The Happy Learning Den: October 2015

Sunday, October 25, 2015

I Believe in Capitals & Punctuation Marks

After 8 years of teaching 3rd grade, I am back in 5th. I looked forward to a refreshing change of older students. After all, they are older so they are capable of more... right? Mostly yes, but I am not seeing the quality in their writing that I expected. My students are not capitalizing the beginning of their sentences or proper nouns, and a few students don't put a capital letter in their own first name. They are writing the word "I" as "i," and forgetting to put the proper punctuation marks at the end of their sentences. It's frustrating because many of the students who are doing these things are students that I had in my class in 3rd grade! So what is a teacher to do?

Modeling
Yes. I modeled with my own writing. I modeled with student writing. I modeled by retyping a page from a book that one of the students was writing... a complete page without any punctuation marks, capital letters, or quotation marks. I had students assist me in fixing the mistakes. Still, in their own journal writing and responses to test questions they continue to make careless mistakes.

Editing
I circled many answers and fixed the errors with my pink grading pen. I sat with students and discussed .... "I forgot," "Oh yeah," and Ooooops" are the generally the first replies students make. Yet nothing changes.

I Believe
I am trying something new. Something that came to me out of the blue. I asked my students one morning if they "believe." A few responded by asking, "in what?" But most just said yes. I kept this up all day. At the end of they day I asked students what they believe in. The responses were cute and typical of 5th graders: "g-d, unicorns, magic, good grades, family, etc." Then I asked if they wanted to know what I believe in... total buy-in... they all wanted to know!

So I told them in a whisper... "I believe in putting capital letters and punctuation marks where they belong."

I told them that anyone who showed me in their writing that they believed in capital letters and proper punctuation would be called "Learning Captains." Learning Captains would be in charge of helping other students edit their writing before turning it in to me. Like magic, they all started peppering me with questions. These students want to be Learning Captains! Yes! I have buy-in!

Now I have 3 Captains in my first Math/ Science class and 2 Captains in my second Math/ Science class. My goal is to have every single student be a Learning Captain by the end of the school year. Cross your fingers for me!

Learning Captain Necklaces
(erasers & ribbons)

"The The Impotence of Proofreading" by Taylor Mali

Stay tuned, the best is yet to come!
Until next time,
~Sandra @The Happy Learning Den

Sunday, October 11, 2015

Lightbulbs

Light bulb moments are when students truly understand something.

Even now, in my 18th year of teaching, I strive for the moment that one student 'gets it." The moment a realization hits them, a concept is fully understood, or a difficult problem clicks. It is so rewarding to watch.

In movies, the scene usually has some soft lighting, a quiet classroom. An inspirational teacher lays a hand on a student's shoulder as they say softly, “Oh! I understand now.” The teacher smiles indulgently and says something inspirational like, “I knew you could do it, dear.”

Real-Life
It's better than what you see in the movies. When kids figure something out, they get what I like to call ‘light bulb face.’ You can literally see their brains connect the dots, and they go slack jawed and wild eyed, usually letting out a dramatic gasp or “Ooh! Ooh!” It's almost magical.Sometimes, it’s even more dramatic...

Small Group Learning
This week we were reviewing repeated addition in a small group (for example 2 + 2, plus 2 more, plus 2 more). The rest of my class was working on multi-digit multiplication with problems like 571 x 27 and 369 x 49. The group of students who were working with me still use their fingers to add, so this was a perfect time to turn multiplication problems into repeated addition. I would write on my dry-erase board a problem, and they would copy onto their boards, and then solve... (For example, instead of writing 3 x 3, I wrote 3 + 3 + 3 = ?)

Dramatic Light Bulb Moment
As they were working in partners to solve a problem I gave them, one boy stood up so fast his chair crashed to the ground, he pointed his hand at me, and very loudly said "Oh my g-d!" Everyone, including me, stared at him. Then he pointed to his dry-erase board, and in an excited loud-whisper said, "This is just like multiplication!" YES!!! Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner!

The light-bulb moments aren't always dramatic, but they are always rewarding.

Stay tuned, the best is yet to come!

Until next time,
~Sandra @The Happy Learning Den

Sunday, October 4, 2015

Science! Science! We love Science!

My students have been working very hard on the weather unit. Last week they learned about climate zones, and how each area has different kinds of weather.

I am diligent in providing my students with lots of different activities: from muti-media such as virtual labs, power points, and online research, to reading nonfiction texts, interactive notebooks, and journaling. Students continue to use the class R.A.N. Chart (I wrote about this in a previous post.) to write down information they have learned, questions about something they still don't understand, and things they still wonder about. This is helping me guide my instruction as I follow the curriculum.

There is a lot of discussion in my classroom. We talk about what they have learned, and I try to answer their questions. I admit, sometimes they stump me! Many times a week I am saying to my students, "That's a really great question! Let's research that answer." Then we discuss how to find the answers. Students almost always want to look online! But I don't always allow this. They look in their science text books and other scientific/ student-friendly books that I have in my class library. Even if they can't always find the answers, I truly hope that our discussions help them love the process of learning and researching, and digging deeper for answers.

As elementary educators, we know how essential it is to differentiate instruction in order to make sure that every student learns the subject matter. Once in a while, a class discussion reaches all of my students. BUT that is rare. Students need to be engaged in what they are doing- not just told what they should know.

They do hands-on activities. They do journaling. We have discussions. I make time for students to go online and add more details/ notes to their interactive textbooks and journals. It's A LOT and that's not all we do, but I make sure that I reach as many of my students learning style as possible. The more often, and more ways I can get my students engaged in their learning.... the more authentic learning takes place.

Below you will find photos of what my students learned last week: Weather and Climate Zones.

PLEASE leave me a comment below and let me know what you do to engage all of your students! How do you differentiate your science lessons? One reason I started this blog is to collaborate with teachers all over the world to gain insight so I can continue to learn and grow as an educator!
I heart comments!

This is a photograph of my hallway bulletin board.

One student's 3-tab foldable of Weather and Climate Zones: Mountain, Desert, and Swamp.

This student added details inside his foldable.

More notes...

Here is another student's assignment.

The next few photos are my adaption of the Frayer Model for vocabulary words. (A Frayer Model is a graphic organizer commonly used by many educators. It helps students gain a deeper understanding of new words. Students are asked to define the words, give examples and non examples, use it in a sentence and illustrate the word.) I have students do something similar. They write it "fancy" and illustrate the word in one section. They tell 2 ways that they can remember the word in another section. They create 2 test questions and answer them, and then they explain how they can use the vocabulary word in real-life.

Happy Learning!
Happy Teaching!

The best is yet to come!
~Sandra @ The Happy Learning Den

The Happy Learning Den

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