SOL #2 Marvelous Monotonous March

As a teacher, March is the month with no holiday breaks.  It is the long stretch of not winter, not spring. Weathered in my twentieth year, March has new appeal.  

I realize that this is the time of year that my students and I really get our groove on.  Expectations are habit, foundations are laid and we just dive into the work, bettering ourselves everyday in small easy increments.  The long month is a quiet time of slow and steady but happy, cozy and familiar.  Yesterday, the first of March, I should have started the day harried from a slightly, snowy commute. March miracles! Every single child was working on writing, or spelling or finishing up a math project.  The classroom volume was at the perfect decibel. I breathed.  I smiled.
After lunch, we snuggled down to conclude our read aloud, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, an annual favorite that has shaped me as a person and teacher and crowns each of my students. "Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia."
The day culminated with one of my struggling students receiving a classroom certificate to his total surprise and another struggler's work honored at a school wide assembly. Can I say it?  It was the perfect day in the classroom.
Today, I slept in, as much as a mother of a 6 and 7 year old boys can.  My husband wants to know what we want to do today.  This. Just this.  The boys made a fort of those jumbo, cardboard, building brick, blocks and inhabited it with army men.  I'm writing this and I'm still in my pajamas, coffee in a think cozy mug, enabling me to savor thick warm gulps that my weekday travel mug just can't deliver.
March is nothing special but everything just being.

SOL #1 February End Resolutions

Making resolution for the new year is so 2018.  I have just realized that I have made some promises to myself to begin at the end of February.
I've promised myself to make a commitment to writing everyday, getting back to healthy eating and getting my butt on the treadmill everyday.
I started getting myself healthier over the summer.  I committed myself to eating right, pushed myself to do cardio everyday and weight train twice a week.  Besides the weight training, the healthy habits have fallen by the wayside since the holidays.  Today, I went on the treadmill and set my alarm to wake up to do it again tomorrow.  My portions and choices of food were healthy today and my food is prepped for tomorrow.
Prepping myself for the week of teaching I came across Slice of Life challenge.  This is something that has intrigued me in the past but I never committed to it.  So here it goes with my first slice.
Why the gung-ho ness at the end of February?
Why not?
The winter is coming to an end and I can almost feel spring coming.  Perhaps I will be the crocus this year, the first to emerge.

I’m here to amuse you? #DWHABIT

I’m funny how? I mean funny, like I’m a clown? I amuse you? I make you laugh? I’m here to amuse you? Whattya you mean funny? Funny how? How am I funny?
I better be there to amuse them. If I don´t amuse them, I certainly will lose them. Could you imagine sitting through a 6 hour show that was dry and boring? As the one time assistant to a magician, I often equate my day as a six hour show. It is one hard gig.
The prep. It is the backstage work, the rehearsals, the set construction and costume design and it definitely is not long enough! I spend my time at home revising the day, the lesson, the conversation. There is Smartboards to create, animated gifs and text to download, fonts to chose and the best interactive venue to be chosen.

The different acts of my day must draw them in.  There must be action, suspense, drama, and certainly comedy.  I must also be able to read my audience.  Why are they here?  Are they invested or are they just here because they have to be?  How can I get them invested?  How can I get them to care about the show that Iḿ putting on?  How can I get them to see that they are not just the audience but the characters themselves.

Of course Iḿ here to amuse them.  They are children and they are here to have fun.  I just have to sneak the education in there.

Posssess or Not To Possess

In trying to increase my daily writing habit and the fact that Iḿ home sick and done binge watching tv, I thought I would embrace the challenge posed by Teach Write. The Word of the Day challenge is to eliminate the fear of the blank page. The word for today is possess.
The first thing I thought of was, ¨Wow! There are a lot of Ss in that word.¨  The next thing I thought of was Sarah McLaclanś song Possession. That song was constantly on the 5 disc changer during college.
More prevalently, as I look at the wrapping paper and gifts to be wrapped, I think about all the possessions that my little ones have.  TOO MANY!! There is too many possessions for them to keep track of, to clean up, to appreciate.  I think they have more toys then my 4 brothers and I had put together.  I ask myself is this a sign of the times?  Are we a society of possession hungry people.
I hear the news of the middle class having a hard time making ends meet, of Long Island homeowners being house poor and I wonder what have we created.
I remember driving around in a used station wagon.  Not us today.  I have a beautiful Ford Explorer and my husband has a Chevy Colorado.  We just did our house over, with new tile, new countertops, new siding.  I see something online and click! I buy it.  It cannot just be me that can confess this kind of spending and accumulating of possessions.
I drive about two hours a day and the majority of cars are new.  The expectation for a destination vacation is commonplace.  We are a society of possessions.
We just studied the Native Americans of New York and how they met all their wants and needs from the good Earthś natural resources.  While my students marveled at the idea of living such a way, I saw the beauty in the simplicity.  Iḿ sure their lives had their hardships but Iḿ sure they also had less need for Xanex.
I wish I could turn back the clock for my kids and help them appreciate having all of what they need.  I first need to get rid of my own possession addiction and Amazon account.

Craving Creativity and Starving for Structure

I have been so bored with my current writing curricular.  It seems that we are writing essay, after essay, after essay.  I laugh at myself though, because some years back when the pendulum was swinging far to the left brain, I found myself questioning the necessity of all the narrative writing.

I recently found The Art of Storytelling, a set of videos and exercises designed by Pixar in a Box through Kahn Academy.  My students who were lulled to sleep by the many lessons on paragraphing and editing conventions were awakened by these concise, quick, structured activities.  I incorporated the videos and activities into a Google Slide that the students can reference as many times as they want through Classroom.  One of my students, who normally avoids anything to do with the written word, asked if he could work on his idea over the Thanksgiving break. The project is designed for those wishing to make films but who knows, maybe the next film artist is in my class.

One Teacher's Professional Reading Garbage...

Recently I have rebooted my professional learning.  Following tweets and blogs has inspired me to fill my kindle wish list. I purchased two off the list and read the shorter of the two first.  How disappointing.  The book described an intervention method for students struggling with multiplication.  The author prescribes listing the facts by place value and pointing out the pattern she had found in the ones place.  For instance in the nines times table one as the facts are listed the numeral in the ones place decreases by one.  She continues through the eight times table and seven.  For the seven times table she explains the strategy to list the ones place by following the pattern subtract three unless one cannot subtract three with out regrouping. in that case add seven.

Horrid!!!

I was so disappointed by my $3.99 purchase on Kindle.  This offered me nothing to help my students. These lessons did reinforce that multiplication was repeated addition or represents equal groups.  She dictated a pattern to the students.  Her patterns were legitimate but her teacher led lessons left nothing for the students to discover.

After I dismissed the method, I began top think about how I would do it better.  Some time later I designed a template for a number line for students to highlight the multiples as they skip count, a place value chart to list the multiples of a number and write the patterns that they discover for the ones place and tens place and a hundreds chart to color in the multiples of a given number. I then participated in making discoveries using the templates that I created.  As I found patterns I asked my self why the patterns worked.  I found myself noticing patterns and strategies that I have never thought of before even as though I thought of myself as a proficient fourth grade mathematician.

I now have a intervention tool for my struggling mathematicians, a center activity, possibly some whole class lessons.  More importantly I have a stronger number sense and validation that I am a constructivist and facilitator of students discoveries. 

So as my budding essayists end their writing with a call to action.  I urge you to go read a horrible professional book.  May your best teaching grow from the mulch.

The Problem Solving of Problem Solving

This year I have delved into a problem solving centered math workshop.  My goal was to use problem solving to introduce big ideas of the unit and come back to the problem to teach the pertinent standards.  It is common practice to use a mentor text in a literacy unit.  For my math workshop, I centered our units of study around a mentor problem.

With my colleagues on a math team, we focused our work on finding rigorous problems that incorporate the big ideas.  Many of the tasks came from Howard County Schools website.  This site has been my go to for my mathematical instruction.  In exploring the site, I was introduced to Three Act Tasks.  Three Act Tasks aligned nicely with my goal to center my math instruction in students unearthing the units concepts. Starting the unit with a Three Act task introduces the concepts but also reveals the misconceptions of the students.

After my class experienced some Three Acts, I decided to create a Three Act of my own.  

I worked with one of my students to create the picture to introduce decimal and fraction relationships.

Act 1

The busyness of the end of the year created the necessity to join classes.  This was a first in many ways. The students of the class were experiencing a Three Act Task for the first time, I created a Three Act for the first time, AND I facilitated a math experience for 40 something students for the first time.

The students unearthed so many noticings and wonderings.  The concepts of value verses coin amount came up for the students. Check. I don't have to do a whole class lesson on that concept.

I learned from the experience how I can foster mathematical practices.  Some students feel they only have something to offer if it is a mathematical mindblowing statement.  Often it was the simple notings and wonderings that pushed other students to think more deeply. When Anthony then asked, "How many pennies are in each stack?" I asked, "This seemed like an obvious question.  When he admitted that it did, I applauded him because no one before him offered that question.The important questions are often the simplest questions and students and teachers need to honor that.  More students then felt more comfortable to enter the conversation.

Math is scary but we need to all jump in and try. No as Yoda says, "There is no try.  There is do or do not."

I tried creating my first Three Act Task and I fumbled along the way, wondering what is the difference between a wondering and a student question.  I found out that my second act picture was not clear enough to lead to estimations and solutions.  I debated whether to ask, "Who has more money?"  "Who has more value?" or simply "Who has more?" I decided on the ambiguity of "Who has more?" since the students' noticings and wonderings uncovered the difference of value and coin amount.

First Attempt at an Act 2 Photo.
The photo does not lend to estimation or solution.

My second attempt at my second act picture

So as a teacher faced with the the problem solving of problem solving, I have yet to find the solution.  I have made discoveries and have I have more questions, yet this is a good thing since this is what we hope for our students.

The

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