Marshmallow Challenge 2.0

Last year, when my friend Genie told me about the Marshmallow Challenge, I was on board from minute 1. I knew I would do it again this year, too, but just maybe a little later than my original plan from last year, based on our new plans for doing community building. So this year, we waited a little longer, and today was Marshmallow Challenge day.

Just like last year, we worked within these guidelines:

Ok, well almost the same rules. I realized when I opened the box that I had thin spaghetti, so I gave them 5 extra pieces. 🙂 The rest was the same.

First we reviewed our norms and the directions, then I set the timer and they set off to work.

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At the end of the 18 minutes, everyone stepped away….and….we saw all but one of the towers fall. 😦

Now, while the stated goal of the challenge is to build a tower that stays standing, the real goal of the activity is to work well enough with your group that that other goal can happen. So what we needed to find out is what happened that made it hard for us to achieve our goal today. We met on the carpet to discuss plusses (things that we did that HELPED us do well, or that went well) and deltas (things we would CHANGE to make it better next time).

Here’s the chart we made:

We talked about our thoughts, and whether or not it was a coincidence that the 1 group whose tower stood is also the only group who put any plusses on our list. Obviously, it was not a coincidence.

So my next question was “So what do we do next? What do we do with this information?” The answer (from more than one person) was “Clean up?” Well…yes, but that was not quite the level of problem solving I was hoping to hear.

So now I’m asking myself, what do I do with this info? We’ve obviously still got a ways to go before most of us are ready to do something this tricky. Today’s challenge, and the debrief that followed is telling me we still need to work on how to accept and appreciate the perspectives of others and not just consider our own. We still need to work on using kind, patient voices with our classmates. We still need to learn how to include everyone in an activity and give everyone an equal say. We still need to learn to be gritty when something is hard or doesn’t work right on the first try.

So that’s what we’ll do. And while we were not quite ready to take the Marshmallow Challenge today, someday–probably sooner than later–we will be. And we’ll do it again. 🙂

Oh, but one more thing. Here’s a pic of the group who was able to build a standing tower. Way to go, friends!

Can’t wait to share this again when we have our Marshmallow Challenge 2.0–Take 2!

Be Square

Here’s a post about another team building activity we did the other day. And boy, did it take some GRIT! Some grit that we had to dig really deep for, too. 🙂

The basic premise of the game is that each person in the group has a folder with pieces of different squares. In total, the group needs to end up with 5 equal-sized squares. The catch? No one can talk. You can’t ask anyone else for pieces, but you can give pieces to other people in your group if you think they need them.

At first, this was a really tricky task! The biggest problem? Everyone was trying to do it on their own! Pretty much the opposite of how the game works! You would not believe the sounds I heard during this activity–it’s too bad I didn’t take any video. Most sounds were moans and groans as they tried to figure out what to do, except for from Table 6 (see above)–their group had “tweeting” or “chirping” sounds happening during this task. I soon figured out that that was the sound of them digging deep to find their grit. Whatever works, right?

However, I mentioned that some of us really struggled, and that was something that could be seen as well as heard. Within the first few minutes, there were twisted-up “thinking” faces, frowns and furrowed brows. One friend was even laying over the seat of his chair upside down. Frustration abounded. But nope–they could not and would not give up. 🙂

Eventually it was time for lunch, and so we left to chow–and left our game just as it was, planning to return after we’d had some time to breathe. As I was sharing the story of our struggle with some friends at lunch, Mrs. Berger said something about needing to see things in another way. This was genius! It gave me an idea for how we could switch things up after we came back.

Once we were back in the room and ready to get started again, kiddos returned to their tables, but they had to sit at a DIFFERENT seat than where they were sitting before. Groups got started again and slowly, but surely, I started to get hands raised (which was the sign that they had gotten it!). 🙂

As we debriefed after we were finished, I asked each group what they thought it was that helped them the most. Without fail, groups mentioned that seeing it from another angle helped them–then could see the puzzle from a different point-of-view and think in another way. Thanks for the suggestion, Mrs. Berger–it’s just what we needed! 🙂

3 Things and 3 Friends

I have to start this post by fully disclosing that neither of the ideas I’m sharing today are mine. 🙂 Remember my FABULOUS teammates Genie and Rachael? These ideas are theirs and I tried them in my room and they went really well. Thank you for sharing, friends!

As I am sure you have figured out by now, building a strong community of learners is very important to me–as it is to many teachers. So we spend the beginning weeks of school getting to know each other, both as learners and as people. We laugh together, create together and hopefully start to build a trusting relationship that will help us as we learn together throughout the year.

One way I help foster these bonds is by going through an exercise called 3 Things (or at least it was called 3 Things this year–I have too many students to do it the original way of 5 Things as Mrs. Hong taught me!). It’s pretty basic, but has been very much worth our time. The conversations we’ve had around everyone’s 3 Things have been great and the inferring that happens during the exercise is great, too.

It’s pretty basic: each person brings in 3 things that tell us something about them and we have to guess (or infer) what those items mean. I started by sharing my 3 things: a picture of Mickey Mouse, measuring cups and a Kirkwood School District pencil. Everyone then has 3 minutes to talk in their 3 Friends groups (which I’ll explain in a minute 🙂 ) and decide what the items mean. Every group shares their ideas with the class, I chart them, and then we hear the “real” answers from the spotlight person. Easy peasy. Here’s what my chart looked like:

Now, honestly, the first two of mine were pretty obvious: Mickey Mouse is to represent my family’s love of Disney World and the time we spend in the Happiest Place on Earth. I can’t really explain what it is about that place, it’s just that it’s become our home-away-from-home and has a special feeling. Just being there is amazing. But I digress…

My second item is measuring cups and represents my recent love of baking and creating things for my family, primarily my kids. If you dig a little deeper there’s a story about how we’ve been learning about eating locally harvested “real food” and are trying to cut out processed food from our diet–this was the spark for my new baking hobby–but that was obviously not a story that kiddos inferred from my picture.

That last one is a pencil. It represents a couple of different things. First of all, and most glaringly it is my love of writing. But I also picked this particular pencil (and a pencil instead of a pen) for two other reasons: it represents the annoying trouble there has been in my room for YEARS with never being able to keep pencils sharpened (EVERY pencil sharpener I have ever tried has broken. I think my room is cursed!), as well as the fact that Kirkwood is my home, and where I have always been a teacher.

Since I shared my 3 Things, we’ve randomly chosen two kiddos every day (a boy and a girl) to share their own 3 Things. Kiddos have taken this very seriously, and with each group that goes, they’re getting better at picking tricky things that get us really thinking. They’ve been really good!

Then the other simple but powerful thing we did was called 3 Friends (thanks for sharing, Ms. Turken!). Again, it’s not very complicated: you and two other people get in a group and do a couple of simple things–make sure you know each others’ names and find out 3 things you have in common. The groups then introduced their 3 new friends to us, and shared what they had in common. We took a quick poll to see who else had those common interests, too. Then we come back to these groups everyday in 3 Things, helping to solidify the connections we’re making. I’m thinking that as we go on, we’ll create new 3 Friends groups periodically that have different goals or functions in our room.

What would you choose for your 3 Things? Post your list here and we’ll see if we can figure you out! Play along with us! 🙂

Book by Book…

Yesterday we talked about the journeys that readers take. Today we talked about how readers can make little goals along the way to help the goals in their journey seem more attainable.

We talked with our elbow-partners about goals that they’ve made, and when we shared out from our conversations, we realized that we had made goals that fit into 3 basic categories: goals for at school during RW (like reading 30 pages before the end), goals for at home at night (like reading 2 hrs before bedtime or “scheduling” it for after dinner or before bed), and goals that span the whole week (like finishing a certain number of books each week). It was a great conversation that helped us all better envision how to have (and keep) a growth mindset.

Then I was ready to give them a goal of my own. It is a year-long goal, and is definitely a pretty big one: to read at least 40 books, in a variety of different genres.

(Remember how I read The Book Whisperer this summer? This challenge and genre requirements came from there. 🙂 )

I put this slide up on the ActivBoard and waited for the reactions. To my surprise (is it ok to say that?), no one freaked out. No one cried, and no one seemed discouraged! I was really expecting at least one person to say that this was an impossible challenge, deciding already that they were doomed to fail. But beautifully, what happened instead were a variety of responses somewhere along a continuum of “only 40? I thought it would be more like 150!” to “on 40? I know I’ll read more than that this year!”. I loved it, too, when one sweet friend looked at me, slowing nodding and smiling, seemingly saying “I can do that, Mrs. Bearden! I don’t know how yet, but I know you’re going to help me.” 🙂 And YES, my friend, I will help you!

But then my favorite part happened. My friend Brittany (remember her from that big pile of books yesterday?), who had been talking to Grace, looked at me and said, “Mrs. Bearden, you’re going to do this, too, right? You’re going to read 40 books with us?” I was a little surprised, because I was surprised that she asked. But I was SO GLAD that she did. It would have been one thing for me to say that I was going to join them–which I was planning on doing anyway–but it’s a completely different thing when it’s their idea. Now it’s OUR challenge instead of just mine. And we’re going to accomplish it together, book by book. 🙂

Everybody Loves Reading!

Or at least they will when I’m done with ’em! HA!

One of the most important goals of the beginning of 5th grade–or any grade–is to help kids get to the place where they love school. Really love it. This is the case with the beginning days of my Reader’s Workshop as well. Unfortunately, I have students that come to me and can honestly say that they don’t read because they want to. They read because they have to, or they don’t read at all. Boo. 😦

So in addition to conversations about how our Reader’s Workshop will function (like we had as we filled in this chart the other day):

Kids worked in pairs first and then we discussed together our thoughts about what Reader’s Workshop looks and sound like, and how that helps us as readers.

we also have lessons that give kids chances to see themselves as readers, and to see what is possible for them–no matter where they are starting.

Today we started with a conversation about mindset (growth vs. fixed) and tied it to this quote:

We talked about how every reader is on a journey, and those journeys look different for every person. We talked about how having a growth mindset–believing that we are capable of achieving great things if we keep trying, changing and making mistakes–helps us on our journey. Then I described one reader’s journey from short, picture books with few words to reading Harry Potter using this pile of books:

While the scenario was hypothetical (I know…sometimes stories I tell at school are made up. Don’t sue me. 🙂 ), it is very much like what real readers do, and I wanted my readers to see that there are steps that they can plan to help them get from where they are to where they want to be (which in this case was the desire to read a Harry Potter book–a very real goal for many readers!).

After I told the story of how this reader traveled through their journey and after I piled these books high in Brittany’s arms (who so kindly volunteered to play the role of the reader in my story), I had everyone think about whether they saw themselves somewhere in this pile of books. Maybe they were already on a similar journey to this one. Or maybe they were starting in a different place. Regardless of the answer, their next step was to consider their own personal reading journey and write about it.
I want readers in my room to understand and appreciate that we need to think past the book we’re reading and onto the next book and the next book and so on (I’m working through Reading Ladders to help me help them with this right now). Everywhere has somewhere they can go! Here’s to a remarkable reading year in Rm. 202!

Ever Wondered….

…what teachers do on their plan time? If you’re a teacher then probably not (unless you wondered what other teachers do on their plan times), but if you’re a student or a parent–I’m about to let you in on a little secret. Ready? We plan things. Ok, that’s not fair (and it’s a little snarky. Sorry. 🙂 ). But really, we do. And often (as with my fabulous team this year!) we do it together.

Sometimes we get the luxury of double plan-times (which is really just a fancy way of saying we have a big 2-hour chunk to work with instead of just 50 minutes), and it’s during those that BIG things happen. Like just last week when we were doing this together:

See the work there? Can you figure out what we were doing? Those pictures, my friends, are our notes from time spent chewing on a volume pre-assessment. We were trying to create something that was engaging, real-life and challenging all in one. We even had the idea of creating two separate scenarios to interest different kiddos (one was Legos and the other was related to cupcakes). I LOVED how well we worked together in this session, how we each brought something different to the table (and to the whiteboard!), and how we ended up with a great pre-assessment to use that is equal parts us and equal part awesome.

Have I mentioned before that MY TEAM ROCKS? If you haven’t been to their blogs lately to see what’s going on in Rm. 201 and Rm. 203, do it! Now. 🙂 Please? 🙂

Did You Hear?

We got our iPads today! I have to share this picture first because it pretty much sums up how excited we all were for this day to come:

I had to finally stop and take a picture of my dear friend Landry, because it said more to explain the feelings than my words could. 🙂

I was SO IMPRESSED by how well everyone did today. We had LOTS of directions to listen to during the setup process for our iPads, and the class followed every one of them. They helped each other, worked efficiently and got the job done. They definitely brought the GRIT and self-control I told them they’d need today!

Check out some pics of us during setup:

Thank you Mr. Strecker for your tech support today!

Mr. Shelton lending an iPad hand today!

Mrs. Jeon was a big help, too, as she answered questions and gave directions

Rollouts like these are only possible because of all of the district people who show up to help! Mr. Strecker, Mrs. Covert, and Ms. Rima–who was such a busy bee she didn’t end up in any of my photos!–made this process painless, even with 23 5th graders!

We ended up having a mostly iPad-filled day, but were able to set up our Gmail accounts, setup and verify Apple IDs and iCloud accounts, and log in to the App Store (including account verification and security questions–that was time consuming!). After lunch we downloaded Cut the Rope (it’s the FREE APP of the week!), as well as Pic Collage. Our first iPad project was to use Pic Collage to create home and lock screens to personalize our iPads and help us tell them apart from others. We’ll use this app (along with many others) in creative ways throughout the year to show what we’ve learned and demonstrate our understanding. The last part of the day was a hoot! I wish I had video of all of the funny pictures people were taking of each other to add to their collages. WHAT FUN!

I mentioned it before, but I have to say again–ROBINSON 5TH GRADE ROCKED IPAD DAY TODAY! I am so impressed with all that was achieved today, with little to no hiccups. Here’s to a great year of learning and growing with a fabulous tech tool in our hands! Oh, and of course, THANK YOU TO THE KIRKWOOD SCHOOL BOARD FOR MAKING IT HAPPEN! As a teacher I appreciate all that you do to help me help my kiddos achieve great things and work to their highest potential.

Did I mention I LOVE MY JOB?!

Ropes Course (or “Getting Gritty With It”)

Remember how we’ve been talking about grit? Well shortly after we first talked about it, 5th grade had a perfect situation where they had to dig down deep and find some: the Ropes Course!

Every year, 5th graders spend some time in the Westchester Woods working together on team building exercises. And this year we did it in 100 degree weather! YAY! Just that is gritty in itself, right?

There were many stations, but I was in charge of the most fabulous station: the swinging log. Wanna guess why they call it that?

The goal of the swinging log was to get the team from one end of the log to the other (one at a time) in whatever way makes sense, without touching the log, the person on the log, or the ground. Go, team!

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And then, on the way home, I was wondering what a teacher looks like after they’ve been standing out in the heat cheering on 5th graders at the Swinging Log. Here’s the answer:

Not horrible, right? HA! Just had to throw this one at ya to make you laugh. 🙂

WAY TO GO 5TH GRADERS FOR BEING GRITTY AND WORKING TOGETHER, EVEN WHEN IT WAS HARD! 🙂

How GRITTY Are You?

We’ve been working on a new word around our school lately:

Grit can be defined as courage and resolve; strength of character. It’s the “stuff” deep down that keeps you going when things get tough. It’s what you hold on to when you have to push through something hard and not give up. Here’s a video that we watched recently that does a better job of explaining it:

We have been talking about it as a staff, but we’ve been talking about it in our classroom, too. Here were our first thoughts on the subject:

The blue words are what we think grit is, and the green is how we think we can "get" it, or where we find it when we need it

The blue words are what we think grit is, and the green are how we think we can “get” it, or where we find it when we need it.

This is a new concept for friends in our class, and honestly, we are not very gritty yet. But we’re working on it. We even have a question we end our day with every day to help us reflect on our day:

And even better, we’ve been doing lots of things lately (every day, really!) where we have to be gritty, and push through–even when it’s hard. I’m excited to share our journey this year as we learn to dig down deep and learn to push through no matter what!

How gritty are you? 🙂

Our First Class Meeting!

If you don’t know about how we do Class Meetings around here, be sure to check out the previous posts Lessons in Democracy and Class Pet Petitions for a little background first….go ahead. I’ll wait for you. 🙂

We had our first real class meeting this past Friday and it went really well! I say “real” because the week before (our first Friday) I walked them through the process of 5th grade class meetings, to either remind or inform them of how we’d be doing them this year.

Here’s our chart after dots were added:

We had a busy week, huh? The lists at the beginning of the year always seem to be a lot longer because we do many more short activities as we’re getting to know the classroom and each other, as opposed to longer projects as we move further into the year. And for some reference, SRI is the Scholastic Reading Inventory and helps assess readers. Students get their Lexile level from this assessment, which helps them as they choose books (which I guess is why so many kiddos gave this a blue dot–signifying that they learned alot from that activity).

I found it really interesting (and surprising, honestly) that so many kiddos chose Appletters as the topic to discuss and problem solve around. And with that many red dots I was dying to find out their thinking about how we could fix it for next time.

After they shared their concerns, these were the things they mentioned that we could work on:

kiddos using really loud voices during the game
some just sitting (not participating or waiting for others to come to them)
not allowing others to join their words
leaving others out on purpose, or replacing their letters with other letters
only trying to make words with friends, instead of trying lots of options
people stepping on each other, running into each other or shoving as we move around the room

Then we were on to problem solving (we actually had a lunch break in between to do some thinking), and came up with some ideas on how we could improve our game the next time we played it:

aim at using a Level 1 or 2 voice (which at our school means whispers or soft voices), so even if we get a little louder we’ll still be at a reasonable volume
give kiddos time to think independently before we move together to build words
make a rule that you could add letters or rearrange them to make new words, but NOT remove letters once they are there
play in another part of our room, or try to use more space instead of clumping together
have a place for “odd” letters (like Z, X, Q, etc.) to go if you can’t build a word, then those letters try to build something.
I also suggested that I would add some other guidelines for what kinds of words they could build.

These were pretty good, and we were excited for the next time we played!

Little did they know that their next opportunity would come that afternoon! The “rules” this time was that their words had to be at least 4 letters long, and could not be names (remember GIBY from last time?). We all agreed that the next time we were much improved. Check out our words the second time around!

Someone said this word was inspired by a book cover they were looking at just before we played our game–funny that they were actually able to find the letters to build it!

Check out the way CAR turned into CRATES–a longer word with more friends involved! Success!

All of the “odd” letters met at Table 4 to see what they could come up with…

…and many hands made for light work.

Definitely not an Appletters “fail” here–that’s a good word!

Check this one out! Another one where someone (Owen!) was just looking at the letters and this came to him! Genius!

What a FABULOUS example about how a group of people with great ideas can change things for the better! What a great start to the year, and an exciting precedent for class meetings to come. WAY TO GO, RM. 202!! YOU ROCK!

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
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5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31

20somethingkids and 1kookyteacher

Starting a 3rd Grade Journey