Reflecting on Our Math Workshop

Math Workshop has always been one of my favorite hours of the day...the energy and controlled chaos within the room is contagious, and we love that the kids take ownership over their choice time. This year our district adopted a new math curriculum...I'm not going to lie, that adoption made me a little apprehensive. After attending the training and reviewing the materials, it seemed to be greatly teacher-driven...something we are not totally in agreement with. I loved the components of Bridges, and knew the kids would enjoy the problem solving activities embedded throughout, but worried that I would be spending too much time in front of the students.

Angela and I promised each other we'd go into the year with an open mind and a positive attitude towards the program. We knew we liked Bridges in and of itself, so we had to remain optimistic. We discussed with our students some of the changes they may see in our workshop block, but promised them we'd familiarize ourselves with the curriculum and go from there. This was one of those moments when we felt bound by curriculum. It took us a good three units, and copious amounts of time co-planning, before we felt we had a grasp on Bridges and all it had to offer. Our students were extremely patient with us getting ahead of the learning curve.

Bridges has supported our students in many ways, and they have grown tremendously through this program. They have an amazing intervention binder that supports our struggling mathematicians (we also use that for our daily bullpens). Our students have also developed incredible mental math strategies. They approach complex problems in a variety of ways, and think about numbers flexibly. We've enjoyed the overlap of concepts, and love seeing how the different domains mesh together throughout units.

A few disadvantages, though, is feeling there is a repetitiveness of lessons at times. Sometimes lessons seem redundant and unnecessary. We also noticed a decrease in the students' daily choice time. Part of these struggles are due to system structures that we can not control, and part of that is feeling as if we needed to teach the program with fidelity in order to best understand all it has to offer. It is a juggling act when you're tackling a new curriculum. There are concepts the students already know, but then there are definite areas where they're missing information. BUT...with the first half of the year under our belts, we are thrilled that we FINALLY feel we can venture away from Bridges a bit and bring in some more project based learning. Please do not misunderstand, Bridges is still our primary resource, but based on pretest results and some of the skills our students have mastered, we know many of our students are ready to take on more independent choice and project based learning.

As I previewed our Unit 4 pretest results, I was extremely pleased with the skills our students already had in place. Students doing well on a pretest is sort of a double edged sword- you're excited and proud of them for showing they're applying skills previously taught and knowing they're ready to move ahead...BUT it can also be terrifying because you're faced with the dreaded "Now what do we do with them?" question.

We had a relatively large group of children (8-10ish) that scored 100% on the entire pretest. We have another 5-8 that will master the skills needed within a few mini lessons or bullpens. Knowing that, we knew we had to plan accordingly for these flyers. They'd be ready for something more. We did not want these students sitting through unnecessary mini lessons. Last year, based on their pretest results, we had students moving back and forth between multiple mini lessons on a daily basis. That was easier to do when we were writing all of our units and lessons. This year it's been more difficult to juggle because we are still getting to know the Bridges units.

Seeing our results for this unit, though, we knew it was time to venture outside of the walls of Bridges and jump back into our "normal." We wanted to give our students an opportunity to practice the skills and standards addressed within Unit 4, but also push them further ahead. We knew this would better serve them and give them the opportunity to apply their knowledge in a real world situation. Angela and I spent time creating "Planning For Your Future- a Personal Budget Project"; an independent project that our students could work on throughout the unit. This project is required for students that mastered the learning targets on the pre-assessment, but is open to ALL kids in our class, as well.

Click the image above to see the full product.

Students tackling the budget project may participate in certain mini lessons, especially during problem solving days. We want their expertise in our discussion, and we want them to practice the skills and explain their thinking in a variety of ways. With that being said, they will spend a good portion of their unit working independently on the project. We have the luxury of having two full time teachers, and a student teacher in our space. This gives us a lot of flexibility to work with a variety of small groups throughout our workshop block.

We are excited because it's wonderful to see the enthusiasm back in  our classroom. The students are thrilled to be gaining back some choice time, and tackling long term projects. They understand, though, that there are days we will pull them back to our mini lesson for multiple reasons. Maybe we feel they need more practice, maybe we need their voice in our discussion, or maybe we think they'll just have fun tackling the day's lesson/activities. We are also hoping to see them take this sort of open-ended project, and spark new ideas of their own! They always come up with better projects than we do!

The "Cake Pop" problem below is a perfect example of a problem-solving day that was beneficial for ALL learners. Only a handful of our students have background knowledge on multiplying decimals, but EVERY kid in our class could solve this problem using a variety of strategies we've learned in class. Some used ratio tables, some used the double-half strategy, some tore apart the dollar amounts and made the questions easier to solve, and some used the traditional algorithm for multiplying decimals (teaching them the traditional method will come within this unit, but we loved that the students pulled other strategies to solve instead of just saying, "I can't do this...". Our hearts were even happier when partners chose to solve the questions in multiple ways.

Katie & Evy solving their cake pop questions using the traditional algorithm. Another group setting up a ratio table to solve.

We are super excited to see our students jump into the "Planning For Your Future- a Personal Budget Project". This enrichment project has them exploring their future careers, as well as budgeting for life's everyday expenses. Students will find an apartment to rent and furnish the apartment, determine cost of additional living expenses each month, along with making a plan and shopping for healthy meals.  It's going to be an eye-opening experience for them. To check out the project, and try it in your classroom, visit our Teachers Pay Teachers store. As always, if you have questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out! We love hearing from you!

 ~ Kate

Math Workshop at a Glance

So many people ask us about our Math Workshop framework, I thought it would be wise to outline the way Angela and I unit plan and use Math Workshop to personalize in math. Like many classrooms, we have a wide range of math learners in our learning space. This year, we have 56 math students in our workshop each day. 47 of those students are working through 4th grade standards, five are accelerated math students from T.E.A.M. Togetherness, and we pick up an additional four accelerated students from other 4th grade classrooms. Historically, our accelerated math students would have gone to a 5th grade classroom to receive instruction during the math block. This year, it was important to us to keep ALL of our learners together in our space knowing we could personalize for ALL of our mathematicians each day.

Unit Planning & Pretest Data:  Our school district is currently using Everyday Math as one of the resources we are encouraged to use within our classroom. For Angela and I, EDM provides us (loosely) with a scope and sequence of units, but we definitely do not teach it lesson by lesson. We follow the 4th grade scope and sequence outlined, but bring in corresponding 5th, and sometimes 6th, grade standards since nine of our mathematicians have already received 4th grade curriculum as 3rd graders. We have been co-planning with a couple of other teachers throughout the year for math. Together we have looked carefully at the standards within each domain and planned our units accordingly. This unit planning can be hairy, but it's actually some of my favorite work as a teacher!

We use a shared Google doc to organize our lessons, activities, formative and summative assessments, along with game ideas, video links, etc. These unit plans have become our go-to resource hub. There are three 4th grade teachers and one 3rd grade teacher co-planning for math, so we needed something to keep us organized across many standards and three grade levels. Do I see room for improvement in the unit plans? Absolutely! Have we made minor tweaks and changes throughout the year? Definitely, but it is what is working for our team right now and it keeps us somewhat organized.

Here is a sample of a UNIT PLAN we created. Within the plan are a variety of links to our Google Slides, Pear Deck slides (if you don't know about Pear Deck, stay tuned for another blog post. We LOVE using Pear Deck to increase student engagement), formative assessments, task cards, etc. across 4th and 5th grade standards. Our plan also includes anchor chart ideas, interactive notebook options, videos and games that coincide with each lesson. We use these videos for reteaching opportunities and the games are incorporated into the May Do time outlined below. We organize all of those videos and games, along with links to our Google Slide lessons, on a Videos/Games Doc that is shared with all of our math students at the beginning of each unit. Once this unit plan is well under way, we can create our pretests for the unit. We administer a 4th and 5th grade pretest for each unit and then plan accordingly.

After our pretests are administered and scored, we use this data to develop an initial long range plan for instruction. This plan may change based on students' daily performances, but we have an initial pathway outlined for students based on their pretest results. To keep ourselves relatively organized, and sane, we use this spreadsheet to organize our data and outline what lessons our students will need for the unit. The spreadsheet lists the 4th and 5th grade learning targets and students are automatically highlighted in green if they have already met proficiency based on their pretest.

From there, Angela and I create a Student Sort that gets printed and put on our desk for the entire unit. We purposely print our Student Sort and fill in student names in pencil because we are constantly adding and/or moving kids around on this doc. Based on the pretest results, students may fall within the 4th, 5th, or 6th grade lesson throughout the unit. We have movement of students daily across the multiple mini lessons within our space. We have had 4th grade students get 100% on the pretest, so they move for the entire upcoming unit. Typically though, we see 4th grades move for a handful of lessons. We also have accelerated students that come down for a 4th grade mini lesson prior to receiving their 5th grade mini lesson because there were holes in their learning. Daily formative assessments are also analyzed daily and results from those assessments may show us that students need to move at a faster or slower pace through the learning targets. Our students are flexibly grouped and added to the Student Sort doc in that way as well.

Mini Lessons: Now we get to the fun part...TEACHING! We run a 75-minute math workshop every day. This Math Workshop at a Glance doc outlines how we organize that time. We begin most workshops with our students coming together to activate their brains. We utilize a variety of math routines to do this. All of these routines involve math discourse, and most last 5-6 minutes. From there we move into our 15-20 minute mini lesson. Once in a while we will begin workshop with a thought provoking problem solving task that can last upwards of 20 minutes depending on the complexity of the problem and where are students go with it. On the days we begin with problem solving, we typically run that workshop across two days.

Everyday we run two, occasionally three mini lessons. Our mini lessons are prepared using Google Slides. To increase student engagement in the lesson, we then upload our slides to Pear Deck which allows us to bring interactivity into the slides. We typically used whiteboards and markers during math workshop mini lessons, but as soon as I was introduced to Pear Deck I was sold. Our mini lessons are focused on the day's learning target, and we use them as a springboard to support problem solving during May Do time. They are interactive and involve a lot of turn and talk opportunities for the students. As mentioned above, the number of mini lessons and the types of mini lessons held each day depends on the needs of our students.

Extended Mini Lesson: Because our mini lessons are relatively quick, we have come to realize that some students need extra practice, more examples, and/or more direct instruction. Every day we offer an "extended" mini lesson immediately following. Students that struggled during the focus lesson can stay for more guided practice. Pear Deck allows us to track our students responses during the mini lesson on our iPad, laptop, or phone...whatever device is handy and in our hands. While the lead teacher is instructing, the co-teacher will jot down students that would benefit from this extended mini lesson. If those children do not stay on their own, we often encourage them to come and receive the extra help they need. Our students are really good about this though. They understand the importance of taking charge of their learning, and they know that sometimes that means advocating for themselves and receiving extra coaching along the way.

Guided Math 

At the end of the mini lesson, we move into our guided math time and our Math Template goes up on the board in both rooms. This template outlines the Must Do work, Bullpen needs, and some of the May Do options. We do not list Seminars on the template because our students have taken over a different whiteboard in our room to advertise for their Seminar time.

Must Do Time: From mini lesson, the students move in to their Must Do time. Must Do time includes practicing the skills taught during the mini lesson and completing the daily exit slip. During this time, the teachers and assistants are rotating throughout the room and supporting students. We will do a lot of on the spot strategy lessons at this time. All of the adults in the room understand that the exit slip should be the student's independent work. If they seem unsure or lost, we pull out whiteboards and do some reteaching immediately. When the students feel secure, they are invited to go back to their exit slip. Exit slips are graded as quickly as possible to provide rapid feedback. We then use those results to drive the following day's instruction and "bullpen" needs.

May Do/Choice Time: As students finish their daily formative assessment, they move in to their May Do time. This time provides students with voice and choice in their math block. It is an opportunity for kids to work on areas of interest. It is centered around a variety of options including games, journaling, fact fluency, problem solving, QR codes, scavenger hunts, ALEKS, Front Row, Dreambox, personal areas of growth, inquiry and/or STEM options. In all honesty, as long as they are focused and working on something math related, we are thrilled! Students may work independently or with peers, and it is flexibly paced.

Bullpen Time: Our daily "Bullpen" is pulled during May Do time. Bullpen is an intensive reteaching based on the previous day's formative assessment. It is often teacher directed, although many students ask to join Bullpen and come on their own. It is another opportunity for students to revisit the work done throughout the current unit, and receive extra teacher support.

Seminars: Several times/week we offer seminars to students. These could be remedial or enrichment opportunities based on student interest or need. They cover a variety of concepts. These topics may coincide directly with our current domain of study. Other times seminars are based on a topic of a child's choosing. Initially our seminars were primarily teacher led, but our students have now taken over seminars for us, allowing us to support individuals or small groups throughout the workshop. We typically host 1-2 seminars/day, and they are conducted after the Bullpen so that ALL students have an opportunity to participate.

Closing: As our workshop time comes to a close, we often review the day's learning target, address any remaining questions, and discuss homework options for that evening. From Math Workshop, our students head to Learning Lab. 

As you can see, Math Workshop is a whirlwind of learning! Our 75 minutes together goes by so quickly, and it is often my favorite part of the day! If you have questions about what you read or any of the embedded links please do not hesitate to comment or email us. If you are new to Math Workshop, or looking to add something to your existing math block, you are welcome to come and see our students in action! 

~ Kate

Personalizing Learning in Math Workshop

Last month I had another amazing opportunity to share my knowledge in Green Bay at the Mathematics Proficiency for Every Student (MPES) Conference.  I attended this conference, sponsored by Wisconsin Math Council, last December in Oconomowoc, and this year I had the wonderful opportunity to present.

Day two of the conference focused on looking at ways to transform math classrooms to make them more personal. Jim McLure and Jean Garrity, from the Institute for Personalized Learning, CESA 1, provided the afternoon keynote. From there, the conference attendees learned more grade level specific strategies for personalizing learning in their own math classrooms. All of the afternoon breakout sessions were run by amazing teachers from Elmbrook! I was proud to be one of the six teachers sharing their expertise in this area.

Since this presentation, several classroom teachers have reached out to us, looking for some of the docs I shared. We wanted to use this blog post to share a link to my presentation and to invite others to email us with questions, concerns, or feedback. Within the Google Slides you will find links embedded throughout. We look forward to hearing from you!

~ Kate

S.T.E.M. Challenge Exploring Volume!

We are just finishing up one of our Geometry units in math workshop.  This unit looked at standards around coordinate grids, volume, and area. The students will be completing their learning models and final assessment next week.

To have a little fun on this Friday morning, Angela and I decided to spend today's workshop tackling a STEM activity exploring volume. This creative and fun challenge came from CDavis @ Teachers are Terrific. She has amazing STEM activities on her Teachers pay Teachers store. Be sure to check them out! 

We began our mini lesson by reading Tomie de  Paola’s book-The Popcorn Book. This nonfiction book presents a variety of facts about popcorn and helped us set the stage for our volume activity. Our students were faced with the challenge of designing and building a container that would hold EXACTLY 293 pieces of popped popcorn. The groups were given a sample sizes of 10. This small amount of popcorn helped them estimate volumes and construct a container for the larger amount. Each group was given a roll of tape, scissors, a ruler, stapler, and unlimited pieces of paper. Then they were asked to use their knowledge of volume to work together and create the vessel. 

With 40 minutes on the clock, the kids were off and constructing! They used a lab sheet to plan out their groups' thinking and to sketch their possible ideas and final design. While the groups collaborated and created, they snacked on popcorn and got to constructing! 

In the end, two of our vessels met the challenge and successfully held all of the popcorn with little to no room to spare. We had an additional 4 vessels that came very close to meeting the challenge. They had an inch or less at the top! 

It's Learning Model Time!

Oh, how my Saturday nights have changed...I can remember a time, not that long ago, when I used to be getting all dolled up to hit the town. Now I find myself curled up on the chair, NCAA basketball on TV, a glass of wine nearby, working on our upcoming "Learning Model" for math.

We just finished a unit focusing on adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing fractions. Prior to the final assessment later next week, the students will be spending time on Monday and Tuesday creating their end of unit Learning Model. We use Learning Models in reading and math workshop, as a form of assessment. Our students have a choice in how they demonstrate their learning and proficiency of the standards that we have taught. 

From Powtoon to Educreations...Screencastify to Emaze, our students always put forth incredible effort and they create some amazing work using a variety of platforms! They choose the questions they want to use, create their learning models in their chosen form, and share with others via their digital portfolios! 

To check out our latest Fractions Learning Model, or any of our other unit Learning Model, check out our Teachers Pay Teachers store! 

~ Kate 

Proud Teacher Moment

Most days our students are asked to bring their composition books to the carpet for the math mini lesson. Sometimes we have learning models to tape in, some days we work through example questions, some days we just use as a note taking tool. We encourage the students to keep their composition books organized so they can use it as a tool during work time or test time.

The students are really good at using the composition book to house the handouts from class, but most kids do not take the time and energy into their own note taking. If we ask them to write something they will write it, but the majority will not take the time to write out their own examples...except for one child!

Meet T! This sweet boy takes it upon himself to write math notes from our mini lessons in his composition book each and every day. T has realized this is how he learns best. During the mini lesson he listens intently, then takes a few minutes before his Must Do time to jot down hints to help him when he's working independently. He does this diligently, without being told. T can also be seen going back to his notes during work time. I am so proud of this young man and his willingness to tackle this project. T understands his own learning style, and has created a tool that he'll carry with him to middle school and beyond!

T has also inspired me as his math teacher to reflect on my own practices and find a better way to organize my students' math journals next year! I spoke to him about his post-it note tabs. T thought it would be helpful for next year's students if the book was organized by math strand. What a fabulous idea, T!! So proud of you! Thank you for being you!

 Just recently T's added tabs to his composition book so he can easily see the concepts. 

~ Kate

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

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 :)

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 :)

Learning Models in Math

At the end of each math unit our students complete a Learning Model to show us they have mastered the unit standards. Yes, yes, yes...we still give the end of unit math assessment, but they're Learning Models are uploaded to their digital portfolios to showcase their work for that unit.

We provide our students with a list of skills we'd like them to tackle, along with a rubric, and they are left to show us what they know. Some students choose to do this with paper and pencil, but most utilize technology to share their knowledge.

I can not tell you how impressed I am with what some of our kiddos come up with! I am so proud of our crew!

Check out a few exemplars from the Unit 1 Learning Model!

Grace's Learning Model using Powtoon

Maika's Learning Model using Prezi

Manal's Learning Model using Google Presentation

Way to go, Ladies!!

~ Kate