Class Antics – Inside Elementary Education

For years, I have read magazine interviews in which actress Eva Longoria* mentions that she makes the world’s best guacamole.  This month she was kind enough to share her recipe with Self magazine—just in time for the Super Bowl**!  Eva Longoria’s guacamole will go very well with chili.

 Try it and you’ll see: it really is the best ever!  I live in the Southwest, so I know a thing or two about guacamole.  Every year, students make guacamole and salsa for the class for their “How-to” presentations.

Best Guacamole EVER!

6 ripe avocados, diced
4 medium tomatoes, diced
1 large white onion, finely chopped
1 medium Serrano pepper, finely chopped
½ cup chopped fresh cilantro
½ cup fresh lemon juice
2 tsp kosher salt

Mix all ingredients.  That’s it!

If you like the recipe, check out Eva Longoria’s new cookbook, Eva’s Kitchen: Cooking with Love for Family and Friends

 *of Desperate Housewives fame.  I have seen some of Eva’s movies.  I really liked Over Her Dead Body—Eva is very funny as a bride who dies on her wedding day—and haunts her fiancé when he falls for a psychic.

**Funny story: one year I asked a routine question while teaching third grade math and a boy raised his hand.  Instead of answering, he blurted out, “Okay, who do you like: the Saints or the Colts?  It took me forever to calm the class down.  I asked the boy to write a paragraph about why you don’t poll the class about football during math.

An occasional series with sample pages from the Best Multiplication Workbook EVER!

This tip comes straight from my Best Multiplication Workbook EVER!  The section on teaching 2 digit multiplication is very helpful for teachers looking to scaffold learning.  I break long multiplication into 3 sections—multiplying multidigit numbers by 1, 2 or 3 digits.  Within each section, a dozen or more lessons teach the process step by step.

Please use these two FREE sample pages with your class to introduce 2 digit multiplication.  This introductory lesson lets your students learn the Hugs and Kisses method to keep their numbers lined up when they have to put in that place holding O.  (The place holding O is the hug.  You put an X, or kiss, over a number to kiss it goodbye when you are through with it.)

The workbook lets students practice Hugs and Kisses by beginning with multiplying times 11.  This isolates the Hugs and Kisses skill, allowing students to focus on the procedure, not the math.

I wish I’d learned multiplication this way when I was a kid!  I hope this and other lessons from the Best Multiplication Workbook EVER! help your students.

January 18 is A.A. Milne’s birthday.  Celebrate with Winnie the Pooh Day!  You can adjust your activities to suit your students’ interests and reading levels.  Pooh is not just for little kids!  The books are actually quite challenging—AR levels Winnie-the-Pooh at 4.6. 

Disney has a great Winnie the Pooh site where your class can play games, watch episodes, and print pictures to color.  (Veteran teachers know to NEVER let students print without permission!  Print the pictures yourself ahead of time.)

Print Disney’s downloadable Winnie the Pooh activity book.  It’s excellent for students up to grade 3.

Extend your students’ learning by going beyond Disney’s Winnie the Pooh.  Visit the charming UK site for A.A. Milne.  You can teach your students about the author and delve more deeply into his life and books.  He wrote much more than Winnie the Pooh!  He wrote really charming poems, for instance.  They are excellent for your students to study.

I love “Halfway Down,” Milne’s poem about a place of one’s own.  It comes from his book When We Were Very Young.  http://www.dltk-kids.com/crafts/miscellaneous/mmilne-halfwaydown.htm   Check out this awesome Muppets video of Kermit’s nephew Robin singing the poem as a song.

Click here for the text of several of A.A. Milne’s poems.  You can use them for reading comprehension, reader’s theater, fluency practice, or just to color and decorate.  Whatever suits your class!

Your students would enjoy listening to you read aloud from the original Winnie-the-Pooh book.  Have fun comparing it to Disney’s movie and TV versions of the story.  Just-Pooh.com has a nice gallery that lets you compare original illustrator Ernest Shephard’s illustrations to the Disneyfied Pooh. 

 Happy Winnie the Pooh Day!

Students love to learn about Martin Luther King, Jr., but his achievements seem inaccessible to them. For kids, Dr. King was a fully-formed civil rights leader who always knew just what to do.

You can inspire children by teaching them about Dr. King’s school days. Then they will understand that he had to face obstacles, study, and learn. Kids feel so powerless sometimes—it’s good to show them that famous people were once children, and that everyone was a beginner at some point.

You and your class would enjoy taking Valerie Strauss’s MLK Quiz: His unorthodox education. Here are some no-context tidbits to get kids interested:

Did you know Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. …

> Was kicked out of school? (Okay, so it was kindergarten, and it was only because he was too young. Got your attention, though!)

> Was called an underachiever by his college professors?

> skipped two grades?

> thought about studying law or medicine?

In my book, Double Switched, the kids in Mr. Hoker’s class pick the subject of  African-American history for a group  project.  Connor and Tyler get their topics switched around when their presentation doesn’t go as planned: Connor talks about his dad’s experiences growing up during the desegregation years in the south, and Tyler talks about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a leader of the civil rights movement.   Their classmates are thoroughly confused about who did what.  I bet you will enjoy the double switch — I certainly could see it happening in a real classroom!

Amazon’s e-reader, the Kindle can be a wonderful classroom tool, and it’s something parents can easily make available for their students at home.   The Kindle is so wonderful, in fact, that I can’t do the Kindle justice in just one blog post. Hence the Kids and Kindles series.

Part four: building a classroom Kindle library

1. Browse books by cost: when you browse Kindle children’s books, you can search by age group and cost.  You will find interesting Kindle books for under four dollars.  The Kindle books are offered on special every so often, so you might be able to find a famous title at a super-low price.  Low-cost Kindle books can be a good way to try new and independent authors.
2. Borrow from Amazon:  If you are a member of Amazon Prime, you can borrow many Kindle books for free.  (My books are available to Prime members to borrow for free!)  You join Amazon Prime for $79: the first month is a free trial—it’s an especially good deal because Amazon Prime includes free 2 day delivery and streaming movies and TV shows.  If you just have one or two Kindles in your classroom that you paid for, you can use your account to borrow books for them.
3. Borrow from the library:  Public libraries are now making e-books available for download to your Kindle.  You usually search through your library’s online catalogue, click the link, then follow directions to download to your Kindle.  This is a great way to stock classroom Kindles.
4. Read free books: Kindles let you read public domain books for free.  Through Amazon, you can reach a variety of websites with free classics.  This is excellent for high school students who are required to read these classics.  Many classics are hard for elementary students to read, but Beatrix Potter is accessible.  So are lesser-known books by A. A. Milne, author of Winnie the Pooh.
5. Read series books:  Series pull kids in because they don’t have to get bogged down in the exposition.  Download Kindle books of classic and new series.  I think the Boxcar Children are due for a renaissance.  They are longer (and a little cheaper) than Junie B. Jones or Magic Tree House, so you get more for your money.  Whatever series you research, be sure to sort by price so you buy the bargain installments first.

Bonus Tip: Don’t forget the Corey Green Kindle books!  I wrote them, so I know they’re good.  Check out the first three books in my Buckley School Books series.  The characters are just like kids in your class, and kids will love the action and comedy.

Corey Green Kindle books fit the tips for stocking your Kindle library: they’re good series books, they’re low-cost Kindle choices, and you can borrow them for free using Amazon Prime.

Zapped!
Kyle creates a fake student named Stan to take the blame for a prank gone wrong.  Kyle and his friends learn that inventing Stan was easy, making him behave is impossible.  Stan takes on a life of his own, getting the kids into more trouble than they ever imagined.

Brainstorm
Brian is very smart—so why do his brainstorms backfire?  His homework help website was supposed to help kids and make Brian cool—but when it becomes famous, everyone is jealous.  Brian tries to distract his classmates with a mystery about a heist at the art museum—but then it turns out the heist is real!  Can the kids stop the robbers?

Double Switched
Connor knows he will be a baseball star—if he can just make it through sixth grade.  But life is so switched around!  Switched team position: now Connor’s not the star shortstop.  Switched class at school: how can Connor do the work if he can’t even read the directions?  Switched baseball field: what is that strange odor over where the workers are smoking?  The bases are loaded with problems for Connor.  Can he find a way to make things right?

Kids and Kindles, an occasional series at the Class Antics blog.

Don’t miss Part 1 about how the Kindle will read any book out loud to you, or Part 2 about how to use the Kindle to teach speed reading.

Amazon’s e-reader, the Kindle, can be a wonderful classroom tool, and it’s something parents can easily make available for their students at home.  The Kindle is so wonderful, in fact, that I can’t do it justice in just one blog post. Hence the Kids and Kindles series.

Part three: the no-budget Kindle

The Kindle is great for teaching reading, but it’s not cheap.  However, you can download a free Kindle reader to your classroom computer or computer lab workstations.  Then you can let your students use a no-budget Kindle.

Your no-budget Kindle doesn’t have bells and whistles, but it’s enough to get your class started.  You can teach speed reading.  You can motivate reluctant readers to read.  You can get some results and build a case for buying actual Kindles in the classroom.  (Document results, get some students to write testimonials, and submit to administration or charitable organizations that might give you a grant.)

For your no-budget Kindle startup, you’ll mostly stick to free classic books available through Amazon, Internet Archive, Open Library, Project Gutenberg, and other free e-book sites.  (They all have directions on how to download).  If you teach older students, many will be able to read classic stories like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.  For younger students, there are still options, like classic Beatrix Potter stories.

If you are lucky enough to have a projector in the classroom, you can teach students about the Kindle app before you turn them loose in the computer lab.  Load a free e-book, then project your screen as you show students how to play with features that enhance readability.

Click on the Aa at the top of your screen to adjust the text display.  You can increase the font size, making any book seem easier.  Adjust the brightness so the background is gray rather than white.

What really helps speed-reading is to decrease the words per line (an option found by clicking the Aa).  This helps because students’ eyes don’t have to travel so far across the screen, so there is less opportunity for the eyes to lose their way, so to speak.  Check out my blog posts on Speed Reading and Kindle Speed Reading for more information.

Click on the blocks to format your Kindle text in columns.  Students will see how the narrow band of text enhances their ability to read quickly—just like in a newspaper.

Click here for Amazon’s free Kindle apps for a multitude of platforms: PC, Mac, iPod, and various smart phones.

Don’t miss Part 1 about how the Kindle will read any book out loud to you, or Part 2 about how to use the Kindle to teach speed reading.

Amazon’s e-reader, the Kindle, can be a wonderful classroom tool, and it’s something parents can easily make available for their students at home. So wonderful, in fact, that I can’t do the Kindle justice in just one blog post.  Hence the Kids and Kindles series.

Part two: how to use the Kindle to teach speed reading

For a full lesson on speed reading, read my blog entry on the topic.  Here are the Cliffs Notes:

1.  Speed read by tracking with your finger.  Yes, just like you did back in first grade.  Build up speed by sliding your finger more quickly under the text and challenging your eyes and mind to keep up.
2. This helps because it focuses your eye.  Without imposing focus, your eyes will just wander over the page, re-reading, skipping along, and generally wasting time.
3. It also teaches you not to read in your head.  You know how little kids read aloud?  Well, us older folks enunciate the words in our heads.  As you learn to track your finger faster and read faster, you will read much faster than you could talk.  Once you break the reading-aloud-in-your-head habit, you read much faster.

How does Kindle help kids with speed reading?

1.  It focuses the mind.  With the Kindle, you are looking at a single page at a time, not a double-page spread.  It feels like you are cutting your distractions in half.
2. The eye doesn’t have to slide so far.  With a traditional Kindle—the ones that are about 6” wide, the text is a little narrower than in many books.  Your eye doesn’t have to slide so far, and you take in many words at once, naturally scooping them into phrases.  This makes a huge difference in how quickly you read.  Think about a newspaper, and how those 3” columns are built for speed reading.  Your eye takes in several words at once.
3. Kids get a feeling of accomplishment as they click through the pages.  You know how kids who are just learning to read chapter books stop constantly to brag about how many pages they have read or what chapter they’re on?  Kindle brings back that exhilarating feeling of accomplishment.  For some reason, it really is fun to click through pages.  This encourages kids to read faster—faster—faster!  (My advice to you: allow some time for goof-off clicking through pages to let kids get it out of their systems.)
4. You can enlarge the font size.  This addresses many problems facing kids.  For example, a poor child might wait forever for new glasses while you and the school nurse try to secure a pair.  With a Kindle, you can enlarge the font size so the child can read without headaches.  Enlarging the font size also makes any book seem easier.  This can decrease the intimidation factor for struggling readers.  Click here to read comments about Kindle and kids on Amazon—there are some persuasive testimonials.
5. Kindle is new.  Like any skill, you get better at reading—and speed reading—through practice.  Although it’s been around a while, Kindle is still a novelty.  Kids who don’t like to read will want to use the Kindle.  They’ll practice more than they would have otherwise.

Don’t miss Part 1 about how the Kindle will read any book out loud to you.  Important: you don’t get text-to-speech with the cheapest Kindle, the $79 one.  You have to buy a Kindle with audio features.  If you need text-to-speech, get a Kindle Touch or a Kindle Keyboard.

Kids and Kindles, an occasional series at the Class Antics blog.

Amazon’s e-reader, the Kindle can be a wonderful classroom tool.  So wonderful, in fact, that I can’t do it justice in just one blog post.  Hence the Kids and Kindles series.

Part one: harnessing the text-to-speech feature

The short version: the Kindle will read any book out loud to you.

The long version:

Kindle parents taught me this tip.  Over and over, parents say that Kindle has not only encouraged children with learning disabilities to read, it has practically taught them to read.  Click to read about how the text-to-speech feature has helped many Kindle users who have learning disabilities!

Important: you don’t get text-to-speech with the cheapest Kindle, the $79 one.  You have to buy a Kindle with audio features.  If you need text-to-speech, get a Kindle Touch or a Kindle Keyboard.

The text-to-speech feature will read any English language content to you.  This is extremely helpful for kids with dyslexia or a learning disability.  The kids can follow along as Kindle reads aloud—or not.  Either way, they are building their vocabulary though exposure to the richer variety of words found on the printed page compared to everyday conversation.

I think the read-along-while-I-read-aloud aspect of the Kindle is really valuable.  It hearkens back to Teddy Ruxpin and his books on tape I loved as a child.

Audiobooks, while higher quality than Kindle’s text-to-speech because they’re read by actors and not machines, are expensive.  If you want to follow along with an audiobook, you have to own the actual book, too.  That can get really expensive.

With Kindle, you can listen to any book read aloud.  The deal is especially great when you consider how many free books are available.  Kindle has an extensive collection of public domain books you can download for free.  Many classics are written at quite a high reading level, so even kids without learning disabilities might like the text-to-speech feature.  How nice for new technology to expose kids to classics like the Oz books, Beatrix Potter’s collection, or Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland!

Winter holidays often feature lavish feasts, and no matter how old you are, it’s hard to remember how formal place settings are designed.  Nothing causes tension at a formal meal quicker than anxiety over which drinking glass is yours …or your tablemate’s.

I learned a cool tip that helps kids with their table manners.  It’s called “b—d”. 

As you can see from the photo at right, you make a sort of “good job” gesture with each hand and your fingers form lowercase letters b and d. 

The b is for your bread plate.  The d is for your drink.

Your bread plate is on the left. Your drink is on the right.

See how helpful this can be at formal dinner parties?

It remains to be seen whether this tip will help children tell their b and d apart—or create “which bread plate is mine?” confusion for students who can’t tell the difference between b and d.

I always try to take care of my students’ basic needs: hungry, cold kids can’t learn. Add to that list a wintertime problem—kids with chapped lips can’t concentrate.

I solve this problem with the class Vaseline jar. It’s not gross, I promise! 

 I buy a big jar of Vaseline (or generic petroleum jelly) and Q-tips (or the cheapo knockoffs.) When kids have chapped lips, I supervise them as they dip the Q-tip in the Vaseline. No double dipping allowed!

The students swipe their lips with Vaseline and feel much better. The kids are really grateful for the class Vaseline jar.

…until I pronounce them “all better” and put them back to work!

Accessing information you’ve already memorized is
as easy as Z-Y-X!

That’s a catchy way to introduce this tip: teach kids to access memorized information by showing them where to look for it, so to speak. All you need is a backwards alphabet and a buddy!

Here are the Z-Y-X steps:

Z: Ask the child to stand right in front of you and recite the alphabet—backwards.

Y: Watch the child’s eyes as he attempts this task. Note where the child looks.

X: Tell the student that when attempting the task, he looked to his top left (or top right, or whatever you noticed.)

For THIS STUDENT, that is where to look when trying to access memorized information. Everyone is different, so you will need to help each student individually or buddy kids up so the buddy can identify where the partner should look for answers.

Got a test coming up? Try it yourself and you’ll know where to find all the answers!

It’s much more effective than staring into space.

Once I developed this tip, my students quickly mastered how to read long numbers.

Take the example 165,247,873

I showed my students that within each comma, the numbers follow the standard hundreds-tens-ones protocol. The comma simply indicates whether you are dealing with millions, thousands or plain old units (the name some people give the hundreds-tens-ones group.)

Each three-digit group can be read as if it were just a hundred. Referring to our example number, you first say “One hundred sixty-five.” The comma signifies millions since you are in the third comma group from the right. Thus, you begin reading the number by saying “one hundred sixty-five MILLION.” (Capital letters added for emphasis—they’re very helpful for students.)

Then, you read the next three-digit group as if it were a hundred: “two hundred forty-seven” and then add the THOUSAND. (I point to the comma as I loudly say “THOUSAND.”

Last, read the last three-digit group as a regular number: “eight hundred seventy-three.”

Thus, your number is “one hundred sixty-five MILLION, two hundred forty-seven THOUSAND, eight hundred seventy-three.”

Once I taught my students this, they understood why each place is important. They had less trouble reading and writing numbers with a zero as a placeholder, such as 207,800. After all, you just read each three-digit group as a regular old hundred: “two hundred seven THOUSAND, eight hundred.”

Ironically, our math book teaches place value only to the ten thousands. I think that’s to save children from that horrifying extra place value that would take them to the hundred thousands. But when I taught to the hundred thousands and even hundred millions using this method, the confusion (for the most part) went away.

Teasing and glasses envy: New glasses wearers worry about peer pressure and teasing, but in my experience, this rarely happens in elementary school.  Rather, I find that other students catch a bad case of glasses envy.  They borrow the glasses of the “lucky” nearsighted students and wear their dad’s old geek glasses to school.  They even buy glasses accessories in stores like Claire’s at the mall.

Destruction: Once kids have their glasses, they often destroy them the first week (or day) out.  Glasses tend to cause headaches until the wearer is used to them, so kids set their glasses down anywhere.  My family still talks about the first day I got glasses (in 3^rd grade!) and for some reason I set my glasses on the floor.  My big brother accidentally stepped on them. 

Glasses that go missing: Students lose glasses all the time.  Many students need glasses, but their eyes aren’t really bad yet, so they only use them for certain tasks.  This means the student is always setting the glasses down somewhere.  Consequently, glasses get left in the computer lab, lunchroom, gym, library, or school bus.  If a child is missing glasses, send the student and a buddy to check the lost and found and whatever special you had the day they went missing.  Then check the main office.  Before you officially declare the glasses MIA, offer the whole class a chance to find them.

“Forgetting” to wear glasses: Some kids just don’t take to glasses, and they start “forgetting” to bring them to school (or home).  Give it a shot and remind the child for a day or three, but I strongly recommend that you make no promises to the parents about reminding the child to wear his glasses.  You don’t want the onus of a stubborn child’s glasses-avoidance issues on you.

The beginning of the school year is a classic time for kids to have trouble with their eyesight.  In third or fourth grade, many students who previously didn’t wear glasses suddenly need them.

Symptoms include the obvious—squinting, asking to move closer to the board, and headaches.  These are usually apparent at the beginning of the school year.  Many kids’ eyes may have changed over the summer, but families didn’t notice because very few people need to see the whiteboard from their living room couch.

Talk to your school nurse and ask when it’s convenient to send a child down for a screening.  Make sure the screening is during class time, not a special class or, heaven forbid, recess.  No need to add missing fun to the child’s stressful experience of taking a vision test the teacher recommended. Watch students all year because new cases will crop up. 

Finally, from the School of Hard Knocks, I offer this tip: not all kids will thank you for referring them to the school nurse for vision screening.  They’ll blame you for quite a while.  I think that you have a moral obligation to refer the child to the school nurse anyway.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”

Emma Lazarus’s inspiring poem is engraved on a plaque at the Statue of Liberty.  Many people only know the famous ending, but reading the whole sonnet gives a much deeper meaning.

“The New Colossus” makes a wonderful memorization challenge.  Your students can handle it—my third graders sure did!

The title refers to the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.  The Colossus of Rhodes was a huge statue of the titan Helios, constructed to celebrate Rhodes’ victory over Cyprus.

America’s Statue of Liberty is “The New Colossus,” symbolizing welcome, freedom and hope.

I hope you and your students will enjoy my teaching notes and vocabulary handout.  It gives background information and lays the poem and relevant vocabulary words side-by-side.  Having all this information on one sheet will help your students understand and memorize the poem.

Memorization tips:

1. Give a deadline:  Students will work harder if they have a deadline.  Memorize the poem alongside your students.  Offer a reasonable deadline—I chose two weeks—but you can tell students that if they don’t have it learned by then, they’ll get an extension.
2. Offer a reward.  My class’s reward was an ice cream sundae.  I expected about five students to take them time to memorize, but 35 students qualified! (Tip: when you’re making that many sundaes, save yourself the trouble of scooping and buy the little ice cream cups.)
3. Study and analyze the poem:  Students learn and memorize more effectively if they understand the material.  Work as a class to find examples of metaphor and symbolism.
4. Memorize in sections.  Begin with the most famous lines, “Give me your tired…”  Then, go back to the beginning and memorize in sections.  Practice each section over and over.  Don’t move on until you know that section cold.
5. Don’t worry about the lines.  Sometimes one thought continues onto another line.  Focus on meaning, not form.
6. Memorize with your students.  When you undertake to memorize this yourself, you’ll come across tips and tricks to help your students.
7. Finally, appreciate the poem’s beauty.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

You can read about “The New Colossus” at Wikipedia.  Be sure to click and read about the Colossus of Rhodes.  Visit the Statue of Liberty’s official site, as well.