Tightening Up

I CANNOT believe that we are already in the 4th quarter of the year. Well, really I guess it’s the 8th quarter for some of us, since it’s our second year together! LOL This time of year brings with it warmer weather (followed by colder weather, then warmer, then maybe some snow or ice, then finally Spring for real!), excitement about being outside more, comfort and ease the comes with having a well established community, and sometimes it brings kiddos who are SO comfortable and at ease with things that they forget the rules and start to act like crazy people. Ok, not really, but everyone teachers can sometimes get lax and kids quickly take advantage of that. And so this time of year often also brings with it a tightening up of the procedures and routines, reminders of the rules and lots of reteaching and practicing to help ensure we end the year in the best way we can!

“Tightening up” in Rm. 202 looks a little different than it probably does in some other places, mainly because the structure in my classroom looks different from many others to begin with. I guess what I mean is that there are a few things that I find it necessary to be totally in charge of, and there are many more others that I leave my kids to decide upon or choose for themselves. In general, students in my room choose their table seats (they are not assigned and are usually very fluid even throughout a school day); choose their carpet spots and learning partners (unless I deem it necessary for specific learning goals to assign them); make decisions both about how they learn and show their learning; and they are in charge of much of how our classroom runs on a given day (like lunch count, attendance, cleaning, making announcements, using each other as resources for info and answers, etc.). Most of the time, this works seamlessly, and we all spend our day happily working and learning together, supporting our friends, challenging each other, offering kind words of encouragement and taking care of each others’ needs. It ‘s a beautiful thing.

And then days like yesterday happen. While I know that no kid is perfect, and that everyone has their moments and makes mistakes, our Wednesday was a kind of day which I have not seem in a very long time. Perhaps never with this class even. Their behavior was screaming out to me that what we are doing in our room right now is not working. We were loud, unfriendly, unproductive, messy, disruptive, disrespectful, slow…all words that do not describe a healthy, happy learning environment.

So what was I to do? I certainly could have gotten really annoyed, mad, frustrated, had hurt feelings, yelled, etc., but obviously none of those options made sense. They wouldn’t have been good for me or for my friends, and they wouldn’t have solved our problems that had happened during the day. So instead, I decided to tighten up the reins a little bit. Since they were showing me that right now they couldn’t handle choice and freedom, I’d give them less until they could prove again that they could. Makes sense, right?

This meant a couple of new things, then, happened on Thursday. First of all, kiddos had new table spots (ok, when they had assigned table spots to begin with–which was new) that were chosen by me. They also had assigned carpet spots–again chosen by me–based on who they could best work with and be quiet and respectful next to. As we started our day together, Evan made another suggestion that would end up being very helpful to us. Let me back up for a second–at the end of Wednesday, I drew a graph of what our behavior looked like over the course of the day. It looked like this:

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Evan’s idea was that we draw a behavior-over-time graph like that at the end of every day so that we could see how we were doing. Even better than that, Emily suggested that instead we should keep track of our day DURING the day. Otherwise we would have a hard time changing the way our graph looked; knowing in the moment that we were off track would allow us to fix things. SUPER IDEAS friends!

One more thing that was a part of our tightening up plan was a little bit of a whole-class behavior chart system with Xs for misbehavior (based on expectations we already have in place in our classroom) and a reward for friends that fit a certain criteria. Basically everyone starts with the reward, and it’s up to you to make sure you don’t lose it. We put together a chart where everyone has a label, and you get an “X” for choices that do not line up with our classroom expectations and Road Rules. IF you have a certain number (or less) by the end of the time period (which will change as we go along), you can participate in our reward (this will also change with every period). This first go-round, the Xs is 3 and the time frame was from Thursday morning to Friday afternoon (2 days). The next chunk starts over on Monday and will go for more days or have less Xs (haven’t decided yet).

So…we put our new things in place and went through our days Thursday and Friday and kept track of our behavior over time. Here’s what our charts looked like:

AMAZING, right? One thing I love about Behavior-Over-Time graphs is that you have to justify why you’re putting each dot where it is. Kids had to really reflect on our choices and evaluate whether our behavior counted as + or -.

At the end of the day on Friday we talked about why we thought that our last two days had been so much improved over what had happened earlier in the week. Some friends of course pointed out our new reward system, some said it was our spots, but Sara mentioned that she thought it was our system AND our BOT graphs; being able to SEE how we were doing was super helpful in keeping those choices positive. I agree, friend. 🙂

What stories can you tell about “tightening up?” Does 4th quarter bring new procedures and routines for you and your kiddos? How does the end of the year look different than the beginning? Please comment and let us know! Here’s to another great week starting tomorrow!

Lego Challenges With Mrs. Sisul

We had an amazing 1st-day-back-from-Spring-Break today! Our principal, Mrs. Sisul, has been learning about engineering and STEM with Legos, and volunteered to come set us up with some Lego challenges if we were interested. Well, yes, of course, Rm. 202 friends were interested! Luckily she was free this afternoon and came on up with her big ‘ole box of Legos! Check out what happened! 🙂

She started with a quick reminder of what STEM means (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), and then introduced what we would be doing: every kid would get a card with a challenge and they would work to do that challenge with Legos. Pretty straightforward, right? Well, they she led us through a great line of thinking about how we work best, and how kiddos would have the choice of how they tackled the challenge: alone, with a partner, a group of 3, a group of 4–whatever worked for each kiddo. She shared her example that she knows that as a learner she likes to be able to bounce ideas off of another learner, and so she’d focus on finding another person to work with. She asked me to share my strategy, and I talked about how I knew that that plan would DEFINITELY not work for me. I am the kind of learner who needs to process and plan by myself first, and then I might want to work with someone else to blend ideas, get a critique or ask a question. I know that if I went with a partner right off the bat, I wouldn’t have anything to share with them–so if I was Mrs. Sisul’s partner, I wouldn’t be a very helpful partner! Right off the top I could tell that Rm. 202 kiddos were thinking about what would work for them, and they knew what would be best. We had all sorts of groups–singles, partners and groups of 3. Some kiddos worked alone, but right next to another friend so they could get feedback that way.

Ok, once teams were developed, Mrs. Sisul gave the guidelines for how kiddos would get their Legos. She walked them through a planning session where they were to really think through what kinds of Legos they’d need. She would call names of kiddos 3-4 at a time, and they’d have 30 seconds to “block shop” and then get started. Once everyone had an initial visit to the pile, they were free to come back for more. And since it would be virtually impossible for me to explain the amazingness with which these kiddos followed this protocol, I had to record it. Check out what it was like when Mrs. Sisul dumped the Legos:

Once we got started, I roamed around and got some footage of them working. I know, kiddos wanted me to do the challenges, too–but I couldn’t document it to share with you if I did that! Maybe next time. 🙂

Here are some videos that share more of their thinking while they got started:

This one has some great thinking about what happens when things are hard (which this was for some of us!):

There’s one more, and it’s really the one I’m the most tickled about. It’s an example of what happened in our room when we put 20 kids and 2000 Legos together. I want you to think about what you see first, but then I’ll tell you why I liked it:

As I watched this video, I noticed these things:

quiet voices
pleases and thank yous
kiddos finding pieces for others
sharing
everyone just taking what they needed
no one grabbing, hogging or arguing
kiddos respectfully letting others into the circle
focus
engagement
motivation
laughter
encouragement
respect for self, learning, others and the environment

What did you see? (Please leave us a comment and let us know–Rm. 202 kiddos would LOVE to hear what you thought and would LOVE to know you watched their super hard working!)

Ok, I know you’re wondering what some of those challenges looked like, and how they tackled them. Here are some examples. And yes, they told me I could. 🙂

This was definitely one of those touchstone moments in our classroom that we will return to for many days and weeks to come (darn, I only wish we’d done it earlier in the year!). I know that we walked away with many things (and I hope to share what those were in THEIR WORDS soon), but one of them definitely was that there is not one way to solve a problem. We could each access each of these challenges in our own way, and use whatever skills, ideas–and Legos!–that we wanted to in order to achieve our goal. One friend even decided to do the same challenge twice to make it even harder for himself! We are builders and thinkers and problem-solvers in Rm. 202 and this was definitely right up our alley! Come back any time, Mrs. Sisul!

Teachable Moments

We had one of “those” moments recently. One of those moments when we had to stop and deviate a little bit and take a different path. It was one of those moments when I knew that the lesson I was supposed to teach was bigger than the writing lesson I had planned for the morning.

Let me tell a little bit of a back story. We had just finished Readers’ Workshop, and were heading towards the rainbow rug to start our Writers’ Workshop mini-lesson. I had met with three groups, done at least 4 individual conferences and assessments, and the room had been quiet and productive. At least it looked and sounded productive.

And then it all kind of went downhill. Evidently, there was a group of kiddos who were not, in fact, making an acceptable reading or writing choice during our work time. They were playing a game. Oh, and a game that was not appropriate for school, for that matter. 😦

We stopped what we were doing right then and there and talked through all the many layers of what was going on. First of all, the group of kiddos who had been playing were do so in such a way that NO ONE was the wiser that it wasn’t what they were actually supposed to be doing. Many kiddos in the room were baffled (ok, as was I!) how that was possible. Many said they had been sitting right there and didn’t even know. That’s just it–they were quiet, they were busy and they seemed like they were doing the right thing. We talked about how and why that could have happened and what we could all do to help ensure that every learner in our room was using their work time in the most useful way at all times. We agreed that this had been a bad call and everyone should do better to do the right thing next time.

Secondly, there was a layer of “I-saw-it-and-didn’t-join-in-but-also-didn’t-stop-it.” We had a really heartfelt conversation about why it was important NOT just to NOT join in, but also to be strong enough to say something when they see someone doing something they know isn’t ok. While I know they don’t truly understand the gravity of this, I have to begin to teach them this skill now, because they will need it for much bigger decisions in their future. Imagine what middle school would look like for them without being confident enough to stand up for what’s right. Or high school. Or LIFE for that matter. Yep, it begins now with these small lessons when they’re 7- and 8-years-old.

Then, there were a couple of friends who actually did wander over and join the fun because it looked really interesting. They took the “it’s-not-my-fault-because-it-was-my-idea” stance. Again, we had a great conversation about how this explanation doesn’t make sense because they actually participated in what was going on. Yeah, I know as adults this is clear, but for these 2nd grade friends, it was really hard for them to understand (or at least accept) that not being the originator of the idea doesn’t make them exempt from the consequence or responsibility. It wasn’t their idea to start it, but it was their idea and their choice to continue it and join in.

While this was obviously not one of our proudest moments as a group of learners (as far as choices and wise time usage goes), we definitely used the moment to our advantage and had some really important conversations. I am sure that by the end of the class meeting, everyone walked away learning something, ready to make a different decision next time–even the ones who didn’t really have any part in the trouble of the morning. Some will be stronger and stand up when they see something go awry, some will be wiser and use their time in a more appropriate way, some will choose to not go along with the crowd, and some will continue to do the right thing as an example to the rest of us. The best part is that everyone has the choice to do each of those things in whatever situation they find themselves in. And the even better part is that because of the community of friends and learners we have, we will do well to encourage each other to make the right choice as we go forward. What better lesson could we have had that day? Sometimes the best lessons are not the ones you plan for but the ones that just happen instead. 🙂

This One’s Just For Fun

I take a lot of pictures. Most of them are related to what we’re learning, but sometimes there just for fun. Cute pictures that make us happy or of silly stuff that 2nd graders do. This is one of those “just for fun” posts. 🙂 And yes, I asked them if I could take these pictures and post them here. Some of them even asked me to! LOL

This was actually the photo that inspired this post. How could you NOT put a picture of twin Darth Vaders on your blog? 🙂

I tweeted this picture when it happened (yes, with permission!), but didn’t post it here. As we were making muffins for our 100th Day celebration, I LOL’d when Tyrin brought up a connection to a favorite Fig Pudding character. He said, “We better be careful or Josh will steal all of our butter and eat it!” LOVE IT!

This one was posted before when I told the story about our door decoration, but I had to post it again because it just shows how silly some Rm. 202 friends can be, especially when you put another 2nd grader behind the camera! Great job, again, Baron! You were an excellent photographer!

Ok, so these are my own kiddos, not my students, but they definitely fit in the category of silly, right? This is what happens when we’re waiting for daddy and the camera comes out. 🙂

What’s more fun than taking a picture in a police car? We went to a pancake fundraiser for the KPD and some nice officers let us take a peek (and a pic!). Riley got to turn on the lights and siren, too! WOHOO!

I think I posted this one before, too, but it just made me laugh at how Jacob is tying himself in a knot to show me his fortune!

Ok, just two more. Gotta love a squeeze from your teammate, and this picture is just to remember the times when super great kids come up and say “Can I take your picture and print it so I can write about you in my Writer’s Notebook?” I’d say there’s no greater honor. 🙂

What would you put in a post that was called Just for Fun?? Leave us a comment and tell us about something fun you’ve done lately! We’d love to read your comments. 🙂

Second Grade Math Warm-Ups: Week of March 7-11, 2016

This week was a FULL one!! It was also another great example of how these warm-ups were meant to be used. I know…wish it was always like that. But anyhow, they were all directly connected to what we were doing in Math Workshop, and gave kiddos a great opportunity to think about the work we’d be doing later on in the day. It was really cool to watch how their understanding would be deeper when we debriefed later on, or when they had a chance to discuss the problem with their partner or a small group. Also, since they are connected to our regular math work, I have lots more to say about many of them than I will do here. But that’ll be in a later post, so be sure to stay tuned!! Here you go!

Monday

IMG_5782-min This one is related to the work we’ve been doing with The T-Shirt Factory, and would help them with the work they’d do later on with breaking up larger numbers into smaller groups.

Tuesday

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Wednesday

So we didn’t get a chance to discuss the problem all together on Tuesday, so I analyzed their answers on my own, and instead used their post-its to help me build the problem for Wednesday morning. It was based on our work the day before in Math, as well as their answers here.

Thursday

This one was asked with the idea of stretching their thinking for later in the day about how a number can be broken apart. Up til now, kiddos have typically just been thinking about a number in terms of hundreds/tens/ones. I wanted to nudge them into thinking about a number in a variety of ways, using the parts to compensate and make problems easier.

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These were two close-ups I needed to share. The first was just so you could see more of their answers to this one–they almost all connected this question to the work we did on Monday, even though I wasn’t sure they would. Nice! The second is just a great example of grit in our classroom. Kiddos know that they are not to write “I don’t know” on a post-it; they always have to try something. Often we use the stem “I don’t know yet, but here’s what I”m thinking right now…” Do you see what Ella Marie wrote there? Love it: “I have no idea what you mean by this, but I will do what I think you mean….76 is 70 and 6.” This is a great example of trying something she isn’t sure is right, but that she feels safe enough to take a risk. 🙂

Friday

Again, this was connected to our work all week, and I wanted a way to take a little assessment, so they turned their work into me rather than putting it on the post-its like normal. This will help me as I group and plan for our next days….after Spring Break!!

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Culture Projects Come Together

Remember how I told you about how we started reading all sorts of versions of Little Red Riding Hood? And then how we started researching the cultures from which each version came? Oh, and how I only was able to tell you those parts of the story because of the changes I’ve made this year? Ok, good, glad you’ve been here so far for this much of the story, cuz here’s the rest. 🙂

Kiddos spent many days researching the cultures of many countries and several regions of our own United States: Germany, Ghana, Spain, China, the Midwest, the West and the Southeast (Cajun culture). They worked in groups of three to discover important facts about many culture and geography topics: language, flag, location, landforms, holidays, food, games, religion, school, art and music. One group decided to add info about clothes, as well. This part of the project took longer than I had expected, mainly just because there were so many topics to find out about, and 4-Squares to fill in.

After enough days of research work for kiddos to have something to put in their planners, we worked together to draft what we thought our topic sentences should sound like. Each group worked on their own to add in specific details about each topic, but we all used a general common starter for our first sentences to add continuity. We worked on some general ones, first, to get the idea of a paragraph (topic sentences, details and a conclusion) solidified in our heads, and then tried one from one of our countries together.

Once we had agreed upon our starting points, kiddos got busy crafting their own words into their organizers. These would then become each page of their book. We saved the introduction and conclusion for last.

Eventually we got to the point where we were ready to put all of these fabulous facts and wondrous words into a draft of a teaching book that we could later share with our classmates. There were many options for how to do that, and students were allowed to choose whatever format made the most sense for them. Most students chose to use Keynote at the way to create their book, as adding in the text features we would need would be the easiest in that app. One friend thought Notability would be best for her, and two friends decided to hand write their books. Regardless of the how, though, we add worked toward the same goal together.

Students then spent the next few weeks (yeah, i know, this project was LONG!!) putting together the words first (you have to build the house before you can decorate it!) so taht they could then plan how they would add in text features to enhance their reader’s understanding of the topic. For that lesson we talked a little about “app smashing”, where you take more than one app and “smash” it together with one or more others to create something even better than you can do with any one single app. Kiddos made plans for their text features and showed me what they were thinking, many of them smashing together their camera and Notability or their camera and Keynote. Some friends smashing Safari in there, too, and used images from the internet.

Ultimately we will share our final drafts on our blogs, or print them to create actual books for our classroom (or both!) or we could publish them as ebooks and share with other readers in our school…we haven’t decided on this yet. The first step was to share with each other, though, and we did this the other day before we left for Spring Break. Kiddos were able to project their book on the big screen (either by AirPlaying from their iPad or just by displaying it through my computer since they had turned it in to me through eBackpack).

While we were listening to kiddos share about their cultures, two other meaningful things happened, thanks to my friend and teammate Mrs. Appelbaum (remember her and her amazing Tower Garden adventures?). One, kiddos had a big sheet where they were to collect information from their classmates’ books; they could write or draw anything they found interesting, a connection they made, something didn’t know, something they wanted to remember, etc. It made it so much easier to pay attention through the 12 books we were able to share that day.

The other super smart thing that happened was that I was able to knock out much of the grading part of this project while the presentations were taking place. This project was a big part of kiddos’ social studies, speaking and listening and writing grades. I was able to sit with our rubrics on my lap and make notes about what I observed right in the moment. this is really a big deal because I usually leave things like this until the last minute, and this was just such a smart, efficient suggestion. Thanks, Shannon A.!

While my kiddos’ final drafts are WAY better than this one, here’s an idea about what they ended up looking like. I’ll share theirs when we all come back in 4th quarter, but here’s mine (well partially finished one) about Australia:

Australian Culture Book

Please let us know what you think! This project has definitely been a motivating and engaging one for us in Rm. 202. Can’t wait to share the final drafts with you!!

Second Grade Math Warm-Ups: Week of February 29-March 4, 2016

Remember last week when my kiddos were my teachers? This week it kind of happened that way again–again without my real planning it that way. And you know, sometimes those are the best kinds of warm-ups–when they happen at just the right time as just the right response to something that happened in our classroom. Here we go. 🙂 (Oh, and I think somehow we ended up with a warm-up for every morning this week! Hot dog!)

Monday

We ended last week with the beginning of our new addition/subtraction unit, so I started with a 3-digit problem. And no, it wasn’t until we sat down to talk about the solution that I realized that the answer went up and over 1,000. Oops. But hey, if you can do those hard ones, then everything else is just cake, right? No one seemed to notice. And many of them got it right, which was nice and exciting. We talked about both compensation (making the problem easier by making 620 + 541) and splitting it by place value to add.

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Tuesday

Ok…so Tuesday’s warm-up didn’t end up the way I thought it would. (Man is there a theme here lately?) I wrote this problem BEFORE school, knowing that it would tie into our place value work, as well as remind them of work we had done previously with this topic. And then I had some AMAZING professional development work in math with Kara Imm (an amazing teacher from Mathematics in the City out of NYC) and the rest of my 2nd grade team that afternoon.

(Sorry, she’s so amazing I have to stop and introduce you to her for a second. 🙂 )

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During our planning we decided that we were working to launch a new investigation called The T-Shirt Factory, which is based in the context of a family who starts a t-shirt factory. Nicholas, the son in the story, works with rolls and loose shirts to organize and keep inventory, and the kiddos work alongside and within this context to solve similar problems to the ones he encounters.

Anyhow, after I had written this problem, we planned our lesson and I soon realized that my warm-up didn’t really fit in the pacing and sequence we’d decided upon. It wouldn’t make sense further on down the line if we discussed it on that day. So instead of fulling working it out and digging into how and why and what their strategies were, we just shared our initial thoughts. And then, like a happy accident, I figured another way I could use this debrief and the results I got to help plan my next lesson–just not in the way I thought I would originally.

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When we met on the rug to talk about this problem, I started with questions. They were to listen for the number of 10s they had marked on their post-it and then stand in a certain place in the room. I called all combinations that kiddos could have said (9, 2, 5, 52, 29, 20, 500), and we ended up with two groups: 52 and 2. This was not surprising, based on two common understandings of what I mean when I say “tens” and how numbers are “inside” other numbers. Next, instead of sharing out how and why 52 was the correct answer or why one group only said 2, each group talked to a partner in their SAME group to share why they had decided upon 52. The focus was on communicating how they knew; this is something that is tricky for many of my friends to whom mathematics comes easily. The “2” group did the same thing within their ranks. Then, I paired them up with someone from the opposite group and they had to then work to convince their new partner why their number made more sense. And then we stopped, knowing we’d pick up that same conversation again on a later day during our t-shirt factory work.

Wednesday

Remember the theme of unexpected results? Here’s another example of that. Usually when it’s time to talk about the math warm-up, we meet together on the rug and talk about the problem. We don’t necessarily refer to specific post-its, these just serve as the kiddos’ opportunity to think about it prior to our conversation. On Wednesday I was out of the classroom during our normal debriefing time (because of more math conversations with Kara and the team), so I only had their morning work to look at. I gathered info about who knew what to do with these 3-digit numbers and who still showed that they needed to continue to practice (it was about 50/50 I’d say). It gave me an idea, then, for the next day’s problem, building on the solutions I saw given here with this one.

Thursday

First of all, I have to giggle as I remember when Ja’Mia asked me today if this story was true. Of course, my friend’s son volunteered to help us with our math lesson! (wink, wink!). But really, I did see my friend’s son that day, so there’s something. 🙂

Ok, this one taught me something I had forgotten about 2nd graders: 1) they haven’t yet done a problem like this one where I’d asked them to analyze someone else’s thinking, and 2) they answered ONLY the question I ask.

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See? The question (which I crossed off today during our conversation as we talked about what the problem really wanted us to think about) could simply be answered with a quick and simple “yes” and so most of them did that. They probably thought I had lost my mind by giving them a question like that!

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I did have a couple who did get to the thinking I was looking for (but who knows how since I asked the question in the TOTAL wrong way!). For example, I wanted kiddos to notice that rather than just taking jumps by place value (200 + 70 + 5), the tiny jump of 3 made sense next because it got us to a 10, which is easier to work with. That resulting 570 also creates an easy double to add mentally (570 + 70, like 7 + 7), leaving a quick +2 to finish up. Here’s Khalani’s answer example:

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Friday

The whole “my friend’s son” thing got me to ask my real son for some help and he was more than willing to do so (plus it meant that if he was helping me with my homework that he didn’t have to work on his own!). I gave him the problem 519 + 365 and asked him to solve it using a number line to model his thinking since that’s what we’ve been working on. He did not do it on purpose, but we realized after he finished that he had left out a part, and we actually decided that was a great thing to have happen; my kiddos might have more to talk about if they weren’t just reviewing their own work and saying “yep, it matches.” Having a different answer and having to figure out why it is different was a new kind of thinking for them.

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We didn’t have time to completely finish the debrief, but we were able to talk about how he started, like why he put 519 first as well as why his first jump was just 1 rather than 300, which would have been a typical “place value” jump. They talked through what he had done and noticed that he misrecorded his +30 jump as only a +3, and that his answer seemed too small; most figured he had forgotten to add on the last 300.

This week’s warm-ups took on a new role. Our thinking was really deepened, and we dug into how and why in a way we haven’t done in a while. Plus it was great to be able to have 5 in a row!!

What do you think about our thinking? What had you tried with analyzing others’ mathematical thinking? Do you have any problems you can share with us? We’d love to hear from you!!

Teamwork is Tops in Rm. 202!

This month at our school there has been a door decorating contest. Since our class seems to always be doing 10,000 things at once–all fun and motivating, of course!–I chose not to participate in this project. It was running for the last two weeks and the classes on both sides of us (Hi, Ms. Turken and Mrs. Appelbaum!) have been creating amazing displays, and no one in my class has really said anything. A couple of friends inquired in passing, but were fine with my answer of “We are doing so many other things right now!” It wasn’t until the last few days of the contest when someone finally asked me about it and wasn’t so happy with my answer….instead of “ok,” he asked, “What if I do it?” I am almost always on board with kiddos taking the lead on things, so I was willing to play the game with him. I told him he could TOTALLY do it, if he was in charge of the whole thing and that the only time I had to give them to work was recess. I have to admit I was a little surprised, but he was instantly on board. This was Friday, so he was given the weekend “homework” of figuring out the theme, the plan and the ideas for how the rest of the class could help get it done.

I have to be honest that I was expecting him to come back on Monday having changed his mind, but instead he had a pretty well developed plan and excitement to include his classmates. We made plans for who would come to join us at lunch and recess, and almost the whole class wanted to help!!

We only had from Monday until Thursday after lunch to complete our BIG job, so on the first day we brought our lunches up and worked for as much of our 40 minute lunch period as we could. By the end of that day, we had the background up and a great plan for what we would do the next day. Oh, and we ate our lunches. LOL

Can you tell our theme just by this picture?

Well, if you know my friend who planned it, that would be an easy give-away, too, but I’ll just tell you that we had the theme of teamwork, shown through a football game. We have a HUGE rival down the road in Webster Groves, so that’s the reason for the red and orange end zones. Our rough-draft plan looked like this:

On this first day we had about 16 kiddos working and not many jobs, so I worked it out with one friend to be our photographer. I needed pictures to document our work and he wanted to help, so bingo! I am super happy I did it, now, too, because it’s so great to get a kids-eye-view on what we’re doing. Obviously he took very different pictures than I would have (and I’m even in some of them! Thanks for being kind–LOL), and it makes me think I should hand over the iPhone more often! Check out the work we did on our first day. Oh, and I didn’t edit them at all. I kind of thought it was very organic and “real” with his fingers were in some of them. I also love that you can see conversations happening in many of them, as well as how messy it is working with 2nd graders; I think often I try to crop and edit our life into just the right picture. But you know, honestly sometimes we just watch. And sometimes we leave big piles of paper laying around, and often it takes 6 people to do the job of 1 person. But no matter what, we work together, solve problems together and have fun with each other.

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Our second stop in the process was to create the field, with yard lines, names and goalposts. Some friends started on bleachers and a crowd, but we quickly had to scrap that part for time’s sake. Next decide about teams, then create football player and cheerleader versions of us to play the game. For this job, I did give them some class time, as there really wouldn’t have been enough with just recesses to make that part happen. We divided in half, created the parameters (7 inches tall), and even decided that we should have a mascot (Remember my photographer friend? He was cast as Pioneer Pete!). Again, here’s what it looked like while we were working, from a kids’-eye-view of the room:

Once we were all said and done, our entry into the door decorating contest looked like this:

I was SUPER impressed with how quickly it came together, with how well everyone worked together towards a common goal, and how willing my friend was to lead us all to this great product! On Tuesday at the end of the day, as we were having our closing circle, more than one kiddo thanked him for being a bold leader. What a great way to end the day! Way to go, Rm. 202 friends!!

Second Grade Math Warm-Ups: Week of February 22-26, 2016

I have three warm-ups to share this week. We had a surprise snow day (which was a little funny because where I live there was no snow!) on Wednesday, so no warm-up that day! We are in the middle between our money unit and addition/subtraction up to 1000, so the problems reflect that.

Monday

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As we discussed this problem, we tried a similar one:

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Tuesday

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Friday

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IMG_0737-min We modeled the solution to this one in three different ways (which we related to the ways we had done 2-digit addition earlier this year).

Ok, now for a confession…I was surprised when my kids made some of the connections they did this week between money and 3-digit addition. I know, right? Probably shouldn’t happen that way, but it was honestly something I hadn’t really noticed, or at least thought about it as specifically as they did. I think it was nicely pictured in the problem from Tuesday, where we solved each problem in red–they made connections between how you can add whole dollars just like the hundreds in the 2nd problem (and that’s just like 100 cents, making the amount with pennies); the tens were dimes and then the ones were pennies. Ok, so that part is not surprising to me–obviously I have this knowledge as an adult–but I honestly didn’t expect kiddos to use this to help them solve the 3-digit addition.

It went even farther yesterday when I had a kiddo working on a pre-assessment for this next unit and was doing the problem 451-238. He told me he needed the money bag so he could use coins to help him. Since I always allow kiddos to use whatever manipulatives or strategies they need to figure things out I said “ok,” but I honestly was thinking this would hinder him more than help him, or that he’d end up more confused. When we first looked it he seemed confused with how he’d subtract 8 from 1 (which told me he wasn’t really solid with regrouping yet). He started by making $4.51 with half dollars, dollar coin, dimes and a penny, and seemed a little unsure about it as this point, too, asking me about names and values as he made his amount. But once he got his $4.51, he could easily take about the $2 from $2.38, as well as the $.30, which he did with 3 dimes (and I wonder if he made that $.50 that way on purpose since he could think ahead to having to break it apart later on). Then he sat with only 1 penny, and the need to subtract 8 cents. And so yes, here’s where the money came in handy–the concrete nature of being able to think about trading a dime for 10 pennies (which is what he is doing abstractly when regrouping) helped him see the constant value and how he could then actually take about the 8 pennies (8 ones) from what was there. He then counted the money he had left and told me it was $2.19. We then talked about what that would be if we were just talking about hundreds/tens/ones instead of money and by drawing it in a chart he eventually saw it as 219.

I’m excited to see how this connection to money plays out for some of my friends who need to actually hold/touch/feel the addition and subtraction. Yes, it’s something we’ve done with other kinds of math tools and strategies, but I wonder if this might even be the best connection, yet, since it’s all based on place value anyway. Oh yeah, and maybe that’s why this unit was placed after this one in the sequence….

The conversation around this problem the other day was the kind of thing that reminds me that I don’t know everything. Obviously I know this, but it’s refreshing when kiddos remind me that they are figuring out things I hadn’t thought of. I love sharing with them those moments, too. It reiterates the fact that I am not the only teacher in the room, and that I have things to learn as well as they do. And I hope it’s a lesson that all of us will remember–and use–for days to come.

28 Days That Changed the World

Last year I found the most amazing book. Books, really. I am almost certain it as a Twitter find–since that’s where most of my teaching gems come from–but regardless, I ran out to get it and it became the basis for the conversations in our classroom during our history unit.

Here’s the main one, written by Charles R. Smith, Jr. :

It goes through all the days of February and gives a little story about an important figure in African-American history, working forward from the 1700s to today. The synopses are short, interesting and my favorite part is that they are not just the “big” ones taht you are used to reading about. There are women and men, as well as children, and often the moment that changed history wasn’t even a person, but a court case or event. We read through this book last year during our history unit–where our focus was on people who change the world–and loved it, as well as learned a lot we didn’t know. OH, and I didn’t tell you anything about it. Since I have this thing–well used to–where I wait until the end of a unit/project/story to tell about it. And then don’t actually do it. So here’s to telling you this time around. 🙂

Oh, just a quick mention of some other FABULOUS books I found at this same time: the I Am series by Brad Meltzer. They are along the same vein as the 28 Days book, and are little biographies about important people (not just African-Americans, though). The illustrations are SUPER cool, and make it a really interesting narrative non-fiction text to share together. The voice of the famous person comes through and kids are hooked from the first page. We’ve read almost all of them (I just got Lucille Ball and haven’t had a chance to share that one yet!):

Somehow I only took a picture of a few of them. 😦 We also have Amelia Earhart, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Helen Keller and Lucille Ball. They are pretty great!

This year as we got ready to start February, I knew I wanted to incorporate this book again, but obviously in a different way than we had done it previously. I was really glad that my kids were as excited as me to reread the stories again, and it’s been great to see how they anticipate who will be highlighted each day. We really enjoy this time of our day, and I can really tell that they are learning about the people/events and their impact on our world, as they make connections between them and other things we talk about in the course of our day. This book is more than just a book for the friends in Rm. 202.

One thing I wanted to be able to do to deepen our understanding (or at least solidify our memory) was to do some writing about each day’s text. We had been doing some work with non-fiction, as well as main idea/details, so I figured it would make sense to write a summary paragraph to tell others about what we were learning (we had decided we’d hang them on our bulletin board outside our room).

We have been using the 4-Square organizer to make sure we have all of our thoughts (in read aloud, during Social Studies, in Writers’ Workshop as we write opinions about things), and so we decided they would make sense for this, as well. And ultimately, I want kiddos to learn how to use the organizer to meet their needs, not just to use it when I say to, or to see it as being just for one time or place. We wrote the first few together, discussing our topic sentence and then adding in details to explain the text for the day, like this:

After we got our thinking down on the planner, someone would “publish” it and we’d hang it outside on our board.

Last week, we had a short week with a weird schedule, which made for a little bit of a problem. We didn’t get to finish our text for Feb. 11, then we weren’t in school for February 12-15 (that’s 4 days) and so when we returned on February 16, we had 7 pages to work on!! There was NO WAY that we would have been able to sit and do all that work together as a whole group (can you say behavior problems?!), so we needed a new plan.

Well…it worked out SUPER well that we just happened to have 7 groups already in place for our culture study. Each group was in charge of planning and then writing one of the paragraphs after we all read them together. Great plan, huh?? We thought so. 🙂

Kiddos knew what to do, since we’d been using the planner already, and I was really impressed with how well they have been able to add appropriate, relevant details to the topic sentences (which I had given them already in their planner).

While I have a REALLY WONKY panoramic picture of it (the end of our bulletin board is inconveniently up a flight of stairs 😦 ), I’m really excited about how it all looks out there, and I love that there are things for us to share with our Robinson neighbors!

We still have another week or so before we’re finished with the book again, but I’ve got other plans for continuing our study far beyond the end of February. I have been doing some behind-the-scenes work with our librarian and some other teachers to find even more recent stories of Robinson personalities, or other Kirkwood figures that these friends might know. I think it is essential to teach kiddos that change-makers are not just old people, in black-and-white pictures who have been dead forever. Important figures in their lives are not just from long ago and far away, nor are they just “famous” people they read about in books. I want them to see versions of themselves in the smart, successful people I teach them about; I want them to see the possibilities for their own futures. I’m excited to finish the plan I have for this next step. And yes, I’ll be sure to share!

**UPDATE: GREAT story that happened today as we were reading about Thurgood Marshall for Day 22….I was talking about how he was a Supreme Court Justice and how often that means that a judge has been an important lawyer. I explained how the Justices are appointed by the President, which is a BIG DEAL, and how Thurgood Marshall had been part of a big deal court case that we knew about. “Do you mean Plessy vs. Ferguson?” WHAA?? Love that they could throw that one out there. “Nope, not that one.” “Are you talking about the 14th Amendment?” “No, not that one, either.” “Oh, I know!! Brown vs. the Board of Education!” Um, yeah–that one. 🙂 Isn’t it pretty great that 2nd graders can whip out those names like that? I think so. Way to go, Rm. 202 friends! Love that you’re soaking it in, and making connections, and more importantly I think you’ll make CHANGES with that knowledge someday.**

20somethingkids and 1kookyteacher

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Second Grade Math Warm-Ups: Week of March 7-11, 2016

Second Grade Math Warm-Ups: Week of February 29-March 4, 2016

Teamwork is Tops in Rm. 202!

Second Grade Math Warm-Ups: Week of February 22-26, 2016