Tag: teaching

Book of the Week: Stickeen

Every Monday, I highlight a book from our school bookroom along with lesson plan suggestions.

Stickeen, by John Muir, as retold by Donnell Rubay

John Muir was a pretty neat guy. This book is told as narrative nonfiction, from John Muir’s point of view. I believe it’s taken right from his journals, but retold by Rubay. This would make an excellent mentor text for a biography unit, particularly for talking about what makes a story narrative nonfiction. (It’s told in such a way that it has a plot, just like a fiction story.)

If your students are working on biographies, there are a TON of great biographies at many different levels in the Benchmark series. Log in to www.librarything.com and look for the tag of “biographies.”

There are also several good book titles at the back of the book for further reading.

John Muir started the Sierra Club, which has a bunch of biographical information at its website.

You can learn more about Muir’s hometown of Dunbar, in Scotland, here. If you want pictures of Dunbar, contact me and let me know. It was one of my favorite places that I visited in Scotland.

Stickeen comes with a pretty high-level lesson about inferences, figurative language, and similes. Please leave this lesson in the book bag, as it is the master copy. The lesson suggests pairing the book with Old Yeller or Where the Red Fern Grows. Both of those books are former SFA books, so 4th and 5th teachers should have 4-5 copies in each classroom if you wanted to use them in a shared reading.

There is a CAFE menu included with this mentor text, and I’ve highlighted these as suggestions:

Comprehension

  • Predict what will happen; use text to confirm. It would be interesting to see if students think that Stickeen will start out being John Muir’s best friend — so many books are written with canine pals, that this might be the case. If they do think they will start off with a strong bond, question them throughout the text as to how their prediction might shift or change.
  • Recognize literary elements (plot, setting, theme). As mentioned above, because this is a narrative nonfiction, it can still be used to discuss the importance of plot and setting. Additionally, the included lesson plan touches on the theme of determination.

Fluency

  • Adjust and apply different reading rates to match text. Although students are often advised to read fact-heavy nonfiction books in second gear (1st gear: memorizing, 2nd gear: absorbing facts, 3rd gear: reading as fast as one would speak, 4th gear: skimming), you could talk with your students about why it matches the narrative flow of the book to read it in 3rd gear, but to make sure to stop frequently to check for understanding.

Please add any lessons or supplemental materials to the book bag so future teachers can utilize your good thinking!

Comments and constructive feedback are always welcomed. Please let me know if these lessons were useful in your class!

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Stickeen

Every Monday, I highlight a book from our school bookroom along with lesson plan suggestions.

Stickeen, by John Muir, as retold by Donnell Rubay

John Muir was a pretty neat guy. This book is told as narrative nonfiction, from John Muir’s point of view. I believe it’s taken right from his journals, but retold by Rubay. This would make an excellent mentor text for a biography unit, particularly for talking about what makes a story narrative nonfiction. (It’s told in such a way that it has a plot, just like a fiction story.)

If your students are working on biographies, there are a TON of great biographies at many different levels in the Benchmark series. Log in to www.librarything.com and look for the tag of “biographies.”

There are also several good book titles at the back of the book for further reading.

John Muir started the Sierra Club, which has a bunch of biographical information at its website.

You can learn more about Muir’s hometown of Dunbar, in Scotland, here. If you want pictures of Dunbar, contact me and let me know. It was one of my favorite places that I visited in Scotland.

Stickeen comes with a pretty high-level lesson about inferences, figurative language, and similes. Please leave this lesson in the book bag, as it is the master copy. The lesson suggests pairing the book with Old Yeller or Where the Red Fern Grows. Both of those books are former SFA books, so 4th and 5th teachers should have 4-5 copies in each classroom if you wanted to use them in a shared reading.

There is a CAFE menu included with this mentor text, and I’ve highlighted these as suggestions:

Comprehension

  • Predict what will happen; use text to confirm. It would be interesting to see if students think that Stickeen will start out being John Muir’s best friend — so many books are written with canine pals, that this might be the case. If they do think they will start off with a strong bond, question them throughout the text as to how their prediction might shift or change.
  • Recognize literary elements (plot, setting, theme). As mentioned above, because this is a narrative nonfiction, it can still be used to discuss the importance of plot and setting. Additionally, the included lesson plan touches on the theme of determination.

Fluency

  • Adjust and apply different reading rates to match text. Although students are often advised to read fact-heavy nonfiction books in second gear (1st gear: memorizing, 2nd gear: absorbing facts, 3rd gear: reading as fast as one would speak, 4th gear: skimming), you could talk with your students about why it matches the narrative flow of the book to read it in 3rd gear, but to make sure to stop frequently to check for understanding.

Please add any lessons or supplemental materials to the book bag so future teachers can utilize your good thinking!

Comments and constructive feedback are always welcomed. Please let me know if these lessons were useful in your class!

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New Books for our Classroom Library

I’ll admit that I’ve neglected our classroom library as I’ve been chipping away at all the books that need to be processed for the school bookroom. But the boxes of unused books are just killing me, and so I decided I’d spend a good chunk of time this weekend knocking some of these books out.

This is usually my home base when I process books. I use Toby’s iMac instead of my laptop because I scrunch over less. Plus, I can queue for random dungeons in World of Warcraft.

Stack of books and book pockets. And WOW hidden behind GoodReads.

I try to add books to our library as soon as I receive them, but lately we’ve added a ton of new books. You can see I also enjoy eating pizza and drinking fizzy water while I work.

Books from Wildwood, Mrs. Burn, and Ms. Willard

This doesn’t even really put a dent in all the books I need to go through. My parents are still sending me old books from my childhood.

OMG BOOKS!!! (and my math frameworks binders... I TOLD you I didn't lose them, Ms. Stock!)

After I’ve entered the books into LibraryThing, figured out their AR levels, and made sure they have book pockets and book cards, I set them out in the hallway to be whisked away to school.

Sound book to send back to the science center, books with no AR level, books that need AR tape.

I’m looking to go into Wildwood tomorrow to spruce up our classroom and get these books into book boxes so students can check them out first thing Tuesday morning.

Remember that tomorrow is really supposed to be a day “ON,” rather than a day off, so consider participating in a local service project. I’ll be serving in a public elementary school classroom, and you should totally join me! :) Oh, speaking of public schools, did you notice the Glee folks thanked public school teachers in their acceptance speech?

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Flicker Flash

Every Monday, I highlight a book from our school bookroom along with lesson plan suggestions.

Flicker Flash, by Joan Bransfield Graham

We have two copies of this mentor text, so this would be a great book for a team to take on! You can find the bag in the red poetry bucket in the bookroom.

Shape poems are covered pretty extensively in children’s literature. If you use this text, you might also want to check out Love that Dog by Sharon Creech and A Curious Collection of Cats by Betsy Franco.

What’s neat about these poems is that they fill a niche in children’s poetry. They’re not too adorable or rhyme-y, but they’re not completely silly or gut-busting. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to scan in a page from the book because of copyright permissions, so you’ll need to trust me.

If you’re reading the Battle of the Books book The Maze of Bones, chances are you’ve been learning about Ben Franklin to build up your background knowledge. There’s a great poem called “Lightning Bolt” that would be a perfect starting place for a conversation about the myth of Ben Franklin, the kite, and the key.

There is a CAFE menu included with this mentor text, and I’ve highlighted these as suggestions:

Accuracy

  • Blend sounds; stretch and reread. There are tons of digraphs and blends in the poems. Copying a page or two of these poems would make a great shared reading to pull apart and highlight.
  • Trade a word / guess a word that makes sense. Rhyming texts are a great place to start encouraging students to make informed guesses as to what a sensible word could be.

Expand Vocabulary

  • Use pictures, illustrations, and diagrams. If you’re not sure what’s going on in the poem, chances are, the shape of the poem itself will help students figure it out.
  • Use prior knowledge and context to predict and confirm meaning. If your science kit deals with light, the seasons, or space, you might want to use this to link your science lesson to your literacy block.

Please add any lessons or supplemental materials to the book bag so future teachers can utilize your good thinking!

Comments and constructive criticism are always welcomed! Please leave a comment if you’ve found this helpful!

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So, You Want to Start a Math Team: Planning Ahead

Read other entries in this series here:

Part 1: Thinking it Through
Part 2: Planning Ahead

After much soul-searching and schedule-finagling, you’ve decided that a math team is in your future. Huzzah! Before you start bringing in the students, you’ll want to make sure you’re fast friends with your school’s office manager, who is usually in charge of updating the school’s event calendar. This will save you a ton of time because the front office will be able to field many parent questions without needing to contact you personally. I’ve laid out a plan of attack aligned with the school year so you don’t feel like everything needs to be done at once.

When should I start my math team?

You can start your team at any time during the year, but it helps if you start it after a schoolwide event like a concert or an open house. That way, you can have a math team sign up table where you can answer family questions and promote your awesome program!

School Year Guide to Math Team
This plan assumes you will start your math team meetings in mid-September. It can be modified to suit your needs. This plan also assumes your school is in Western Washington, and includes local and regional math competitions.

July / August

  • Reserve the classroom space for your team. Fill out necessary site paperwork.
  • Print up and fill out activity permission forms. You might want to add additional information to the standard permission slip — we add teacher’s name, grade, and e-mail address. When we had bus transportation available, we asked if students were bussers.
  • Ask your school’s webmaster to post a blurb about your school’s math team on the school website.
  • Give your school’s office manager a tentative calendar for math team meetings and events. If you don’t know the specific date of a competition, for example, make sure the event says “tentative weekend for Snowball Math Jam” or something similar.
  • Extra credit: Contact the school district’s public relations representative to see how you can get in touch with them if your students are doing something exciting or noteworthy.

September

  • Find out when your school’s open house or orientation nights are. Make a sweet Math Team sign (you might want to invest in a long-lasting vinyl one — these can be useful in helping parents find their students at a crowded math team competition), and have a table with information, permission slips, and a calendar of events.
  • Decide if you want to have a separate Math Team parent night to provide additional information. Ours wasn’t terribly well-attended, but it was helpful because then families couldn’t make excuses like, “Oh, I didn’t realize I needed to pick up my student…”
  • Speaking of which, talk with administration about what your school’s policy is when students’ rides don’t pick them up on time. If more than one person is in charge of your team, figure out a system for who will stay late with students.
  • Have your first Math Team meeting! Your first meeting will probably focus on expectations and include a math-y ice breaker.
  • If you’re a Title One school, contact the Title One coordinator to see if you can have snacks provided for your after school program.
  • Extra credit: Contact Blue Highway Games and plan a school game night. Talk with your PTA to see if part of the proceeds can go directly to math team.

October

  • Congratulate yourself on starting a math team!
  • Make sure you have all students’ information organized, probably in a binder.
  • Decide if you want to have an Excel document with students’ information. This can be helpful when it comes time to send home flyers, to see who’s been coming most often, and to figure out how many bus riders you have.
  • Extra credit: Design a sweet T-shirt. If you’re a uniform school, see if you can get the shirts approved as uniform.

November

  • Decide if you’re going to go to any winter competitions. If so, print up permission forms and field trip request forms. School administrators usually need to approve events 20 days prior.
  • Print up sample tests and other materials if you choose to compete this winter.
  • If your team is using merit badges, have a merit badge ceremony and consider displaying the badges publicly so other students might ask to get involved.

December

  • The Thomas Jefferson Winter Middle School math competition is usually the first or second week in December.
  • In 2010, Green Gables Elementary School had its first Snowball Math Jam for elementary schools in Federal Way. Keep your fingers crossed that it will happen again next year!
  • Consider an end-of-the-year celebration.
  • Have the principal read an announcement highlighting all the fun that’s been going on at math team, and encourage new students to sign up to join after winter break.

January

  • Organize any new student information.
  • Review expectations and possibly have another ice breaker at your first meeting of the year.
  • Print materials for Math is Cool competition. The old tests from Math is Cool are good preparation for pretty much any math competition.
  • The Mt. Rainier Math Invitational is usually the last week of the month.

February

  • Make sure you’re balancing out competition preparation with fun activities to keep students excited about math team!
  • Consider joining the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics. Their Teaching Children Mathematics publication has great activity ideas for math team.
  • If your school has 6th graders, the Math is Cool 6th Grade Championships are held in the middle of the month.
  • Extra credit: Find out when your school’s track team is planning on having practice. Some of your students may want to do both track and math team. How will you accommodate for that?

March

  • The Math is Cool 5th Grade Championships are held in the middle of the month.
  • Track teams often start practices this month.

April

  • If you’re in Federal Way, sign up for Wildwood’s spring math competition!
  • Join us the last Friday in April for our competition.
  • The Math is Cool 4th Grade Championships are held in the middle of this month. Decide if you want to send 3rd graders to this competition as well.
  • Several competitions are at the beginning of May, so you will probably want to print out permission slips for the May competitions this month.

May

  • Find out if your school has an end-of-the-year awards ceremony. Ask if math team can be included. If the office staff is in charge of making awards, make sure all members’ names are spelled correctly and that you’ve made your requests as clear as possible. Provide a sample award, if possible.
  • The Seahurst Elementary Math Bonanza is held in early May after school at Seahurst Elementary School in Burien.
  • The Middle School Math Olympiad is held in early May at Marvista Elementary School in Normandy Park.

June

  • Celebrate your students’ hard work! We’ve started a S’Mores party tradition, and we hand out paper plate awards for students who’ve been with us all year.
  • Make sure all your math team information is organized so you won’t need to hunt for materials in the fall.
  • Extra credit: Take a few minutes to reflect on what worked well this year and what you need to tweak for next year.

Hopefully this list is helpful rather than overwhelming. Many thanks to Tom Clymer, who has a bunch of great information on his Math Club’s page. Month icons from Trixinity.

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Book of the Week: Up North at the Cabin

Every Monday, I highlight a book from our school bookroom along with lesson plan suggestions.

Up North at the Cabin, by Marsha Wilson Chall

This book is a featured text in Strategies that Work by Anne Goudvis and Stephanie Harvey. There are several copies available for checkout in room 301 if you’d like to see detailed lesson plans around this book. If I’m feeling particularly energetic, I’ll see if I can copy the passage from Strategies that Work and add it to the book bag.

You can find a copy of this mentor text in the red “realistic fiction” bucket in the bookroom.

If you’re introducing your students to Caldecott winners, a good companion for this book might be Robert McCloskey’s Time of Wonder, which is about a child’s summer in Maine. (read the New York Times’ obituary of McCloskey here)

There is a CAFE menu included with this mentor text, and I’ve highlighted these as suggestions:

Comprehension

  • Make a picture or mental image. There’s a lesson plan on visualization included in the book bag. Please return it, as this is the master copy.
  • Compare and contrast within and between text. This would be a good time to introduce Time of Wonder, mentioned above. For contrast, you might want to try The Snowy Day, which takes place in an urban setting during the opposite season, and is perhaps a familiar text for students already.

Behaviors that Support Reading

  • Increase stamina. This book works fine when broken into chunks, so it would be a nice fit for a lesson at the beginning of the year (or right after a break!) when you need to shorten your whole group lessons.

Please add any lessons or supplemental materials to the book bag so future teachers can utilize your good thinking!

Comments and constructive criticism are always welcomed! Please leave a comment if you’ve found this helpful!

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Up North at the Cabin

Every Monday, I highlight a book from our school bookroom along with lesson plan suggestions.

Up North at the Cabin, by Marsha Wilson Chall

This book is a featured text in Strategies that Work by Anne Goudvis and Stephanie Harvey. There are several copies available for checkout in room 301 if you’d like to see detailed lesson plans around this book. If I’m feeling particularly energetic, I’ll see if I can copy the passage from Strategies that Work and add it to the book bag.

You can find a copy of this mentor text in the red “realistic fiction” bucket in the bookroom.

If you’re introducing your students to Caldecott winners, a good companion for this book might be Robert McCloskey’s Time of Wonder, which is about a child’s summer in Maine. (read the New York Times’ obituary of McCloskey here)

There is a CAFE menu included with this mentor text, and I’ve highlighted these as suggestions:

Comprehension

  • Make a picture or mental image. There’s a lesson plan on visualization included in the book bag. Please return it, as this is the master copy.
  • Compare and contrast within and between text. This would be a good time to introduce Time of Wonder, mentioned above. For contrast, you might want to try The Snowy Day, which takes place in an urban setting during the opposite season, and is perhaps a familiar text for students already.

Behaviors that Support Reading

  • Increase stamina. This book works fine when broken into chunks, so it would be a nice fit for a lesson at the beginning of the year (or right after a break!) when you need to shorten your whole group lessons.

Please add any lessons or supplemental materials to the book bag so future teachers can utilize your good thinking!

Comments and constructive criticism are always welcomed! Please leave a comment if you’ve found this helpful!

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Book of the Week: Jalapeno Bagels

Every Monday, I highlight a book from our school bookroom along with lesson plan suggestions.

Jalapeno Bagels. By Natasha Wing

You can find a copy of this book in the red Multicultural Fiction bucket in the bookroom.

No lesson plans are included with the book, but if you visit this site and click “Lesson Overview,” Kathryn Felten shares her ideas.

Learn more about the author at her Web site. You can even set up a Skype conversation with her!

If you’d like to see some vocabulary and comprehension PowerPoint presentations related to Jalapeno Bagels, check out this site.

If you’d like to study the vocabulary in this book, a virtual stack of flashcards is available here.

There is a CAFE menu included with this mentor text, and I’ve highlighted these as suggestions:

Comprehension

  • Use prior knowledge to connect with the text. I have decidedly mixed feelings about this book. I like that it highlights a multiracial family based on an actual family in California. But I don’t know how I feel about some pieces that could be seen as caricatures or stereotypes (Does the Jewish Dad really need to wear owlish glasses and have full facial hair?). Wildwood has a pretty significant Hispanic population. I think it’d be interesting to see how our students feel about the portrayal of the Mom. Are they pumped because a Mexican-American family is featured? Or do they find the depth of the characters lacking? What are their experiences?
  • Summarize text, include sequence of main events. This book is short and simple enough that it would be a good resource for a lesson explaining the differences between retelling and summarizing.

Expand Vocabulary

  • Use dictionaries, thesauruses and glossaries as tools. Jalapeno Bagels has a multilingual glossary in the back. Talk with students about the fact that fiction books that contain multicultural or international components often contain supplemental material in the back. This could be particularly useful for intermediate students who have gotten out of the habit of doing picture walks before reading.

Comments and constructive feedback are always welcomed. Please let me know if these lessons were useful in your class!

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