QFT stands for Question Formulation Technique. It requires students to generate and prioritize their own questions about a topic.
Today we are working on our first QFT for the year. For many of my third graders this is the first time they will have experienced the strategy so it will be highly scaffolded over the course of the year and this time will be heavy with teacher support.
For today we are just reviewing the rules for generating questions: 1. Ask as many questions as you can 2. Do not stop to judge, answer, or discuss the questions 3. Write down every questions exactly as it is stated 4. Change any statement into a question
After using this technique with my students last year, I find number two, to be the MOST challenging step in the process. It is so hard not to want to praise and reward a student for generating a "good" question. Judging in a positive manner should not occur either.
Normally I like to have students create their questions in a shared Google Doc but we don't get our chromebooks until this afternoon and we are on a time crunch for this lesson (it will be part of a bigger lesson involving bills and laws) we will have to record questions the "old fashioned" way on pencil and paper.
So today we will review our rules for generating a question and students will generate questions based on the following focus statement:
"Rules are important for communities to run successfully."
Simple. Next time we complete a QFT we will move further into the process.
Check back for a blog post with more detailed comments on how to facilitate a QFT in your classroom.
Last year I completely let my blogging fall apart. My new year's resolution is to keep up with my blogging.
My personal life has been in an uproar since I accidentally scheduled my wedding during my first month of student teaching. Now as I am in the beginning of my third year in my own classroom (fourth in my district) and approaching my third wedding anniversary I finally feel like my life is settling down. Over the course of our short marriage my husband and I have faced our fair share of struggles. Finally as of the end of July we are settled into a new house and both feeling comfortable in our careers. I finally have enough time and space to focus on my teaching craft, family, friends, and my love of cooking.
Over the last year I have fallen in love with using GAFE and giving professional development. I love presenting to and working with other educators who are as excited about their jobs as I am. While I am not a morning person (by any means) I enjoy getting up in the morning and coming to school. Comparing that to jobs where I have actually cried the entire commute (Nordstrom...retail...ugh) it is a welcome change.
This year my goal with my students it to help them be more proactive about setting their own goals and tracking their own progress. I created "Record Keeping & Celebration" books for each student. In the books it gives them a section to record their behavior points for the week, math scores, reading scores, set goals, and discuss their challenges and successes from each week. (I promise to post on TPT soon!)
I don't think we should hide how students are doing from them--if they aren't at goal in something let them know. And let them know it IS okay...as long as they are working their hardest and making progress towards the goal.
So for my own goals this year?
1. Finish setting up my new house. I know, I know...not a "school" goal. However, until my home is ready I don't think I can devote 100% of my focus to my students. So I need to have a sanctuary I can return to in the evenings to recharge.
2. Keep up with the blogging! I love sharing ideas, reading ideas, and even looking back on what I was doing LAST year---how quickly we forget!
3. Eat healthy. This aligns back to number 1. I can't be at my best for my students if I am not mentally and physically at my best. I just ordered a new pressure cooked and veggie slicer so I can make healthy meals in a shorter time span. So I may even be throwing in some healthy(ish) recipes here as well.
4. Keep up with my own learning and sharing. This year I will have Chromebooks for all my students. I need to make sure I am using them in the best possible way. And I am super excited to be presenting at another google summit nextthis (YIKES) month.
I could continue on and on and on...but I think four is a reasonable number of goals.
As much as I love Ms. Frizzle...I love Disney even more.
While I am (gasp) not a fan of Ellen at ALL I love Nemo & Dory.
"Just Keep Swimming" feels like it has been my quote of the year. With so much other "stuff" getting in the way I have spent the last several weeks of school (okay who I am kidding since before school even started this year...) feeling like I am drowning.
Each day I just need to remember to smile and "Just Keep Swimming"
My biggest savior this year has been my continued work with Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides in my classroom. This past week I have used screencasts as part of several of my lessons. It has given me the flexibility to work with an extra tier II group each day...and made it SUPER easy to get work to my kiddos who were pulled by another teacher or out sick.
As silly as I feel making these screencasts they seem to be working!
Don't forget my Slides & Ladders Multiplication is ON SALE until Halloween!
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Multiplication-and-Division-Slides-and-Ladders-388430
I loved the Magic School Bus when I was a kid...in fact I ever played Arnold's cousin Janet in our fourth grade class play The Magic School Bus Gets Lost in the Solar System. I really wanted to be Ms. Frizzle but she was lost for about half the play and clearly I desired more stage time than that. Janet seemed like the best of both worlds, she took over in Ms. Frizzle's absence and since she was super bossy it was also a great fit for me.
For those of you that don't remember Janet (I wish I had a picture of me as Janet I'm sure my 90s clothes and hair would be a great laugh in 2014).
Anyways I wish I took Ms. Frizzle's advice more to heart. The older I've gotten the less likely I have been to take changes. The Gafe Summit this weekend was a great reminder that Ms. Frizzle WAS right. If we don't take chances, make mistakes, and get messy nothing will ever get done.
Failure was a reoccurring topic at the summit this weekend. Today I came across this blog post on Twitter---The Dung Ball-Progress Through Failure. (Thanks @JamesTSanders)
It was the reminder I needed to keep pushing forward and working hard in my classroom--sometimes regardless of the outside voices. In the past I have shied away from blogging about my technology use and stuck to my super cute (in my opinion...) TPT items.
So today I took a chance with my kids. Last night I blogged about recording my first two screencasts to use with my kids. I created one about what grouping with multiplication and one about how to access their Google Doc and work in it.
We reviewed grouping and went over where the resources were. I set the timer for 10 minutes and told my friends I was going to be invisible until the timer went off. Not surprisingly the kids quickly adapted, got in, and got to work. I almost cried when I saw that one of my lowest students was the first one done--and done correctly and quickly. She had reviewed the video clips at her own speed and had no trouble completing the assignment. In fact she had the opportunity to be a resource for the other students.
With so many of my kids receiving services and/or extra help my room can be quite the revolving door. Having the screencast allowed me to send my friends to their laptops to review the lesson if they had missed it. Now I'm excited to take it one step further. It has been hard to find the time to work with some of my struggling students between balancing all of their schedules and giving mini lessons to my class as a whole. With prerecording/collecting lessons for my kids I can let some of them review the lesson on their own while I work in guided groups with the kids that need the extra support.
So tomorrows challenge...let the kids view the videos for tomorrow's lesson on their own. While they are doing that I can pull my kids who need fact practice for our touch math group before the revolving door starts and kids start vanishing.
Even though I felt like an idiot I added voice-overs to my screen cast this time. Hopefully this will help guide my kiddos enough. Wednesday's challenge is to get them to screenshot and explain their own work so this is an important stepping stone!
If you are extremely bored (or want to know how to layer pictures in google docs) check out my video below...
Now on to prep some sub-plans so I can watch the PearDeck webinar at 11am!
PS Don't forget there's several items in my TPT store I have marked down until Halloween!
So over the last year of my on-again-off-again blogging I have done very little to discuss my use of technology in the classroom.
At the beginning of last year I was living in a tech nightmare. My smart board was not operational, the wiring was connected to a dilapidated student computer on the opposite side of the classroom, I didn't even have internet or network access from my dusty desktop at the beginning of the year. I spent my days lugging my personal laptop back and forth to simply take attendance. For someone who likes to be connected it was nightmare.
Overtime things slowly got sorted out. They reran the wiring for my smartboard, they connected my desktop to the network, teachers got shiny new laptops, and eventually the students also received 1:1 laptops. I was super excited to jump right in and get started with my kids.
My new goal is to walk through some of my trials and triumphs here so hopefully not so many others will have to make the same mistakes that I have.
What motivated me to finally start blogging about technology: GAFE Summit.
I was fortunate enough that my district sent me to the first one in our area this past weekend.
(Yes I said weekend as if the two weeks worth of laundry and grading I've been avoiding didn't need to get done).
Of course being at the conference all weekend left me with no time to plan for this week. Being me I wanted to pick at least one thing I learned this weekend and use it in my classroom tomorrow. Why wait?
While my kids will be getting their own log-ins so we can use Google Classroom (yay!) that hasn't quite happened yet...so all my incredible learning on that will have to wait (check back for some follow up posts soon!)
I walked away with a ton of great online publishing ideas for my kids....but I am not feeling that ambitions on a Sunday night to plan for that (though I can't WAIT to try some and share the results!)
So what to do tomorrow?
I wanted to give my kids a chance to play around in their own Google Doc and to try out the draw tool.
So far we have used shared sheets but have not gone too in-depth with Google docs or sheets.
Possibly because it was presented in my last session or maybe because this seems manageable at nearly midnight but I decided to try my hand at making a quick screencast of a Google Presentation I created on grouping that I could upload to YouTube (which I learned today I really knew nothing about). I was inspired by some of James Sanders "10 Ways to Use YouTube in Your Classroom" and the quality of some of his earlier videos. It made me feel safe to start small.
(Honestly before that session I searched YouTube here and there for educational songs...but thought of YouTube as more like the video below....and if a clip was more than 30 seconds wasn't happening for me)
So tomorrow for Math Workshop we will learn about multiplication by grouping with some hands on math manipulatives (I love my teddy bear counters!), review multiplication by grouping thanks to our friends Moby & Annie at BrainpopJr. and then move into stations.
While at "Practice Makes Perfect" I am going to require students to view the "Multiplication by Grouping" video I created and the video I created to show them how to access their doc and insert a drawing. I want to see what they can figure out on their own tomorrow and what I will have to explicitly teach. They are pretty good with managing folder systems, working off of templates, and cutting/pasting thanks to their weekly technology classes. Hopefully they can apply those skills here if I enforce a little tough love.
If the morning goes well I have a few new tools to share with them during our afternoon literacy block as well. More to come on that.
For now check out my screencast video of multiplication by grouping. I know I could have made it better if I talked and explained things to my students while it was going on but that just wasn't an option for a first attempt at nearly midnight.
I know I know....it's lame but it's a step in the right direction.
Perhaps someday my educational videos will be as good as the ones I created to try and convince someone to buy a bigger boat...
Now I'm off to bed. Hopefully I survive until at least lunch tomorrow...so I can start to properly report on GAFESummit and how incredible it was!
No matter how busy we get with assessments or how lost in our one-to-one laptop world I love this 15-20 minutes a day of pure "face time" with my kiddos.
Morning meeting is a great time of day to work on teambuilding and community skills with your
class. It is also a useful time to incorporate vocabulary, spelling, and math facts in the form of fun
games for your students.
I gather my students in a circle on our back carpet. I sit in my rocking chair and my "first mate" doubles as my morning meeting leader sits next to me. The first mate selects a greeting from our greeting bin. The greetings vary from a simple handshake where we practice eye contact and speaking clearly to fun ones that involve chanting and silly body movement.
After our greeting I give my students a brief overview of our day and important upcoming events. This is also a great time to discuss issues/behaviors that my need to be addressed in our classroom.
Next we complete a fun activity. This can be student or teacher choice. All of the activities are designed to work on speaking and listening standards, following directions, literacy, and/or math skills.
To finish we rotate between four different closure.
One of my favorites is "wishes" each student thinks of a wish and whispers it into their hands. On the count of three all the students "release" their wishes into the air. The morning meeting leader then picks a friend or two to share their wishes.
My Morning Meeting packet on TPT has been one of my best selling items. I have sold close to 100 copies and right now over 60 people have it on their "wish list"
In honor of getting back into the groove of blogging and since so many people have saved it to their "wish list" I am marking my "Ultimate Morning Meetings" packet down 20% until Halloween! Get yours now :)
Don't forget to comment with your own Morning Meeting ideas!
Seriously after all the work...I really hope I don't have to move for at LEAST ten years.
My heart is in third grade, I enjoy my school, and wellllllllll I don't want to have to box everything up AGAIN.
Last year I used fadeless paper (see above). This year I took the advice of my new teammate and went and got felt for my boards. SO GLAD THAT I DID. Thanks to my awesome hubby my boards look incredible and the backgrounds will hold up for years to come.
My new favorite addition (as far as bulletin boards go) is my "Instabooks" bulletin board.
#keepcalm & #readon (spelled out in Lilly Pulitzer patterns of course!)
I actually created an instagram account (@mrsnpartyka) to photo and filter pictures of the books we have read. As the year goes on I will post pictures of the books on the board. This way students have a remind of all the books we have read. PLUS since I use many of the same read alouds from year-to-year I can save them to put back up next year. In my opinion it is way more fun (and current) than having a long list of titles and authors.
(PS found the cute Surf's up sign at my favorite teacher place--Dollar Tree!)
This picture above shows one of the areas I am MOST excited about--above my cubbies and cabinets. Once the hubby finished putting my felt on the large bulletin board I measured it out and realized I had enough to cover the ugly ugly dirty looking walls above my cabinet. Fortunately my incredible hubby is over six feet tall (he's an entire foot taller than my practically legal midget status) so we were able to staple all the left over felt up there. (Years ago the entire wall was a bulletin board). Afterwards while I continued to organize and set-up my awesome hubby added some underwater cutouts and bordette for me. Then he places all the super cute stuffed animals of book characters my former first grade teacher grandmother had given me.
It is incredible how much brighter and cleaner my classroom looks with this little touch. Plus it will keep me from getting lazy and throwing old materials up there. I hate how cluttered some classrooms look because of that!
So another great reason NOT to move...I don't want to have to make the hubby redo his incredible bulletin board! <3
I write this blog post as I watch my poor poor UConn Huskies have another rough football game.
Sigh.
Anyways! Math Workshop is one of my favorite parts of the day.
I love teaching my mini lessons, I love my guided groups, and I love watching my kids have tons of fun in their stations.
Three years ago we transitioned to a math curriculum based off common core standards.
The first year was rough. Kids were missing a lot of the building blocks they needed to be successful and we spent a lot of time working hard to fill in the missing pieces before we sent them off to fourth grade.
Last year it was significantly better. I could see right away what a huge difference it made that students were exposed to the common core curriculum in second grade. I was hoping to see the improvement continue this year, considering students had been immersed in this curriculum since first grade.
However this year, with trying to work in a brand new ELA curriculum, I personally felt my math workshop instruction had not been as strong as the two previous years. I post-tested my students on Friday fully expecting to have so-so results and several friends who would need to revisit the concepts in small group.
I was so relieved and ecstatic to find that 90% of my students exceeded the goal of 80% (most pretested with scores in the 20-30% range) with most scoring 90% or better. My students that did not hit the 80% still increased from their pretest scores by over 40% and are already receiving extra help in both math and reading. With the long week I had, the results almost brought tears to my eyes.
I attribute my results to my solid math workshop routine (see a previous post for more info here) and my math workshop stations for this unit I have worked on and used for the last three years.
It is important to me that all of my stations have tracking and accountability for my students.
This year I started using TenMarks and FrontRowEd as part of my "Terrific Technology" station but I also like to mix gaming and tracking sheets.
I love www.abcya.com they have some great quick mini games that my students can play on their laptops. Prior to our shift to one-to-one devices I only had one student computer and access to a handful of iPads. That was when I created three (free!) tracking sheets to go with ABCYa's Base ten Bingo.
At "Games Galore" I expect students to be reviewing skills and concepts in pairs of small groups while having some competitive fun. It is important to me that they have "never ending" activities so I can work with my guided groups.
Two math stations in one! Great for differentiating. My students absolutely love this game. I included digit cards to print and laminate but for a fun twist it is easy to play with cards as well. Students can play "two digit flip" to review ordering of numbers and expanded notation. For a challenge, or when students are ready to move on, they can advance to "three digit flip" Teachers can also up the ante by allowing students to play with multiple decks of "digit cards" at once.
Another bonus buy with two math stations in one! Great for differentiating. A great game for students to play independently while they learn how to round! I use the same digit cards for Rounding Rampage as I do for Digit Flip (and many other stations), Less Prep Work!
This station is a complete fan favorite. I introduce it during our first unit of the year with both 2 and 3 digit addition and subtraction equations. Kids must solve the problem (and their partner must agree!) in order to be able to stay on the square. As we move on into multiplication and division I have gameboards made for multiplication and division facts as well. I send home copies for kids to play and review at home. Families love the fun twist on addition and subtraction.
Packet Includes:
4 game boards to practice three digit subtraction or addition
4 answer keys for game boards
4 printable game pieces
Directions
Tracking sheet
So excited to see the great results I got from these resources.
During "Practice Makes Perfect" I expect students to review and explore concepts independently. I try to give them stations where they can modify the level of challenge (or I can assign) based on their own needs.
Check out the links below for more Place Value & 3-Digit Addition/Subtraction Practice
In order for my students to be able to work on their own, we build 'tool-kits' with all of our songs and strategies. I had out hard copies of these strategies and keep a set in our "LiveBinder" (check back soon for a LiveBinder post!).
Last (but not least) I love my "Superhero Power of One" lesson I have taught for the last three years. I wish someone taught ME this strategy when I was 8 instead of 25! It makes subtracting across zeros incredibly easy. Plus the kids love that it is a SUPER POWER!
Now that we have a super successful first unit under our belts I cannot WAIT to dive headfirst into multiplication and division after this 3-day weekend.
Don't forget to leave your own Place Value and Regrouping Tips in the Comments!
This past summer was a whirlwind of packing and unpacking...and more packing...and more unpacking...
As we moved from 5 team members down to four I had to move my classroom down the hall.
While it is nice to be in a quad with my team members instead of down the hall on my own it is definitely a double edged sword. I love the social aspect (and having three teachers and two aids in the quad who can keep an extra eye or ear out if need be) buttttttt I am having trouble getting more work done since I am near everyone else.
While I have an AC (that somewhat works and by somewhat might take some staleness out of the air...) I ended up further from the bathroom and the printer/copier...two seriously important items during the school day.
Overall I love my new classroom (and I cannot thank my incredible husband enough for all of his help) but it was made that much more difficult by the fact that I also moved in (and out) of my summer school classroom. Needless to say at the current moment I am very much looking forward to Christmas Break where I'll have more days off than I did all summer!
Check out a few new pics below!
I'll be following up with some more posts about each one...
Small Group Table
(Top New Room, Bottom Old Room)
This is one of my FAVORITE upgrades in my new room.
Check back soon for some tips on integrating stability balls in your classroom.
Rocking Chair/Morning Meeting Area
(Top New Room, Bottom Old Room)
I was lucky enough to stumble across this awesome blue and white flowered fabric while cleaning out the cabinets in my new classroom. My husband had picked out the shiny blue fabric for my last year. Somewhere in the course of the year it came away slightly stained and tattered.
Both wall hangings actually came from Dollar Tree. I was nervous that I would damage the whale when I took it down so I bought the palm trees as well. I absolutely love the way it brightens up the whole back corner. I even used it for a backdrop for some first day of school pictures.
Last year my door was fairly boring. I had fish labels on the door and eventually added cards and letter to/from my students. This year the hubby (super handy with a straight edged razor) helped me to wrap the door in blue fadeless paper. Check back for future posts and my super cute Captain Mickey and Sailor Minnie name tags!
Last year I hated how dingy, dirty, and scratched my desk was. There just never seemed to be enough hours in the day to do something about it. This year it was a priority and my wonderful husband and his straight edged razor again saved the day. We (and by we again I really mean he) wrapped the desk in fadeless green paper. I use the bottom half of my old whale wall hanging from my last classroom to spruce up the side. I then decorated the front with magnets I made myself using Lilly Pulitzer 5x5 designs and some of my favorite designs from Lilly. (I hope to share some of my magnet templates in a future blog post so make sure to check back!)
Another dingy metal area I spruced up (this time on my own!!) with fadeless paper and Lilly magnets!
Plenty more ideas, freebies, and TPT ideas to come. Make sure to check back for more posts in the next few weeks as I get back into the posting routine.
I am a typical New England girl. I love fall. I love the leaves changing colors. I love pumpkins. I love ghost stories. I love monsters!
This has been one of my favorite lessons for the last two years. I am already super excited about creating these monsters with my students this year!!
We teach multiplication and division over the course of two units in our math workshop (and of course continually revisit for the rest of the year...).
Our second unit with multiplication and division introduced the distributive, commutative, and associative properties of multiplication.This introductory/exploratory lesson requires students to apply their knowledge of the associative property of addition and multiplication facts to create a giant monster. I love how different and creative they all come out! It is a great opportunity for students to work on their fine motor skills.
Last year I took some small video clips and tons of photos of the kids while they were working and of their finish products. To surprise them I edited it quickly together in iMovie on my phone using the "horror movie preview" template. The kids LOVED it and it was a great way to showcase a project like this when our bulletin board was in use and we have limited display space inside of our classroom.
A great lesson that can be adapted as an exploratory, introductory, or review lesson regarding the Associative Property of Multiplication. This lesson plan includes Five worksheets for your "on grade level" students as well as several accommodations for students below grade level, students who need review, and enrichment students. Plenty of open ended graphic organizers to keep students brains working!
This is a perfect tool for teaching these Common Core Standards
Content Standards:
CCSS.Math.Content.3.OA.A.1
Interpret products of whole numbers, e.g., interpret 5 × 7 as the total number of objects in 5 groups of 7 objects each.
CCSS.Math.Content.3.OA.B.5
Apply properties of operations as strategies to multiply and divide.2 Examples: If 6 × 4 = 24 is known, then 4 × 6 = 24 is also known. (Commutative property of multiplication.) 3 × 5 × 2 can be found by 3 × 5 = 15, then 15 × 2 = 30, or by 5 × 2 = 10, then 3 × 10 = 30. (Associative property of multiplication.) Knowing that 8 × 5 = 40 and 8 × 2 = 16, one can find 8 × 7 as 8 × (5 + 2) = (8 × 5) + (8 × 2) = 40 + 16 = 56. (Distributive property.
Happy Haunting (and Multiplying) Friends!
PS This is also a great excuse to watch the clip below:
Last year I totally fell behind on my blogging and TPT-ing!
In January I hopped on board our Language Arts Curriculum Committee...and spent the next nine months submerged up to my eyeballs in common core reading, writing, language, speaking, and listening standards. Now that my time on that committee is done I've moved on to some work on Google Docs and trying to get my own classroom up and running!
I also tried to take some time to focus on myself. Between graduate school, wedding planning, and moving to a new school I had forgotten that important detail. I started working out again, dropped 30 lbs and started teaching fitness classes for the first time since I was an ungrad. I feel better than I have in years!
Now that things finally seem to be settling down (well as much as they ever do...) it is time to get back into one of my favorite hobbies of creating materials again.
To get back into the blogging aspect I wanted to hop back to a material from my days in second grade.
Normally priced at $10 I am putting my "Changeopoly Jr." on sale for $7.50.
Change-opoly Jr. encourages students to work on cooperative play, coin identification, coin counting, addition, and subtraction.
Included in this kit: • One “change-opoly” 32 square game board • 30 ? card fronts • 30 ? card backs • 4 game pawns • 48 (12 of each color) “math books” to mark classrooms owned • Coin cards to print on colored paper • Colored coins to print on white paper • Directions for assembly • Directions for set-up and play o Directions are a bit wordy. I would recommend walking through the game play with students before sending them off on their own. • A tracking sheet to follow students’ progress
When I used this in second grade, I glued the game board onto the cardboard from the back of a pad of chart paper. I store the game board and all of the pieces in a Nordstrom shirt box---perfect size for a game box!
Since we do not explicitly teach change in 3rd grade I use it as a review station and sometimes the students choose to play with it during our "Ketchup and Pickles" time or even indoor recess.
Check back soon for more new posts and pictures of my new classroom!
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