Book review botheration

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...

Making ideas real: #slowchatED December 8-12

Since joining Twitter, #SlowChatEd has been one of my favorite hashtags. Since it runs for an entire week, it was always a little different than the other, sometimes frantic Twitter edchats I join in on. But when the school year started, #SlowChatEd disappeared. I figured it went on a short hiatus while the usual moderators were "September busy." The hiatus dragged on, and #SlowChatEd slipped to the back of my mind.

Then, a couple weeks ago, Ross LeBrun revived #SlowChatEd to talk about being thankful. Although I couldn't participate for the entire week, I was reminded how much I liked the slow chat format. So, this coming week I plan to hijack (I mean moderate) #SlowChatEd to talk about "making ideas real."

As I've shared before, joining Twitter has done wonders for me as a teacher. Before Twitter, I was still an avid reader of big education websites like Edutopia and a few teacher blogs. I attended conferences and professional development classes whenever I got the chance and I was always looking for new ideas in my classroom. When I hear a great idea, I want to put it into action right away! Sometimes, though, I had so many great new ideas that I just couldn't make them work. Being on Twitter has only made it worse - my TweetDeck columns are never-ending waterfalls of new ideas. How can I make the best of these ideas into reality?

Image by nocturnal~schism

I'll be posting one question or prompt each day for the next week. Since it is a slow chat, please feel free to respond in multiple tweets, post links to resources, and ask questions of the other participants. Here are the questions:

Monday: Share an idea you recently implemented in your school.

Tuesday: What are your favorite sources for new ideas?

Wednesday: How do you manage the flow of ideas?

Thursday: Share an idea you are working on now. How are you moving from idea to reality?

Friday: How can we support each other and our colleagues to implement new ideas?

I have a few follow-up questions in mind for some of the days, too. I hope this will be a valuable discussion and I hope to see you there!

BIG things in math - Part 3

Read part one and part two to see how my fifth grade students began using Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada's "Out of Many, One" in math class.

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...  

Seeking enrichment for all

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...

BIG things in math - part 2

Read part one to see how my fifth grade students began using Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada's "Out of Many, One" in math class.

This satellite image was captured by DigitalGlobe's GeoEye-1 satellite
on Oct. 6, 2014. Image from the National Portrait Gallery's website.

After figuring out how much dirt was used in the creation of "Out of Many, One," my kids tried to figure out just how big this colossal artwork is. We looked at a number of photos of the work, but decided that the one to the right gave us the easiest picture to measure. It didn't take long for students to realize that they needed more information to figure out the scale.

I pulled up a map of the National Mall on Google Maps to give us some context of the area. After a little discussion, we decided that we should figure out the length of another feature in the picture. We chose the road to the west of the DC War Memorial. Although the road had a small curve around the memorial, it was the easiest to clearly identify in the picture and on the map. The road measured 400 feet long. Students used that measurement to come up with a scale for the map and estimate the square footage of "Out of Many, One." If I were to do this project again, I would find measurements for other landmarks, such as the width of the reflecting pool, to see if we come up with similar estimates when basing our scale on other known distances.

Image from Google Maps

We weren't done exploring big things just yet. My students went from using scale to estimate the size of this artwork to creating their own scale drawings for a giant artwork. They're still working hard on that project, and I promise to let you know how it goes.

You can see my students' final project in part three.

BIG things in math

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.

Be sure to read part 2 and part 3.

Life-long learning, a teacher's impact, and pizza

My family tried a new restaurant last week. I'd been excited to visit Embers by the Lake, a pizzeria out in the country about half an hour away from our house, since they opened this summer. Although I had heard great things about the food and the atmosphere, that wasn't the only reason I wanted to visit Embers. It's run by two of my favorite middle school teachers.

Photo by Carrie Scozzaro, INLANDER

Mr. Hammons was my seventh grade math teacher. At that point, math was not my thing. I had struggled with learning my multiplication facts and felt like I would never be good at math. He was my first teacher to present math in context. I remember a project where he challenged students to design a house and calculate the cost of windows, flooring, and other materials. I had fun with the project and I willingly did calculations that I would have avoided if they were presented as bare numbers in a textbook. In fact, a discussion about compound interest in his class inspired me, a math-a-phobic middle schooler, to go home and attempt to calculate the payments on my neighbors' crazy new boat even though it wasn't an assignment for class.

I never took a class from Miss Roletto (now Mrs. Hammons), but I remember her as one of the friendliest teachers in my middle school. She was always out in the hallway between classes talking with students. She was also one of the teachers who attended our middle school's Natural Helpers retreat the same year I did. It was a great program training students and teachers to help others. Now that I'm a teacher, I really admire each teacher who gave up a weekend with family to tackle serious middle school issues through the Natural Helpers program.

Our Embers experience was terrific. My child was excited because it was superhero theme night there and that made it appropriate to wear a cape and mask to dinner. Our server (Captain America) happened to be a former student of mine. And my former teachers kept busy as Mr. Hammons manned the wood-fired brick oven and Mrs. Hammons greeted diners and checked in with each table. The pizza was terrific - we had a sausage pizza and one with Gorgonzola cheese and mushrooms.

After we cleaned our plates, Mr. Hammons stopped by our table to ask how we enjoyed everything. I just had to ask him how he learned to make pizza. He said that he took one class, watched YouTube videos, and practiced a lot before the restaurant opened. The practice paid off, because he is making outstanding pizza. After helping so many learn during his years as a teacher and principal, his commitment to lifelong learning is on display at Embers.

Dessert at Embers is an experience as well. You make your own s'mores at the firepit out in front of the restaurant. As Mrs. Hammons started the fire for us, she commented that our waitress remembered me as a fun teacher. I told her how great it is to run into my former students and see what they are up to. She reminded me that my former teachers have enjoyed seeing me grow up and come back to teach in the school district that educated me.

It's amazing how nourishing pizza at Embers can be!