Of Power Suits and Purposeful Teaching

I started my teaching career a bazillion years ago in A________ Public Schools. I remember my first new teacher training: Hundreds of young, bright eyed teachers packed into a dimly lit warehouse somewhere in southeast Atlanta. We sipped tepid coffee as we listened to a woman in a yellow, heavily shoulder-padded suit  (aka: the late '80s "Working Girl" Power Suit) espouse the importance of daily lesson plans. "The most important part of your plan," she said, "is to show the Georgia Performance Standard that matches each activity. Only one standard per activity, please. Too many standards make it unclear to your principal what you are working on." In front of me sat a notebook the size of 5 telephone books, crammed full of these standards. Page after page after page. I felt panicked and confused. How would I ever figure out which standard went with which lesson? I mean, if I was teaching place value to 3rd graders, would that fall under

State Standard M2D1: Students will solve problems 

or

State Standard M2P3: Students will communicate mathematically?



There were also "highly suggested" activities for planning the actual lessons.  For example, when working on Place Value, we could choose from:

a workbook page with fill in the blank (aka "cloze" in teacherese) activities
a workbook page with multiple choice activities
a workbook page with true or false questions



Once I hit the classroom, I found several things to be true about lesson plans:

1. It was darn near impossible to match one activity with only one "standard". Don't get me wrong, matching standards with activities is a good thing. As a teacher, I always have goals in mind when working with children.  Personal goals, developmental goal, and yes, even state standards. But one activity usually meets a multitude of Performance Standards. Additionally, one activity might target different goals for different students.
2. While there is nothing wrong with a workbook page here and there, one size does not fit all. And, frankly, workbooks are pretty darn boring to me. No matter if it's filling in blanks or coloring in bubbles, I just wasn't that thrilled about using them.
3. Who the heck has time to write lesson plans that include every standard known to man??? I didn't get into this teaching gig to spend my days poring over a lesson planner. I wanted to actually spend time with my students. I wanted to plan fun, engaging activities that targeted the needs of each child. What I did not want to do was to spend my valuable planning time writing sorting through the Performance Standard manual searching. After a month or so, I knew what my kids knew, I knew what my kids didn't know, and I knew what I wanted to teach them.

 I won't bore you with the number of times I was called into the Principal's office (she also had a closet full of Power Suits...where do they buy those??).

 "Ms. Lockwood, there are 3 standards for this one lesson. One standard per lesson, please."
"Ms. Lockwood, writing the math problem in sand was not one of your choices for this standard."

and later:

"Ms. Lockwood, why have you not turned in lesson plans for the past two weeks?"


So began my downward spiral. First, I was written up for a "violation". Eventually, I was put on a "Professional Development Plan" for non-compliant teachers.  Ha! What a rebel I was!
The funny thing was, no one ever actually came to my room to observe whether or not I was teaching. But, boy howdy, were they serious about getting those lesson plans in to the front office on time.


So just imagine what A_________ Public Schools would think of one of our math lessons for this week.

Estimation Station

Noodles. One big jar, one small jar. The children made their initial guesses on Monday as to how many noodles were in each jar. We compared jars, explained our guesses. On Thursday, we reviewed the guesses. After hearing our friends' ideas, some of us adjusted our original guesses. Then we counted, starting with the large jar.

"How should we count?" I asked.
We had several suggestions: one at a time, 5 at a time, 10 at a time.
"How should we do this?"
Another student suggestion, "Give us each 10 noodles."
"Hmmm...if you each got 10 noodles, then how many noodles are in the jar?"
"50!"
"Do you think there are more than 50 or less than 50?"
"More! Way more!"
"Let's give everyone 10 more! Then everyone will have..."
"100!"
"Who wants to count out the first 10 noodles?"

and so on.

As we counted, the noodles, we adjusted our guesses again...and again. The student were so excited and involved, and we s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d the lesson out for so long that we didn't even get to the small jar this week.

So,as a nod to my former employer, I will share a few of the Georgia Performance Standards targets we were hitting during this time:


Building new mathematical knowledge through problem solving.
Solving problems that arise in mathematics and in other contexts.
Applying and adapting a variety of appropriate strategies to solve problems.
Monitoring and reflecting on the process of mathematical problem solving.
Organizing and consolidating their mathematical thinking through communication.
Creating and use representations to organize, record, and communicate mathematical ideas.
Representing numbers using a variety of models.
Understanding the relative magnitudes of numbers using 10 as a unit and 100 as a unit.
Using mental math strategies such as benchmark numbers to solve problems.
Estimating to determine if solutions are reasonable...............................................................

Wait, WAIT! Where are you going? I wasn't done yet! There are hundreds more standards happening in this lesson!

Fine, I won't continue. What I will tell you, though, is that there was a purpose to this activity. Actually, more than one. Waaaay more. And the purpose for one child was not the same for every other child. Want to know what we were looking for with your child? I'd be happy to answer that. Want to know what you can do at home to continue to build these skills? I can help you with that, too. Want to hear more about my vast knowledge of State Performance Standards? Well, we can go there, too...


 But for now, however, I will show you some other awesome activities that we did this week.

Writing in our journals:

Practicing spelling words:

and making self portraits:

We also got to hang out with these guys:

Cyclops

Eros

Uranus and Gaia

 To help you understand what we've been reading, here's a video about the creation of the world, Greek Myth style:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHNae-ym9Z4



We introduced the students to the different types of rocks, thanks to Bill Nye:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGfco7kNzJA


One of the coolest moments this week was when the students actually tied together the forming of the Earth, according to the Greeks, and the forming of rocks, according to, well, Bill Nye (wait, he didn't discover this?)


We spent some more time with this little fella during read aloud

Stuart Little

as we learned some cool nautical vocabulary terms (rigging, mast) and cheered him to a toy boat racing victory.


But the best thing about this week? NO YELLOW POWER SUITS WERE INVOLVED (though I really think Leslie would look good in one).


Have a great LONG weekend!

I'm feeling like I've won the classroom lottery.

Seriously, I've been teaching for 19 years and this was one of the smoothest 1st weeks I've ever had. Why? Your children, that's why. What an amazing crew! The self proclaimed "Dragons and Unicorns" crew have adapted to new faces, new routines and for some, a new school with ease.

And with a new school year, comes some old, familiar student questions:

"Ms. Amanda, when are we going to do school work?"
"Are we going to start doing math soon?" 
"Wow, do we always get to play so much at this school?" 

Yes, yes, we do. We love to play at Hirsch. But what these sweet young things don't realize is that the academics have already started. Shhhh...please don't tell, we don't want to ruin the fun by letting the kids know that they have actually been thinking and problem solving all week.

Here's an example...


Marble madness is a fairly simple visual thinking game. The children have a red cup and a blue cup. Red in right hand, blue in left. The person with the marble says a name, rolls a marble, and the receiving child traps the marble under the cup. To start, we used the red cup only with the left hand. Then the blue cup only with the right hand. Things got a bit more tricky when we used both cups, so you have to call the name of the person you are rolling it to and the cup color you want them to catch it with (later, we will add more than one marble to the mix, mwuahahaha!)

See? Simple game, right?

Not so fast, young Jedi.

Before we even started the game, we were already putting the kids to the problem solving test. We explained that we were going to play a game where we passed marbles to each other. "Where should we play this game?" we asked. A couple of students said we should do it right there at the table, but a couple of others felt like it would be too loud. So, they decided that we should sit in a circle on the carpet. There were some pretty big spaces between us, though, and the kids realized that the marbles would go all over the place if we didn't find a way to contain them. After a few minutes of deliberation, they plugged the holes with beanbags and stuffed animals.

So we were totally ready to play when...wait...my body is sticking out in the middle of the circle.
"Move back, Ms. Amanda!"
I scoot back and *ouch* hit my head on the table.
"Just sit under the table, Ms. Amanda."
But I didn't want to sit under the table; I wanted to be with the group. I asked them to help me find a solution. And after a frustrating 3 minutes or so, they figured it out. And by frustrating, I mean for them, not for Erin and me. We love this stuff. They just wanted to get to the game and couldn't figure out why this irritating teacher was making it so tough just to get the ball, er, marble, rolling. But the desire to play with the marbles kept them talking until...

"Let's move the tables! Then Ms. Amanda can fit in the circle!"

And with that, we were able to begin the Marble game.
This is how we roll (sorry) in the Dragons and Unicorns class. We make them think before the game even begins.



Other examples of thinking, problem solving, and good old fashioned academic skills we introduced this week:

• Mystery Box :(foundations of problem solving: using clues to solve a problem)

• Estimation station: (estimating, greater than/less than, adding and subtracting, base-10)

• Morning Work: (spelling, capitalization, calendar, time, data collection and analysis)

• Brown Bags: (comprehension, sequencing, making a pre-writing map) 

Spelling Treasure Hunt: Is it work or is it play?

Zoe spots it...

...and records it.

Parents, please, don't blow our cover. Let the kids think we played all week.

Next Week:

I will be starting Key Math and Word Reading Efficiency assessments. Please make sure your child gets a good night's sleep and a big breakfast each morning!

Look for reading logs to come home in a folder each night. I would like for each child to read for 20 uninterrupted minutes a night and keep a record of what they have read. I know it can be hard to find that long of uninterrupted time, but its really important for the children to have this time to build reading stamina.

We will have our first swimming day next Wednesday at the Decatur Dekalb YMCA. Carpool is from 8:45-9:00 at the YMCA.

 Next Thursday night, August 22, 7:00-8:30 is the Hirsch Parent Orientation. More details to come.