BOMBA: Una canción para redondear

Now I have said before that I am not much of a singer, but I should also add that I am not much of a dancer either...in public!  Put me by myself in a room and close the door and I can have some really good moves! :)

All of this makes what I am about to share even more funny.  But, this is all in the name of education, right?  In the summer of 2003, I was on staff with Teach for America at their summer institute in Houston, Texas.  That same summer, a song called "La Bomba" was very popular on the radio.  Being a part of Institute is like being in a teaching incubator.  I learned so much from my fellow TFA staff and was so inspired to return to my classroom and try out some new methods for helping my students achieve.  

One afternoon, as I heard "La Bomba" for like the thousandth time, the lyrics about moving your body up and down made me think of rounding numbers.  I'm telling you...it was HOT in Houston in 2003!  I decided to rewrite the PG-13 lyrics and created a song to help my third graders remember the key concepts about rounding numbers.  Here are the lyrics I came up with:

BOMBA (una canción para redondear)

Versión Matemática por la clase de Miss Bounds

(Bomba) Un movimiento inteligente

(Bomba) Un movimiento muy fácil

(Bomba) Un movimiento muy fácil

Y aquí se vienen los alumnos con el baile que es una bomba

Para estimar esto es una bomba

Para contar esto es una bomba

Para sumar esto es una bomba

Y los alumnos lo bailan así, así, así, así

Todo el mundo

Una línea en la decena

Una línea en la decena

Un movimiento fácil

Un movimiento fácil

Un círculo a la derecha

Un círculo a la derecha

Un movimiento fácil

Un movimiento fácil

Y ahora empiezo a redondear

4 o menos para abajo, para abajo, para abajo

5 o más para arriba, para arriba, para arriba

4 o menos para abajo, para abajo, para abajo

5 o más para arriba, para arriba, para arriba

(Bomba) Un movimiento inteligente

(Bomba) Un movimiento muy fácil

(Bomba) Un movimiento muy fácil

Y aquí se vienen los alumnos con el baile que es una bomba

Para estimar esto es una bomba

Para contar esto es una bomba

Para sumar esto es una bomba

Pero este problema se acaba, acaba, acaba, acábalo.

Now tell me you aren't singing this to yourself and dancing!  My students loved it and rounding was truly "un movimiento muy fácil"!

Making TAREA Work for Everyone

Last night while I was cooking dinner, I overheard the news anchorman say, "We're talking about homework.  How much is too much and is it even necessary at all?"  You can see the video from the broadcast here.  (Updated 8/21/13: The original video is not available but here is a link to a similar report.)

As a teacher, I have never been a huge fan of homework.  It brings up so many questions:  What assignment do I give?  How much do I give?  What horrible thing logical consequence happens to those that do not do their homework?  How do I grade homework?  Do I grade homework?  How much weight do I give the homework grades?

After processing those questions for many years and working through my Masters in Reading where I read lots and lots of research, I developed my own personal philosophy about homework. 

Homework SHOULD NOT be:
- a time where I expect the parents to do the job that I should have done during the school day

- the boring work that I do not want to make time for in my schedule
- an assignment that has never been practiced with my guidance in class
- unexpected and unpredictable
- frustrating for parents, children, and the teacher!

Homework SHOULD be:
- congruent with my beliefs about what good teaching and instruction should look like in my classroom
- a reflection of the learning that we are doing in school
- consistent and predictable so that families can plan for their lives outside of school
- a time for the student and the parent(s) to bond with each other as they talk and learn from each other
- challenging but rewarding for both the parents, children, and the teacher!

Based on this philosophy, I made this weekly homework packet for my second graders.

In class, my students and I kept individual dialogue journals about their reading during self-selected reading time.  "Lectura en casa" was a miniature extension of these journals. 

The entire packet was turned in on Monday mornings and a new packet was sent home on Monday afternoon.  I did not check the packet every day.  Wait a minute!  I know what you're thinking!  What if they just filled in the whole thing over the weekend?  That probably happened but there are only so many things you can control.  I read this article and it confirmed my decision. (Update 8/21/13 - The linked article is now only available to Choice Literacy subscribers.  Sorry!  However, this more recent article by Kathy Collins is excellent!)

While the majority of the writing in our classroom was in a writing workshop format where the students could choose the genre and topic, for "Escritura en casa", I would write a simple prompt that would ideally inspire some discussion at home before writing.  I asked students to tell how they got their name, to share their families' funniest moment, to retell a special memory with a relative, etc.  This was my favorite sheet of the homework packet because it really gave me a window into my students' lives and the anecdotes provided a means for me to build relationships with the parents.  It was amazing how a comment about one of these stories could quickly light the mood at a parent-teacher conference!

Spelling homework!  Ahhhh!  Since I have entered the world of parenthood, I hear more horror stories from my friends with school-aged children about the dreadfulness of spelling homework.  I think spelling is the area of more teacher malpractice than any other subject area but that is a whole other bowl of frijoles!  Anyways, I use the Words Their Way method for spelling during the school day so that spills over into homework.  On Mondays, students sort their Spanish words according to the patterns for that week.  On Tuesday, they do a no-peeking writing sort with the Spanish words.  On Wednesdays and Thursdays, they repeat the process with their English words.  

All in all, it is a pretty painless process and my students' scores on the Friday assessment were much better than they had been when I required things like writing sentences, rainbow spelling, pyramid spelling, alphabetical order, etc.  To all of my former students who were required to do those assignments, please consider this my open letter of apology!  

My math assignments varied throughout the school year.  This page was in the packet for the majority of the first semester while students were working on automaticity with their sums.  During class, we discussed various strategies for visualizing numeracy.  We played several different games and made flashcards.  Students were to use those flashcards as well as playing cards or dice to practice their sums at home.  Embedding the table as an assessment tool was helpful in keeping the parents informed about how well their children really knew the facts.  This is one of those concrete tools that parents really love because they can see progress over time.  I got a lot of good feedback from this page.

Because my total packet was three pages front and back, I alternated between using the Science and the Social Studies pages each week.  Most of the time, I would write a question asking students to apply our unit of study to their lives at home.  I would often find the questions or prompts in the textbook teacher's guides.  The topics were sometimes imaginative (What would it be like today in your house if electricity had never been invented?) or exploratory (Make a list of five items in your house that are attracted to your magnet.).

So, there you have it!  It's not perfect and I will continue tweaking it to make sure that homework is truly purposeful and powerful in bridging learning from school to home.  If you would like to download my homework packet for free, you can do so here.  Let me know what you think!  I would love to know how you make homework work for you in your classroom!

Mentor Text: De verdad que podemos cuidar de tu perro

Personal narratives tend to be the starting point for most writing workshops and, for most students, they are the perfect place to help students become confident, fluent writers.  However, I always had a few students that could never get past the “Ayer fui a Wal-Mart.” stage.  Please tell me it's not just me!  Despite my many mini-lessons on exploding the moment and finding the nuggets in everyday life, writing was a chore for these friends and it did not hold the meaning or excitement for them that it did for my other students. 

And then, I introduced “All about…” and “How To” books.  It was like I had found the key to their writing souls.  Apparently, just like some people do not consider themselves nonfiction readers, some people may not consider themselves nonfiction writers.  It doesn’t mean we can neglect a genre all-together but it does makes sense that we might find more interest and joy in one than the other and that is okay!

One of my AFAW (Ayer fui a Wal-Mart) students wrote the most elaborate book about how to paint a car.  It turns out that his dad works in a shop that paints cars and this eight-year-old has spent many a Saturday morning at that shop with his dad.  Because he was so familiar with his topic and so excited to share his knowledge, his writing oozed voice and development of ideas.

My all-time favorite “How to” book was written by a little girl that struggled academically and behaviorally.  She was one of seven children and missed many days of school.  Her book was titled “Cómo darle un baño a tu bebe”.  It was the most precious book with excellent illustrations.  I WISH I would have kept a copy of it but I didn’t.  The book was filled with evidence of a seven-year-old that had participated in bathing numerous siblings.  There were lots of details about safety and to be careful “porque pueden ser muy resbalosos”!

I came across this book at the library last week and I thought it might be some inspiration for our AFAW students. 

De verdad que podemos cuidar de tu perro by Lauren Child is a fictional story with a “how to” embedded inside:

“Muy bien”, dice Marv.  “Pero para poder cuidar de Chispas hay que saberse muy bien estas normas:  Nada de bombones.  Nada de pasteles.  Nada de dulces de ningún tipo.  No hay que dejarle que haga agujeros…  Ni que persiga a los pájaros.  Ni que se meta en los charcos.  Y sobre todo NUNCA quitarle la correa.”

What a great frame for getting students started on how to writing!  

Para poder cuidar de ______ hay que saberse muy bien estas normas:  Nada de ____________.  Nada de _____________.  Nada de ____________ de ningún tipo.  No hay que ______________________...Ni que ____________________.  Ni que ______________________.  Y sobre todo NUNCA _____________________________________________________.

Here is my little attempt at imitation.  Paco is our mischievous elderly dog. 

Para poder cuidar de Paco hay que saberse muy bien estas normas:  Nada de chocolate.  Nada de chicle.  Nada de dulces de ningún tipo.  No hay que dejarle que duerma en las camas…Ni que se acueste en los sillones.  Ni que se meta en el cuarto del bebé.  Y sobre todo NUNCA dejarle escapar por la puerta principal porque le encanta explorar el vecindario.

Nothing fancy but it is a good exercise in word choice and sentence fluency.  If you don’t have a lot of experience with mentor texts, I love using Jeff Anderson’s Invitation to Notice and Invitation to Imitate.  Trying out small paragraphs like this one helps us build our skills and our confidence by imitating published authors.

Do you have any AFAW students?  Have you invited them to try writing in other genres?

Weight a Minute!

Pardon my bad pun but I was going through some old pictures and found these that I took from a second grade bilingual classroom in Mesquite. This is why I believe we shouldn't buy prepackaged posters for our classroom! I love how this teacher took items that were relevant to her students and used these to make associations for measurement. The only addition I would make would be to add in the English term so that the students could see a lot of cognates!