End of the year: What have I Learned?

I started the year in a brand new grade and a brand new division. Before this I taught eight years of junior, going between grade four and five positions. This year I am teaching grade two.  My first impressions were, YIKES! I mean I didn't know if I could handle the younger grades. But here I still stand and it has been an amazing journey, with an amazing class.

Here are some things I have learned (I appologize if some may seem like duh moments):

1) primary students take longer to do work. I know this may not be shocking news but I don't think I was quite ready for this. I mean I prepared myself and I wrote plans to reflect this but it really didn't truly understand. Now this actually was a big blessing in disguise. It taught me the importance of going deeper and slower. Because of this my students and I worked through constructing sentences, writing paragraphs, indepth inquiry projects. Math concepts were developed at the students pace. This feeling is a lot different then junior or even intermediate where the need and rush to fit all the dense curriculum is a lot of pressure. 

2) teaching primary has allowed me to focus on inquiry and really developing a inquiry model in the classroom. As I mentions above students work at a slower pace but that doesn't mean they cannot do wonderful things. In fact it's a lot easie because they still have this curious engagement in all topics. Some how this is lost on their way to junior and I think we need to bring it back.  Inquiry has always been a big part of my teaching but this year I have really tried to allow the students to be a big part of the project design and questions.  I have been using provocations, students I wonder statements and trying to flip projects inside out so that we start with a question and develop our understanding through that question.  This is still a big work in progress so stay tuned.

3) even though they are young they are ready to be independent. One of the biggest pet peves of many junior teachers is that the students don't seem to be ready to be independant. They rely on the teacher for answers, not patient with problem solving or just are not ready for success.  I was also told by some that primary they cannot do certain things because they are young or small. Well I wanted something different and have tried to push these skills in grade two in hopes that they are ready for these junior years.  Guess what they can do it.  It took a lot of work and building with students but they are so capable of doing so much.

4) I think that all grades should have a primary mindset. Now I know that this gets harder as kids get older but the inquisitive spirit of a primary child is remarkable.  It's this spirit that we should be harnessing and using to teach our curriculum not the curriculum to teach our students. Now don't get me wrong, curriculum is still important and it's a great guide but that is all. We need to have more inquiry, where students are able to explore and develop understanding. By following this model I actually finished my curriculum ahead of the year and found that I had to give more challenges because the students needed it. If only all grades taught or allowed this to happen, think of the possibilities.

5) I actually like teaching primary, shhh!! I might ruin my image but it's been a lot of fun. The kids are great, they have come so far and it truly has been a lot of fun.

From this learning I have thought of three areas to work on next year:

1) more inquiry

2) more reflections and online portfolios

3) more parent connections and celebrations

What has been the best part of your year? What learning have you done? Love to hear it.

Watercraft week two

It is really week three but I am a little behind.  Just to recap, I gave my class a challenge to create a game for students to play within Minecraft. Our real hope was for them to actually program but it is taking us a lot longer then we originally thought so we are just having them create three worlds to showcase their learning of conservation of air and water. The first world is all about conservation, the second is on pollution and the third is a choice but must be on a water issue.  The project is in it's gaming phase (as I would like to call it). Students have completed their plan and are starting to make their plan a reality in the minecraft platform.

Here are some of my week two reflections:

1) students need to plan: I am all for creative play and working through problems but what I have been finding is that the students are way to excited about showing me what they can create that they really are not completing the task.  In the middle of the week I made sure that the students had a plan using their google documents. This is linked to iPads and can be checked regularly.  We are also using it to share information as the google doc allows us to write more information on the topic nd share the link. Planning also allows students to make goals and reach them. It allows them to self regulate and check their progress.

2) students are highly creative moreso then what the game may allow them.  We have had to have a lot of conversation as students thoughts cannot be easily translated in the game. For insistence, some students want to create pollution in the water, this is really hard in the game but my students used chickens and had them floating. Now if I didn't talk to them all I would see was chickens. The dialogue that we have had is the key to seeing their understanding.

Also students have a great mind to create things. The thinking that they have done with this project is truly remarkable. Take a look, this is a sink: 

3) this is a longer process then I originally thought: we originally planned three weeks for the project but it has taken the students a lot longer than this. Now this could be we didn't have a solid plan, they are in grade two, or it really takes this long. 

4) as always you the teacher are very important in this educational process. I know I have said this before but as a teacher, even though the kids are exploring, it is our job to guide and direct. I am constantly asking questions about what they are doing, why and how it works. You are redirecting were needed and assisting them when they need it too. This has help with the process and keeps the project moving.

Overall, I know many of studied the impact that gamification has on students but from our two weeks on it, I am sold. This is because it has taught my students problem solving skills, it links many strands together, it gives voice, formative assessment is automatically built in and it's a lot of fun. 

Stay tune for more reflections.

Geometry

I started this blog to talk about the things I did in my classroom but it has turned into more of ramblings on education; however, this blog post I want to focus on some things that I have been doing in the classroom with my grade twos.  

As I have stated before, I predominately teach through inquiry and problem based learning especially in math.  Rarely, if at all, will you find me lecturing, I just don't think kids want to hear me ramble or that they are really listening. Instead I try to facilitate discussion through activities, problems, projects and carefully planned questions.  However, there are still some subject areas that I have trouble with, geometry is one of them.  The reason I struggle with this is it's sometimes really hard to come up with a context or a problem that allows students to explore the concepts that you are teaching. Not only this, but there is a lot of vocabulary, or social constructs as I like to coin it, that students just need to learn (e.g. The name of a four sided shape is a quadrilateral). Moving to primary has allowed me to shift my thinking nd find more ways to explore these concepts.  I have had to revisit many of my favourite resources, like VanDeWalle, Marilyn Burns and Fosnot. VanDeWalle has an amazing learning progression for geometry in his book.

Here are some of my activities: 

1) concept attainment: yes and no categories

For this activity, I had a bunch of 3D figures or shapes for students to see. I placed one object in the yes and then another in the no. I would then have the students discuss what they think is happening.  I would then place another object in the yes and no category.  Once this was done we would discuss and then I sent them off to try and figure out my rule or concept I was trying to get them to see.  This was great for teaching terms like parallel, shape names (quadrilateral, triangle, prism, pyramid), etcetera.

2) 4 triangle problem: 

This problem is in numerous resources but I found it in Mariyln Burns book.  For this problem, I gave my students four equilateral triangles and told them they had to make as many different shapes as possible. They then had to organize there shapes.  This was really good for teaching shape names and other various properties.

3) property hunt:

This activity is one that I traditionally do as it lends itself to exploring the various shapes and figures.  For this activity I have the shapes or figures out and the students just try to find as many properties as they can. Normally, I would tell my students what properties they would be looking for or at least brain storm ideas from them.  However, this year I just let them search.  This often would generate lots of questions, which I would then stop the class and have mini congresses ( debriefing).  This would then lead to more questions, exploration and so on.  This change has really opened up my students understanding and has helped me see what the students actually understand versus what they have absorbed.  

4) Make a figure: 

This particular activity is used for 3D figures but possibly could be modified for 2D shapes.  For this activity I gave my students various shapes and asked them to find what figure they made.  This actually generated some really cool discussions around prisms an d pyramids.

For me inquiry is the best way of teaching but it does have some problems here or there.  I hope that these are useful ideas.  If you have any great lessons you love, please share; would love to hear them.

Patterning in grade two

Today was our first formal lesson in patterning.  What I mean by that is we have been discussing patterns but more in the context of number sense, where we have been learning to count by twos, fives and tens, as well as, doubling numbers. This type of talk has been focused on the magnitude of numbers and associated with place value not so much on growing and shrinking of patterns.

So today we started with a problem that was asking the students to sort eight sets of (patterns and none-patterns) into two categories, a yes it is a pattern and a no it is not a pattern. I have attached the patterns down below.

It was very interesting conversation around this. At first the students put only the repeating patterns in the yes category stating that for it tone a pattern then it had to repeat. I had to remind them about the book we read called patterns big and small. In this book they had a set of nesting dolls, I'm asked the kids did that pattern repeat? After that discussion the kids where better off explaining their reasons for their groupings.

I really liked this question because it made the students really think about what a pattern is and what attributes are needed to make a pattern. They obviously had worked with patterns in grade one but mainly with repeating patterns, which is why they at first they only made piles with repeating numbers.  The non-patterns are also helpful because they can assist us with thinking about what attributes a pattern doesn't have and therefore in the end has.

Today we are going to be working on the justifying of their answers and then coming up with a definition of what a pattern is and is not.  If your grade two or any grade for that matter I highly recommend this type of problem for your class.

For the patterns we used click on this link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/okxkmomlckfu758/Is%20this%20a%20pattern.docx

 

Making conjectures and proving them

In grade two we have been exploring the concept of doubles and what is a double. It's an interesting concept because we probably assume that by grade two students should know what a double is and why it is called a double, but that was not so. Oh of course, all of the kids could count by twos, but when asked what makes a double all I got was blank stares.  With this in mind we went through some problems exploring whAt a double is.  We started with the story of Madeline, see previous post, and then moved to a discussion about where we have seen a double before.

Today, the class looked at pairs of shoes.  The problem was if each person in your house had one pair of shoes in the front hallway, how many pairs would you have and how many individual shoes would you have?

Most of the students drew out the people and then the shoes, they then counted by ones or twos to get the individual shoes. This alone is a good math problem but I decided to take it a step forward. I asked them to look at their results and make theory, so that I could figure out how many shoes I would have for any number of people?  Once they made a theory they had to test t out to make sure it was true.

I was amazed at how many of the students looked puzzled. It was almost like I asked them to fly to the moon. I am amazed every year at how students struggle with thinking. We often say that's we are teaching 21st century skills but are we really?

As I look at what my students eventually did I think how they are starting to become real mathematicians. Sure I could have told them the rule was the amount of people doubled would give you the individual shoes because each person has two shoes or mode the rule with pictures, t-charts and then follow up with a question like, "what pattern do you see?" or i could count the shoes with the kids, but then would my students have learned?

By doing this, this way, I have allowed my students to make their own theories and thentestthem out and prove them to the mathematical community. They have thought about the process, they have looked at the numbers in relation to the context and the math became real.

So I ask you, what are you doing to make your students think?

Madeline

Madeline Math Problem

This was a really cool problem.  The kids read the story of Madeline and we discussed all of the math problems in it.  After closely looking at the story the kids saw that the girls always walked in two rows.  We had a discussion about how many kids that was and how they knew.  I then had them go back to their seats and work on this problem:

1) Suppose that there was 7 kids in a row, how many would their be altogether?

2) What if there was 8 kids in a row, how many would their be altogether?

3) What is there was 23 kids in a row, how many would their be althogether?

Here is what the kids said:

Dot Plates

It has been an amazing experience working with Dot Plates.  Such a simple exercise but what rich discussion we had.  In this simple exercise my students learned about subitizing, counting on and one to one tagging.  They also learned that numbers are made up of other numbers and that there are parts to numbers.  This is the foundation for addition and subtraction.  If you want to create your own dot plates all you need are simple 35 paper plates and bingo dabbers.  The patterns are simple here is a youtube video to follow:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POSgVl07Go0.   Our next move is to play a game called part-whole Bingo. I'll fill you in on how that goes in my next blog.