Common Core: Why Change?

I laughed so hard watching this video during our opening staff meeting this morning.  As I listened to my executive director talk about the hidden meaning of the video as it pertained to us and education I drew my own comparison to common core and the changes we face.  I love the common core shifts and I believe for some it will be like this broken escalator.  We are used to one way of doing things.  We were taught one way and so we teach that way and when we are stuck we are now faced with the decision of moving on our own despite the challenge or remain where we are and go nowhere.  It also made me think of how we teach certain subjects--math in particular.  Many teachers resist the idea of giving kids the opportunity to use multiple strategies.  There is a fixation with the standard algorithm.  Amazingly enough, there are other ways to solve problems.  Just like in this video, we need to know more than one way out of a situation.  We need to know how to solve problems on our own and how to collaborate with others as well.  When we learn how to solve a problem using only one method, we don't learn the skills necessary to make application to other situations and solve more complex problems.  That's my thought for the day.  I felt the need to share.  I'd love to hear your thoughts and opinions.

Classroom Pets?? Crayfish

Oh where oh where has my little "crayfish" gone???  Ok this is my 9th year in third grade and this has been the craziest crayfish year yet!  First of all, I've had almost all of my crayfish survive.  That in and of itself is a miracle.  I usually start with about 15 and because of survival of the fittest I end up with about 8 left.  This year I had 12 left.  Normally, I have kids knocking down my door to get one at the end to take home.  This year, I only had a handful.  I had no choice but to let my daughter take some home too.  She's in my class this year and has spent many a years hearing me tell her that she couldn't have one because they are for my students.  So, we took two home.  One, which we have name Clawless, (no wondering about that one) is safe at our house in a little container.  The other one which definitely has claws is at my house but the word safe probably would not describe it.  Yes, overnight, the little thing somehow got out of the container we had it in and is now somewhere in my home.  We didn't make this discovery until about 5 minutes before we had to leave for school this morning.  My wonderful husband is now at home looking high and low (mostly low) for "Maddie".  The story doesn't end there though.  When I finally made it to school, my very innocent custodian informed me that he found my crayfish.  I thought he was teasing me, but I came to find out that one of the ones left in my classroom awaiting a ride to another home got out and was down the hallway under a bench outside the first grade classroom door.  (Much to his surprise at 6am this morning!)  Craziness is the only word that comes to mind! LOL!!

Just a little reminder of what we are talking about here!  

Growing Plants in the Classroom: Hydroponics!

My last science kit goes back to the science center tomorrow, but I have to admit we have had a blast with this one.  Usually, I grow bush beans hydroponically because that is what the science kit calls for, but this year, my bush beans weren't germinating so hot!  I decided to try all of the seeds that we germinate in our minisprouters to see if they could be grown hydroponically as well.  I must say.....they can be!  We have growing in our tanks bush beans, peas, corn, and sunflowers.  I know I'm nuts, but I absolutely get a huge thrill out of watching plants grow day to day.  Below you'll see photos of our plants from May 23 and then again from May 28.  AMAZING!  Also, if you closely you'll see tadpoles swimming around in the bottom of the bush bean and sunflower tanks.  One of my students brought them in to show the class so we decided to add them in to our science lessons.  Why not! It's all about life cycles anyways.  LOL

May 23, 2013 Sunflowers, Beans, Peas, Corn

May 28, 2013

May 23, 2013 Peas

May 28 Peas

May 28 Bush Beans

May 23, 2013 Bush Beans

May 23, 2013 Sunflowers with tadpoles

May 28 Sunflowers with tadpoles

Corn May 28

Close up of our tadpoles

End of the Year treats!

At the end of the year last year, I gave my students a cute treat! It was a bottle of water, a Kool-Aid Single serve packet, and a silly straw.  I also sent them to my daughter's class as well.  The kids loved them.  This was an idea I adapted from a Pinterest post.  Here are what my summer treats looked like:

  

 The single serve packets are actually meant for a 16 oz bottle of water so next time I will use the 16 oz bottles.  Click on the pictures above if you would like to download it free.

Test Incentives and a little before test FUN!

This week begins our state testing.  To get the kids pumped up and ready we had a pep rally for them last Friday.  We only have two third grades and two fourth grades this year so we were able to have some real fun!  All of our 3rd and 4th grade classes were assigned a color to represent their "team".  Each class from K-2 was then assigned one of our rooms to be part of our team for the pep rally.  Each team designed pennants that we hung up along our hallways and each third/fourth grade teacher made a sign for their team.  Our signs reflected our theme for the pep rally.  My theme was that we are going to light up the test!  We entered the gymnasium one at a time running through streamers to Katy Perry's Firework song.  Other songs heard were Eye of the Tiger, and We will Rock YOU.  Here's my sign:

I made for this week Test Incentives to pass out each day of the test.  I found the idea on Pinterest but I didn't want to use construction paper.  I decided just make them using the computer.  Click on the first picture below if you would like your own copy of them.  I was so excited to find on my desk when I came in this morning something similar from my second grade team.  The second grade teacher left a bag of candy for each day of the test with the following:

You were "Mint" to succeed---starlight mints

"CHEW" up the test---chewing gum

You are BURSTING with Knowledge--starbursts

Don't be an AIRHEAD show what you know--Air head taffy

Mine are similar to those.  They are:

Smarties Candy

Blowpops

Hershey Kisses

Starbursts

Gummy Fish or Goldfish Crackers

Crayfish, Crayfish, Crayfish!!

Check out my new classroom pets! Actually, they are part of our science kit curriculum from FOSS Structures of Living Things.  They are huge this time!  My students are loving them though.  Actually, they may be loving them too much.  Every time I turn around the kids are back at the tanks checking them out.  I'll post pictures again soon.  Right now we have 15.  I hope we have 15 still alive in the morning!!

Patterning

I had a great lesson today with my students on patterning.  Why this is such a difficult concept for children I'll never know.  Every year when we analyze our previous year's scores, our students always seem to be low in analyze a geometric or numeric pattern.  Hopefully the lessons we've gone over these past few days will have cleared up any misconceptions my students may have had.  My teaching partner and I were discussing today how we never really understood patterning when we were children.  We just don't remember being taught how to find the pattern.  I definitely hated questions that asked me to find the a certain number of shapes in the pattern ie., find the seventh shape if the pattern continues.  Hated that! I never understood the concept of the unit.  Students must find the unit, or repeating sequence, in order to determine what shape comes next.  Eventually I think I figured that much out, but until now I didn't realize there was a number pattern that would help me.  Our problem we worked on today was from Pearson's Investigations Unit 6.  It was titled Find the Greens.  We were given a cube train consisting of red, blue, green, red, blue, green, red, blue, green, up to 12 cubes.  The goal was for students to realize that we can find the number of any green cube by skip counting by three's since the green cube was in the last position.  We made an input/output table to check our work.  By figuring out what number each green cube fell on, we can now figure out the number of any of the other cubes in our basic unit sequence.  For example, I know that the 4th green in my pattern is the twelfth cube in my train.  I can now figure out the 4th blue also because it is just one less than the 4th green.  This will work for any number in the pattern.  What would the 20th cube in the pattern be?  I know that the 7th green is the 21st cube so the 20th cube will be blue. If students make a table listing all of the greens they can then add in what each blue and red should be.  This lesson is great for hitting a large majority of the mathematical practice standards.