Teacher Tuesday

Every campus has one :) Enjoy your week!

How to Pause Questions

Tireless interuptions while giving directions is a problem that has plauged special ed and mainstream classes. I have found two awesome tricks to pause the questions.


The first comes to you from Im Blog Hoppin'! When the crown is on, no questions are allowed.


One thing I've used in my small groups is a dollar store push light. I have a few in various shapes and colors. I write "No Talking Please" or "No Questions Please" and when the light is on voices are off.


What strategies do you use to cue silence?

Grab Bag Review

Need ideas for a quick review? Don't print up extra packets. Take the worksheet or test for the end of the unit and cut it into strips. Place the strips in a fancy bag and voila! You have a way to review on the fly. This way you can use every possible teaching moment while making review a little more fancy. Could use a simple brown paper sack or cool gift bag.

Possible Extensions
Use with math facts.
Get a few extra bags for partners/pairs to practice.
Use with unit vocabulary.
Have a discussion question bag. Save time by organizing by genre. Example, Non-fiction questions that could be used for any non-fiction text.

Teacher Tuesday- Language :)

A little humor to brighten up your Tuesday. Follow my blog via email for a weekly funny :) This story is a little "on the edge" for my humble blog, but I couldn't help but laugh when I read it. Before teaching 5th grade I taught Pre-K and have a lot of similar stories. It comes from a site where teachers share these kind of moments. Visit MyTeachingStory.com to find more.

The U word?

This happened to a friend of mine. She was on yard duty, and a little kid came up to her looking very serious.
“Miss, so-and-so said the ‘U’ word!”  My friend was baffled as to what that word might be, so asked the girl to tell her what the ‘U’ word was.
“No, miss, it’s a very bad word! I’m not allowed to say it!”
“Go on, it’ll be okay. You’re just telling me what the boy said. What’s the ‘U’ word?”
“No, miss! It’s very bad! I can’t say it!”
“Well, how about if you whisper it? What’s the ‘U’ word?”
So my friend leant down, the little girl stretched up and whispered behind her hand: “You motherf#%ker”

And a little more about language :)

Teaching Pet Peeve

Teaching pet peeves, we've all got em!

One of my worst teaching pet peeves is when I explicit instruction on common errors or the "wrong way" to do something.

 I was mosing around on pinterest when I came across this chart:

 

I love this chart! EXCEPT for one thing. The big common error explination with a model. What we have to realize is that when we teach the wrong thing to do, we are still teaching it! Now, do I think we should never mention common errors? No. There may be a time and a place with a specific group of learners where we need to say it and say it in a direct way. But I don't think it's wise to repeatedly teach it or prominately display it for all to see everyday. It is entirely more meaningful to repeatedly teach the correct process. The goal would be to eventually cue learners through common errors rather than simply identify them.

For example, when I have a type of math problem where learners typically leave off the last step, I will work the entire problem up until that point. At which point I will say " Am I done?" The learners say "No!" I always respond "Why not?" Do you see how that might be more meaningful than repeatedly showing me the wrong way? What do you think?

And if you have a little extra time... Click the pic to compare student guesses with teacher responses.

Top 10 GUESSED Pet Peeves for Teachers:

1.    Chewing gum obnoxiously.

2.    Talking after they give you the shut-up look.

3.    Crazy excuses for not turning in homework.

4.    Giving the instructions, then having someone ask “What do we do?”

5.    Distracting noises.

6.    All of someone’s stuff on their desk.

7.    Someone slamming their locker when it’s not locker time.

8.    Running in hallways.

9.    Daydreaming in class.

10.  No one laughing at their jokes.

Click the pic for the full article

Mixed Numbers and Improper Fractions Posters

Here's a pic of some posters I made to help my students remember the process for changing mixed numbers or improper fractions. I'm halfway sad to post this as you can kinda see my ugly classroom walls lol.

Explanation-
To convert a mixed number to an improper fraction they must make the number "MAD" Multiply, Add, and Denominator.
To convert an improper fraction to a mixed number they have to multiply. Thus the cheer "With an improper fraction, division is the action!" It might be more fun with hand gestures :)

Text Mapping Non Fiction Text

I'm in love.

I'm in love with text mapping. I wish I would have came across this earlier in the year, but nevertheless, it's here and it's here to stay!

Text mapping involves marking non-fiction text in order to understand text features. It's a pretty specific system and I'm committed! Love it.

First of all, the text that will be mapped is presented in scroll form. Pages of the text are laid out in a sequence rather than a book style where they turn pages.

Old school


New school


You feelin' it yet?

And here's my beautiful take on scrolls. I found some old Boys Life and American Girl magazines in a magical closet in the school library. For the long, fancy, small group articles I ripped out the magazine cover and table of contents as well. I glued them to posterboard and voila! I eventually got lazy after 3 or 4 of these and stopped gluing them to posterboard. I'm having everything laminated so it really doesn't make much of a difference.

I also found some cool 2 page articles for independent/paired work.

Using text mapping is typically done in small group because it's hands on and very interactive. You could try it with a whole class, but I wouldn't do that to your self lol :) The scrolls are usually placed on the floor but I would rather have it on a white board so we could make notes. Like this:

<---Can't do this on the floor. Advantage white board!

<--or lay it out. Note: This is not me! I had this up on my computer and one of my students was like "Miss, is that you?" :)

When we map it we are going to look for text features. This includes but is not limited to:

• Headings & Subheadings
• Captions & Sidebars
• Bold print & Italics
• Glossary, Index, and Table of Contents

At first we are going to use post-its (a lovely idea from my coworker Cobia!). I will give them post it's and ask them to identify text features. They can write what the text feature is and then place it on the scroll on the item. Example, place a "Heading" post it on the heading. They could also use multi colored dry erase markers if you laminate your scrolls.

We are going to incorporate several of our reading strategies including predicting, summarizing, and main idea vs. details. It's important to know what text features are how they work together. Be prepared for some tough times with the vocabulary. For example, some learners may have a hard time distinguishing a caption from a sidebar.

All images (other than the two from my scrolls) are from an the Text Mapping Project. Please visit their site at TextMapping.org