UOI this week

We are getting ready to interview parents or grandparents. We have generated questions and are revising them to make them more open ended so they would invite more story telling.

Yesterday we talked about purpose, types, and procedures of interviews. I am very thankful to Ms. Helelyn, the anthropologist, for her suggestions and information. 

We still have to practice on each other how to interview and how to keep notes.

We will have a flashback to our previous unit about human body and health. We had hoped to have a nutritional specialist visit in October. With her busy schedule that was impossible. Now she has a bit more time and I thought that it's better to listen to her now than never. She already commented on the daily menu pictures that the students created and will come tomorrow to answer questions.

Today we spent two lessons looking at creative family time-lines and listening to family stories.

Thank you, parents, for your input.

Writing this week

Last week we collected ideas for personal narratives.

This week we are getting ready to write our best first draft.

On Monday we created story mountains to remember the important parts of the story.

Yesterday we practiced some different techniques to pay attention to the details.

After thinking trough the stories in the head, most of the students had a chance to tell their stories orally. 

Tomorrow and on Friday we will look at different personal narratives written by my former students and discuss what makes one narrative better than another.

Reading this week

This week we have continued learning about different reading strategies. We have spoken about making connections and this week the students are reading Patricia Polacco's books and other books related to personal stories and thinking about connections. On Friday or Monday they will mark a page in their reading journal that they believe is their best example of making connections while reading.

Tamsin helped me to make a poster to remember what kind of connections we can make.

During read aloud we have talked about another reading strategy that helps the reader to understand text. Readers often wonder and ask questions before, during and after reading a text. Sometimes it is like almost having a conversation with an author.

We have talked about the types of questions and where we could find answers.

I sometimes draw little sketches on the white board to illustrate the ideas. The students have got used to my little brain heads. They also understand that the speed affects the quality of sketches and handwriting. 

Math this week

We spend every day 10-15 minutes practicing mental math. First we speak about different ways to help us remember facts and then the kids can practice with dice, flash cards, or different games on I-Pad. We have set a goal that by the end of December everyone will know the basic addition facts automatically. This week we hope to see that they are able to get more facts done in 5 minutes than they did last week.

The larger math lesson (40-45) minutes we have spent learning models and vocabulary of lines and angles. We have followed the same routine for three mornings.

Watch and repeat.

Practice.

Play "Simon says."

Draw your own models and label them.

Practice on IXL

I have used the whole body and toy swords to help the children memorize the words. Some of the material is beyond third grade, but it will come handy when talking about 2-d shapes.

Tell me everything about your life

If anyone told me to tell everything about my life, I would have difficulties thinking of what to say and my answer could sound very much like a list of facts.

To avoid this situation in learning about family stories, we started making a list of questions that would invite others to tell us interesting and rich stories.

We decided that we could ask parents and grandparents about childhood, home, school, hobbies, favorite  things, pets, friends, free time, traditions, meeting a loved one and getting married, troubles, big events, and small happy moments.

Everyone wrote some possible questions and next week we will refine the collection.

Differentiating in math

Adjusting teaching and problems to meet the needs of the students doesn't necessarily mean coming up with different tasks and creating many different problems. It is possible to have the same type of problem and give the option of which numbers to use in the story problem, or the difference comes from the strategies that the students choose to use.

For example, the basic problem can sound like this:

Tom is reading a book. He has read ........ pages. He has ....... pages left.

How many pages are in Tom's book?

The student can choose which pair of numbers to use.

23     and      64 ( this would require knowledge of basic facts and place value)

57    and       39 ( this problem expects to understand the idea of regrouping)

234  and     182 ( this problem becomes a bit harder because of regrouping and larger numbers)

When a student has chosen the pair of numbers they have to solve the problem.

Tom is reading a book. He has read 57 pages. He has 39 pages left. How many pages are in Tom's book?

It is possible to solve this problem mentally, in a written form or with the help of base ten blocks.

Sometimes some students get discouraged when they see others using larger numbers or solving problems faster. Also there may be frustration when understanding doesn't come fast enough.

I quite often say something like this to encourage the kids: "This is something you don't know yet, but will learn. We just started to learn about it and you have made progress already. Remember when you couldn't ....., but now you can..... It's because you practiced. You will build on what you know, practice as much as needed, and you will learn. I will help you."

The word "yet" and stressing the importance of practice motivates them to try again and again. 

Sometimes some students already have more knowledge and skills to begin with and don't need very much practice to become confident in using new skills. 

Then it's possible to challenge them with asking for alternative possibilities to solve problems, ask what if.. questions, add steps to word problems, or let them create problems.

We will continue practicing basic facts, computation and solving word problems on regular basis.

This practice doesn't have to take up all the lesson time, so we can start exploring geometry concepts as well.

What do they have in common?

Here are some of the books that I have read out loud to the students. In each of these an author shares with us a memorable personal story.  Some stories are form one evening, some go over few days, some stretch over a long period of time, some have other stories as part of the big story. 

How and why did the author's choose what to write about?

We talked in class and decided that these moments and experiences must have been special and important for the writer to write about, that they included people, places, items, and feelings they wanted to remember and share. 

Then the students looked over their journal entries and marked three ideas from their elaborated lists.

They tried to think which special moments and experiences matter to them the most to remember, write and share.  

Next week we will spend more time looking at mentor texts, choosing, talking through and planning our stories. We want to envision the possibilities before we start writing the drafts.

Thank you for coming to the conferences

Thank you for coming to the conferences yesterday. Grade 3 had 100% families represented.

We talked today with the students how they felt about the experience. Most of them said that the best part was when they got to share their portfolio. Many liked to hear good things about themselves. Some said that they were a bit nervous. Some were a bit disappointed that they couldn't go to the specialists like they do in spring. I felt that we were a bit short of time, but overall I loved the excitement of kids sharing their reflections and parents being supportive and encouraging.


You can access the portfolios when you go to Evernote. For the students the sign in to Evernote is the same as their Gmail account.

Reading as a reader, reading as a writer

 

 This week I have read the three books you see on the picture aloud to kids during the snack time. They listened to the stories and responded in their journals. I will read some more stories and then they will choose their best response to share with me. Then we will work with these texts as we have done with others, looking at what we could  change and improve to make our thinking more clear to someone who read our writing. 

I used the same three books in our writing workshop.

Together with family stories in UOI we are learning about personal narratives in Literacy.

Personal Narratives are true stories based on the experiences from the writer's life.

Writers write from their heart about what matters the most.

Over the next five weeks we will inquire into:

• what makes a good personal narrative
• how to develop ideas
• how to organize the text
• ways to revise

We have learned already that writers often make lists to collect ideas. We revisited this strategy, because lists can lead to unexpected ideas, they give possibilities and can be viewed as places to begin thinking.
To write a good list you should think big and accept all ideas.

We have written simple list before. Now we wrote elaborated lists.
Three days, three books, three lists.
Each book that  you see on the picture gave us inspiration to write a different list.

Our next step is to spend time choosing the idea, exploring mentor texts, envisioning and planning before we write our first drafts.

What? How? Why.

Why do people tell family stories?

What could they tell about?

How could we find out more?

The posters above show what the students think now.

We will see how these posters change when we finish the unit.

On Monday we read...

...and talked how objects and photos can help in finding out more about family stories. 

I look forward to seeing pictures and hearing stories on Friday.

The family time-line sharing next Wednesday also promises interesting stories.

A guest teacher from grade 4

Lawrence from grade 4 asked whether he could demonstrate to our class what he had learned about volcanoes during his unit of inquiry. We gladly accepted that offer and curiously listened and watched what he showed. 

I find that it is wonderful when the learning doesn't stay hidden in the classroom but is demonstrated across grade levels. 

 

Math on the floor

When I went to school, I had to sit with a straight back and quietly listen to the teacher instruction and then carefully write in my journal. I couldn't even imagine that school could look different. Yet, now, as a teacher my math lessons look different. Quite often the learning happens on the floor. It's not that I don't  have  desks in the classroom. It's because the floor is more spacious to sit in a circle, use different manipulatives, and then see what others did and listen to how they explain their thinking.

Currently we are solving 2-and 3-digit addition and subtraction problems. Some simpler, some harder.

From the years of experience I have learned how important it is to take time and use hands-on materials to explore and explain concepts before writing with symbols and learning procedures.

So when you pass our classroom and see us on the floor, you can be assured that there is learning happening. Learning can be fun and challenging at the same time. 

New UOI

Ms. Helelyn, an anthropologist, came to our class to kick off our new unit of inquiry "Family Stories."

She read Patricia Polacco's The Keeping Quilt and this led us to talk about traditions, special food, and about things that are passed on from generation to generation.

An inquiry into 

Where we are in time and place

An inquiry into orientation in place and time; personal histories; homes and journeys; the discoveries, explorations and migrations of humankind; the relationships between and the interconnectedness of individuals and civilizations, from local and global perspectives.

Family stories

Central idea:

Personal and family stories provide an insight into cultural and personal identity.

Lines of inquiry:

·      Ways to find out and record about the past

·      How learning about the past generations helps to understand the relationship between the past and the present

·      Similarities and differences between generations within a family

 

Picnic

Thank you to mothers who came for a class coffee meeting yesterday. There was so much food that we had plenty to have a small class picnic today. It felt appropriate to read another Patricia Polacco's book.

Rereading

We have spoken about how readers activate their schema and during reading add to it or change it. Reading is as much of a process as writing. Readers are actively engaged with the text and are constantly developing their understanding. In writing we have several drafts. As readers we also draft and revise our comprehension. When we read a text for the first time, we usually try to keep track of what is going on, what is said.  We make connections and respond with feelings. To dig deeper readers sometime reread texts. If writers have spent time carefully choosing how to say and show what they wish, then the reader tries to almost translate the words back to find the meaning behind them. There is probably a reason why the author chose certain words, details, patterns or structures.
Yesterday we took some stories and poems that we were familiar with and reread them. We read to discover things we hadn't noticed before and came up with theories as to what might these things mean.