Meaningful Work

After reading the following post from The Sisters by Allison Behne, I thought it was worth sharing. This post really makes one reflect on the purpose of meaningful practice in the classroom.

Unscramble—RTHWOSSLE RKSHWOETSE  
Allison wrote:
I have always enjoyed word finds and word scrambles. They don't take a lot of thought, and they keep me busy when I need something to pass the time. However, when my daughter brought home a word find for homework a few nights ago, she did not find it enjoyable, and neither did I. It was very challenging, due the next day, and took an hour and a half to complete—time that could have been better spent finishing math homework, studying for an upcoming test, or reading a book. As parents, my husband and I asked, "What is the purpose of this assignment, and what value could it possibly be providing?" As a teacher, it made me reflect on my classroom and the assignments I give my own students. To be respectful of the students' time and take them to the next level, I need to be sure I am assigning only work that is meaningful and provides individualized, authentic practice.Before I hand out a worksheet or assign a number of problems or pages in a book, I ask myself these questions:

• Will I take the time to grade this? If not, what is the value of students' doing work on which they will not receive feedback?
• Is it a good use of time? What benefits will the focused effort on the assignment provide? Would students be better off doing something else?
• How will this assignment help children move forward? Answering this helps me validate my decision to have them spend time completing the assigned task.

Most important, I have to remind myself that fair is not always equal and that what is good for one student is not necessarily good for another. Gone are the days when I had to follow a practice book in chronological order and pass every worksheet out to every child. Instead, I have the opportunity to provide each student with individualized work that is a valuable use of his or her time.
Did you figure out the scramble? Let's save trees, time, and brainpower by refusing to assign worthless worksheets.

Shades of Meaning

Our state standards are asking students to be able to know and understand the differences in word meanings. Shades of Meaning is a phrase used to describe the small differences in meaning between similar words and phrases. Understanding the Shades of Meaning helps with concept development of words such as the denotation and connotation.

- Denotation is the dictionary meaning; EX: Woman and lady both refer to a female adult.
- Connotation: feelings an ideas that have become attached to certain words; EX: even though woman and lady both refer to a female adult, lady suggests one who is well-mannered or proper.

 

There are many ways to incorporate Shades of Meaning activities into your daily routine either whole group, small group, or center time.

• Give students a target word and then they must work together to find synonyms (or provide them) and place them in order from weakest to strongest meaning. Students will have to defend why they put their words in a certain order. There is NO right answer.  
• You can also have a set of words made and students can use them in a center to determine the strongest and weakest words.

Below is an example out of paint strips fro the store. You can have students take it a step further and write an example of each word that has personal meaning to them. You will want to encourage the students to have better word choice in their writings.

Authors that Skype

What better way to connect with an author about a book you have just read with your students then to Skype with them. Below is a link from Kate Messner, that has authors that will Skype for a free 15-20 minute session with your students.

 

http://www.katemessner.com/authors-who-skype-with-classes-book-clubs-for-free/

Digging Deeper with Themes

As teachers we often are in a time crunch and in such a hurry to move on to the next objective or book that we don't stop to really think and reflect on a book that we have just read. Rereading and discussing a book before, during, and after reading are essential to digging deeper and really understanding what was read. This may mean that you are reading less books as a class, but the quality of instruction is so much deeper. To help students have a deeper understanding with the theme of a story try the following activity:

• Before reading, try giving students a keyword as to what the theme is.
• During reading students reflect on how the keyword are captured throughout the book by the events that are happening. They will have to reread and take notes in their reading journal or on sticky notes citing evidence. As teachers, this allows you to guide the students thinking as they are reading or listening to a story.
• After reading students are able to define the theme in terms of what it is and brainstorm what it is not by looking back at their journal entries.  This allows students to have meaningful conversations about the book that was read.

Picture of the Day

With Common Core we often ask our students to look closely to site evidence, infer, observe, and draw conclusions from the text they're reading. We can do the same with a Picture of the Day, which will lead to increased reading comprehension. There are many sites and newspapers that have created picture of the day resources available for use. This would be an excellent activity to incorporate into a center rotation or morning work.

Below is a link from Jen at Hello Literacy, she wrote a wonderful post that includes resources about  Picture of the Day.
http://helloliteracy.blogspot.com/2013/08/observing-describing-inferring-with.html

Daily 3 Math and Math Blog

The Sisters use a Daily 3 format for teaching math. The main lesson for each day comes from the district wide curriculum. These lessons are usually too long, so they break the lesson into more manageable chunks to be taught during 3 whole group focus lessons (7-10 minutes). To do this teacher must be mindful of the essential components that are really necessary for students to learn. The Sisters use the following format when teaching math:

• Mini Lesson 1 (I Do) - teacher explanation and modeling
• Mini Lesson 2 (We Do) - guided practice of same concept
• Mini Lesson 3 (You Do) - Students work on a problem for the focus lesson and share there thinking.

After each Mini Lesson, students are working in the following areas (30-40 minutes):

• Math By Myself - additional practice on focus lesson or what they need help on
• Math in Writing - problem solving where they are writing their thinking
• Math with Someone - math game

When students are working this gives the teacher a chance to: assess students, have a small group, or confer with students.

This Blog is a space for all those using and those interested in using Guided Math in k-5 classrooms. It will include pictures from classrooms, short instructional videos of sample lessons, lesson plans, math centers, great websites, podcast and screencasts. Most importantly it provides a space to share resources, to talk and to collaborate with others. Together we know much more than anyone of us can alone.

http://guidedmath.wordpress.com/

 

Dr. Dixon video about Guided Math Groups

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtExID3SDVk

Doing Math with the 8 Math Practices

Common Core Standards have put in place the 8 Math Practices which focus on the “processes and proficiencies” of doing math. Simply put they are ~  what we do when we do math!

Students should be:

• thinking the problem out
• reasoning
• modeling
• talking math with one another

We are trying to get students to develop an understanding of how to do the math. It is no longer enough that students get the correct answer, but more importantly HOW they got it. While reading an article the author stated, "If kids could be successful without having to think or reason, then the lesson is not good enough".

Grade Specific 8 Mathematic Practice Poster Sets:
http://www.citrus.k12.fl.us/edserv/klauderm/CommonCoreMathResources.htm

Math Videos
http://www.insidemathematics.org/index.php/standard-1