them with you! There were three main things that stuck out to me from the conference.  Here they are! (The pictures should - if I did it correctly - include links to each website.)

1) WolframAlpha:

WolframAlpha is a great search engine. Where Google is a search engine that FINDS things that are already out there, WolframAlpha GENERATES charts and graphs and tables based on what you search for. It literally searches the entire web and throws the information into one place for you. Also, it does math problems! Type in any problem at any level and it will generate the answer for you but also will show step by step how to solve it. Go play around on it! It is fun to do. For example, you can type in Obama vs. Romney and it will generate tables and charts comparing their information in a matter of seconds. Simply, amazing.

2) Jing:

Jing is a free download that enables you to take screen shots on your computer. It is how I got the pictures above. BUT that is not all it does! It also records video from your computer. You can create a screen shot video with your voice recorded on it through Jing. Can you imagine the possibilities of this in your classroom?! I certainly can and am going to spend some of tomorrow really playing with it and figuring out how to incorporate it into some lessons. My students could use it on their own and I could also use it to record video lessons. I am SO excited about this one!!

3) Fluency 21 project:

Fluency 21 project is a website geared towards helping teachers with their 21st century "fluency". It includes many resources you can use in your classroom and aids in helping you reach your 21st century students. It will send you newsletters and will compile a list of the most recent education articles for you to read. You can "commit" to the project at the bottom of the page which just means that you have signed up to receive their information and now have access to their online resources.

I gained other knowledge as well at the conference, but wanted to especially share these three resources with all of you! 

Classroom Pictures!

My classroom is just about done, which I am thrilled about considering it only took me about 5 days to do this year! :-) Here are some pictures. (The pictures are not the best ever....but hopefully you can get a general idea of what it looks like.)

On my "crafty day" the other week I also made this Books Needed Board with two pieces of cork board, ribbon, and hot glue. I will thumb tack the books up each day so students know which ones to have on their desk.

While visiting with another teacher in her classroom, I noticed she had this desk by the door. She said she didn't want it anymore and so was waiting for it to be taken out of her room. I said, "I'll take it!" It will be the perfect size for my laptop and document camera to fit on. The only thing was the back was pretty beaten up....

So I went to the new Joann's and bought some fabric. With a little cutting and a glue gun the ugly back was hidden from sight:  

Here is a picture of the desk at the front of my room:

Now for the tour:

A little reading area by the window along with the How I Act discipline system:

A view of the front of my room.
I put boarder around the white boards this year!

My door:

I took string from the jewelry making section of Michael's and tied it to command hooks to string clothespins across the door. Students will write a "tweet" on an index card to hang up on the door telling about something they learned that day/week. (I used the little birds from Pixar's short film "For the Birds" but you can't see them very well in this picture...)

My reading corner complete with the TRAVEL acronym to finish out the sentence "Adventure's Out There so let's TRAVEL". I also have the house from "Up", clouds hanging from the ceiling, and the clock was turned into a sun (the sun has the minutes written around it for easy reference as well). During the first week of school students will make a picture of themselves holding a balloon to be put on this wall.

My library!! I spent a lot of time on Thursday working on organizing all my books (which really aren't too many as a 2nd year teacher :) ). This is my fiction section:

I have a classroom library ribbon with clothespins on it for each student to use to mark where they got their book from:

The view from the front door of my room:

Our Writing Desk:

A wall:

Look! There's the Book's Needed sign:

The "non fiction" portion of our classroom library:

Another close up of the wall:

The paper center with the "no name papers" clip idea from pinterest and student mailboxes. I also used a quote from Nemo: "Welcome, explorers! So much to see, so much to learn. Let's go!":

The Calendar and the picture book portion of our library:

A close up of the board with our table points and daily plan:

A close up of the Class Jobs and Attendance board:

I decided to use a command hook on the underside of the white board tray to hang the bucket with the magnets for the attendance board. It works really well!

My writing process chart:

My desk area. I pushed my big chunky teacher desk against the wall and the school had an extra trapezoid table available so I grabbed it. I can't believe how much it opened up my classroom just to push my desk against the white board. Now, students can easily pull their chairs up for small group time. I can also use the space for grading in the afternoons. Saving space by having a multi-purpose!

 I started working on this hall pass board today. All it needs is a heading. I used a pizza pan, ribbon, clothespins, and magnets. I loved the idea to use clothespins as hall passes so students just clipped it onto their shirts as they left. The magnets are for easy placement back on the board.

The "Drop Off" bucket held on by command strips (velcro ones):

That's my classroom as of right now! A few little things to add next week, but it is pretty much ready for students now. I'm excited about the new year!

A Crafty Day

In my attempt to be a bit more creative and crafty, I have been working on a couple of projects today I wanted to share. 

First, I found these great magnetic strips at Lakeshore last week. I decided to use them for the daily schedule I post on the board each day. I typed out the name of the events/subjects we have during the day. After cutting them out I glued them on to the magnetic strips and finished off by covering them with contact paper for extra protection. 

Then I decided to get really crafty. I bought a glue gun and ribbon. Along with those supplies I got a pizza pan from the Dollar Tree and some round magnets.

I then turned the pizza pan into a magnetic attendance board!

Behind each magnet is a number. Since each of my students have a number based on alphabetical order in our class, all they have to do in the morning is grab a magnet and place it on their number to mark their attendance.

I'm going to attempt a couple of other projects today but we will see if they actually turn out! :-)