Sleeping the Sickies Away

Hello Friends!

I have been in absentia from the blogosphere the last couple of days. 

I went to a wonderful workshop on Friday (more to come on that at a later date!) and then came home feeling like death warmed over (or, at least, what I think death warmed over must feel like!).

Went to bed at 8:45 Friday night and didn't get up again (other than to go to the bathroom and get drinks) until today (yep, Sunday!) a little after 10:00 a.m. 

Wowzer!!!! I slept over 36 hours!!!!

Still not feeling great but have been out of bed for over an hour and so far am not feeling the huge need to nap. So, thought I'd get in a post while I am still awake!

Not a lot of talk today. Just some photos of life in Lucky Division 13 this past week!

Made "Mummy Dogs" with the class on Wednesday. Well, in reality, Miss Vanessa made the mummy dogs. I just brought in the supplies. 

There are no words to describe how grateful I am to have Miss Vanessa working in our class this year. Beyond the fact that she is an amazing cook (these mummy dogs soooo didn't make use of her considerable talent!) but because she just makes life better. Always positive, never complaining, a beautiful quiet energy and a great heart. How could I ever want anything more?

Some photos of our Math Stations this week. One was pattern blocks (we have begun learning/reviewing what we know about 2 dimensional shapes), another was at the tub station (a roll the dice game that works on addition facts) and the last was our seat work ( a book about shapes.)

And last, but most definitely not least, a page from a student's Gratitude Journal. I had this student last year and, I have to tell you, my heart just about burst when I read what she had written! Her current teacher sent her over to me during Community Centres and I almost cried reading her wonderful words about me. 

And I love how she is so honest saying that I am optimistic most of the time! So true! I pride myself on always trying to see situations and people from a positive perspective. I succeed more often than not, I am glad to say!

This, to me, is what community is all about. Building relationships that last and are meaningful with the students! It helps me to remember why I am a teacher and what I believe in. The bottom line is always about relationships. Math, Writing, Reading, Science, Social Studies, Gym...all are important but, without relationship, are really meaningless as far as I am concerned. I could go on but, since you all know by now that this is one of my soapbox topics, I won't!

Instead, I will bid you adieu and head back to bed. Not feeling too bad still but could probably use a nap (after all, I have been out of bed now for over 2 hours!!!!!) Crossing my fingers that I am well enough to come to school tomorrow!

Ms. Hughes

Sorting It Out

We've been working on sorting and patterning lately. This has been the assigned task at math tubs during Math Stations. Check out some of the sorting done lately. Can you figure out the sorting rules?

Cheers! 

Ms. Hughes

Foto Friday

Hello friends!

Sorry there were no photos last Friday. To be perfectly frank, I was just glad to get through last week! I didn't take time to do anything other than what had to get done. It was a long, long, long (did I mention long?) week!!!!!

Anywho, here are some photos of the happenings in Division 13 lately!

We started using our math tubs for sorting activities. 

We learned a math facts game called Bump. This is the fall version with addition to 12.

There was lots of K'Nex love during centre time. Some of the kids are obsessed!!!!

We made applesauce in the slow cooker 

Cheers!

Ms. Hughes

Where Do They Get These Ideas?

For the last week or so I have been letting the class have about 30 minutes of free choice at math tubs each morning. As one of the kids put it, "Ms. Hughes, this is just like Choosing time only with Math!" Yep, pretty much!

A group of students took a bunch of different math tubs and combined the contents to create the Appleberry Mining Co. For a few days, they were building and dismantling each time we had math. A huge undertaking believe you me! Then last week, I let them leave it and they have been adding to it since.

It has offices, a cafeteria, a smelter, a museum, bathrooms, a computer lab and its very own cave! There is also a railroad (run by a different student) to carry the ore to the mining company. I have no idea who came up with the idea but it has been super cool watching them all work together to create and run the mining company.

Especially interesting was how two of the head mining honchos dealt with the number of students who wanted to play last week. It started to get a little crazy with so many kids wanting to be in the same small space so, what did they do? Well, they laid people off, of course!!!! The laid off employees were sent off to find new work (i.e. play with a different math tub). Then, when one student was sad to be laid off, they promptly told him that the company was rehiring! (Oh, if only life was really like that, huh?)

Anywho, I took a video of the mining company and had them talk me through the space. So, take a minute and check it out. The minds of grade 1 and 2 students never cease to amaze me!

p.s. Sorry about the picture quality. I was trying to zoom in and out without getting any faces on the video. It got blurry in a couple place. My bad!

Classroom Economy

As many of you know I have been using a points system since just before Christmas to reward students for making appropriate behaviour choices. Students earned check marks for listening, doing their work, behaving appropriately etc. At the end of each day, we would draw names and the students with the predetermined number of points would get to go the Treasure Box for a prize.

This system is pretty basic behaviour modification. It works for short periods of time but does not work over the long haul.  I am not a big fan of behaviour modification programs in general. In the short term they can keep a teacher from losing her mind (that would be me who was going to lose my mind if the chatting at the carpet didn't stop pronto!) and help students to train themselves to a certain behaviour (in our case it was more listening, less talking!)

I was starting to find that the Treasure Box system was not working for me anymore. The behaviours that needed changing have changed for the most part (and I am happy to say that they have changed for the better!) The students still love getting to pick out a treasure (aka dollar store junk toy) but I want them to think beyond the getting of something. I want a system that will be a learning tool (and ideally meet some of the PLO's) NOT just an incentive to get stuff.

I have found a way to encourage good choices AND meet some of the PLO’s we have for Math and Social Studies. In my explorations around the web I have come across a lot of great ideas. One of them is from Beth Newingham who is a grade 3 teacher in Michigan. She does something she calls the Classroom Economy. Students earn credits for doing their classroom jobs and for making good choices during school time. They earn debits for failure to do their work or for making poor choices. Her system is fairly complex since she is dealing with grade 3 students but the concept is one that I really like.

So, we are going to be starting our own classroom economy experiment. Students will continue to earn points for their choices and work habits. We are going to create a bank (which has been named Turtlepond Bank of Kitchener by the students or TBK for short) where students can either cash in their points for Turtle Dollars OR they can put their earnings into the bank for safe keeping.

Once a week, students will have the opportunity to go to the Turtlepond Store where they can purchase things from the Treasure Box (prices range from $10-$30)OR they can buy coupons to get certain privileges or experiences. Things like being able to stay in the classroom for lunch with the teacher or get first dibs on the computer or sitting at the teacher's desk to do all seat work. 

I found a bunch of coupons at this one site called Seusstastic Classroom Inspirations where she does something similar only she uses "fuzzies" (pom poms) to pay her students and they trade them in once a week. Then I made some coupons for the other ideas the kids thought up. 

We are on week 2 of this experiment now and it is going great. Generally, students earn around 5-7 points per day if they are consistently making positive choices. I have not been taking points away for poor choices but do put an X on their box if they make a poor choice. If they get 3 X's in one day then they lose any of the points they may have earned for that day (I am happy to say that this has only happened once. Most students see that X and get their act together!)

We have assigned bank managers and tellers that rotate each week. They are using the calculator to figure out amounts and enter them into the bank ledger. At the store, students have been volunteering to work. They use the ticker tape machine to create receipts and stamp them with the PAID stamp I bought.

Probably the most interesting thing to me is watching which kids spend their points right away and which ones save them up. And a really bright spot for me was on Thursday last week when one of the students used 15 of his points to buy something at the store for our new student (who had not been with us long enough to accumulate enough points to buy something). It made my heart ache just a wee bit to see such generosity in action.

What do we do at Math Stations anyway?

We do Math Stations 3 mornings a week. I have the students in groups of 3 and they do 3 stations per day. The stations are in math tubs and each tub covers different prescribed learning outcomes (otherwise known as plo's). Some tubs involve games. I love that the students love playing the math games and don't even realize that they are practicing math skills! Others involve pencil and paper jobs. These are great because I can really differentiate activities and have a written sample of how they are doing.

Here is a sampling of what some of the tubs look like this week:

This is a game where we practice adding doubles. Being able to know that 4+5 is really only 4+4 plus 1 more is a great strategy for addition. Or that 4+3 is the same as one less than 4+4 for subtraction. It is played kind of like BINGO only there is no caller. Instead, you roll a dice, double the number rolled and try to get 5 in a row.

 Here we are playing Domino Parking Lot. Each player takes a domino from the tub and adds the two sides together. Then they place the domino in the correct "parking space" that has the sum. The objective is to fill your parking lot first.

Here is a 2-D shapes activity. Some cards come with the shapes in them and students have to rebuild the shape but other cards are more challenging with only the outline of the shape and a list of shapes needed to created the final product. Students are expected to work with the cards that challenge them. No easy, peasy, lemon squeezy choices allowed!!!!

This is a patterning job. It is not actually the one we are doing this week. It is from last week when students were making matching mittens that had to have a pattern of some sort. Other weeks this tub has different patterning and sorting activities. Students are expected to challenge themselves to create more complex patterns. For example, I expected the grade 2's to do more than just a simple ABAB pattern on their mittens. They had to have at least 3 colours and more things going on in their patterns.  

This tub has math fact practice booklets in it. Each student has a booklet for the level they are currently working on. Some only have addition. Others have addition and subtraction. One of our other paper and pencil tubs has printing practice and set making activity booklets.

Some days I work at a tub and teach each group a new game. This gives me a chance to watch each student and see where their strengths and weaknesses lie. (This helps me to form groups and activities for the next week) Other days I pull a group of students for a particular math activity like beginning addition with regrouping. The math groups change weekly. Sometimes I put 3 students together who are all working on the same skill. Sometimes I mix up the students so that they can better learn from each other. The activities and groups are always changing and evolving depending on the needs and abilities of the students.

So, there you have it. Math Stations 101! This is probably my favourite way to teach math (and, believe you me, I have tried more than a few!)  The students are independent workers, I get to work with small groups and there are a number of activities each day. In between the tubs we meet at the carpet for an Energy Blast (or 4) and then some Calendar pages on the Smartboard. I am able to introduce new concepts to the whole class through the Calendar before putting out games or activities using the concepts in the tubs.

Ms. Hughes

We have been having a blast with Energy Blasts this past week! 

Somehow, since coming back from holidays we haven't managed to get through our math routines very well. So, I decided to mix it up on the mornings we do Math. Now students start the day by doing a math tub with their group then they come to the carpet for some Energy Blasts and a few pages of calendar on the Smartboard before going on to the next math tub. We do this combination three times and then stop for snack before recess. It has been a huge success! We have not only gotten through our calendar each day but I have been able to add a couple pages on two digit addition with regrouping and writing numbers in expanded form. I have been able to meet with more groups for longer periods of time to go over math concepts in a small group setting. AND we are all moving more and getting our wigglies out through the use of Energy Blasts!

So, just what are Energy Blasts? It is a DVD made by a teacher named Judy Howard. It has 65 different 1 minute workouts. They are four categories: African, Athletic, Latin and Hip-Hop. I set it on random and we do 3 or 4 in a row. This means that between school starting and recess we have managed to get in between 9-12 minutes of exercise plus do loads of math. It is a win-win!

The DVD came to our school as part of a course I took called Action Schools which is all about integrating more physical activity into the daily routine of school. If you are interested in finding out more about it, I found a couple of videos of showing Judy Howard teaching some of the moves. Check her out teaching the samba here and the robocop here. The DVD looks like this:

If you are interested in having a copy of the full DVD for your own child to use at home, it is available through its publisher Eye Learner. You can find out more about purchasing it here. Enjoy!

A Little of This, A Little of That

Things are chugging along in Turtlepond these days! It is hard to believe that we are only 9 school days away from our Winter holidays. How did that happen? Over the last few days I have taken a bunch of pictures that are completely unrelated to each other so I thought I would just share them anyways! So, here goes....

We got mail! Today we got two postcards from Beijing, China! Last week we got a postcard from Texas. If you get the chance to check out the blackboard above our book boxes you will see the map of the world I have hung there with strings going from the places to the mail we have received. We sent off 23 letters to various schools participating in our holiday mail exchange and are hopeful that we will also get more mail from relatives of the students in our class. We can hardly wait to see what comes next!

We have discovered that you can draw a picture with our felt pens and then use water and a paint brush to turn it into a watercolour! This moment of serendipity happened on a day when I just didn't have time to get out the paints during choosing and suggested a student try doing this instead. Tons of fun (and art) ensued!

Four of the boys built this very complex structure during choosing. It is an entire village surrounded by a wall with a blacksmith, horses and everything all made out of Lego. They had me take a gazillion photos from various angles which would take up about 4 pages if I tried to post them all. Cool, huh?

And we have been reading a variety of versions of the Gingerbread Boy story. So far we have read the following versions...

We have been comparing each of the versions to the ones we have read before and discovering many similarities and differences. Reading the Hawaiian version (The Musubi Man) was particularly fun as it ends in an entirely new way from the original. And today we started working on our own class version of the Gingerbread Man story that we hope to finish before the holidays and have our very own "Conan The Librarian" put it in the library for all to read!

In Math Stations we have been working on gingerbread boy patterns, number printing, addition and subtraction games and completing math assessments with me. I am discovering that quite a few of the grade 2's need to work on quick recall of their math facts to 20. We still have a lot of kids counting using strategies like their fingers, objects etc. which is fine as a strategy but really slows down their ability to do math facts quickly and accurately. We are going to be working on place value in the new year and begin doing more column addition with and without regrouping. Knowing their math facts is kind of like knowing sight words. It allows them to spend their time thinking about the question and how to do it rather than having to stop and count on their fingers each time they have to add another two numbers together. A set of math fact flash cards in each stocking this Christmas would be a very good idea!

This Thursday we are looking forward to making Christmas ornaments with our parent volunteers. Before the holidays, we will be doing a scrapbook page about the holidays for our scrapbooks. And next week we are going to be singing Christmas carols in the gym on a couple of mornings. I will let you know which days we are going. Hope that you can join us!

It is amazing to me that October is here already! Where did the first few weeks of school go? It seems that every year of teaching goes faster than the one before. I am happy to say that even with the job action that teachers here in BC are currently doing, our school year started smoothly and everything in the classroom is moving along as always.

Friday was our Terry Fox Run at school. We walked over to a nearby park and did the run. If you don't know about Terry Fox, he is a true Canadian hero. His story is inspiring and we do a run in his honour each year. It is a way to pay tribute to him and also raise money in the fight against cancer. Check out this wonderful video about Terry Fox on youtube here.

With job action we were not allowed to collect donations this year so all families had to donate online. I hope that we did well with donations. Our school has a wonderful reputation as a big fundraising school. I hope that we have kept the tradition alive with this latest fundraiser to help find a cure for cancer.

After missing two days of school last week trying to get over this cold (I am still fighting it but am definitely on the mend) I forced myself to stay late on Friday to hang up our self-portraits. I was seriously exhausted after doing the Terry Fox run in the morning and having our first pizza day at lunch but I was determined! I finally finished around 6pm and headed home. It was a late day but worth it. They are so wonderful and add such a nice tone to our walls. I tried to put these into a slide show but for some reason my computer won't copy the video over to the blog. I finally gave up and uploaded all the self-portraits. Check them out. Aren't they wonderful?

I am missing one self-portrait for a student who came into our class after we made these. I will have to get him to do one this week.

In other class news, we are working on patterns and sorting. Tomorrow I am going to put more time into getting our math stations going. We have been doing lots of small group activities but I have yet to have them practice the actual routine of doing the math stations. This week my goal is to get the math stations up and running. I am using my previous methods for teaching math combined with things I have learned from Laney Sammon's Guided Math books and the book Math Work Stations by Debbie Diller. I have very high expectations for my math program and know that this class will quickly figure out the station rotation and get to work. Wish me luck!

I will be using the book The Button Box on Tuesday for our Math & Literature lesson. I created a couple of worksheets for the students to use after we have worked with real buttons sorting them by different attributes. If you would like to have a copy of the assorted buttons click here. The kids will get to decide on the attribute they will use to sort the buttons. Shape, colour, design etc. I will post some pics when I have them!

I have been teaching the grade 1's their first Social Studies unit. Twice a week, we group all the 1's together with me while the 2's go to the other two teachers in our pod. The grade 1's are learning about Canadian symbols. So far we have learned about the maple leaf and Canadian flag. We have also learned about some Canadian animals. This week we will be learning about hockey. I expect that most of the kids can teach this part! I am sure that they know more than i do about the sport!!!!

Here's to finally getting over this cold and having a good week!

Ms. Hughes