Author Archives: Jen Bearden

Learning Is Messy

 

Today was our last day of school before Thanksgiving break.  And so traditionally, that means that we do things that are a little bit nontraditional in our schedule.  For math, that meant that I put the kiddos to work.

Here’s what I mean…

For many years, my husband and I have taught together.  Well not really together, like in the same school or anything, but we’ve always taught the same grade or the one just behind.  So since that’s the case, we’ve been known to do some of the same things in our classrooms.  One such thing is the Thanksgiving Dinner project in math that comes during these last two days of school.

The idea is pretty simple–plan and shop for the Thanksgiving meal for your family.  The directions for my class this year looked like this:

What’s cool is what happens after you give all the directions and answer all the questions and set them all loose to figure it out for themselves.  Check it out.  Like I said, learning can get a little messy.  But it’s a really good kind of messy. 🙂

Z was so focused on his meal, searching diligently through each circular to find just the right foods!

 

 

Love how my friend M is so into the paper in this one!  Can you see her behind there?

 

The other cool thing, besides a messy classroom and lots of kids saying things like “this is really fun!” or my friend D asking me to copy his plan so he could share it with his mom (love that!), was the togetherness that this project brought as they worked with each other.  Truly a family feel in Rm. 201 today!

 

 

 

Happy Thanksgiving, friends!

 

Subs, Family and Diet Dr. Pepper

So I could have entitled this post “Things I am Thankful For,” but decided I’d use a sampling for what I’m going to write on my list instead.  Got your attention, too, right?

Being that Thanksgiving is this week, and also because it’s probably been a bit too long since I’ve done so, I’m going to take a few minutes to make a list of things I am lucky to have, things I am thankful for, things with which I have been blessed.  So please indulge me for a few minutes, especially if this post veers away from the “classroom” theme for a while.  I promise I’ll come back eventually. 🙂

So here we go (in no particular order–well except for #1!):

1. Family–It’s probably cliche’ to start with this, but it’s definitely the truth: without my family–the one I was born into and the one I’ve created myself–I would not be who I am.  From the earliest moment I remember with my parents and my brother, to the memories I just made this weekend with my hubby in Chicago, the experiences I have shared with the people I love helped to create this version of me.  I am so lucky to have such amazing parents who live in town and get to love on my kids as much (and as often) as they like.  My brother’s family is here, too, which I love.  Then there’s my own little family.  I may very well be the luckiest lady around.  I have the most amazing husband and kids that I could ever hope for.  I may just have to take some time in another post soon to tell you all of the reasons why!  For now, I’ll share a picture of all of those lovely people from a recent photo shoot.  Thanks LeSeure Photography for taking care of us!

2. Subs–Like as in substitute teachers, not sub sandwiches. 🙂  Last week I was out 3 days–2 totally unexpected because I was sick, and 1 planned as a personal day.  Regardless of the reason, though, I wouldn’t have be able to be gone were it not for the countless substitute teachers that are available to take over for me.  I would not have been able to spend an amazing 10 weeks with my new baby last winter were it not for amazing subs like Linda Spina whom I could trust to handle the reins while I was gone.  And believe me, if you think teaching is hard, substitute teaching is 10, no 100, times harder!  I did it.  4 times.  4 half days.  And that’s all I could stand.  It takes an amazing person to be able to step into someone else’s shoes for the day, and I’m so glad that they are there to do it for me.

3. Diet Dr. Pepper–All the goodness of Dr. Pepper with no calories and no sugar!  Need I say more?

4. Mistakes–I have this crazy expectation of myself that I am going to do everything perfectly the first time I try, but obviously that’s not how it works.  I mess up.  Often.  And sometimes in a really big way.  But what I love about those mess-ups is that I always learn something from them.  And the best mistakes, in my opinion, happen in my classroom.  If you ask any of my students, they will tell you that I don’t know everything.  *GASP!* I know, it’s unbelievable, but it’s true.  And they know that because I make sure to tell them.  I try to make sure that if I don’t know something, that I’m honest and I say so.  And sometimes, on really great occasions, a kid in my class does know about that something, and they teach me about it (just ask Colby: he taught us about how the number 1 is a special number that is not prime or square).  Or we’ll learn about it together.  It’s the mistakes I make that help me grow and learn and how I become more confident in my abilities.  The same is true with kids.  The important part–and the part I work really hard to make sure is in place–is that they have a safe place to make those mistakes; a place where they know that it’s ok, that we’re all in it together.

5. Laughter–I love to laugh.  I love it when I am having a really crummy day and someone says something at just the right time and I can’t help but crack up.  And then I can’t be cranky anymore because I’m smiling so big.  I love how laughter brings us together.  In our classroom, as well as in my own home, we laugh alot.  And at weird things.  It just makes those places more fun to spend time in.  Got a good joke to share?  I’ll tell you one that I got while I was trick-or-treating with my kids last month:

My neighbor asked me if I wanted to hear a joke.  I said, yes, and then she said, “The Texas Rangers.”  HA!  I did laugh at loud at that one.  (Do you get it?  The Rangers?  They’re a joke?  Get it?  Ok, not the best written joke ever, but funny nonetheless. 🙂

6. Fall, Rain and November–Check out this post from earlier this month to see my thoughts on this time of year at school.  I LOVE IT!!

I should probably keep going and going and going, because I’m sure to leave something important off the list and inadvertently offend someone, but I guess that’s all for now.

And now it’s your turn:  what are you thankful for?  Leave a comment and tell us!

Lessons from a 4-year-old

Kids say the darndest things.  And if we really listen to what they say, we can usually learn something from them.  This was the case the other night when I was having a conversation at dinner with my son, Riley, who is 4-years-old.  He announced very matter-of-factly that “If you wanna have a friend, you gotta be a friend.”  I asked him to tell me more about that, and he told me “That’s what Ms. Liz says.” Now I know that she probably says that to the class as a whole, but I also know that she probably needs to say that specifically to my son more often then I’d like.  We continued the conversation with more about what that saying meant, and how he knew if he was being a friend.  I was glad to hear his thoughts and could tell that he’d really been working on how to do just those things.

We talked about this phrase on Friday in our own classroom.  I shared it with a small group of friends who were trying to work out how to really care about each other and work together as a team.  We decided that as simple as that phrase is–a 4YO can understand it, afterall, on some level–that is is really more involved that you might first think.  We discussed at length what it might look like to a 5th grader.  And then we put a plan in place to start living it out.

And then even as I’ve gone through this weekend, I’ve realized that there are implications for me, too, as an adult.  I’m learning the same lesson that my son and my students are, just on a different level.

So it’s true what they say: “If you wanna have a friend, you gotta be a friend.”

What does that mean to you?  Feel free to add your thoughts and comment!

1/8 is 12 1/2%

At our school we use Investigations for math.  One thing I love about the program is that it usually digs into the why of each math concept instead of just the how.   It encourages students to create their own strategies for solving problems, emphasizing that there is not just one way to come to a solution. In the case of our fraction/decimal unit that we’re in now, we are doing more than just learning the rote definition of a fraction and coloring in fractional parts of pictures or just adding or subtracting them using the method I directly taught them–like I know I did in 5th grade.  Instead, we are investigating and creating and figuring out and–most importantly in my opinion–using what we already know to discover something we don’t.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:

We are at the beginning of a unit called What’s the Portion?, which includes experiences with fractions, decimals and percents. Yesterday and Thursday we were working on figuring out the percent that is equivalent to a fraction.  We started by making drawings on a 10X10 grid (which helped us “see” what was going on) since we know that percent means “out of a 100.”

We used this visual, and what we knew about fractions and percents already to figure out that 1/8 is equivalent to 12 1/2%, because 1/4 is 25% and an eighth is half of a fourth. Our music teacher, Mrs. Kesler, will be tickled to know that I even had one kiddo make the connection between this and what he knows about music notes to help him figure it out.

So after the initial idea of fraction and percent equivalents was presented, they were to dig in a little deeper.  I gave them a chart to fill in, that had lots of other fractions to work with.  I told them to fill in all that they could with the directions to NOT do thirds and sixths, that we’d do them the next day.  But what they did instead, was make it their goal TO DO the thirds and sixths.  In this case I didn’t really care that they did the opposite of what I said, because it meant that they were going to try something that might be a challenge, might stretch them a little, might give them questions to ask when we worked on it together.

And for the most part, they all totally rocked it.  They made it look really easy.  Like they’d been figuring out fraction and percent equivalents for years. (Ok, 5th grade readers—which character from one of our favorite read-alouds did that sound like?  Comment on this post with your answer if you know!!)

Here’s what our chart looked like when we were done:

The thing that I think is really remarkable about the thinking behind this is that they are already getting comfortable with going back and forth between fractions and percentages, and can tell you how that relates to a group of things, like how getting 10 out of 20 of your spelling words right is 50% or that 3/4 of a class of 24 is 18.  There is understanding being created that goes far beyond just memorizing definitions.  I like that.  And they like it, too.

Light Bulb Moments

In case you haven’t noticed, read-aloud (chapter book) time in our room is a big deal.  This ain’t no lay-on-the-floor-and-rest-after-recess-time.  My kids will tell you that read-aloud is one of the most important times of the day–we use the chapter book to connect to reading, writing, vocabulary and many other things.

Right now we are deep in the middle of The Secret of Zoom by Lynne Jonell.  In Reader’s Workshop, we’re working on inferring in fiction text.  So today as we read our chapter book, we focused on noticing and recording inferences we were making about the story.  We reviewed the meaning of inferring (which we defined as background knowledge + text=inference), and then got started.  There were a couple of parts when I paused in my reading to say “You might be able to infer something here,” but for the most part I just left them to their listening and thinking.  Then I read a sentence and K, who was sitting right in front of me made a rather loud noise, somewhere in between a gasp and a screech.   She covered her mouth, grinned, and then scribbled something in her notebook.  And I knew exactly what she was thinking.  She had figured out something in the story–she had made an inference.

Now, every time you infer something in a story, you don’t make a big deal like that; it’s not always so obvious.  But this was a really great illustration for us.  Some kids in my class have a hard time knowing when they are inferring; they know what to do, but they don’t always attend to when they’re doing it.  But I’ll but from today on, they will know that when you have a “light bulb moment”, when you say “Ahh! Now I get it!” or when you think “aha!”, you’re probably inferring.  It was cool to watch several others do the very same thing–most without the screech–as we continued to read.  And I’ll bet we’ll notice more of it tomorrow.  I love how the thing that really made it visible, too, is something I couldn’t have planned for (the best learning moments happen like that!).  It came very naturally, and was really powerful for them.  Next time you think “aha!” or have a “light bulb moment”, pay attention –you might be inferring something, too. 🙂

“Blog Worthy” Part 3: Talk-a-Mile-a-Minute

My students love to talk.  I do, too, so I can’t blame them.  I remember myself as a 5th grader, even, and remember that the thing I got in trouble for most often was talking when it was somebody else’s turn.  So whenever I can, I try to give them opportunities to talk while we’re learning.  Partly so that they won’t fill in the space with talk about non-learning things, but also because learning is a social thing; talking is part of how you make meaning.

So frequently we play a game called Talk-a-Mile-a-Minute.  It’s a vocabulary game, and can be used in any subject, with any set of words.  I think I introduced it in math (because there is a TON of vocabulary there!), but we have also played it with science and social studies terms.  Today we played it with new terms from our Ancient West Africa unit in social studies.  It’s fun, they can talk and be active, and they learn something.

Here’s how it works:

Kids choose a partner to work with.  Partners sit “eye-to-eye, knee-to-knee” in front of the ActivBoard.  The person with their back to the board is the guesser, and the person who can see the board is the describer.  I put up a screen with words they should know (or that they are working on), and the describer has one minute to get the guesser to say all of them.  The first time we played it, we did several practice rounds, and instead of words there were pictures, like this:

The goal is to be as descriptive as you can, without saying what the word starts with or rhymes with.

The first round was pretty easy, so then we tried it with words:

Here are some terms we used yesterday in math:

And here’s today’s version for Social Studies:

How well do you know these words?  Play with your child and see how it goes!

“Blog-Worthy” Part 2: Closing Circle

One of my favorite parts of the day is the last few minutes.

Ok, I know what you’re thinking.  No, it’s not because they’re about to leave, it’s because that’s when we have our Closing Circle.  We end our day together reflecting on what we did as learners.

I know I got the idea for the Closing Circle from someone–probably several someones–and I’m not sure who it was, but I will officially say thanks to Mike Holdinghaus, Heidi Ford and Grant Bearden for this idea.  I am sure I’ve probably tweaked and changed it a little, like teachers often do, but the general idea is the same–appreciate those people we’ve spent the day with and compliment them for the hard work we’ve done together.

The name implies alot: we sit in a circle at the close of the day.  I choose someone to start (this is usually random) and that person starts off by complimenting someone who helped them as a learner at some point during the day.  We go around the circle and each person shares, using the starter “I compliment ________ for…”  They are allowed a “pass” the first time around, if they can’t think of something, and then we fill in with all of those people in the second go-round.

One of the reasons I love this time of day is because it allows us time to reflect on what has actually happened; what we’ve learned, the fun we’ve had, the struggles we may have overcome.  Another reason is because usually they notice things that I didn’t, or think about them in a different way than I would have.  I love that even this early in the year, they’ve figured out that giving a compliment like “You helped me think about that in a way I’d never thought of before” is more thoughtful than “You played with me at recess today.”  Obviously there are times when the compliments are on the surface level like that–but then, sometimes, that’s what really matters to the kid who says it.

There are many days when we don’t get to the closing circle because the last few minutes are nutty and we run out of time.  Those days just don’t feel “right” to me.  And usually someone notices it, too, and makes sure to say so.  Then we always make sure that the next afternoon we make time to meet and close together.  Love it that they love this time as much as me.  It’s just a part of our classroom culture, and is a part that helps everyone leave on the same high note, ready to come back for more tomorrow. 🙂

“Blog-Worthy” Part 1: Table Points

We started something new in our classroom today.  Well, we  do that almost every day, so really it was just like every other day.  But today my students requested that I blog about this one.

Starting today, we’re tracking “Table Points.”  Every week, each table group can earn points for their table for doing the right thing; for following the universals of our school (we call them the Robinson Road Rules).  They never know when I will award them, or how many I will give.  They can be earned as a whole group or I can decide to give them just to one person (but they count for the whole table) for doing something extra amazing.  At the end of the week, the table with the most points earns lunch with me on the following Monday.

I got the idea for table points from my hubby, who also teaches elementary school.  He started using table points in his classroom a few years ago, and after seeing it work really well and hearing how excited his kids were about it, I was interested in trying it in my own classroom.

I think kids intrinsically really want to do the right thing.  Sometimes things get in the way of that and they do kooky things like talk in line and stare out the window during reading time or doodle on their paper instead of answering the math problems.  But deep down in there most kids want to follow the rules and act in a respectful way.  Sometimes they need some motivation and encouragement to do so–or just recognition when they do it without being asked.

That’s where table points come in.  Today I gave 10,000 points for being the first table to be cleaned up and quiet for lunch.  I gave 10,000 more points to every table for waiting quietly in the line for us to go to lunch (this is hard for us to do most days).  Table 1 and Table 4 earned 5,000 points for spending all of their writing time really focused on adding new, thoughtful entries to their notebooks.  Tomorrow I might give points for doing morning work quietly or picking up other people’s messes up off the floor without being asked.   It might be 10,000 points or 5,000 points or just 1 point.  The amount of points is not important, and neither is when they earn them.  I think it’s that they earn them, and that they never know how I’m going to do it.

During our Closing Circle today (an activity that happened to be another thing that they thought was blog-worthy), I loved how S complimented her tablemates for helping her earn so many points today.  She thanked them for staying focused and working together.  Together.  They had decided at the beginning of the day that they were going to do whatever they could to make sure they were on task, engaged and doing the right thing.  And since they had all made it their goal, they achieved it.  Each person had a small part in the success of the whole group.

I am excited to see who “wins” lunch with me on Monday.  It could be anybody, but no matter who it is who, we’re all winners because we’re focused on being better, more focused, respectful learners.  And we’re doing it together.

The Excitement is Building

I have been sharing our blog with my kiddos over the last few days.  Thought they should know what amazing things people were saying about them!  They were so proud that readers all over the internet were finding out about the really cool things they are doing in school.

So as we left today, I figured I’d ask them what they thought I should write about tonight.  My last question as we were dismissing was, “What happened today that was ‘blog-worthy’?”  I loved their answers; they thought of things I hadn’t even considered.  So the next few blog posts are their answers to today’s question.

I love that they are as excited as me about this!  Hopefully your excitement is growing, too, as you follow along with us!