I pride myself on having engaging classes. My room is a place for exciting projects, highly anticipated annual events, and connecting with other places via Twitter and blogging. Engagement hasn’t been my goal, though. I want my students to clamor for knowledge and understand how to drive their own education in my class and beyond. Chapter 6 of The Innovator’s Mindset has me wondering if I empower my students to reach that goal.
Right now, my 5th grade reading students are in the middle of creating curiosity projects. This is the fourth year I have attempted something inspired by Genius Hour. Some kids blow me away with their enthusiasm and deep learning as they take school time to write a short story or do research on one of their passions. Other kids seem to amass a folder full of gifs and memes related to their chosen topic, but show little evidence of new learning.
This taste of empowerment isn’t enough. My kids need more chances to take control of their learning so they can all use that freedom to do amazing things. I’m not quite sure what it will look like, but I can’t wait to get there!
My students are writing a book review blog. I've been excited about this project since reading The Book Whisperer at the beginning of summer. It goes live next week, but I have a problem.
We worked together as a class to identify what a good book review looks like. We looked at professional reviews from The Horn Book and The Children's Book Review, and student-written book reviews at Reader Views Kids. But we were most impressed by the reviews from This Kid Reviews Books. Inspired by his format, my kids decided to write book reviews in two sections: a summary followed by their opinion.
Altered books by Bryan Elementary students
As the teacher, I led discussions about what made for a good book review. We read about writing book reviews and revising with a partner from the Writer's Express handbook. I wrote an example review using the format we chose as a class. I've offered suggestions on their Google Docs. Still, about a third of my students haven't written a quality book review yet.
Some of my kids' reviews lack detail. When I push for more, they say that more detail would result in giving spoilers. Other reviews lack specifics in the opinion section and just say "it was a good book," without giving examples of the things that made it shine.
Other students have written beautiful reviews that tell just enough about the book to entice a reader. The opinions include reasons why the characters or settings were just right and comparisons to other books. Those reviews are ready to publish and represent the type of work I expect from students in an advanced learning program.
I'm struggling with where to go from here. I know that we'll post the detailed reviews this week, but not the others. This year, I've been working at building a culture of going back to review and revise work until it is top quality. I'm not allowing students to get a low grade and move on. How do I continue to support those students to develop their writing? Where do I find the balance between pushing them to improve and motivating them to write?
Please let me know if you have some ideas. I want my 4th and 5th graders' writing to shine. I know we can get there with some more time and effort. And I'll keep you updated as I continue to experiment and refine...
After figuring out the square footage and weight of the materials used for "Out of Many, One," I wanted to give my students the opportunity to create something large. My original plan was to go outside and measure our school's field, make a scale drawing of the field, figure out an image that would fit the shape, and then use string to mark a portion of the artwork in a little-used corner of the field. A week of very rainy days made that plan impossible, so we figured out a suitable indoor alternative. My fifth grade math students separated into two teams to design large posters for one of our school's hallways. I showed my kids the wall spaces available for posters before giving them a selection of different size graph paper and the requirement to include a quote or slogan that represented a growth mindset, but otherwise I left them alone to come up with something.
Our spaces had obstacles including a fire extinguisher
The first day of work on the project consisted mostly of measuring the space for the poster. Both groups recorded a number of measurements, but had a difficult time translating those to a scale drawing. Seeing that my students needed some more experience with scale drawings, we spent part of the next class period looking at diagrams, blueprints, and other scale drawings and discussing how large objects were represented accurately in smaller drawings. We also looked at our second activity with "Out of Many, One" in an attempt to see how we previously worked with scale. It didn't take long from there for students to complete their scale drawings. When they presented them to me for approval, I asked how much butcher paper they needed and how large the writing and other features would be on the poster to double-check their scale drawings. Next, students divided up the work on their posters. It was interesting to see how one group put assigned members certain squares from the graph paper while the other group chose one person to work on text and others to complete specific drawings on their poster.
This group used 1/2 inch graph paper
Both groups ran into trouble with teamwork along the way. I did my best to let them solve their issues, but I had to step in a couple times to help. One group had a very difficult time drawing objects on the big poster to the correct scale based on their scale drawing. I frequently checked in and had them look back at the scale drawing to confirm that their poster matched the plan.
Turning the scale drawings into large murals
took a lot of careful measuring
In the end, my students created some nice art for a bare spot in the hallway, got some practice measuring & multiplying, and learned a bit about scale drawings. It definitely took longer than I planned. We spent three full math periods working on the project and used the last ten to fifteen minutes of class frequently for about two weeks. Still, the students really enjoyed the project and it gave them a chance to demonstrate their budding understanding of scale. If I do this with next year's fifth graders, I would want to give them some more opportunities to work with scale drawings before getting to this project and I would want to speed up the process of creating the final posters. Still, it was a fun project and it makes me excited to find more extended problem solving opportunities for all of my math groups. And I'll keep you updated as I continue to experiment and refine...
Teaching in an advanced learning program, the idea of enrichment drives so much of what I do. I'm always trying to go beyond our curriculum to provide my students deeper understanding. It's terrific! I love seeing what my students can do and sharing all of those enrichment opportunities with them.
But my students make up about 20% of my school's population in grades 3-5. What about the other 80%? What about the younger kids? If my job is to provide enrichment, how can I provide enrichment to all?
My first attempt to provide enrichment to all is our Invent Idaho competition. I participated three times when I was in elementary school: adapting a phone cord as a dog leash, creating a cat food container that was also a serving dish, and making a mash-up of Tiddly Winks and the Game of Life. The competition challenges students to create something. They keep an inventor's journal with their thoughts and sketches, build a prototype, and make a display board to share their invention with the world (or at least everyone at their school).
Last week some of my reading switch groups were canceled due to testing, so I took the opportunity to visit other classrooms and get the whole school (not just the kids officially in my program) fired up about inventing. It was awesome! Since visiting the first and second graders, I think I've had at least half a dozen of the little guys come up to me each day and tell me an invention idea. A fifth grader I never met before visiting his class has come to see me twice during recess to show me blueprints and dig through my tinker box for materials. I think we're in for some awesome inventions at our competition this year!
I shared this video with all the classes I visited
I'll put some posters up around the school, make a few guest appearances on our morning announcements, and keep encouraging the inventors I meet in the hallway. Hopefully that will result in a wide reach for this enrichment opportunity.
We're still about a month away from our school competition, but I'm already asking myself how I can provide more enrichment for all opportunities. The next one on the calendar are the classroom and school spelling bees I coordinate in January. Like any teacher, my time is limited, but I know there have to be more ways that I can help provide some great opportunities for all the kids at my school. Do you have an enrichment for all opportunity that works in your school? Please let me know in the comments. And I'll keep you updated as I continue to experiment and refine...
Watch this video. What mathematical questions come to mind?
After two viewings, my fifth graders wondered how many pounds of dirt it took to create Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada's "Out of Many, One" portrait on the National Mall. Through the first viewing, most just wondered what the heck was happening until their jaws dropped at the final reveal.
One of my goals for this school year is to frequently engage my math students in extended problem solving. About once a month, I want to give my students a challenge that takes a week or more worth of math switch classes in order to find a solution. I've scoured all of my books and countless websites for resources, but I'm most excited for the projects that pop into my mind when I hear a great story on NPR, read about something unbelievable from mental_floss, or watch an especially interesting video shared by a friend.
My first attempt at creating an extended problem came together after learning about Dan Meyer's Three-Act Tasks at a recent district collaboration. Later that same day, I saw a video about the "Out of Many, One" project and realized it would make a great first act and a Three-Act Task would be a great kick-off for an extended problem. The first act of a Three-Act Task presents students with a chance to generate mathematical questions and estimate an answer. After coming up with their question, I asked my fifth graders to make a high and low estimate.
For act two, students generate more questions to pull out the information they need to solve the problem. Some of their questions didn't lead to helpful information, but we discussed them all. Eventually, many of my students asked how many truckloads of dirt were delivered to the site. Luckily I had a video for that, too.
The kids still didn't have enough information. They figured out they needed to ask how much dirt a dump truck holds. I had already reverse engineered the problem, so I was able to tell them that the trucks for this project carried between six and seven tons of dirt each.
I encourage a lot of teamwork in my math classes, so students worked together to make the unit conversions and figure out just how to use the information they had to find the answer they sought. Some found an answer right away and began trying to figure out how much sand was there, too.
Finally it was time for act three: the big reveal. We visited the National Portrait Gallery's page about the work to find out some more information and check our answers. Most of the class had been successful in finding an answer close to 1,600,000 pounds of dirt. The best part of act three was comparing that figure to students' initial estimates. The largest act one estimate was 600,000 pounds. One student commented that she didn't even know it was possible to have a million pounds of dirt in one place.
We read some more about the artwork and had a short non-mathematical discussion about the artist's choice to assemble features from many real people into a portrait. It was a great experience for my math students. We weren't done though, that was just our first day and a half, and I wanted my students involved in a problem for a week (or a little more). I'll post later this week about where we went next.
