New Tech Tools!

So, my summer to-do list today is ridiculously long, but while prepping for some upcoming PD work, I got a little excited about some new tools and figured now was as good a time as any to share!

Angela and I love stumbling upon new tech tools that make our lives easier. This summer, after presenting at and attending our first GAFE Summit, we were introduced to a few new ideas that we are excited to use this fall.

ADOBE SPARK

Adobe Spark merges graphics, text, stories, and even videos into an amazing visual presentation. It is a quick and easy way to create a video, presentation, parent newsletter or even an invitation to your class Wax Museum. Like many of you, we are also always looking for new publishing options for our students. The templates and font options are endless, and your students will have a blast creating their own Sparks! Check out the newsletter I quickly created to send out to our students and families below.

Our colleague, Michael Mohammad from MoPhysics MoProblems, created a great tutorial video to help his students get started. It's a great resource for students AND teachers! Thanks, Mike!

HYPERDOCS

Collaboration, creativity, critical thinking...these are skills crucial to truly engage and empower our learners to be innovators in the classroom. I'll be honest, initially when I heard about Hyperdocs I wasn't overly excited. It seemed like a Google Doc with a few links embedded throughout. That was something we had been doing in our classroom for years. Then I started following the Hyperdoc Girls on Twitter (my favorite personalized PD option), and I quickly realized the power of these interactive tools. When thoughtfully created, these Hyperdocs will help you shift the way you use tech tools to teach! Give Hyperdocs a shot! 

More from these amazing educators!

GOOGLE CAST FOR EDUCATION is a new Chrome app from Google that gives teachers and students the ability to share their screens wirelessly. Screens can be shared out to the entire class, or just the teacher's computer. It's an incredible way to increase collaboration and interaction between students and/or teachers!

Learn more about it here!

NEW GOOGLE SITES

And, finally, learn about the new Google Sites update! Not gonna lie, friends, this is a GAME CHANGER, in my opinion! Sites has always been my least favorite GAFE tool...it is cumbersome and not user friendly. We went away from it with our digital portfolios in the past due to this. This update is a total overhaul of the old program, and it is now SO easy to use! Check out our buddy, Mike Mohammad's blogpost and his great video to see its ease of use! Thanks, Mike!

Alright, now back to the to-do list! What new technology tools are you excited to use this fall? We'd love to hear about them!

~ Kate

Now Presenting... Our Wax Museum!

Okay...so I'm a little late on this blog...I actually wrote this MONTHS ago, and for some reason, never published it! So sorry! I don't know what happened there...

So, we have finished the culminating activity for our "Historical" studies that we have been doing for the last few months...OUR WAX MUSEUM!

When we started our Historical Fiction book club unit (previous blogs HERE and HERE), we knew we wanted to tie in some sort of nonfiction writing component. The NEW Teacher's College Units of Study recommend the spiral "Bringing History to Life." This connects to the new reading unit about the Revolutionary War. Since Revolutionary War is sort of a 5th grade "baby" in our district, we wanted to explore other options for topics. We decided to allow kiddos to research an important person that lived during the historical era that they were reading about in their book clubs.

We had kids meet in large "era-alike" groups (multiple book clubs together). They were given a piece of construction paper, and asked to brainstorm a list of important people that lived during their era. At this point, they had experienced quite a bit of nonfiction reading throughout their book club work in order to learn more about their era. They generated these amazing lists:

From there, they picked which person they wanted to really dig in deep with. For some eras, we had to draw names out of a hat (Adolf Hitler, for example...we had about 10 kids that wanted to research him...wasn't ONE Hitler enough for this world? ;)

They, then, began their research. They used various graphic organizers to help plan their ideas and put together all of the rich information they were learning. We discussed reliable sources, citations, strong transitions, tone, and more! It led to some amazing conferences and classroom conversations!

We discussed text features, layout of our text, and all the other amazing nonfiction goodies! To be honest, their final papers were some of their best all year long! We were SO impressed with all of the little "teacher voices" that we read come through!

From this point, we discussed first vs. third person. They were tasked with taking their amazing nonfiction pieces and converting them to biographical sketches that utilized 1st person narrative! They also had to pare down their pieces, as they were given a 3-minute time limit!

Another important feature that we added to this modified piece was a "heart" of their story. What could an important life theme be that could encapsulate their historical figure? Was it determination? Perseverance? Grit? Tenacity? Putting others before themselves? They were challenged to weave this heart like a thread throughout their piece. This was the hardest part for many of them!

Once they had their biographical sketches written...it was planning/practicing time! What props would they need? Would they dress up? Could they incorporate a technology component to support their presentation? A photo slide show? We encouraged all kids to just use what they had at home. We did not want anyone feeling like they had to go out and buy a fancy costume or special prop! In the end, some chose to have these items, and some didn't. We were okay with either!

It was so fun to see what this project brought out in many of our kids. Some really thrived and it bought out sides to them that we hadn't seen before. Some really struggled, which also surprised us. But in the end, the final wax museum was PRICELESS! We invited other 4th graders and our families. It was a truly magical afternoon!

Here are a few examples of the fun!

Have you ever done a wax museum? What worked well for you? We'd love to learn from you!

Happy Teaching!

~Angela

Closing Out the Year with Collaboration & Coasters

It's the last week of school! Incredibly hard for Angela and I to believe that this amazing year is over. This new group of 4th graders WOWED us again with their energy, hard work ethic, and collaborative efforts. We are already looking forward to our time together in 5th grade!

This past Monday, was our last collaborative activity with Mike Mohammad @Mo_Physics and his INCREDIBLE Brookfield Central High School AP Physics students. We are SO FORTUNATE to have such a close relationship with Mike. Without his amazing efforts, and his students' willingness to give it their all, our students would not have had the experiences they had this year. 

We could not close out the year without one more collaborative day of fun! This week's design challenge was for the groups to build a marble coaster with at least three obstacles. These obstacles could include hills, loops, and/or jumps. We had 10 groups of 4th grades, along with 3-4 high school students serving as coaches/mentors. The high schoolers outlined the challenge to the students, kept them on track, and supported our kids during the building process. Mike had reached out to me earlier last week to get the specific scientific terminology we use with our students during STEM time. This common language allowed our students to jump right in since this was the same way we had been communicating all year! 

The teachers in the space documented the event on Periscope, Twitter, and encouraged creativity. We let the groups use whatever materials we had on hand. The students grabbed foam tubing, tape, and marbles and got to work. Initially, the AP students took the lead and started the building process. In no time at all, our 4th graders stepped up and found other useful materials- funnels, xylophones, chairs, stools, Klennex boxes, Iced Tea bottles to add to the coasters. You name it, and they found a way to incorporate it into their design! As the "bigs" and "littles" interacted with each other, the building process became much more collaborative. The AP students took a bit of a backseat and let our 4th graders take control. It was so incredible to watch! ALL of the students quickly learned that there roller coasters would fail many times before ever reaching success. It was a proud teacher moment when there was no complaining, the groups just carried on with a growth mindset. They persevered, knowing the failure they felt would move them forward in their building process. In the end, ALL of the groups met the challenge and had successful coasters! 

The Learning Lab was abuzz with excitement and student engagement! The entire morning was amazing and a perfect way to kick off the last week of school! The students (who am I kidding? and the grown ups) had A TON OF FUN! 

A HUGE thank you to Mike Mohammad for an incredible year of collaborative learning! We CAN NOT wait to see what we can put together for next year!!

The high school students, along with Angela, Mike, I were busy Tweeting and Periscoping the morning of fun. Mike introduced us to Storify, so I figured I would use this opportunity to give it a go!

~ Kate

Diving Deep into POETRY!

Ahhhh...spring! April is here and with it, we got SNOW! Not exactly the fresh face of spring here in Wisconsin that we were hoping for! Still wearing hats and mittens after spring break was a bit of a shocker, but the weather is starting to look up!

In addition to the hopes of spring weather, April also brings us state TESTING month! In 4th grade, we have 7 and a half hours of testing to work around! YIKES! We did not want to lose too much momentum with our instruction, so it was a perfect time for our reading and writing poetry units!

Poetry units are so great, because kids can pick up a new poem or anthology at any time, without losing plot or character development. So, this unit has been a wonderful thing, as we lose blocks at a time of different subjects due to our state testing schedule.

We always launch our poetry studies in reading. We blogged about how we did this last year in 5th grade, as well! This year, we are fortunate, because the Teacher's College released new curricular calendars for poetry! We are Teacher's College district, and we were so excited to dive in and see what TC had to offer! We were pleased to see that their ideas did match up with what we already believed for poetry. We combined their ideas with some that we felt our kiddos needed and developed a rich, creative unit!

Teaching kids how to read poetry is so much fun! Poetry is full of inferences, imagery, and creative sentence structures. So many kids try to tackle it the same way they tackle a chapter book! And they run into trouble! To start this work, we spent two reading blocks just immersing ourselves in poetry. What did we notice? What did we like? What stood out to us? What confused us? We had a grand conversation about our initial thinking. We logged in on an anchor chart.

After our immersion, we teach them how to annotate and read a poem right away. We chose a Langston Hughes poem for this work ("Dream Variations"). When Kate and I were planning it out, we were a little hesitant on choosing it. We were worried that they wouldn't "get it." We questioned our choice and had a more literal poem on standby ("Since Hanna Moved Away" by Judith Viorst).

We read the poem all together, and we only told them that Langston Hughes was a famous author. Then we sent them off, independently, to try to capture their thoughts. After about 5-7 minutes (or when they started to get squirrely), we had them get into groups of about 3 to compare their ideas. Kate and I moved between groups and kept catching each other's eye...we couldn't believe what they were discussing! 

Following this group share, we came back together for a final grand conversation. I kid you not, this was one of those "goosebump moments" in teaching for me. Their interpretation of this poem left me speechless. I was even on the verge of tears at one point. #unbelievable #proudteacher #loveourstudents

If you follow us on Twitter, Kate periscoped this conversation. All of these were THEIR words! I still can't believe how well they did! It really helped us to reflect on when we doubt their capabilities...DON'T! They will always surprise you with what they can do and handle! Give them the challenges! They will RISE to the occasion! 

After this, we created a new anchor chart of all the different things we can think about or look for when studying poetry.

We did this, initially, but then went back and revisited each of these skills (and more) in our mini-lessons.

We give our kids a lot of choice in our room. One of the ways we try to incorporate their voice, choice, and personal learning styles, is how the respond during independent time. We have a lot of kids that struggle with organization. For them, we have a packet full of templates that they can use to track their thinking. Many of our kids know their own learning style and preferences so well that they create their own. They use everything from Google Slides, to Docs, to Google Keep, to regular old sticky notes or journals.

So, we continue to support them as they explore mood, tone, themes, and speaker point of view! We absolutely LOVE conferring with kids during this type of exploration. Each kid approaches a poem differently and interprets it in their own way. We also find that "share time" is incredibly crucial during a poetry unit. Kids not only want to discuss their poems with others, but they need to! They have theses ideas swirling around in their head or they found the most perfectly hilarious poem and they absolutely MUST share it with a friend!

We are going to be using all of these skills in analyzing poetry to help them write their own poetry anthology tied to a theme! Check back later for a future blog post! :)

In the meantime, we hope your April is sunny, and that your room is filled with the sweet sound of engagement and LOVE of poetry! Happy Poetry Month!

Happy Teaching,

~Angela

Wrapping Up Historical Fiction

We made it! What an amazing unit that was! The kids impressed us with their passion to learn new information and how they could connect the "dots of history" from book to book! We just finished up our Historical Fiction unit in Reader's Workshop. You can read about how we launched it HERE. 

This unit has been so much fun! We loved meeting with the book clubs each day. To help manage our time in Reader's Workshop, we used a rotation system for this unit ONLY. Now, we are not "centers" teachers. That being said, in a book club unit, kids will talk FOREVER if you let them! Not that that is entirely a bad thing, we wanted to make sure they still had time for independent/choice time during this unit. Due to this, we created three, 15-minute rotations to support this work. This allowed for book clubs to meet every day. It also limited the noise level in the room to not have every club meet at the same time! :) Below is an example of a daily rotation chart:

This was made in a simple Google Slide Presentation. We had a different slide for each day of the week...why, you might ask? Because we met with groups on different days. You might notice the letters in the book club rotation are black and some are red. The red letters are the groups that meet with an adult that day. We are fortunate to have 3-4 adults in our classroom during our Reader's Workshop block. This allows us to have much smaller groups to provide much more tailored support. Some groups meet with us every day. Some groups meet with us every other day. And a few group only met with us twice per week. It was all based on the individual needs of  our students. You might also notice that Group B meets with an adult for two rotations every day. They are our neediest ELL readers that benefited from extra vocabulary and graphic organizer support each day.

Topics we tackled in this unit included: Character development and tracking, Theme development, Power struggles, Secondary Characters, Literary point of view, Character Perspective, and even Connecting nonfiction topics to our historical fiction texts. Kids created double timelines to show where their books fit within the actual historical timeline.

Kids tracked their thinking in multiple ways throughout the unit. We provided them with a packet "template" that had various ideas, etc. They could house their sticky notes in there and find helpful graphic organizers. Some groups chose to use it daily. Other groups created their own way of tracking their ideas. Some through Google Keep, others through Google Slides, and even a few through Google Docs. We allowed them to choose the best way to document that met the needs of their groups/individual learning styles.

Again, we also utilized Google Forms as a formative assessment check-in system. About every week and a half, we sent out a new Google Form that targeted a skill we had been learning about. This allowed kids to have time to come across a part in their book(s) where this might be applicable. So often, when we teach a new skill, kids aren't at a perfect point in their books to apply it. This gives you that "guarantee room" to have had it come up!

A sample of one of the Google Forms we used. 

The nice thing about Google Forms, is that we set it up to have every weeks' responses go to the SAME Google spreadsheet! This allowed us to view our unit in one glance. It also allowed us to score the responses right in the spreadsheet using a simple 4,3,2,1 system. This let us sort them lowest to highest (or vs. versa), and immediately pull strategy groups or have immediate 1-on-1 reading conferences with kids to address needs!

We always give kids multiple days to complete the form, as well. Due to this, we encourage our kids to type a "draft" in a doc first. If they don't finish in one day, they can continue the next. If they try to type it in the Google Form directly first and don't finish, as soon as they close their computer, they lose their work! Word of caution to prevent tears/frustration! :)

To wrap up our unit, in addition to the Paper Pencil Teacher's College assessment we use, we give kids the opportunity to show their learning in any way they would like to using a Learning Model style. Now, this was the first literacy Learning Model that our students completed. The format is very similar to our Math Learning Models, but definitely requires more typing! I started it off by providing every kiddo with a copy of this GOOGLE DOC:

I also shared with them my own example that I made using emaze.

We went over the expectations on the rubric with them, answered questions, then the kids then got to work! I have to say, we were super impressed with their final products! Here are a few kid examples:

EXAMPLE USING EMAZE

EXAMPLE USING GOOGLE SLIDES

This was such a fun unit! We had a blast, and so did the kids! How do you teach Historical Fiction? We'd love to learn from you!

Happy Teaching,

~Angela

Go-Cart Collaboration Across Levels: Take Two!

Yes, I know it is the middle of March and I just realized this collaboration day took place almost a month ago :( I am embarrassed it has taken me this long to post this...Angela and I will both agree that the month of February was a crazy, whirlwind of activity in T.E.A.M. Togetherness. Between the end of the quarter, parent teacher conferences, visitors, guest teachers, amazingly fun activities, even an extra day, the month flew by and this post sat in our "drafts" for far too long. 

About a month ago we had another awesome morning with Mike Mohammad's AP Physics students from Brookfield Central High School. After our first collaboration day back in December, Mike and I knew we wanted to get the "bigs" and "littles" together for another day of Physics Fun! Knee deep into our Models and Designs unit, Mike came over to Swanson to observe what we were learning and help me figure out how we could make the connection. When he saw our students would be designing and building self-propelled go-carts, he quickly found a perfect fit!

4th Grade Go-Cart Challenge

Use the supplies provided to design and build a self-propelled go-cart that can move 2 meters on its own! 

Our students were divided into groups and given their baggy of supplies. They were super excited about the challenge and were quick to design conceptual models and jump into the self-propelled challenge. Within minutes, Angela and I began to see the students' frustration grow. They could easily design a go-cart that could roll down a ramp, but they were stumped when facing the self-propelled challenge. We let them struggle for a while and listened in for glimmers of hope. As the conversation and collaboration continued, students started to figure out that the rubber bands in their bags would be the most realistic item to get the go-carts moving on their own. Other groups decided they needed larger wheels. 

After a day or two of working with their small groups, we met as an entire class to discuss the problems we were facing. We then shared out solutions! That is when the magic started to happen...groups started listening and coaching each other. They started sharing ideas, creative juices were flowing, and the go-cart creations started coming together. The grown ups in the space took a back seat and we let the students take over! We had one group of young ladies quickly meet the 2 meter challenge. We celebrated their success, and then encouraged them to share their design with the other groups. They then went out and became our resident experts on self- propelled carts. Within 4 days, all of the groups when from bags of supplies to functioning, self-propelled carts. They were ready to video their cars in motion.

All groups were able to get their go-cart moving on it's own, so they each had the opportunity to have their go-cart video taped for analysis. Some of the go-carts traveled beyond the 2 meter challenge, many did not. Regardless of the distance, the videos were then sent to Mike's students. They used an app called Video Physics to measure the velocity and acceleration of each go-cart vehicle. The high schoolers then created detailed reports that were tailored to each group's go-cart and, more importantly, comprehendable to our 4th graders. They included graphs and explanations that related directly to our Models and Designs learning. The conversations between the engineers from BCHS and Swanson were amazing, to say the least!

Along with investigating the motion of our student's go-carts, the high school students orchestrated five interactive motion stations. Mike, once again, AMAZED all of us with his creativity and work with his high schoolers. Our kiddos were exploring, learning, and in heaven the entire time! If only my high school science courses were this engaging and fun!!

Station 1: Speed Tubes

In this station the BCHS students showed our 4th graders the basics of speed using color tubes filled with air bubbles. The bubbles rose at different rates and our 4th graders used collaboration, and mathematics of course, to measure the speed of the bubbles.

Station 2: Acceleration Cars

What kid doesn't love a wind up car? Using fun pull-back cars, our 4th graders learned the difference between acceleration and speed. They looked at ways to measure acceleration and they even explored how mass affects acceleration.

Station 3: 1st Law Pucks

Newton's First Law of Motion is often stated as An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. Using Air Pucks and a TON of interaction, our 4th graders learned more about Newton's First Law of Motion. The Air Pucks, hovering on a cushion of air, helped bring this difficult concept to reality.

Station 4: Energy Coasters

What 4th grader doesn't love roller coasters? This station showed our students the affect gravity has on roller coaster movement. They also discussed free-fall acceleration on other planets. Our students used an awesome simulation tool to build their own skate tracks on different planets. So cool!

Station 5: Motion Sensor Graphs

Our 4th graders have been working with graphs all year and learning the difference between the X and Y axis. At this station, our kids developed a deeper understanding of the X and Y time graph. They learned what different shapes on the graph mean and they used a motion sensor to graph their own movement. They also used this station to practice their Whip Nae Nae!

As I type up these station descriptions, I am thoroughly impressed at what our 4th graders are tackling (and UNDERSTANDING!) with the help of Mike Mohammad and his amazing high school students. I am incredibly thankful for this collaboration time and I LOVE our time together. Also glad that Laura, from Epiphany Learning, was able to pop in and see our two groups in action! One more science unit Mr. Mohammad...the Human Body! I can't wait to see what we come up with next!! 

~ 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