Decimal Shopping!

My fourth graders and I have been working on adding and multiplying decimals, and I wanted to spice things up a little bit. I wanted something more exciting than plain old practice problems, something a little more meaningful.

With this in mind, I decided to take my students on a little hypothetical shopping trip. I looked through some catalogs at school, but nothing really spoke to me. Then, I turned to the internet. I went to Oriental Trading and started looking up items I thought my students would be interested in.

I settled on the categories of sunglasses, candy, and toy assortments. For each category, I printed one full page of items. Before copying the pages, I underlined the prices to make them easier to find. I set the scene by explaining that we would be throwing a party and needed supplies. For this reason, we would be shopping at a store that sells items in bulk. (We wouldn't pay $20 for one candy bar!)

The students took turns picking what items we would purchase for the party. We recorded these items on our order form and added all our purchases up at the end. It was very interesting to see which items certain students picked. Some of the students did not agree with one particular boy's choice to spend $52 on bouncy balls. We all had a good laugh about that! 

The nice thing about this activity is that it works on adding decimals AND multiplying decimals. For some items, we chose to buy more than one. Most of the students were not familiar with the word quantity, so this was a great teachable moment. When we purchased more than one, we had to multiply the price per item by the quantity.

I dare say, we actually had fun adding and multiplying decimals! The time really flew by. We had some great learning, and we had some good laughs. Definitely more meaningful than "drill and skill!" If you would like a copy of the materials in the lesson, click here!

 How do you embed mathematics in real world contexts?

Classifying Information

I hope everyone is having a wonderful Monday! I am enjoying a lovely snow day on what was supposed to be my first day back from spring break! Anyways, the following is a lesson I used with my third graders when we were working on classifying information. For the lesson, I chose to focus on classifying fish in different ways.

To begin, we started with a sorting activity as a group. For the activity, students had to sort various household objects based upon where they would be stored in a home.

I laminated pages in different colors, with labels, to represent the different places to store objects in a home. Then, I typed and cut up a list of household objects. As a group, we figured out which category each object belonged in. If you would like a copy of the categories and objects, click here. 

Next, we began reading an article on fish from Ranger Rick magazine. This article discussed different categories of fish and their qualities, as well as other marine animals that were often mistaken for fish. 

For our next activity, we used our article to categorize the different qualities of fish based upon what fish do, have, and are.

For the assessment portion of the lesson, students used the article to classify different animals as fish or not fish in their reader's notebooks.

If you would like your own copy of the "Do, Have, Are" graphic organizer with answer key and a list of the animals for the Fish/Not Fish activity with answer key, click here.

The students did a great job going back into the text to find proof of their answers. They were quite surprised to find out that starfish and jellyfish are not fish, even though they have the word "fish" in their names. We had a little discussion about how this proved how important it is to go back into the text. If we were to guess, we would have assumed that jellyfish and starfish were fish. 

The students were very fascinated by the article on fish. Ranger Rick really does a great job of grabbing students' attention. One student was so interested, that she went home and did some research of her own on fish! After she finished her research, she went and typed up a report, complete with pictures! I was so impressed! These are the moments we live for as teachers. 

Do you have any heartwarming moments you would like to share?

Fix-up Strategies

My tier 3 fifth grade group is a pretty intensive group. I noticed that these students do not self-monitor when they are reading, and as a result, they do not problem solve. For this reason, I decided to give an explicit lesson on fix-up strategies.

We began by creating an anchor chart together. (The students even wrote on the chart for this one!) In this lesson, we focused on what to do when we do not understand specific words and when we do not understand what is happening in the story. Students did not really have trouble identifying when they did not understand a word, but they had a hard time realizing where meaning broke down in the story/article. To help correct this, we practiced self-monitoring with several texts.

First, we read shorter articles and gradually moved to longer texts, finishing with a chapter book. With each article, the students read the article independently first. As they were reading, they filled out a self-monitoring graphic organizer. If you would like your own graphic organizer, click on the image below!

Then, we read through the article together and went over the words and parts of the story/article that the students struggled with. Together we problem-solved and figured out what the challenging word or part of the story meant. We recorded what fix-up strategy(ies) we used on our graphic organizer.

Identifying exactly at what point meaning breaks down is a challenging concept for my students. With repeated practice with a variety of texts, my students showed great improvement. Near the end, students were problem-solving some on their own. We will continue to work on this skill.

How do you teach your students to self-monitor when they are reading?

Post-It Summary

My students and colleagues often joke that I have an extreme obsession with post-its.  I have a feeling that a lot of teachers out there share my obsession. If not, maybe you will change your mind after reading this lesson!

Last year, I participated in a book study of Harvey and Goudvis’s Strategies That Work: Teaching Comprehension for Understanding and Engagement. I instantly fell in love with the book. The idea of using post-its to summarize a text, which I use in this lesson, can be found in their book.

My students and I had already discussed the concept of main idea. This can be a very challenging concept for students to grasp, so I am constantly revisiting the concept. After this lesson, I believe my students have a much better understanding of the concept and even aced the assessment I administered at the end of the week!

Since I had already introduced the concept, we had already created an anchor chart. Before beginning this lesson, we reviewed the anchor chart and tips for helping us identify the main idea.

Next, we jumped right in with our first article. I chose an article from Ranger Rick about a tribe in Africa sharing a lake with hippos.  This article is always a hit because it uses the word “dung.” Anyways, students began by reading the entire article independently. Then, we went back through each section of the article and wrote the most important idea(s) from that section on a post-it. (One reason I love Ranger Rick magazine is because the articles are separated into nicely labeled sections.)

Once we had gone through the entire article, we removed the post-its and placed them, in order, in our reader’s notebooks. Next, we read through all of our post-its. We tried to think of what all these post-its had in common, while also remembering our tips from the anchor chart. From all this, we identified the main idea.

I began with an article, because it is shorter, and as a result, more direct and to the point. After the article, we moved on to a book about Thomas Edison. I chose this book because it is not about Thomas Edison’s entire life, only information connected to his inventions. This book is divided into nice sections as well.

As with the article, we went through each section of the book and identified the important idea(s) from each section. We discussed how these post-its were actually the supporting details in our summary. Once again, we transferred the post-its into our reader’s notebooks. We talked about what words and ideas kept reappearing. At this point, the students realized invention appeared on almost every post-it. From this, students were able to see that the main idea was about Thomas Edison’s life as an inventor.

Isolating the important details from the text in the form of post-its really helped my students focus on the central ideas of the text. I am extremely pleased with their progress and will definitely be using this technique again in the future.

Do any of you have an obsession with post-its too?

Comparing Texts

My fourth graders have been reading Sarah, Plain and Tall in their classrooms. They also happened to be studying compare and contrast. I decided I would incorporate the theme of the prairie into a lesson on compare and contrast.

Since I had already introduced compare and contrast to my fourth graders, they already had a copy of the anchor chart in their reader's notebooks. We keep the anchor charts in our notebooks, so that we can keep referring to them. To begin this lesson, we reviewed the anchor chart and what it means to compare and contrast. I find that it is much more meaningful to the students when they look it up for themselves, as opposed to me telling them the answers.

Once we had reviewed our anchor chart, I introduced the first text. I chose Three Names because it is about life on the prairie and also happens to be by the same author as Sarah, Plain and Tall! Now doesn't that just work out perfectly?! (You may recognize the book from my lesson on inference as well. It really is a great book!)

For the second text, I chose a short story called Montana Prairie Sisters. Both of these texts were about children growing up on a prairie and attending school in a one room schoolhouse. One is a fictional story, whereas the other is nonfiction. 

The students read Montana Prairie Sisters independently. As they read, they highlighted the similarities between the two texts. We discussed these similarities together, and students added to their highlighting if necessary.

Next, we completed a graphic organizer comparing and contrasting the two texts. (If you would like your own copy of the graphic organizer, click the image above.) The students have a great deal of experience using Venn Diagrams, but I noticed the state tests occasionally use tables for comparing and contrasting. For this reason, I decided to create a table for this graphic organizer. I chose to focus on genre, point of view, setting, characters, and plot.

These two texts worked very well for comparing and contrasting. They were very similar, but also quite different. Basically, the fundamentals of the stories were almost identical, the major differences occurred in how the stories were told. 

I hope you give this different style of graphic organizer a try. Do you use anything besides Venn Diagrams for comparing and contrasting?

Disney Lied to Us!

Let me just begin by saying, the following lesson definitely ranks near the top, as one of the most fun lessons I have ever taught. My third graders had been working on cause and effect in their classrooms, so I decided to teach a lesson comparing the Disney version of Pocahontas to a biography of Pocahontas. My students were shocked by the differences between the two stories of Pocahontas's life.

For starters, the kids could not believe how different the real Pocahontas looked from the way Disney portrayed her. One of the little boys shouted, "Disney lied to us!" It took just about everything inside of me to keep from laughing. At this point, we discussed the difference between the genres of the texts we would be reading. The Disney version is historical fiction, therefore it is based on some facts, but mostly is a work of fiction. The biography is nonfiction, and therefore all facts.

We began with the biography. First, we looked through the pictures and identified the major text features.

This book is loaded with a lot of great information. In order to keep students' thinking organized, we kept a "FQR" in our reader's notebooks. (FQR stands for Facts - Questions - Response)

After finishing the biography, we began reading the Disney story. I found a copy of the story in the Disney Princess Collection (Disney Storybook Collections). I checked the book out from the school library and was told to return it as soon as possible. Apparently, the book is one of the library's most popular items! Let's just say I received some interesting looks carrying a hot pink book with silver page edges covered in glitter down the hallway. I copied the Pocahontas story and returned the book immediately. 

Students read the story independently. As they read, they highlighted similarities to the biography and underlined differences. When students finished, we went over what students marked together, adding when necessary.

Then, we completed a venn diagram together comparing and contrasting the two stories. Students recorded this venn diagram in their reader's notebooks. One of the boys just couldn't understand why Disney would put a "talking tree" in the story. He said Pocahontas clearly did not talk to a tree. Again, we talked about how the Disney version is fiction. I think many of them originally thought the Disney story was true and had a really hard time coming to terms with this.

The students also thought it was very strange that Disney focused so much on creating a relationship between Pocahontas and John Smith, when she actually married John Rolfe. I have to agree with them on that one. If you would like a copy of a venn diagram to compare the two stories and an answer key, click here.

Were (are) any of you big Disney princess fans?