Class Antics – Inside Elementary Education

The elementary school librarian has a big job. In addition to managing thousands of books, the librarian teaches hundreds of children everything from how to select books to how to research any topic under the sun.

Instead of just dropping off your students, why not take a minute to help?

When I take my students to library, I facilitate the librarian’s task of checking in books by arranging all the books into several fanned-out piles with the barcodes easily accessible. This way, it’s a snap for the librarian to scan each book. If the librarian lets me, I then load the books onto the re-shelving cart. (Some librarians find it faster to do it themselves than explain their system.)

My students have caught on and take pride in laying out their books so that it’s easy for me to make the little piles.

Incidentally, this trick is also a good way to help another person we meet frequently—the store cashier. When clothes shopping, I even go so far as to fold my clothes after they’re scanned, which helps move the line along and leads to fewer wrinkles later.

There you have it—a teaching and shopping tip in one!

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.

The last day of school is usually a blur of yearbook signing, room cleaning, and board game playing. I’d like to make a case for teaching something on the last day of school.

Students are about to leave your classroom for a summer of (mostly) unstructured activity. There will be plenty of time to watch movies and play games at home. Time for learning is precious, and sharing a special lesson together can create a lasting memory. Plus, it can only enhance your rep with parents if kids run home and talk about the cool thing they learned in school today.

Pilot Day: This is my traditional last day of school activity. My dad, a retired F-16 and F-4 pilot, puts on his flight suit and teaches the students about being an Air Force pilot. He starts with a simulation of all he’d say as he prepared for takeoff. He brings in his helmet, manuals, patches and insignia. He even shows an Air Force recruiting video about the awesomeness of jet fighters. Question and answer time can last over an hour. Questions about the ejection seat and bird strikes are always popular.

If you don’t have your own fighter pilot to create last day of school awesomeness, consider a lesson with an art tie-in. This way, you teach something cool, and then the kids can create art and chat.

Mythological Beasts: one of my students just loves mythology, and we did this lesson in his honor. He brought in his book of mythological beasts and my class was dead silent as he read it to us. Then, under his direction, we each created our own mythological beast. He wanted us to write a little about it—not too much—since it was the end of the year—and give it a clever name with a Greek or Latin flavor.

Starry Night: I taught students about Vincent van Gogh, and then we watched a slide show of his art while listening to Don McLean’s “Vincent.” Here is my copy of the lyrics (pdf), complete with vocabulary words. I recommend you teach the vocabulary before listening to the song. You can analyze the song for figurative language or simply treat it as a beautiful homage to Vincent. Then, color “The Starry Night” or create your own Vincent-style art.

Even if you teach on the last day, it’s probably good to leave some time for stacking desks and chairs, signing yearbooks and playing board games. Enjoy it, because you know that you also left your class with the impression that something important happens in this classroom—learning.

Newly released: Best Multiplication Workbook EVER!
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Also available from Amazon.com.

I’m blowing my own horn: Best Multiplication Workbook EVER! is a great resource for teachers, parents, tutors and students.

This book is divided into levels, and everything is taught systematically.  The workbook pages are fun for kids to do, and the organizational system helps teachers, tutors and parents know how to guide kids.  If a child is having difficulty with a concept, the parent or teacher will know to go back a level and remediate before proceeding.

> Teachers can use the book for whole-class lessons or to teach small groups.  The scaffolded, leveled system makes it easy to manage many students working on different skills.
> Parents can buy the workbook for use at home.  Kids can do most of the work on their own.  The leveled system makes it easy for a parent or tutor to review a lesson—or teach the next step in acquiring new skills.
> Tutors can use the book to identify gaps in a child’s learning.  Simply proceed through the levels and slow down when a concept seems difficult.  The book lays out a great tutoring program for helping elementary school students.
> Home school parents will appreciate the comprehensive nature of the book, the word problems, and the scaffolded approach to learning.

The workbook contains 260 pages filled with worksheets for skill development, word problems, long multiplication mastery, standardized test practice questions and strategies — everything needed to succeed in learning to multiply. 

A student who masters multiplication is ready to take on all the other mathematics challenges in elementary school!

This tip will help your students spell would, could and should.  Students have a hard time remembering the tricky vowel combination and silent “l.”  Teach them:

“Oh, you lucky duck!” to stand for “o-u-l-d:”  Would.  Could.  Should.  Whether they’re called trick words or sight words or anything else, these words are difficult for most students.

Now, if you could just get them to stop writing “would of” for “would’ve.”  How did students ever come up with that one?  It makes no sense whatsoever!

I have found that assigning students to write “would’ve, could’ve, should’ve” twenty times cures this problem.  Repeat offenders can just keep copying until they get it right.

Ticket to Read is an awesome online program that functions as a super fun reading tutor for all levels.  You can use it for remediation or as a challenge.  It’s appropriate for grades K-6.

In essence, your child earns tickets for reading passages and answering the questions.  These tickets can be redeemed to play games and to decorate your own personal virtual tree house.

Ticket to Read provides comprehensive reading tutoring.  It really covers everything.  Your child reads the story out loud (fluency) and answers questions that address comprehension and vocabulary.  If your child makes mistakes, the program offers personalized tutoring.  If your child has trouble sounding out words, the program will read to her, and then let her click on words she doesn’t know so she can hear them pronounced.  After all the tutoring, your child tries the passage again.  Many of the passages are nonfiction, which is the most difficult genre for children on standardized tests.  For younger students, Ticket to Read has a phonics component.

The tickets are good reinforcement because your child earns them quickly and constantly.  Every correct question earns tickets.  Reading a story out loud and recording it earns tickets.

It is super fun to decorate the tree house.  Your child can spend tickets on virtual toys such as a drum set or keyboard, buy a virtual teddy bear, and even purchase access to secret passages or a virtual pool.

Individuals can subscribe to Ticket to Read for $29.95.  Classes can subscribe for $249.95.  Schools can subscribe, too—see Ticket to Read for details.  You can get a FREE 14 day trial.

This is a great deal!  You will be so glad you subscribed!  Your child’s reading level will soar!

I have found a magical teaching tool: Spectrum Publishing’s Little Critter Reading.  It’s a workbook with the perfect format: an engaging story based on the Little Critter books by Mercer Mayer, followed by a worksheet covering comprehension, phonics, and study skills.  Students beg to use it and groan when we put it away.

In my experience, Little Critter Reading improves a reader’s skills by a whole grade level.

You can buy Little Critter Reading at two levels: grade 1 and grade 2.  Grade 2 is appropriate for students in second and third grade.  Grade 1 helps students make the remarkable transformation from reading three sentences on a page to reading several paragraphs—in the space of one workbook.  Grade 1 is great for English Language Learners.

I recommend Little Critter Reading books for the classroom and for the home.  At home, a parent or older sibling can tutor a struggling reader with Little Critter Reading books.

How to use Little Critter Reading:

1.  Read the story to your students.  Very important—think how much better they can read if they already know what it sounds like!
2.  Let the student(s) read aloud with you.  This way, you’re pulling the student along and helping her experience fluency.  For the whole class, choral read the passage.
3.  If time and patience allow, the student can read the story aloud without your help.
4.  Do the worksheet that goes with the story.  You might have to teach a mini lesson on topics such as root words, ABC order, verb tense, etc.  Kids quickly catch on and complete the lesson easily.
5.  Review the lesson.

One caveat: you are not supposed to photocopy Little Critter Reading workbooks.  I applied for a grant and bought a class set of the workbook.  I use it with my third graders at the beginning of the year.  We put a page protector over the worksheet page and write on the page protector with an Expo marker.  We erase with old socks.

Students who behave well get to draw on the page protector for two minutes!

Seriously, I can’t recommend Little Critter Reading highly enough.

This is part of a series of posts about special area teachers, whose subjects include music, art and physical education.  Today I’ll discuss how classroom teachers can optimize their relationship with special area teachers and help their students learn more from every “special.” 

It all comes down to respecting the teacher and teaching children to reflect on the day’s lesson.

Before the special area class:

Ask your students what they did during the last session.  What do they hope to get out of today’s lesson?

Take a moment to calm your students, so your students are primed for learning when they begin their special area lesson.  My class usually needs a calming thirty seconds in line before a special area class.  It makes a difference.

Leaving your class with the special area teacher:

Greet the teacher by name.  Smile.  Exchange pleasantries about how much your class is looking forward to the lesson.  Without taking a lot of time, show an interest in what the class will be learning.

Make sure the students are calm and ready to learn before you leave the class with the special area teacher.

Picking your class up from the special area class:

Greet the teacher.  Ask if your children behaved well, and promise to follow up if there were any behavior problems.  Ask one student to recap what they learned.  Remind your students to say thank you.

Special area teachers, do you have any additional tips for classroom teachers?  How can we support you?

This is the first of a series of posts about special area teachers, whose subjects include music, art and physical education. 

Teachers of elementary school “specials” —music, art, and physical education— deserve great respect.  Many people don’t know the requirements to be a special area teacher, the work that goes into their professional degrees, or the fascinating extracurricular activities of the teachers themselves.

Special area teachers…
… Perform at Carnegie Hall
… Exhibit (and sell) their work in art galleries
… Compete in triathlons and other prestigious athletic events
… Play in rock bands, jazz bands—all kinds of bands
… Tour Europe with professional music ensembles and acting troupes
… Deserve our respect!

Before I was a full-time teacher, I was a substitute teacher.  When I covered for special area teachers, I was humbled by their curriculum and the challenge of delivering quality lessons to very young students.

I was also struck by how some classroom teachers treated special area teachers with less than professional courtesy.

As a classroom teacher, you have the power to help your students get more out of every special class by teaching them about the talents of special area teachers:
  – Get to know your special area teachers.  Find out what led them to become a music/art/physical education teacher.  You might learn about a childhood spent learning multiple musical instruments, a stint in the minor leagues, or a career in art that led to a desire to teach.
  – Communicate this knowledge to your students.  Encourage them to both compliment their special area teacher and learn more from them.
  – Communicate this knowledge to other teachers.  You may find that they didn’t know the accomplishments of the special area teachers.

Congratulations, you have made your school a better place!