You have small groups. Now what?

Hi, friends!  Happy Tuesday!  I'm sure that most of you are teaching right now, or maybe on your way to school still, but I'm sitting in the living room with our Christmas tree on and the twinnies are napping sweetly nearby.  I'm going to hit this hard and fast so we can be done before the boys wake up and I need another cup of coffee.  =)

If you've been following along at all, you know that I've been blogging lately about making small groups.  (I'd like to call it a series, but these posts have been so random and intermittent that I think series is too generous.)  In my last post here, I talked about how I made small groups.  So now I want to talk about what the heck you do with these small groups once you have them.  I think the obvious answer is that we all make small groups for SGI (small group instruction), so that you can give kids more targeted instruction, whether it's for reading or math.  What's less obvious is the best way to plan for SGI and actually run those small groups.

There are about a thousand ways to organize for SGI; most of them involve some type of work station, whether you're using Daily 5, Cafe, project based learning, or something else.  (To be honest, my previous literacy coach always pushed upper grades to do SGI during independent reading because she felt that was more authentic than work stations, but I think that's a little impractical in early grades, mostly because their stamina for independent reading doesn't match the amount of time you really want to spend with small groups.)  So, assuming you're balancing SGI with work stations the first thing you should decide is how often will you do SGI?  (For the record, I'm using SGI to refer to both guided reading and math,although I realize the process might not be the same for both.  We'll separate them out in a later post.  Fear not!)  Here are the three SGI schedules that I encounter most often.  I've used two of them myself.

SGI Plan 1 (this is what I used teaching first grade):  SGI occurs daily in reading, and almost daily in math.  Teacher sees all groups at least once a week, strategically choosing groups who might need extra sessions to see teacher multiple times.  Student rotation groups go to each work station once/week.  Pros to this style are that teachers see every single student at least once weekly, so you have a good feel for student progress, challenges, etc.  Cons:  If students are out the day you see them  you miss them for that week.

SGI Plan 2 (I used this teaching kindergarten):  SGI occurs daily, and 3 times/week in math.  Teachers see all groups daily (in reading), and each student within a week (math).  Pros:  Students gets lots of instruction targeted specifically for them and generally make pretty significant growth as a result.  Cons:  high work station churn; very difficult to run without 2 teachers in the classroom.    

SGI Plan 3 (I have never used this myself):  SGI only occurs several times per week (2-3), and teacher prioritizes students with highest needs.  Pro:  frees up classroom time for other aspects of instructional day.  Con:  students with high needs don't get as much targeted instruction.

I'd love to hear about which SGI lay out you use in your classroom.  I'm hoping to be back before the end of the week to talk about how I actually plan for SGI.  Have a great Tuesday, and don't forget to check out the TpT Cyber Monday & Tuesday sale!  Everything is 28% off until midnight tonight!  Start your shopping here!

Stay dry!
xoxo

Two Posts in Two Hours?!

It's because I'm a sucker for a good linky party.  And, of course, my paralyzing FOMO.  An old roommate gave me FOMO and since then it has really negatively interfered with a lot of my productivity.

In any case, Susan over at Thank God it's First Grade just moved from Las Vegas to Mass, and is hosting a super interesting linky.
                                          
And, since I have a paralyzing fear of missing out on fun, I of course need to participate.  Despite that the fact that I have already blogged once today and despite the fact that I have a grand total of zero lessons planned for tomorrow.  Actually, that's not true.  I have one lesson planned for tomorrow.  I planned my whole week of Fundations before brunch this morning.  Without any more babbling here's my schedule:

And here are some preemptive answers.  My grade level partner and I set this schedule together, and our admin team approved it, so we have roughly the same schedule, but we set our blocks.  Some times (GLM, specials, lunch, etc) are set by admin, but outside of those times we set our daily schedule, which is a nice piece of autonomy.  We have duty 4 times a week--3 lunch and 1 breakfast.  I didn't mark this on my schedule, which I also didn't realize until now, but when I go to GLM my students go to 2 consecutive specials.  If there's no GLM one week then I have all of that as personal planning time (which is really nice, but doesn't happen terribly often).  Earlier this summer I blogged about Responsive Classroom and the RC structures that our school uses.  Morning Meeting is one of them, so MM has a very distinct structure and the kids really get into the structure/routine of it--greeting, share, activity, morning message.  I've also added in calendar math this year, which isn't really part of RC, but has been helpful for me and building in some additional math time for my littles.  

If you have any other questions about my daily schedule I'd be happy to answer them.

Happy Sunday, y'all!  (And go Colts!)

xoxo

Rachel

Mid-Day Update

Friends!  Are you totally LOSING your mind getting ready for back to school, or is that just me??

I finally yesterday put every last stinking book into a book bin and I honestly think at this point if I find another unsorted book I might just throw it away.  That was such a never ending project! I'm 100% making that a kid's job during the school year.  Handling it from the end of the school year over the summer was plenty for me. That is one job I will happily pass off to a kid.  Now I'm just feeling nervous because my room is covered with random mess and we're in teacher meetings all week and I'm heading out of town this weekend.  Yipes!

My lunch break is over and our afternoon session is starting, so I just wanted to let you all know that I finished my guided reading planning templates.  You link directly to my store here to check them out.

Keep on keepin' on, friends!  =)

Evaluating Inverted Workshop Math Products

Greetings, and happy Sunday, friends!  I don't know about you, but I'm really starting to feel the back to school pressure.  Which is why I was so happy when the weatherman predicted a gross Sunday, because it's much easier to convince the hubs that I need to spend a (summer) weekend working on school stuff when the weather is yucky.  And it doesn't hurt that we both shirked all adult-like responsibilities and went to the pool all. day. long yesterday.  It was glorious!  And then we acted like we were both 22 again and went out way too late last night with friends.  Whoopsie!  But all in all it's been a very fun weekend; I even made eggs benedict this morning (first time ever)!  You can start calling me Martha Stewart whenever you're ready.  ;)

Today, I want to talk about evaluating student work/products in an inverted math model, especially since it's much less cut and dry than a typical word problem.  Of course there are still answers that are right and wrong, but there's a lot of information you can learn from your students' work, even if their answer is ultimately incorrect.

Initially, I was using a simple check/check plus/check minus system to evaluate my littles' work during this time, but I really felt like it wasn't really meaningful for them or for me.  And if evaluation isn't driving future/forward progress then what's the point?  So I spent some time brainstorming and trying to think about what I really wanted out of my kids' work, and how I could communicate it to them in a kid friendly way.  I've always liked the idea of rubrics, but conversely also frequently had a hard time using them in a meaningful way in my classroom.  And then I was paging through this unit that I bought from Deana Jump and DeeDee Wills and they had a writing rubric inside that was based on smiley faces, which I thought was really brilliant, and it was sort of like the clouds parted and I had this flash of teacher brilliance:  I could use a similar evaluation system for the math work that I was doing with my kids.  But one thing that was really important to me is that my kids bought into the rubric, also.  So I brainstormed the things that I really wanted to make sure were included in the rubric, and then I sat my kids down on the carpet the next day for math and I told them that we needed to think about what the very best first grade mathematician work looks like, and what it looks like when you're not doing your very best work and this is what we came up with.

After we made this chart, we had an epic dance party because we spent so much time on the carpet making it, then I laminated it and it hung up in our classroom the rest of the year.  The next thing I did that I really think helped my kids have a clear understanding of the work at each level is that we evaluated some anonymous work together as a class.  We went over what different mathematicians produced and I asked them what symbol they would have put on it, and then I showed them what symbol I actually gave it.  We did this for about 2 or 3 days so that they really understood how to get smiley face exclamation point (which, by the end of the year, was one long word in our classroom--smileyfaceexclamationpoint).  I really feel like this rubric helped my students be clearer about the way I was evaluating their work, and it gave us all a common language to use around discussing our mathematical work.  It was great to see kids using the chart with their partners to think about what they needed to add to make their work even better.

For those of you wondering how I tracked the data across units, I'm here for you.  =)  I really tracked this data in 2 ways.  I would create a chart in word of the problems we were doing each week, and all my kids names and then I would just put the symbol they earned in their box.  This allowed me to look across the week and see if there was a student who really understood and should maybe be pushed harder, or if there was a student, or group of students who really didn't seem like they were understanding our content that week.  The other way I tracked it was numerically, in a grade book so that I could use these symbols to factor into my students' math grades at the end of the quarter.  I just used a 4/3/2/1 system, with the 4 being equivalent to the smiley face exclamation point, and the 1 being equivalent to the straight face.  I didn't use 3/2/1/0 because I feel like zeros can really wreck an average.  But you are, of course, the boss of you.

Honestly, I had planned to talk about evaluation and leading a share/debrief in the same post, but I feel like this is already a super long post, so we'll save leading the debrief for tomorrow.  And last but not least I am working hard at making my debut on Teachers Pay Teachers, and I'll be sharing the documents that I use in my own classroom to make this model work--planning guides, tasks that I've already written, blank rubrics for you to fill in, and maybe a quick how-to guide, if you think that would be helpful.  I hope to have all of those documents ready to go by this Wednesday.  If there's anything else you'd like to know let me know!  I aim to please.  =)

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday!
Rachel

More Math!

Friends!  Before I tell you more about this rad type of math that I'm working on I have to tell you what I did today.  (pause for dramatic effect)  I went running outside today for the first time today since the end of the school year.  It's been super nice out for 2 days in a row; normally DC is about 95% humidity in the summertime because the Founding Fathers decided to drain a swamp to build the nation's capital.  I felt like it was a sign that I should head outside for a run. When I opened my Nike+ app it totally shamed me.  It said "it's been 8 jillion days since your last run".  So embarrassing.  But then I did a 5K, and I didn't die so I'm going to go ahead and label that a success.

But back to this inverted math.  I'm pretty into it.  What I want to tell you about today is how crafting a task to use with this model is different from a standard or typical word problem.  I think one of the easiest areas to see this difference is in addition and subtraction.  So, when you teach a unit on adding and subtracting you're generally spending part of the time teaching students how to solve word problems.  A normal word problem might sound something like this:  "Mattison has 4 cookies.  James has 3 cookies.  How many cookies are there altogether?"  But when you're using the inverted model, you're going to write a task that is either open-ended, or has multiple answers (sometimes both).  Going to the original example, a task for this model on the same content might read something like this:  "In all, Mattison and James have 7 cookies.  How many cookies could each kid have?"  What you really want is a task that has multiple points of entry, and that kids could really spend a significant amount of time working to solve.  In this example, you could encourage kids to think about how many different ways they could put 2 numbers together to get 7.  It's also likely, in this example, that you would be pushing students to notice how turning numbers around represents a different problem.  I find that the easiest way to get started crafting tasks is by working backwards--starting with something more traditional or typical, and then thinking about how I could make it more open-ended or how I could turn it into a problem with multiple solutions.  One more piece that's important in this model is that students are generally using a combination of words, numbers, and pictures to show their work/thinking.  There's also a heavy emphasis on using labels, but I'll get into that more when I talk about evaluation and sharing.  

Another important part of this math model is that students are usually working with a partner, and that they almost always have a variety of tools available to them.  Obviously that implies that at the beginning of the year you're teaching your students how to work with a partner and use tools, but that's likely to be something you're teaching at the beginning of the year, regardless of the type of math you plan to use in your classroom.  Since you're also usually giving students a materials choice when using this model, you also have to help them figure out what tools are best for different tasks.  But I generally feel like these are things that smart teachers are doing at the beginning of the year, anyway, so I'm not going to waste your time talking about all of that here.

I'll be back tomorrow or Sunday (it's supposed to rain on Sunday) to talk about evaluating tasks and how the structure is different when you're teaching at the end, instead of the beginning of the workshop.  Happy Friday!