Reading Rainbow Reviews

The Thursday before Winter Break was our school-wide Publishing Night.  This annual event brings families into our classrooms to celebrate the writing process.  However, in the past, we've typically had only one polished, re-written, titled, and illustrated piece of writing to share.  This year, in accordance with the new Units of Study from Lucy Calkins, our published work looked a little different.

First off, as I explained in my last post (here) about the Opinion Writing Unit, the kiddos actually "published" three different reviews.  For Publishing Night, I set up tables with our collection reviews and review anthologies.  I put the kiddos' book reviews at their tables, with their book inspirations propped up.  It was incredibly powerful for parents to see all of the writing that their kiddos had produced.  One mother picked up her daughter's first review and actually ask if it was from the beginning of the year!  When I explained that, no, it was only from a few weeks earlier, she was definitely impressed with her daughter's progress.

Not only did we have more writing this year than ever before, but for the first time we did not spend time re-writing.  In the past, I've saved 3-4 days at the end of each unit for the kiddos to copy their finished writing neatly onto clean paper.  My rationale was always that they could use the handwriting practice, but some fellow teachers who attended Teachers College this past summer, pointed out that re-writing every piece was really wasting up to two weeks of valuable instructional time.  More importantly, by not re-writing, we were able to recognize and honor the hard work of revising and editing.  I "warned" families ahead of time that they would likely see cross-out, carets, arrows, and other tools that writers use to revise their work, but no one seemed to mind.  I think they actually appreciated seeing how the kiddos had worked to improve content, spelling, and grammar of their stories.

Another new feature of this Publishing Night was the interactive SMART Notebook with clickable pictures of the kiddos and their books.  At the end of this unit I filmed each kiddo reading his/her book review.  (In order for the kiddos to get this concept we watched a couple episodes of Reading Rainbow on DVD, since, sadly, the show is no longer on the air).  The kiddos loved touching the pictures and watching the reviews pop-up!

I've usually enjoyed Publishing Nights just fine, but this one was, by far, my favorite.  Not only that, but I think it was most "impactful" (I know it's not a word, but it just works well here) for parents.  I'm already looking forward to teaching this unit and producing Reading Rainbow reviews next year!

Ways to Make "n"

Right before Winter Break we were in a Number System Unit in Math, focusing creating equivalent equations.  I posed questions to the kiddos such as, "I have ten toys. Some of them are blocks. Some of them are marbles. How many of each could I have?"  Our Investigations curriculum has a variety of these "how many of each?" problems throughout the first grade program.

This year my school is fortunate to have a consultant from the curriculum working with our staff, and she gave us some suggestions for how to make these lessons more meaningful and effective for our mathematicians.  First, she encouraged us to have the kiddos build all of their equivalent expressions with connecting cubes.  

In the past I'd always used two-sided counters to help students visualize different combinations, but with the connecting cubes it's much easier to see how different combinations all equal the same number.  As the kiddos constructed trains with two colors of cubes, it was also very evident how they were thinking about the problem.  Some of them quickly organized their trains with the "pairs" next to each other (i.e. 2 red + 8 blue and 8 red + 2 blue); others started with 1+9 and increased one color while decreasing the other.  Some of the kiddos just tried out various combinations to see if they added to 10. 

The second piece of advice we received was to keep the sums small.  When the kiddos started guessing equivalent equations (8+5=10?), we were encouraged to scale back to a smaller number.  Almost all of the kiddos could find equivalent expressions within 5, even when they struggled with 9 or 10.  Even when a kiddos demonstrated understanding and fluency with combinations up to 10 or 12, we didn't provide a bigger sum.  The reason being that once you realize the pattern (increase one color, or addend, while decreasing the other), you can do it with any number.  Instead, we asked kiddos to try using three addends, or colors.  This was a challenge, but most "high-flying" mathematicians love a puzzle and enjoyed giving it a try.  

One of the first things I ever pinned on Pinterest was this "__ Ways to Make __" worksheet from Kinder-Craze.  I decided it was perfect thing to add into this session to have one more way of visualizing equivalent combinations.  We actually don't do much coloring in our class, so they loved getting to pull out the crayons and create these fun designs.  (I don't have a lot of bulletin board space but they looked great on the window above our math shelf.

Back At It

I have a lot of catching up to do!  I'd drafted 3 posts before the Winter Break but lost track of them and now it's been quite awhile (I'll post them later today).  As I rediscovered them this week, I was reminded of all the great things that were going on in my classroom before the break and relieved to realize that we have (mostly) picked up where we left off, despite the 18 days off we had in the middle.

Admittedly, I was nervous about having such a long break; we had two full weeks off over Christmas and New Years, which I filled with reading, eating, drinking, relaxing, watching movies, and cooking, but I had some nerves heading back to school.  You never know if the kiddos will have forgotten all the rules and expectations.  We went back to work last Monday for a half-day PD, then I spent the rest of the day co-planning and readying my classroom.  Tuesday morning I felt anxious but ready, then, about an hour and a half before the kiddos arrived, the heater in my classroom broke.  The temps were in the teens and my room quickly turned into a refrigerator.  Not good.

Despite the inconvenience of relocating (we spent the morning in the Chinese room and then moved around while other classes had special) and not being able to review the classroom routines and procedures that I'd hoped to, we had a great day!  In fact, having to think on my feet and figure out what/how to teach out of a box helped shake off the mental "dust" from being away and made me forget about my nerves.  The kiddos were just excited to see their friends again, and me, and thought it was pretty hilarious that we got to switch rooms throughout the day.

Thankfully, the heater was fixed by Wednesday morning and we were back in the classroom and back to our routine.  I had set aside time to go over our class expectations, discuss our class and individual goals, and review procedures, but the kiddos remembered almost everything.  They quickly reminded each other about our bathroom signal, how to "SHINE," and where to sit.  Now it's hard to believe we were away from each other for such a long time!