Fantasy Fun!

I absolutely LOVE teaching literacy! I absolutely LOVE the workshop model of instruction. I also LOVE how easily it lends itself to personalized learning! Students have so much "voice and choice" on book selection and application of skills. You can really drill down to exactly what each student/group needs through individual conferences or strategy groups! Bottom line...workshop is the BEST!

In our district, we are fortunate to be a Teacher's College district. We follow and utilize their Units of Study for reading and writing workshop. We even got to experience "Home Grown Institutes" as professional development in reading and writing over the last 2 summers! We truly are blessed to be in our district!

This year, Kate and I have been really reflective on the order that we teach units and are always looking for ways to connect different subjects to get the most "bang for our buck" in whole group instruction! We have rearranged some of the units to better meet our kids' needs. One of these rearrangements included my absolute favorite genre: FANTASY! 

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During our reflections on the needs/interests of our kiddos, we decided to move up our fantasy unit. This rearrangement allowed us to align our historical fiction units with social studies. We also decided to incorporate the Fantasy Writing unit from the "If...Then..." book in the Unit of Study kit.

We planned out a joint unit together that "married" the two subjects in a Google Doc. We pulled some lessons from reading and put them in writing, and vice versa! We linked all of the tools that we created right into the document, so the members of our 5th grade team, Special Ed, and ELL could all have access to the materials.

Then...it was time to launch! I cannot even begin to describe the excitement in our room when we shared the upcoming unit with our kids. Even our kiddos that were a little apprehensive about the fantasy genre were buzzing with excitement! We began our unit launch by taking our kids on a "book tour."

Click to see the full tour in a Google Presentation

We compiled different series that would meet the wide range of needs in our space! We have kiddos reading from Level N to Level Z! We introduced each of the 15 series to our kids in whole group. We did leave it open to suggestion from our kiddos, as well! The students took notes in their reader's notebooks about series that interested them while we "toured." We talked about difficulty, appropriateness, and motivation to try harder books! We also discussed the different challenges that the fantasy genre can bring (made up words, confusion at the beginning as characters try to figure things out, etc.). This allowed them to make the best decision possible for themselves as a reader.

Then...we voted!! We used Google Forms. Kids needed to vote on their top 3 choices. They were guaranteed one of their top three.

Click to see the full Google Form

We LOVE using Google Forms for things like this, because it gives you the results in a spreadsheet that is easy to manipulate and work with. The best part....all of our kids made great book choices for themselves AND everyone got one of their top 3 choices!

We are now 2 weeks into the unit and everyone is LOVING IT (even our reluctant fantasy readers!) Kids are given 15 minutes a day for their book club discussions and 30 minutes a day for independent choice time. We, as teachers, meet with our lowest readers within their chosen groups daily. We meet with all other students twice a week. The thinking they are doing, the discussions they are having, and the connections they are making are blowing us away! There are a few groups that are having far more sophisticated conversations than my adult book club!

Our next stop...fantasy stories in WRITING WORKSHOP! Check it out to see how we are incorporating the great tool StoryJumper as a choice in publication!

Have you taught fantasy yet? What things worked well for you? Didn't go well? Feel free to sound off below!

~ Angela :)

Front Row Math

Front Row Math came to me by accident...It was 8:35am, ten minutes before the morning bell was going to ring, and I was having a conversation with a 3rd grade colleague about a variety of things. Somehow, within our conversation, she mentioned Front Row Math and assumed I knew of the resource. I had never heard of it before so I asked for a little more information...she quickly showed me how she's using it in her classroom and I immediately knew I wanted to give it a try in our math workshop. Did I mention the bell was ringing in ten minutes? In a matter of minutes I signed up our class, received our class code, and decided that day would be a GREAT day to introduce Front Row to students during seminar time.

For those of you, like me, that know nothing about this free resource, Front Row provides targeted individual math practice. The students take pretests for each math domain and a baseline is set for each math strand. From there students can choose a domain and work on adaptive practice based on their level, or teachers can assign practice based on the current math unit of study. Front Row isolates skills and builds on students' strengths. The questions posed help them improve in a given strand.

Front Row can be used on an iPad or on the Web. Our students use Chromebooks and we have not had any difficulties up to this point. There are a variety of tools to help the students problem solve:
- videos to support their learning
- questions can be read aloud to them
- online, virtual manipulatives can be used to help them solve
- scratch paper is available

Wondering how this fits into Math Workshop? 
- Independent practice during "May Do" time
- Small group seminar work- groups can be created that allows you to target specific standards with a small group of children
- Assigned homework

We've been utilizing Front Row Math for several months now and it's been a great addition to our workshop! Check out this amazing, free resource! 

~ Kate

Genius Hour is Back!

We are always looking for ways to bring more inquiry into our classroom. We dabbled with Genius Hour at the end of the 13-14 school year, but this week we'll be incorporating into our schedule on a weekly basis.

Genius Hour is based on Google's willingness to allow their engineers to spend 20% of their time working on something that interests them. Pinterest, and the internet in general, is filled with Genius Hour ideas, but Runde's Room is a site I found to be SUPER helpful. Her ideas motivated me to get this up and running on a weekly basis. She has links to fantastic PDF's that I will be using to introduce the project. Check out her site below!
For one hour each week our students will be given time to explore, research, and learn about something they're passionate about. Our goal is to bring creativity and more inquiry into TEAM Togetherness. This will NOT be an easy task for our students, but we're confident that with hard work and perseverance they will WOW our socks off! Our Genius Hour will take place every Thursday morning, right before lunch. The first two classes will be relatively structured as we introduce the concept and brainstorm ideas, but future hours will be more student driven as they dive into research and inquiry. We haven't determined how much time we will give our students yet, but I'm sure we'll have a better idea of that once we get started.

This week I will be creating a Genius Hour board (awesome bulletin board letters on Runde's Room website) to house our passion ideas and the students will be generating ideas and sharing those thoughts with families. The students will be creating Passion Project work folders to house handouts, project notes, design ideas and weekly reflections. We bought these duo-tang folders and we'll be using the reflection form created by Jen at Runde's Room on a weekly basis. In week two the students will be getting their two inquiry questions and possible project ideas approved by a grown up (we will require parents to sign off on the inquiry questions and project ideas as well) and by week 3 they'll be ready to dive into research and inquiry!

To help organize my thoughts, introduce this new component of our class, and support the students on a weekly basis, I created a Weebly site. The website explains Genius Hour, outlines student expectations, provides a list of possible inquiry questions and passion project ideas, and gives them a list of kid-friendly research websites. I even set up a forum for students to ask each other questions, offer suggestions, and provide feedback. This is our first attempt with the "forum" feature, so I'll let you know how it goes! I love using Weebly to organize big classroom projects!  

To say I'm excited about this week Thursday is an understatement! I will admit, I am a little nervous, how can you not be when you have very little control over the students' ideas, but I am confident that our 53 students will come up with some amazing inquiry topics that they're truly passionate about!

~ Kate

Technology Connects Learners

Would you rather...

Tough question, right? Not for our 5th graders!:)

Have I mentioned how much I love being in a 1:1 environment? I am continually amazed, humbled, and WOWED by what my kids can do each and every day!

That being said, working with my students and in the type of learning environment that we do, I am constantly challenging myself to learn more, as well. One tool that I am working more with is Google+.  It is amazing what is out there!

A few months back, we received a message from another teacher in our district via Google+. She forwarded us a note from a community that she was a part of. It was from an instructional technology coach from Illinois, Michael Johnson. He was working with a math teacher, Tara Nunes, in his middle school, and was looking to connect with students from other states on some math problems. We reached out and became connected! A slew of e-mails and a video chat later, we were in business!

Tara's math students created these amazing real-world math problems called "Would You Rather", based off of ideas she got from this blogpost. She had her students post the problems to their Kidblog pages. Kidblog is a fantastic tool that allows kids to share their work via their own blog page. It has hundreds of different uses! Be sure to check it out, if you haven't before! It is an amazing tool!

One of the cool ways Kidblog can be used, is to connect one class to another. With some help from Michael, we connected Tara's Kidblog class with ours. Voila! Our students could now see each other's work, give feedback, and most importantly in this case--answer some tough math questions!

Now, Tara teaches 8th grade math students. Our kiddos are only 5th graders. They were pretty excited to not only hear that they were going to get to solve "harder, middle school math problems", but also that these kids were from ANOTHER STATE! :) 

For one week during math workshop, they worked in groups to solve the problems during "May Do" time in our math workshop block! They looked at the various problems posted by Tara's students on her Kidblog page, chose the ones that made sense to them, and worked to explain their mathematical thinking to "big kids" that they will probably never meet in person!

They loved it! The problems challenged their thinking! They need to collaborate, solve problems they might face in the real world, communicate their thinking, and most importantly--HAVE FUN IN MATH! We LOVED the experience! Thank you, Tara and Michael, for collaborating with us! We hope to do it again soon!

Google+ is this exciting, never-ending world! It boggles my mind how fast technology is moving and shaking our educational landscape. Because of technology, we could easily collaborate with teaching peers from another state. Because of technology, our students were given a real-world, problem solving experience. Because of technology, our students were connected with other students for a joint, educational purpose. Because of technology, our students could collaborate, communicate, and critically think about math in a brand new & exciting way. Because of technology, our possibilities are endless.

How have you collaborated or connected with others? We'd love to hear from you!

Happy Teaching,

~Angela :)

Reading Learning Model

Needless to say, we've been inspired and humbled by how our idea of "Learning Models" has spread far and wide! We recently posted about math learning models in our classroom, as well as math learning models done by our kindergarten friends. Last month, some of our fourth grade friends even tried out a reading learning model for their character unit. This got our wheels turning, as well! How could we take these ideas and apply them to our own reading? The result:

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 Just like our math learning models, we gave the students choice in how they demonstrated it.

We also introduced them to a new tool: ZOOBURST. Zooburst is a cool tool that allows kids to make their own 3-D pop up book. It is reasonably priced, as well. It cost $50 for 250 student accounts. It is a great thing to share across a grade level or two! Not many of our students chose this option this time--it might have been too much "new" at once--but they were very excited to explore it on their own!

We encouraged our students to choose two texts on the same topic. We allowed them to use books, reputable online resources, reputable videos, and magazines. They, then, needed to show proficiency in 4 main standards: 5.RI.1, 5.RI.2, 5.RI.4, and 5.RI.6. We also provided some "bonus, optional" opportunities with standards 5.RI.5 and 5.RI.8. (a 4-point rubric is included in the document for all 6 standards).

At first, it was hard for them. They struggled trying to envision how they could put it all together. We think their brains were just so "wired" to do math learning models (which are much more black and white!). So, we created an example together. Click the pic to see the full model:

Once we went over the example, they had a better idea of how to start. Off they went to put their own spin on things! They came up with some amazing projects! Here are a few examples:

Manal's Google Presentation

Cynthia's Prezi

Anna's Prezi

Wow! They truly blew us away with their creativity, the topics they chose, and their deep understanding of the standards!

Have you used learning models yet? How do you envision connecting them to your content? Sound off below!

Happy Teaching!

~Angela :)

Learning Models All Around

We have the tremendous fortune of working with fantastic teachers at our school. We have so many teachers that are working on establishing best practices to support personalized learning. Two of the many teachers that are making an impact are Michele Baumann and Amy Digman. Michele and Amy have been doing some amazing work with team teaching math workshop. They flexibly group their students, and provide personalized learning for their combined math classes. They were also integral in the development of our school's re-purposing of our library into a Learning Lab. 

A while back, Kate posted about the Learning Models that we use in math to provide voice, choice, and differentiation for our kiddos. We have found the work that our students do on these learning models to be more insightful than our end of unit assessments dictated by the textbook. We feel the work they complete is more authentic and a better representation of what they can do with regards to the standards. Michele and Amy recently let us know that they brought our idea for learning models down to the kindergarten levels. The result...MAGIC! 

Michele & Amy's Learning Model Rubric (click to see the entire thing!)

Our wonderful kindergarten friends wanted to share their great learning models with our 5th graders. Our students LOVED seeing the hard work the little ones did. Our students then got to share their learning models with them. For us, watching our youngest and oldest share and discuss mathematics was heartwarming. 

Seeing the progression of their mathematics understanding from where they start to where they can end up really helped solidify the value in the hard work we do.

Here are some examples of the "young" and the "old":

Kindergarten Measurement Learning Models

K example #1

K example #2

5th Grade 

Alexander's Powtoon

Jahnavi's Prezi

~Angela :)

5th Annual CESA 1 Convening Conference

We were so fortunate to spend November 3rd and 4th at the CESA 1 Convening Conference. The Institute at CESA 1 is a fantastic organization that focuses on supporting personalized learning initiatives in school districts. We are so lucky to be partnered with them and to have them so close to us here in southeastern Wisconsin! The Institute's influence is growing, and they now impact school districts across the country. For the last 5 years, they have hosted a conference surrounding personalized learning.

Last year was our first year attending, and we were in awe of the amazing talent and ideas that we are surrounded with. We left with ideas that we could implement the next day and connections with others that continue to influence our own work. This year, we had the tremendous honor of presenting about our work with TEAM Togetherness.

Our presentation (click image to view)

Minus a few "technical difficulties" with internet connection, we had a great audience. They were engaged and asked fantastic questions. It is so humbling to us to know that our work is helping so many others on their own journeys. 

For me, however, the greatest part of the Convening is the learning from others. We learned from some amazing middle school teachers from the Muskego-Norway School district. Their work with project based learning is inspiring. My head was spinning with ways we could incorporate that work in TEAM Togetherness. We learned new ideas for math workshop from teachers in Pewaukee. We also heard from two amazing keynote speakers: Alfie Kohn and Diana Laufenberg.

Something that really resonated with me was listening to Diana Laufenberg. She spoke a lot about "failure." One of the best sticking points for was the difference between "blame-worthy failure" and "praise-worthy failure." In our punitive society, we often see failure as a negative. When, truly, we should celebrate the small failures that lead us to success. In the classroom, should we not praise the bumps in the road as moments of learning? Our students should not view failure as something they should fear, but rather, as something that helps them on the path to their personal success. One of my favorite things that she shared (and she shared MANY) was this video of a young boy demonstrating praise-worthy failure. What if all of our students had this kind of excitement and understanding of "failure?"

Thank you, Institute, for including us in the Convening this year. It was two days of fun, two days of connecting and networking, and most importantly, two days of learning that we can use to push ourselves even further.