How much effort are you giving?

I was on Pinterest recently and I found an anchor chart that someone had posted called "How much effort are you giving?"  As soon as I repinned it, I just knew that I had to have this posted in my classroom for the remainder of this year, as well as next year.  I am currently using a character card that my students fill out at the end of each subject period each day.  They score themselves with a positive if they behaved appropriately and a corresponding character trait.  If they made a bad choice, than they write a negative with the corresponding character trait.  This card is signed over the weekend and returned to me every Monday.  Next year, I'm debating whether or not I want to turn the character card into an effort card where they would record a 1-4 based on the anchor chart below and students that earned a 1/2 would be initialed by me so parents could have a better picture of the effort that is being given in class.  I haven't made up my mind about this yet, but was mulling it over as I created the chart last week.

I Spy Geometry: A Book of Lines, Angles & Polygons

As one of our end-of-year projects, my students created pictures where they had to hide all of the geometry terms/symbols that they had learned during our geometry unit.  The pictures will then be turned into a class book where they can locate at least 10 of the following geometry terms in their classmates pictures:

• rays
• line segments
• lines
• parallel lines
• perpendicular lines
• intersecting lines
• straight lines
• acute angles
• obtuse angles
• right angles
• scalene triangles
• isosceles triangles
• equilateral triangles
• quadrilaterals
• pentagons
• hexagons
• octagons
• points
• radius
• diameter
• symmetry
• congruent shapes

Here are some student examples:

Vocabulary: How do we learn new words?

Several years ago, I attended a professional development on the importance of student engagement.  One of the strategies they taught us to teach new vocabulary to our students was to create hand signals.  The video above models what that looks like.  I have been using this strategy for the past six or seven years to teach vocabulary to my students and it is AMAZING to see what a difference it has made.  Not only are my students able to tell me what a word means, but they are able to use academic vocabulary within their verbal and written responses.

I start off by identifying key vocabulary terms that my students should know within the content area.  Then small groups are assigned a word to develop a signal for.  When they present it to the class, they have to tell us the word, its definition, model the signal and explain how it relates to the definition.  One of the things I really like about this is that it gets students up in front of their peers so they can start feeling comfortable with talking in front of a large group.  Once the class is taught the signal, I will repeat the definition and the rest of the class will model the signal and say the correct word.  For example, in reading, we focus on 20 words each week.  On Monday and Tuesday, I introduce 7 of them and the remaining six on Wednesday.  When we learn the new words each day, I make sure to include the previous days words so they are always fresh in their mind.  Then they are quizzed at the end of the week on their understanding of the words.  The following week they are introduced to a new set of words.

Some of the ways we practice the vocabulary words are:

• Around the World: This works exactly like it does when practicing math facts.  I saw a definition and the two students must tell me the word and perform the signal.  Whoever does it correctly first moves on to the next student.
• Stand Up & Close Your Eyes:  Everyone stands up at their desks.  Two-three students monitor whether or not students are doing the correct signals after a definition is read.  If a student hears their name called, they have to sit down because they did the wrong signal.
• Hot Seat:  Two students sit in chairs facing one another.  Another student is standing behind one student and they have written a vocabulary word on their whiteboard.  They hold the board up and the student that can see the word has to give clues to the other student to see if they can guess the word on the whiteboard.
• Vocabulary Bee:  Students line up and the first student is given a definition.  They must say the word and perform the signal correctly.  If they do, they stay in the game and I move on to the next student who is given a new definition.  If they are incorrect, they return to their seat.  If a student gets the word/signal wrong, then the next student has the same definition.  We usually play until a handful of students are left standing.
• Slap It: I usually start out with pairs playing this and then move onto small groups of four students.  They write each vocabulary word on a sticky note and lay them out in front of one another.  I read a definition and the goal is to be the first one to "slap" the correct word/sticky note.

Geometry Town

One of our projects that we recently worked on is a Geometry Town.  Here are the requirements that students were given, as well as the checklist that was used to grade their final product.  I also included several student examples.  If you would like the Word version of the document, comment below with your email address and I will send it to you as an attachment.

Test Prep: Scoot

A couple months ago I attended a PD on a variety of test prep games that could be used as we prepared our students for AIMS, our state mandated test.  One of my favorites that I walked away with and used that very week is a game called Scoot.  I created a game to review Order of Operations, Factoring, Prime & Composite, and Multiplication/Division problems.  I have 25 students, so I had 25 problems written on index cards.  Each index card then had a number, 1-25 written on the opposite side.  I placed one card on each desk.  I started the music (KidzBop are  great albums because they have the popular songs of today sung by kids so they're classroom appropriate) and they had roughly 2-3 minutes to solve the problem on their card.  Once they finished, their answer should've been written in the corresponding box.  So, for example, if a student had card number 16, than their answer would be written in box 16.  When the music shut off, they moved to the next seat and completed a new problem.  Once they had worked their way through all 25 problems, we graded their papers as a class.  The student who earned the highest score had one night of no homework the following week.  It's a fantastic motivator for the class to work super diligently in completing the problems correctly because what kid doesn't want a night of no homework?  This is definitely a test prep activity that I'm going to keep in mind next year!

Book Study: Flip Your Classroom - Chapter 4

I have started to read Flip Your Classroom by Aaron Sams and Jonathan Bergmann.  After each chapter, I will highlight key concepts and any other noteworthy ideas that will enhance my understanding of the idea, as well as how to implement it within my 4th grade classroom.

Chapter 4: How to Implement the Flipped Classroom

• Don't make a video just for the sake of it.  Think about what instructional tool would best teach the content to your students.
• Use other teachers' videos if you do not feel comfortable being on camera.  Check out YouTube for videos or other video sharing sites.
• When making your own videos, you can use Camtasia Studio, which is a screencasting program.  It will capture whatever is on your computer screen, as well as your voice, and any annotations that you make with a digital pen.  You can also videotape all of your lessons for one year and then turn them into videos the following year for your students to view. 
• Four steps to making a video:
• Plan the lesson
• Record the video
• Edit the video
• Publish the video
•  Side Note: I will be using the iPad app, Show Me, to make my videos.  This app allows me to draw, upload pictures and describe what is going on in real time.  The videos can then be easily uploaded to the internet and then embedded into Edmodo, which is a site I use a lot with my students, or any other site.  
• Making videos your students will love:
• Keep it short: remember bite-sized pieces of information ... 10-15 minutes.
• Animate your voice
• Create videos with other teachers (I need to remember this!)
• Add humor
• Don't waste your students' time: keep to the topic
• Add annotations
• Add callouts: a text box that focuses on key content/steps
• Zoom in and out
• You must evaluate and redesign your class time once students begin watching videos as their homework.  

Book Study: Flip Your Classroom - Chapter 3

I have started to read Flip Your Classroom by Aaron Sams and Jonathan Bergmann.  After each chapter, I will highlight key concepts and any other noteworthy ideas that will enhance my understanding of the idea, as well as how to implement it within my 4th grade classroom.

Chapter 3: Why You Should Flip Your Classroom

• BYOD - bring your own device allows students to use updated technology rather than the out-of-date computers that may be sitting in some of our classrooms to complete a variety of tasks/projects.
• Students can process material at their own pace.  Students who learn more quickly no longer have to wait to move on and students who need more time can pause/rewind the videos.
• Teachers can build better relationships with their students due to increased teacher-student interactions.
• This model also increases student-student interactions as they help one another learn.
• Parents have responded positively to the flipped classroom model because they are able to help their child more but there has been some concern of parents thinking that the teacher was no longer teaching.