Pinterest Professional Learning

I love Pinterest. I love professional learning. Put them together, and I'm as happy as can be! That's why I was thrilled to see that Jivey's Workshop Wednesday is all about favorite pins (and she used my Assess Yourself posters as an example)!

So without further adieu, I'd like to share some of my favorite pins!

Back to School Organizing

I'm planning to replace my table-top caddies this year because they've really taken a beating. One thing that's contributed to that is that they've been really disorganized, so kids dig through them looking for supplies. Even though they have cups in the caddy to hold supplies, the kids don't remember where to put their materials in the caddie, and it becomes a huge mess. Having labels on the outside could eliminate the guess work (and the excuses) so they can stay organized. I'll probably do something super cutesy with them, though, because Pinterest inspires that.

Teaching Writing

Before becoming a teacher, I coached a college debate team, and I was a high school and college debater before that. People often think that means that I like to argue, but that's not the case at all -- I hate arguing with people. I'm really anti-confrontation. But if I'm in an argument, you better believe that I'm going to have examples and evidence to back up what I'm saying, and chances are, I'll also know what I'm going to say to respond to your counterarguments. My husband, who has a similar debate background, often jokes that even though he was a great debater himself, he knows he'll lose any argument that I initiate with him because I'll go into battle ready. Fortunately, we hardly ever argue.

Understanding how to use evidence and reasoning and how to respond to counterarguments are important skills for advocacy, and I think they're some of the most valuable skills we can teach to students. So as the Common Core moves away from persuasive writing toward argumentative writing, I think it's really important that we emphasize the differences. I love these exemplars for demonstrating what argumentative writing looks like. And in my mind, well-written argumentative essays are far more persuasive than one-sided appeals on a topic.

Off my soap box now. 

Teaching Science

While I'm going to be almost completely paperless in my classroom next year, I still intend to use science notebooks (albeit electronic ones). I like this anchor chart for showing students some of the important characteristics of science writing.

If you haven't linked up with Ideas By Jivey's Pinterest Professional Learning, be sure to do so. And of course, I'd love for you to follow me on Pinterest as well. The vast majority of my pins are teaching-related (and the rest tend to be recipes and home organizing stuff...nothing too crazy).

Happy Pinning!

Phases of the Moon

For the last few weeks, I've been mentoring a fabulous student teacher. She has been gradually taking over more subject areas, and later this week, she'll be teaching everything. I really enjoy having the opportunity to work with student teachers because they bring a lot of enthusiasm to the classroom, and they often have really creative lessons. My current student teacher is no exception.

Recently, we studied the phases of the moon, and I was blown away by her visual model. Using black foam board, ping pong balls, Sharpies, and hot glue, she was able to create a really great interactive model to reinforce the concept.

To use this model, students would actually put their heads in the cut out part of the middle (and I wish I'd taken pictures of that before she took it home!). From there, they could turn their bodies (or rotate) to see the moon from different angles. When their heads weren't in the middle, however, they were able to recognize that half of the moon was always light -- the half facing the sun, and half of the moon was always dark as it faced away from the sun. It was a great way to see that the only things that are really changing are the location and perspective.

I'm not sure where/how she came up with this idea, but I will definitely be building my own version of this model to use in future years! The kids loved taking turns being the Earth in the middle of it.

Bananas about Scientific Writing

One of the things that's really exciting to me about Common Core this year is how well it integrates with content teaching for Science and Social Studies. Now that I'm a working mom, I really appreciate anything that allows me to hit multiple subjects and standards at once, and last term, I found myself pushing a lot of informational writing into science.

During our first week of school, I was covering science process standards before launching into our first unit on ecosystems. One of the first activities that we did involved writing about bananas.

In the few days prior to this lesson, we spent some time looking at and talking about science notebooks and the importance of recording our thinking. We took a look at some examples of real science notebooks kept by actual scientists (Note: as I write this blog, the sciencenotebooks.org website appears to be down. I really hope this is a temporary thing because it was a tremendous resource!). For this day's lesson, I asked my students to get out their inquiry notebooks, and I gave each student a banana. They were instructed not to eat their banana, but instead, they were to observe and describe their banana in their notebook.

During this first wave of writing (3-5 minutes), students gave very similar descriptions such as "long, yellow, brown spot," etc. 

We shared descriptions at our tables, and then I asked the class how many students felt like they could identify their banana based on their description if I collected all the bananas from the tables and mixed them up. Only a couple of hands went up. We then talked about what kinds of information and details would be helpful to do that and started a list.

What really came out of this discussion was the idea that we needed to focus on unique characteristics. Everyone had a general idea what a banana looks like, but details such as having a brown spot in the shape of a heart approximately 2 inches from the end of the banana sure went a long way in helping us identify the banana in comparison to "long and yellow with brown spots."

I then gave them time to revise their descriptions. Some students traced their banana in their notebooks and then added details and markings from their banana.

Other students asked to get out tape measures to be even more precise in their details and descriptions.

At the end of this revising time, I had students mix up their bananas between two tables and trade notebooks with another student to see if the other person could identify the correct banana based on the description. It was a great check to see if the details were descriptive enough so that others beyond the writer would understand them. If the correct banana wasn't identified, the students made suggestions for additional details that could be helpful.

What I loved about this activity was how it really got us thinking about interesting details. It's the kind of anchor lesson that we can refer to in all types of writing when we talk about spicing up our writing and good word choices. The bananas were inexpensive, and of course, we ate them at the end of the lesson. 

Do you use science or inquiry notebooks in your classroom? What are some strategies you use to help your students write in science? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments section!