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If you haven't heard already, Teachers Pay Teachers will be appreciating teachers this week by having a sale! Use the promo code from TpT and the sale that I am having at my store to get a total of 28% off of all of my items! Happy Shopping! :)
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My son brought home the neatest thing the other day after his birthday "party" at school! While he and a friend were passing out his extra school treats his class made him a Happy Birthday Book! Of course, when I saw his book I thought to myself, "I can do better than this; and make it WAY cuter!" There is either a black and white cover page that the students can color, or a color version to print! There are 19 different kid choices to get the cover looking just right! The next page I created is a cute page for the students to draw their pictures on (of course the one I saw was made with blank paper..I can't do blank pages! LOL). Click here to see the book in my store!
This year, I am going to attempt to blog/write more often! It's been a weird and long fall; from having our 5 year old start Kindergarten to having a new position at school (Literacy Coach). But, my New Year's Resolution is to make sure I blog at least a few times a month! To start off I'd love to share one of my favorite parts of reading workshop in my classroom. As the students finished reading a book they would complete a book report (I've done this with every grade from 4th to 8th). Students LOVE talking about a good book, or letting you know why they hated a particular book. These are also great for a year round bulletin board filled with suggestions of books to read! To get these FREE Book Reports visit my TpT Store! If you spend 5 minutes with me, talking about my classroom, you will learn how much I LOVE Reader's & Writer's Workshop! Not only do I love it, but so do my students. Two years ago, instead of doing "fun" activities on the last day of school my class requested and voted (I was sure it would lose in a democratic heads-down vote) to do Reader's Workshop instead of the fun activities! I know, crazy, right?
I've also been really excited and seen great results with Math Workshop. The only thing I have been disappointed or miffed at, was the lack of materials and ideas for it (although, I do have to admit, there has been A LOT more this summer on Pinterest). One of the organizational items I really like about Reader's and Writer's Workshop are the binders/folders to organize all of their learning and thinking. So, that got me to thinking, why not do this for math too? Such a simple idea to make me happy, it sort of upsets me it took me this long to think of it! If you are interested in organizing your own Math Notebook, click here, to see how I've organized mine (or download mine, it is FREE on Teachers Pay Teachers). It's now going to be a place my students place their "I Can" statements, resources, copies of anchor charts, independent work, and our math journals! I can not wait to be super organnized next year! There is a huge push for student data in the classroom. And, I LOVE it! If you haven't already gotten on the bandwagon; or if you have not really liked the way you have been using data in your classroom, this is the blog for you! Each student in my class has their own data folder (this school year, I think we might try to get enough binders). We keep district data, and classroom data in them. The students graph everything themselves. After the initial making, or acquiring of, materials for the binders, the students become much more self-sufficient when it comes to testing. This is especially so in district data. What is district data? My school takes two tests in the fall, winter and spring. One of them is the NWEA(MAP) test, for multiple subjects, and a second is Fountas and Pinnell leveling for reading. To see how we graph MAP and F&P, check out my Teachers Pay Teachers store by clicking here. Once I initially teach the students to use the graphs and binder the students can look up their own scores, tell their scores to others, and graph their new scores! I never have to look up old scores.....they do it themselves! What sort of classroom data do I use? I LOVE pre and post testing students! They also love it, because they can see their own growth. The data binders give the students learning that they can hold in their hands and show to others! An example of classroom data is shown below. In math workshop (we are now fully using Common Core in my school) we pre-test and post-test for all of the standards. After seeing their results, the students then can mark in their own scores for their data binders! Click on the picture to go to my TpT store to see the 4th grade Common Core Math Assessments or the Student Data Graphing for 4th grade. I am constantly on the look out for more meaningful data to add to our classroom data binders; I'm sure this is a subject that will be revisited again soon.....
During the portion of our math schedule that says Rotations we complete 4 rotations. This is one of our rotation charts.
The students have been placed into 4 ability-based groups. I use a mix of things to ability group them. Our district does NWEA(MAP) testing, I use my observations, and my leveling assessments (to see those check out my Teacher's Pay Teachers page). Group 4 is always my lowest group. They get to start with me right away. This group often needs to do a lot of review. Many days, I stretch out their teacher group time to be able to get in the review. Group 1 is my highest group. They are often above grade level. While I still teach them the 4th grade common core, I assess them earlier than the other groups and we usually move on to above grade level concepts by the end of the unit. Groups 2 and 3 are my at and around grade level groups. They may need a day or two of review, but then they are ready to move on. Depending on the unit or common core standards one or both of these groups may need to review to get to 4th grade standards. After 10 to 20 minutes (depending on the schedule for the day, the students interest levels, and needs) we switch what they are working on. Hence the name for this section, rotations. I tell the students to, "rotate", or "rotation ____". I LOVE the way I have been teaching math for the past 2 years. I sort of fell into it. The school I was teaching at was closing and I was asked to go back to teaching elementary instead of middle school science. EEEkkkk was my first thought. I was going from teaching 1 subject all day long, back to teaching all the subjects. I did a lot of remembering back to my student teaching days (and even my own experiences in elementary) and regular old-fashioned research on the computer and I decided to use the workshop model for everything I teach.
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