How 3rd Grade Celebrates Saint Patrick's Day the Academic Way!

It has been a busy couple of weeks in Glenolden School! The kids of Room 5 have really been buckling down lately in preparation for the state assessments (PSSA tests). St. Patrick's Day fell on a Monday this year and I wanted to surprise my students with something out of the ordinary...so I created holiday centers in honor of all things green and Irish! :)

Getting to school extra early on a Monday morning can be quite difficult, but I managed to get into my classroom with enough time to spare to setup all of the activities. I sprinkled gold glitter all over the tops of the desks. As students entered the room, they inquired about the glittery mess. I directed them to the white board which explained it all!

 

I wish I had a video of their reactions! They were equally surprised, anxiety-ridden, and grossed out! UNLUCKY DUST?!?!?!? What were they going to have to do to get their luck back??? Within five minutes of entering the room, my 3rd graders were ready for the challenge. 

In partnered groups, the students had four tasks to complete in order to "earn lucky charms and get their luck back". The four tasks included skills that we had been working on in class. I used this opportunity to partner up students based on their mastery of the skills. I grouped students that mostly mastered the skills with students that were still struggling to grasp certain concepts. The activities also allowed for my students to get some cooperative learning experiences. 

The four common core-aligned tasks included:

1.) Students read two passages about St. Patrick's Day celebrations in different parts of the USA. They were asked to compare/contrast using text-based evidence (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.3.9)

2.) After reading a passage about the Irish Potato Famine, the students identified the main idea and supported it with three key details from the text. (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.3.2)

3.) Without using a passage, students were given sentence strips with directions on how to make Irish potato candy to sequence using only the clues in context. (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.3.3)  

4.) Given four short video clips to watch, students were asked to fill in a graphic organizer using their schema and clues from the video in order to make logical inferences. (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.3.2)

 

Be sure to check out my TPT Store in the future for freebies from this lesson! They are not quite store ready just yet!!! 

Math Bulletin Board FREEBIE - Pizzas at a FRACTION of the cost! :)

We are less than a month away from our annual state testing and Room 5 has just concluded learning about fractional parts of objects. As a tie-in to our math curriculum, we designed a math bulletin board as a class. One of my extremely bright and creative students came up with our BB slogan.

Students chose pizza toppings and were given the amount of slices that their pie would include. They designed their pizza and came up with the fractional parts for each topping. I had them color the edge of a standard paper plate brown, gave them a traced circle to cut out on paper, a ruler to "cut" their pizza in the right amount of slices, and paper/tracers for the toppings that they chose. This whole project took approximately 30 minutes from start to finish. 

You can see pictures of the latest board and find a link for the fraction pizza FREEBIE HERE! 

Compare & Contrast Practice with my 3rd Graders

Hula hooping champion of the 4th grade...that's me! Why wouldn't I find a way to incorporate these hard colorful plastic rings of fun into my lesson on comparing and contrasting?! Before expecting my scholars to be able to dissect and analyze similarities and differences between two FULL text passages by the same author, I thought it would be good to break it down into more manageable chunks for my kids.

I intro'ed the skill to the whole class using the anchor chart below and by using the passages I created (that are available HERE) to model, guide, and eventually release the application of comparing and contrasting.

The steps listed gave the students an opportunity to covertly and overtly tackle this task. As soon as I would go to Step 2, students would immediately raise their hands. It is important to actually wait it out fora bit to teach them that "thinking" should take time. We will often put on our best "thinking faces" when getting to these "think" steps of any process. This also kind of forces them to stop and think before raising a hand to answer. By waiting it out, you also give the slower processing students what they need to work it out and feel successful before giving them the answers.

Using my Promethean board, I completed the "I DO" part of my teaching delivery (note the I DO, WE DO, YOU DO, & YOU DO sign next to the board) where I modeled and students gave me the 3 L's (look, listen, and learn). We then practiced the steps together in the "WE DO" stage. During this stage, it is SUPER DUPER important to make sure ALL students are working with you and not just sitting there picking their noses, playing with their shoelaces, or daydreaming of snow days ;). I made sure to color code my markings when working through the passages, to match the anchor charts and steps we referred back to so frequently.

Working in partners and small groups for the "YOU DO" stage, students used another short passage to fill out information in a life-sized Venn diagram. I walked around, giving immediate feedback, challenging my higher students, and helping my struggling students. I also grouped them so that I had stronger students mixed in with the students that would need help. I often find that students learn well when being coached by a same-aged peer. I guess they truly know their audience :). To answer your question, OF COURSE WE HAD A HULA HOOPING CONTEST once we finished our work! Haha! I absolutely lost my title of champ to a 9 year old student. 

After practicing this skill for two more days, I had students attempt to try one all by themselves (thus completing the last "YOU DO" stage). It was through this task that I was able to quickly assess them on their mastery of the skill. Based on the information given, I knew who had mastered it, who needed a little bit of review, and who needed small group or one-on-one help. Luckily, I only needed to pull two students out of twenty to point out a few minor mistakes. 

Be sure to visit my TPT STORE to check out the passages created solely for teaching the skill of comparing and contrasting!!!!! :) 

Happy Teaching, 

Mary ~ Teaching Takes the Cake

Keeping Warm with our Hot Cocoa Math and Literacy Centers

The holiday excitement has come and gone. We are back to our normal routine in room 5. With a new year, comes new centers for station rotations. I worked on creating winter-themed centers over holiday break that I could use interchangeably with any topic that we were covering.

Prior to the break and since returning, we have been focusing on learning how to determine main idea while recounting key details and explaining how they support the main idea (CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.3.2). The students have such a better handle on this skill now that we have practiced it together and in partners several times. We are now safely in the stage of "skill independence" and they are able to determine main idea and key details without the guidance of adult support. To reinforce the skills, I decided to use my newly created centers (which can be found in my TPT STORE).

Students get a hot cocoa mat, 5 marshmallows (or game pieces), and any task cards or flashcards based on the skill being reinforced. They take turns answering questions or completing tasks. If the task is completed correctly, they remove a game piece/devour a marshmallow. If their task is completed incorrectly, their turn is over. The first student to empty their hot cocoa mug is the winner.

I divided task cards relating to determining main idea and key details into plastic baggies. I put about 20-25 task cards  and a class list in each bag. Students place a check mark next to their names so that I am able to keep track of when and how many times they have practiced with certain skill card sets. Answer keys are also provided for students to self-check.

You can find these FREE mats and center directions in my STORE.

Gingerbread Celebration

During the weeks leading up to the winter holiday break, my class worked on putting together gingerbread themed reader's theaters. I presented mini-lessons on reading accuracy, expression, rate, and volume. We practiced our plays together through partner reads, group reads, and independent reads.

We invited other classes to watch our plays. During intermission, we handed out gingerbread cookies and gave students the opportunity to vote on our gingerbread houses.

Third grade had been working on multiplication and money in math class. To tie these concepts into our gingerbread celebration, we worked on compiling a list of items we could use to make a gingerbread house and what each item would cost. We worked on a "cost sheet" that listed all of the items by price. The students worked together to multiply the cost by the number of items that they would purchase. Below is an example of the activity. *** YOU CAN FIND THIS ITEM FOR FREE IN MY TPT STORE  <--- click here ***

The students used this list and a fake budget of $10.00 to order the items they wanted to use to make a gingerbread house. They were challenged to spend as close to $10.00 as they could without going over. During morning homeroom, students were able to purchase the items for their house. They used play money to buy the items and had to figure out the correct amount of change that they would get back in return. I was lucky enough to have brave adult volunteers to join us for the gingerbread house building session!

We displayed our gingerbread village in the main lobby for all to appreciate. During our plays, classes were invited to vote for their favorite gingerbread house.

The students seemed to really enjoy themselves and were able to stay focused during all of the excitement that the holiday season brings! :D

*This is not my original idea. This was an activity found and used by my colleagues*
Many of the originals and ideas can be found on the links below...
Ginger Village Panic
The Gingerbread Baby
The Runaway Gingerbread People

Unlocking the MAIN IDEA with KEY DETAILS

In preparation for my future gig as a DII coach in my district, I have been using my students as guinea pigs while I deliver lessons in strict DII fashion. I must say...it has never gone better! I have never had more skill mastery in any given year than I have now!!!

DII stands for Direct Interactive Instruction. Do not mistake it for the drill and kill of regular direct instruction. DII is anything but that. There is nothing groundbreaking or brand new about it. The easiest way I can explain it is that it takes every best practice we know about teaching and fits it into four quadrants that we should utilize during our allocated teaching time. As a teacher using DII, you are ensuring that you are giving all students what they need to meet the objective successfully. Below you will see some visuals used in determining MAIN IDEA and KEY DETAILS in Room 5. 

The first time I ever introduced this standard/objective, I placed the check next to step 2. I gave students the main idea using small text passages at first. They learned how to "unlock" the main idea by locating 2 key details that supported the main idea. The poster on the right side shows what I used to intro the lesson. Students helped me determine what key detail would fit the main idea "Dogs are wonderful pets".

The second time I reviewed this skill, I completed step 3 for students. They were able to use the key details to determine what the main idea of the informational passages was. They worked in partners to complete step 4. This is how I was able to make further plans for the future and was an informal observation I was able to use to measure my students' mastery of the skill.

As we made our way through the lesson, we continuously referred back to our lesson objective. I moved the objective down the poster as we transitioned into new expectations. At the conclusion of the lesson, I filled in a bar on the standard. This showed students that we weren't done talking about and practicing determining main idea and key details. The visual also seemed to help them feel less overwhelmed knowing that we would be going over it more in the future. 

Before expecting my students to be able to determine main idea and details all at once in long passages, I used shorter informational passages to practice the skill with them. I have made these passages available in my TPT store. For the first lesson, I already had the main idea box filled in. Students went through the passage, underlining the details. During the second attempt, I had the detail boxes filled in while they determined the main idea. 

With the additional passages I have, I will be creating a differentiated literacy center for my students to work in during our guided reading time. I plan on setting it up similar to the picture below. I will place the passages in a page protector sleeve. Students can use dry erase markers to locate information within the passage. After reading, they will have a graphic organizer to fill out (which I have also provided a picture of below). 

I can differentiate for students by giving them certain information already filled in, I can ask them for fewer or more details as I see fit, and I can partner students up to read the passages together in the center. 

I hope that you find this post helpful! Please check back for more goodies, tips, and freebies!

~Mary 

"Give it Two Weeks..."

What the heck does this have to do with teaching? Read on my friends...(too small to read? Click on the picture!)

In a classroom full of children, it is easy to forget that each child comes to the classroom with their own "Tank" kind of story. They may have just lost a loved one, fought with a best friend, found out that they are moving, happen to be new in the school, etc...While we all stress about test scores, student performance, and getting through all of the year's material - we must always remember that in order to reach our kids, we must first take the time to truly know them. In doing this, we may finally get that "3rd tennis ball moment" from them all! :D Happy teaching, colleagues!