Notice and Note: Memory Moments

This week my class tackled the Notice and Note Signpost for Memory Moments.  When a reader is tracking her comprehension and she comes across a situation where a character's thoughts are interrupted by a memory or flashback that comes to the character, they are having a Memory Moment.

Memory Moments help readers understand  the plot, theme, and relationship between the character and the plot. They give us insight into the character's motivation behind some of their thoughts, words and actions.  When we encounter a Memory Moment in our books, I teach my students to stop and ask WHY might this memory be important?  The answer will tell us about a conflict, or development  that may be upcoming in the plot of the story.  The conflict may involve just the character, or may be alluding to something that will be forthcoming in the story.

I love when author's are really good at their craft... I mean, isn't that WHY we want to read their books?  Gary Paulsen starts Hatchet right out the gate with a Memory Moment within the first 3 pages of text.  Brian is sitting in the plane and he says "The thinking started."

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My fourth graders are currently reading Lunch Money by Andrew Clements.  In chapters 5 and 6, Greg Kenton, the main character, shares two memory moments when he flashes back to the first time he meets his arch nemesis Maura.  As readers, we learn about why there is a conflict between these two characters.  I use these chapters in the book to talk to my students about internal and external conflict, and what that teaches use about a character as he/she is developing.  In this particular book, Clements shows Greg remembering something that troubles him, his competition with Maura.  This helps us to see the back story behind why Greg dislikes Maura so much.  It also helps us to make inferences about the plot of the story.  This really helps give my students a deeper purpose for reading.  They look at the novel more closely, because they are reading to prove if their inference has foundation.

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When I first introduce the Memory Momentnt Signpost, I show my students an anchor chart, and we use our tabbed Notice and Note booklets.  We write examples of key words or clues we may encounter that will help us  recognize the signpost.  I also show them this video.  It gives them another overview of the signpost.

Then we use this video to practice the signpost with visual media.  It is easy for them to recognize.

I also like this video from Rataouille

If you have older students they will recognize this quick 20 second scene between Katniss and Peeta from the Hunger Games which gives great insight into the connection between the characters.

Before having my students find and discuss the Memory Moments in Lunch Money, I also remind them of previous picture books we have read that contain Memory Moments.  These include:

Saturdays and Teacakes

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Wilfred Gordon McDonald Partridge by Mem Fox

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A Chair for My Mother

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Another book that I just recently found and am adding to my collection is The Day the Crayons Quit. 

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I know this isn't a new book, I had just not thought about using it with Memory Moments until I pulled it out for our Mentor Sentences.  I LOVE when I have an AHA moment too! 

Do you have other books that you use to teach the Notice and Note Signpost for Memory Moment? I would love to hear about any new books that you have found that help students!

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Interactive Foldables for Fractions and Modeling Division {Mid-Week Motivation}

I was up to my ears this month in teaching fractions.  Do you love or hate teaching this unit?  I seem to have a love/hate relationship with it.  There are days when teaching the concepts is awesome.  It's like we are being served hot chocolate on the Polar Express... people are singing and dancing and just genuinely happy.  Then there are days when I feel like I'm sitting in the dentist chair waiting to get my teeth drilled.....Today I want to share a few activities that I've created and used, and I hope they can make teaching fractions a little easier for you.

One of the first things that I teach is vocabulary.  It is so important that my students are speaking math correctly every day.  Speaking the language helps us to write the language, and this is important when it comes to assessments.  I use a foldable to keep the vocabulary all in one place.

To reinforce the knowledge and vocabulary I have my students use these memory cards to play concentration.  They love to spend a little time in small groups together, and speaking math is a perfect way to spend time with friends.

I also like to use foldables to teach my students the steps to adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing fractions.  To me it is more important to practice the steps, then to spend time writing out all the steps.  We put the foldables into our notebooks, and then leave them open while we practice using our dry erase boards.

And yes, I do teach them the modeling of multiplying and dividing fractions.  I also spend time working through dividing fractions with common denominators as well as the multiplicative inverse of Keep-Change-Flip.

When we start the our drawing models section, I tell the story of my father and baking loaves of bread.  Basically the idea that his recipe makes a certain number of loaves and I have to divide up the loaves.  Here is an example:

The idea of telling a story as we work through these problems really helps them make real world connections to the story.  One of the great things about completing the models first was I could use them to lead my students into developing their own concept for division.  This was really amazing this year. In just a few examples several figured out you could use a common denominator and make equivalent fractions, then divide the numerators and then the denominators to find the answer.  My students really caught on to this concept!  I love giving them multiple ways to solve problems, and many do a great job using math vocabulary for explanations with this type of problem solving.  I'm curious for teachers of fraction division--- do you teach your students to find a common denominator to divide?  Many of mine found it easier than the short cut this year.

I would love to hear how you incorporate vocabulary, or model drawing into your fraction lessons!
Leave a comment below and let me know!
If you need foldables for your classroom- check out my Fractions in Actions Bundle:  It includes Interactive Foldables for basic vocabulary, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division; vocabulary matching cards for center work, and an interactive game you can use with any operation.
It is on sale right now on TpT for WEDNESDAY AND THURSDAY if you are interested.

Have a great week!  If there are any math topics you would like me to blog about in the future, please let me know!

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Using Foldables and Games to Review Numeric Expressions and Order of Operations

I love being able to teach math first thing in the morning!  It is a great way to start my day.  I use my morning work time to have my students cut out or color in their interactive notebook foldables.  Then when we are ready to start our day everything is organized and ready to go.  In this way I have a full 45 minutes to teach math, and not worry about the few slow kids who are always the last ones done cutting.

Today I wanted to share a few resources for reviewing numerical expressions and order of operations:

1) Foldables Foldables and Foldables-  Have you started to use foldables and interactive notebooks?  I started using this several years ago and it has really changed my teaching. It's NOT about cutting and gluing!  Used correctly, foldables are a great study tool for students who need the kinestic touch to study.  They provide parents with the needed vocabulary to help their children, and a great way to teach students about organizing notes and their thinking.

I used three different foldables with this section of my Expressions and Equations unit to help organize vocabulary and give my students a reference point for justifying and explaning their answers.  One reviews basic operations.  We created a four door foldable and put words that can be found in questions and word problems on the inside.  It's basic, but it gets the point across.

My students cut and colored the front during morning work.  Then we completed an activity where students had to sort key operation words.  These went into the inside.

Here is an example of the inside when they finished.  This was great for teaching them about how to "speak" math.  We refer to it a lot throughout the year when we learn how to correctly justify or explain our thinking in words.

The second is for exponents.  I use this foldable for vocabulary as well.  My students need to learn the different ways an exponent can be written.  They always have trouble with this.  They can never remember that the exponent tells how many times the base is used as a factor.  They also have trouble remembering that the expanded form can also be called product of the same factor and repeated multiplication.  Those pesky test creators always use different names for this and it throws my students off.

The third foldable I use is for Order of Operations.
The PEMDAS explains the order that needs to be used with these numerical expressions.  I really stress the way that I have students enter information in this foldable.  My kids always forget that you can multiply OR divide which ever comes first.  The same with adding and subtracting.  So I always put a lot of emphasis on this section.

You can find these foldables {HERE} if you want to use them in your classroom.

I also include examples foldables in our notebooks. Here, we made what I call finger foldables for numeric phrases.  I like to keep things color coded. So when we complete these foldables I have students circle key words using the same color they used in the operations foldable I mentioned above.  If addition was green, then all the addition words are circled in green, etc.  I believe this really helps make the visual memory connection in vocabulary.  After we circle the key word and write the operation on the inside of the foldable we translate the expression.
Here is an example of the finger foldables.

2) Fun Videos

Have you seen Ron Clark perform his Order of Operations song? It is perfect to get your students up and singing about the Order of Operations. My students love it, and I love when I hear them singing or humming it during an assessment!  There is a great link from an Atlanta news station which shows the group dancing on desks and performing.  ***You have to watch about 5 seconds of an ad before you can skip to the video **

http://www.ajc.com/videos/news/ron-clark-academy-the-algebra-song/vdKst/

Here is another great video source that I use in the unit from Flocabulary.  There are tons of resources that Flocabulary has to offer.

I found it on YouTube

3) Interactive Games

My students love to play math games... I mean who doesn't like being able to work in a group and talk... and when the talking is about Math-- HOLLA!

Try this Order of Operations Freebie. It really gets my smarties thinking because those placement of numbers is important to win this game!

We also have loved playing Exponent Dominoes to practice making the connections between exponents, numbers in expanded form, and standard form numbers.  I printed these in yellow, orange and white cardstock to give them a Fall theme because I teach this unit in the fall.  But they work just as well any time of year. 

Have access to IPads?

You may also want to try this IPad game.  It is perfect for centers.
5 Dice- Order of Operations Game
This game is similar to my Order of Operations Freebie.  Students are given a target number and five dice.  They must create a numerical expression that is as close to or equal to the target.  You can set the game to use just addition and subtraction, or all four operations with grouping symbols.

I hope these resources are helpful!  Have a great day!

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Squared Away on a Sunday: Candy Corn Dominoes and Halloween Figurative Language

Happy Long Weekend Friends!  I know many of you have an extra day off on Monday to celebrate Columbus Day.  My students have the day off, but I have a PD day Monday.  Boo Hoo!  I don't always mind PD, but I'd rather have an extra day in my weekend!

We just finished our first quarter of school.  I can't believe how fast it has gone by.  I'm currently trying to prep a few small group activities for my math and ELA time.  I wanted to share a few with you.  Honestly, the math isn't Fall or Halloween related.  I mean, I teach sixth grade, we don't have pumpkins in our curriculum, but I try to do a few things that make the month fun, AND get in the curriculum.
So here is what I've squared away on this Sunday:

1) We have been studying and practicing exponents.  My smarties have struggled and struggled with this concept.  I created a game for them called Exponent Dominoes.  You play this game similar to the way you would play any dominoes game.  To make it work for "October/FALL/Halloween"  I printed the pieces out in white, yellow and orange.

Yep, now we are playing Candy Corn Dominoes!  The winner gets a small packet of candy corn when we play at the teacher table.  My students get the extra practice with exponents and they think it's a Halloween activity.  Boo- Yah!

2) We've been working like crazy to review Figurative Language.  I like to spiral this throughout the year.  I begin with reviewing the basics, practicing and assessing each type.  I take each one a week at time.  Usually we will do some sort of visual activity, use a mentor text to practice identifying the type, practice with sentences and then assess.  Over the past few weeks we have covered similes, metaphors, onomatopoeia and alliteration.  I LOVE this washi tape that I found at Office Depot for our Onomatopoeia week!

This past week we worked on alliteration.  I used a Halloween theme, and had my students create extreme alliteration with tongue twisters about a Halloween topic.  They did a great job! 

Closer to Halloween we'll have finished up with all the types I review in the fall semester.  Then I add in Halloween Figurative Language Centers to the mix.  This is a task card sort with all the types of figurative language.  Students sort the cards, or they can also play concentration/memory with them. Finally, I have two different formative assessments that I give to make sure we are keeping up with our skills.  I can differentiate these as needed, and they go right into our interactive notebooks.

So what have you Squared Away on this Sunday?  Do you also "trick" your students and "treat" them to fun activities that aren't really Halloween or Fall based?  I'd love to hear your ideas!

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Divisibility Rules, Prime Numbers, GCF, and LCM

Can you believe it is already October?  I am amazed that in just another week our first quarter of school will be over!  It seems like yesterday was Meet the Teacher.

We spent a ton of time this week reviewing divisibility rules and prime numbers.  My students have REALLY been struggling with this, and I knew I had to take a week from my normal sixth grade curriculum and do a quick review.  I started by having them put a foldable in their notebooks that gives the divisibilty for 2,3,6,9, 5 and 10.

After my students got a little more comfortable with divisibility, we took on Prime Numbers.
First in the lesson I showed my students a video of Eratosthenes.  He is teh Greek philosopher who is credited with finding that all numbers can be factored into primes.  The video focuses on Eratosthenes as a whole person.  He is also credited for finding a very accurate measure of the circumference of the Earth using a sundail.  Here is the video:

We use a hundreds board and divisibility rules to find all of the prime numbers from 2-100 and color code them on the board.  

We add the hundreds chart to our notebooks and complete a sorting activity for prime and composite numbers.  

We had to relearn GCF in order to be successful using this concept with combining like terms and the distributive property.  I teach LCM and GCF using the prime ladder method as well, so we spent the rest of our week practicing this new concept.  I think that combining like terms will be so much easier next week!  When I teach LCM and GCF I use a foldable as well.  You can read the original blog post I wrote about this lesson {HERE}  If you are interested in any of the foldables you can go {HERE}.  The lesson plan I use to teach finding the prime numbers on a hundreds chart is also included in the packet.  I also have a BUNDLE which includes the lesson plans for each concept, interactive notebook foldables and practice problems.  Check it out {HERE}

I would love to hear how you teach these concepts!  Please feel free to share below!

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Minerals Galore! Reading, Interactive Notebooks, Labs and Studyblocks

School finished up for me Tuesday with a Professional Work Day.  I'm so glad to finally be able to be on my own schedule.  My own kids have had school this week, which has left me with Free Time!  I had originally planned on enjoying a few hours at the beach, but it has really been raining here, so instead I used the time to start looking at organizing my science units for next year.
This was the first year I've had to teach science in a very, very, long time.  So it was like being a brand new teacher.  I had to learn the material. I had to wade through the numerous amounts of folders, and plan and prepare.  I was traveling through my science time by the skin of my teeth.  THAT was NOT going to be happening again this year.

I spent some time putting my minerals unit together.  Take a look at what it has to offer:

We all know that there has been a huge push to teach reading skills in the content area, so I incorporated some Close Reading passages into my unit.  I'll have students cold read these and make connections, complete vocabulary picture notes after discussion, and then do a foldable for our interactive notebook.  One thing I love about these foldables is that they aren't all vocabulary based, but my students have to DO something with them.. hello!  and in INTERACT with the interactive notebook foldable!

For example, the first passage we will read is What is a Mineral?  Throughout this passage my students will learn the four characteristics used to classify something as a mineral.  When we have finished discussion and answering quick check questions they will put this foldable into their notebooks:

Inside I have them write down justification for each item.  The inside looks like this:

Last, we color code the items.  In this case we did green for mineral and red for non-mineral.  It was more than just an enter in your vocabulary kind of thing.

We also have a Project Based Lab to complete.  I think PBL is such an amazing tool, and I can't wait to have more opportunities in my classroom for this.  All of the instructions for the lab are included in the unit.  You just have to supply the minerals.  Most schools that have minerals in their curriculum supply minerals and rocks, but if you happen to not have them try contacting your high school or a local university.  I found both very helpful at loaning me items when I was looking for them this year.  You can also buy rocks and minerals kits fairly inexpensively online.  Try www.rocksandminerals.com  It might make a great Donors Choose project.

I also included a studyblocks review sheet and a unit assessment.  The fabulous, amazing, creative, teacher that I worked with at my former school taught me about studyblocks almost 15 years ago.  I love them because they can also be an amazing data tool for you to see what stuck with your students.

Basically, you give students boxes with topic headings.  Independently or with a partner, students fill in the most important information in each heading.  The key is not to use complete sentences, or have information overload.  The key is just a phrase or code word(s) that will help you remember the important concepts.  My students really loved these this year.  It helped them learn what was REALLY an important part of the unit.  I always make these AFTER I make up my assessment, so students know that what is on the studyblocks is ON THE TEST.  After all, my job in not to trick them into studying a whole lot of trivia.  My job is to teach them how to pull out and retain pertinent information.  After my students create their own studyblocks I have them use a different color pen or pencil and I show them my blocks.  They write down any further information that they may have missed and then use the studyblocks as a tool to prepare for the assessment.

Here is an example of the studyblocks for minerals.

If Minerals is on your list of subjects to teach next year, consider checking out my unit.  It will give you a chance to enjoy a little more of your summer vacation!  My Rocks unit is up next in the queue!

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