Teach Like a Pirate Book Study Part 5: Building a Better Pirate

Welcome to the conclusion of the Teach Like a Pirate Book Study!  It is not to late to join in, so if you are looking for some inspiration for your teaching, grab a copy of the book and join our discussion!  Feel free to leave your discussion in the comments or if you have a blog and want to do a post about it, leave a link in the comments.  I have to say that I have so enjoyed reading this book and it has really helped renew my enthusiasm for teaching.  This book is going to have a permanent place in my collection and will be one I will be going back to for inspiration and fresh ideas.  

Teach Like a Pirate

Here is the posting schedule

July 12 Passion and Immersion

July 19 Rapport and Ask and Analyze

July 26 Transformation and Enthusiasm

August 2 Part II: Crafting engaging lessons

August 9 Part III: Building a better pirate

Part III: Building a Better Pirate

Do you want to be great?  That is the big question in this section.  Do you want your classroom to be a place where students are engaged and building a love of learning.  Working towards being great makes you a better teacher and keeps your enthusiasm and passion strong.  "Teaching is a tough job filled with unbelievable hardships, hurdles, and headaches.  Our profession has a notoriously high burnout rate.  Unless you find something big to care about, you won't make it." I know I want to be a great teacher and when I am committed to putting passion and enthusiasm into my teaching, I enjoy it more and so do my students.  I love when colleagues notice my positive attitude and complement me on not just going through the motions.

I love the comments in this section about failing in the classroom.  If you play it safe all the time, not only are you not having any fun with your teaching, but you are not pushing your limits in your efforts to become great.  Some of my very best lessons have risen out of others that were complete disasters.  "If you haven't failed in the classroom lately, you probably aren't pushing the envelope enough.  You are being too safe." There is no perfect time to try out the lesson or the new strategy.   You  have to jump in with both feet and know that the cost of one failed lesson is not that high.  This advice rings so true with my own teaching practices as well as those times where I have been the teacher during professional development with other colleagues.  If you let fear of failing get in the way, it can be very difficult to get started.

Finding your crew

One of the things that has had the strongest impact on my teaching is the people I have met along the way.  All of the opportunity I have had for co-teaching has led me to develop relationships and learn from a huge variety of educators.  Attending conferences and taking courses had benefited me not only from the increased knowledge but from the increased opportunity to develop relationships and share my passion with other educators.  I have also been able to connect with teachers worldwide through my own and other educators blogs and Facebook pages.  I also have been fortunate enough to have a "best teacher friend" who I have been able to co-teach with, collaborate with and who has always been there to bounce ideas off of and push my teaching to the next level.

Classroom Kung Fu

In my school district it seems like every few years we buy a new math or literacy program that is supposed to fix everything and make everyone achieve the standards.  Despite words like fidelity to the program and rigor being thrown around, the program has never (and will never) fix all out problems.  "Districts and schools always seem to be investing in the latest, greatest program to solve all their problems."  It is not a program that will fix your school's problems.  It is people.  Teachers.  Great teachers who are always looking to "add more and more moves to their teaching style." 

Wrapping it Up!

My biggest take-away from this book is to continue to find what sparks my passion and enthusiasm for teaching and to think outside the box.  If you don't have passion and enthusiasm for your job than you need to find it or move onto something else!  The more passion and enthusiasm you have the better your potential for becoming a great teacher.  Find what fuels you and bring it into your classroom

What makes you passionate and enthusiastic in the classroom!  I look forward to reading your responses! 

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You Oughta Know About The National Library of Virtual Manipulatives

I am excited to be linking but today with Mrs. McClain for the You Oughta Know Blog Hop

I want to share with you a free online resource that I use over and over again with students in all grades.  It is the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives which is maintained by Utah State University.

The manipulatives are organized by strand (Number & Operations, Algebra, Geometry, Measurement, and Data Analysis & Probability) as well as by grade cluster (Pre K-2, 3-5, 6-8 and 9-12).  If you need a manipulative you can probably find it there!  I have used many different manipulatives for specific classroom purposes as well as letting students explore a particular category.  You must have Java installed on your computer to run the manipulatives.  If you don't have Java, it is a free download and easy to install! 

Today I will share with you a few of my favorites!

Fractions- Comparing

You can find this one under number and operations grades 3-5.  It is a fun tool to use on a projector or SMART board as a demonstration tool or as a student learning center or partner game.  

It starts by showing two fractions.  The number of pieces can be changed on each until they are both equal pieces and the same size.   

Once the pictures have equal pieces of the same size, you can rename the fraction so they have the same denominator. 

Once you click on check and have the right answer, you plot your fractions on a number line.  

Next you have to find a fraction between your two fractions.  I love this for thinking about fraction density!  Density is often something teachers and math books skip or do not emphasis but it is super important! 

Click check and if you are right it will ask you to find another fraction between your two fractions.  This will go on and on until you click new fractions.  

I use this virtual manipulative in grades 3-5.  I ALWAYS use this with my fourth graders!

Number Line Bars- Fractions

This is my absolute favorite of all the virtual manipulatives.  When I found this about 6 years ago, it completely changed the way I teach fraction division and helped my students understand this challenging idea so much better!  I even did an action research project on this topic for my master's thesis and the results of using this manipulative to teach fraction division were statistically significant.  

I have created a series of worksheets to go along with this virtual manipulative that I will be sharing on my blog in the coming weeks so make sure you are following my blog or have liked me on Facebook so you will be the first to know when these get posted!

Before finding this virtual manipulative, I did not have a good way to teach fraction division in a hands on way.  Now I have kids use this to help them notice patterns and give them a visual image for fraction division. 

Here is how a student could do a problem like 1 and 2/3 divided by 4/5.

Start by making a bar that is 1 and 2/3 long.  You must enter it as an improper fraction

We need to figure out how many 4/5 bars fit into the 5/3 bars.  We can easily put 2 on top but need to find what part of a third bar will fit. 

By placing a third bar on top and changing the step size we can see that 1/12 of the final bar fits over the 5/3 one.  The answer is 2 and 1/12

Again... these bars are super powerful and the example above is one students would do after being led through a series of problems specifically designed for them to notice some patterns that will lead them to constructing an algorithm.  Stay tuned for a more detailed post on this!

I have used this manipulative mostly in sixth grade.  However because the Common Core has placed some ideas about fraction division into grade 5, I will probably be using it in grade 5 as well. 

Tangrams

I have written about many ways I use tangrams in the classroom but neglected to mention this one in that post!  This is a fun thing for kids to work on spacial reasoning and I always love working with tangrams because there will be a student or two who really excel at this that sometimes don't excel at number and operations.  

You can choose from any of the shapes at the bottom of the screen and try to fit the 7 tangram pieces onto it.  You can change the color of the pieces, flip them by pressing the red arrow and turn them by dragging on the corner. 

If a shape is to challenging, you can click on hint and it will draw in a line that will really help with placing the next piece.  

The National Library of Virtual Maniplatives is really something all teachers should know about.  If the above three manipulatives don't appeal to you there are still many others to choose from.  My estimate is that there are around 80!

Head over to NLVM now to see what they have!

Have you used the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives?  Which ones are your favorites?

An InLinkz Link-up

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Proportional Reasoning and Peach Jam

Today I am linking up with 

A monthly REAL WORLD math blog link-up hosted by

 4mulaFun, The Teacher Studio, Teaching to Inspire in 5th, AND MissMathDork,

I love when I can connect real life stuff to my students' math education.  A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to be able to give a very fun real world math lesson to a few middle school students who I was doing summer tutoring with.  We had finished working on proportional reasoning problems and their rides had not yet arrived.  A few days prior to this session I had purchased a bunch of peaches and one of my tutoring students asked if he could have one.  He noticed that several of them had developed soft spots and I really didn't want to throw out all those peaches so I made a spur of the moment decision to make peach jam.  I had never made it before and did not have a recipe so I did a quick online search and found this. 

We used this recipe from food.com

It seemed like more peaches than I had but I had all the ingredients.  My two students seemed very concerned that it wouldn't work without enough peaches.  Little did they know that we were about to get majorly involved in a proportional reasoning problem.  A few phone calls to parents and they were both granted permission to stay an extra hour so we got right to work.

Peaches about to go bad!

We peeled, and diced the peaches and did not follow the recipe where it says to let them sit an hour and it seems to have come out fine!

After all the peaches were cut up, we had 6 cups.  It was nice that it was a nice whole number, because these kids are just getting the hang of proportional thinking.  If these kids were a bit more advanced, I would have loved to see it be 6.25 cups or another number involving a fraction or decimal.  

We started trying to figure out how to change the recipe.  The recipe calls for 10 cups of peaches and we were short of that amount.  I asked them to make an estimate about how much sugar we would need.  They noticed that we had a little more than half of the peaches we were supposed to and would therefore need a little more than half of the sugar.  Because jam can be super tricky and will often not set of the right proportions of ingredients are not used, I explained to them that we would really need to figure out the right amount.  The estimate ended up being a good jumping off point for them along with the fact that six tenths is a friendly number to work with.  They quickly figured out we needed 3 cups of sugar and about 1.75 teaspoons of lemon juice.  

They were so tickled that they used what they had been learning in our tutoring session to make this jam.  Of course, I could not stop there because these kids also need to review some multiplicative reasoning concepts so I jotted down a few notes and sent them home with the challenge to figure out how much it cost to make each jar.  

Here is the information I gave them

Peaches were $0.77 per pound.  We used 3 pounds

Sugar I bought a 10 lb bag for $3.99.  We used 3 cups.

Lemon Juice 99 cents for 200 mL
Canning lids $1.99 for 12.  We used 5.

They had to use multiplication, division, measurement conversion and addition to solve this problem.  Multi-step and multiple ways to approach this!  We had the best discussion a week later when they returned with their costs per jar.  They got the sweet reward of a jar of jam and I got kids thinking about math and not just doing it which really is the best reward of all!

How do you help your kids see that Math IS Real Life?  Please respond in the comments below or head on over to the linky and check out other teachers' ideas!

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Monday Math Literature Volume 54

This week, I want to share with you a great book for using with primary children.  

Ten Black Dots

I own several books by Donald Crews but I think this one is my favorite.  It is great to use for an introduction to subitizing and ten frames.  The story starts at 1 and goes up to 10, showing several things you can do with that many black dots.  This is a great book to read and stop between every few numbers and see what ideas kids come up with for that many black dots.  You can also give them 10 black dots and see what they can come up with.

This is a great book to use at the beginning of the year to introduce ten frames.  I recently made myself a huge magnetic 10 frame to use this year.  I think it is really going to add a lot to this lesson!  It was super easy to make and cost about $1.

I was going to measure everything out but instead decided to use what I know about partitioning rectangles and apply my own advice that I give to fourth and fifth graders when we are learning about fractions.  

I cut the rectangle in half horizontally.  

Then vertically, I found half and went a bit to the left from there.  This leaves a large rectangle and a small rectangle.  I then cut the small rectangle in half and the large rectangle into thirds.  

The finished product!  Doesn't this look great! I don't think I could have done better if I measured.  The best part is that it took about 2 minutes!

I used black button magnets to be the black dots.  If you want fancier dots, you can use Mod Podge to stick pictures, or decorative paper to the magnetic buttons.   

 I can't wait to use this with my kids!

Here are some of the other 10 and 20 frames I use with my students.  I like to switch things up once in a while to keep things fresh for the students!

Spring 10 Frames

Pumpkin 10 Frames

Cute Kids 20 Frames

Bug Themed 20 Frames

Do you use this story with your students?

Head over to 4th Grade Frolics for more made it ideas for your home and classroom!

Head over to Mrs. Jump's Class for more great children's literature!

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Teach Like a Pirate Book Study Part 4: Crafting Engaging Lessons

Welcome to part four of Teach Like a Pirate Book Study!  It is not to late to join in, so if you are looking for some inspiration for your teaching, grab a copy of the book and join our discussion!  Feel free to leave your discussion in the comments or if you have a blog and want to do a post about it, leave a link in the comments.

Teach Like a Pirate

Here is the posting schedule

July 12 Passion and Immersion

July 19 Rapport and Ask and Analyze

July 26 Transformation and Enthusiasm

August 2 Part II: Crafting engaging lessons

August 9 Part III: Building a better pirate

Part II: Crafting Engaging Lessons

This section is packed with ideas to make your lessons more inspiring, engaging and fun!  I have already read through this section twice and will be spending more time going through each subsection and thinking about how to apply it to my own teaching.  

The focus here is on presentation.  There are many ways to hook your students so their engagement level remains high.  Burgess recommends putting in as many engaging strategies as you reasonably can in a lesson and then scaling it back if necessary.  Also getting administrative tasks out of the way right at the beginning of class give you maximum opportunity to deliver your lesson without losing momentum.  Make sure your students are ready and have everything they need before you begin to lesson transitions. 

This section also contains a giant list of different ways to hook students into your lesson.  I highlighted MANY of these ideas as I was reading but want to share with you a few of the things I plan on implementing as soon as possible.  Your list will certainly look different from mine with so many strategies to choose from.  

"Can we turn the room into a giant opinion meter and have students move to one side or the other based on the statement?"

     I love the idea of getting kids up and moving around and this seems like a great way to do it!  I can see myself labeling the left of the room always the middle sometimes and the right side of the room never.  Then I can make statements like "A square is a rectangle" or "an integer is an irrational number"  and see who moves where.  

"What would be the perfect song or type of music to create the right mood and proper atmosphere?"

     I love music but feel like I don't use it enough in the classroom.  I want to think about adding more music to my lessons during transitions or as a mood setter.  

"Can I provide the opportunity for my students to do skits or appear in videos related to what we are learning?"

     I did some of this last year using iMovie and my students loved it! When we were learning about 3-D shapes we took the iPad with us on a 3-D shape hunt and made a movie trailer out of what we found.  When my second graders were working on measurement we made a video of good measuring techniques and some things to avoid.  Working with my challenge fifth and sixth graders we made how to videos for common math procedures.  Kids were super engaged in this and learned the material well.  I would like to expand on this.  

"How can I show my students why learning this content is important in the real world?"

     Math is all around us and I love connecting what they are learning in school to something happening in their community.  Right now I am working on taking pictures of real life building and other places where arrays are displayed for when I teach my introduction to multiplication facts lessons.  

"Can I invent a superhero or a super villain for this subject?"

    Love this idea!  I do a lot of co-teaching and I think it would be so fun to create a super hero and super villain that both come to one of these lessons.  It could be a classic tale of good versus evil.  

"Can I, unknown to their classmates, cue certain students to play a prearranged role?"

    I have played around with this one a bit and always had great success.  It can be so much fun to let a student or two in on your lesson ahead of time and certainly makes for a memorable experience.  I find I get the most bang for my buck when I include students who are my most challenging to keep engaged.  

"How would speaking in character, using accents, changing intonations, and varying volume for effect (even whispering) have an impact on the class?

     I haven't done this, but I am excited to try it!

"How can I take advantage of the fact that students are intrigued by things they aren't supposed to hear?"

     I have played with this one a bit with younger kids, particularly first graders.  They are instantly more engaged when I whisper a bit and make sure the doors to the classroom are closed because I am telling them something that I am not supposed to tell them until second grade.  

What do you do to hook your students into your lessons?  

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Keep the Summer Fun Going During Back to School

How many of you are already back in school?  I have been enjoying summer vacation and wanting it to never end!  Here is a fun way to extend summer fun into back to school time

Pool Noodle Boats

All you need!  Pool noodle (mine was $2 at Kmart), foam sheets (Dollar tree), straws, whole punch, scissors, sharpie, serrated knife, cutting board 

 Steps
1) Slice noodle into 1-2 inch pieces.
2) Cut triangles out of foam sheets (I got three triangles out of each sheet)
3) Write on foam triangles (possibilities are endless!)
4) Hole punch top and bottom of triangle, slip straw through and trim if needed.
5) Use scissors to poke small hole in noodle and push straw into it!
6) Add to kiddie pool or water table for back to school fun!

I was working with Kindergarten age children so I used numbers to 10, dot dice patterns and ten frames.  I could ask kids to find me the number 7 or 4 or ask them to match them up.  They also had a great time playing with the boats and I over heard a lot of good math talk!  Kids who were ready also did some ordering numbers using both the numerals and the dots.

The best part is that this can easily be adapted!  If you have kids who are ready for bigger numbers, go for it!  You could put double digit numerals on some and sketches of base 10 pieces that match those numbers on others.  You could put fractions on some and pictures of fractions on others.  

These could also be used for literacy!  Imagine matching capital letters to lowercase ones!  

What other ideas do you have for these fun boats?  Please respond in the comments below or leave a comment on Facebook!

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