Using Hooks to Write Introductions

Maybe I’m the only one with this difficulty, but about half the time my students start off their expository essays with a one line statement that shares their topic.  That’s it.  No matter how many times I push them to add a hook, they stay stuck on just the thesis.  Inspired by a friend’s recent lesson on compound sentences, I decide that maybe if I made the lesson more memorable, it would stick a little better.

I saw several lessons about transforming your room with a pirate theme online to teach hooks.  After thinking for several days about it, I decided that was WAY out of my league to pull off.

Every single time I see someone’s room transformation lessons, I feel a twinge of guilt.  I don’t even decorate my own home! I am decorating impaired in fact.  How could I live up to standards like those in the Pinterest photos??  Then I remember that I’m teaching fourth graders that love me.  They forgive me for mistakes ten times a day!  Of course they won’t judge me if my room isn’t spectacular.

In the end, I opted for a theme that didn’t make me feel too inferior.  I decided to use a fishing hook theme.  As usual, I gave myself a time limit on the decorations.  Otherwise, I start having a bit of a panic attack.   I decided whatever I did, I had an hour to pull it off.  After that, decorating time was over.

I grabbed my scissors and sliced some waves in some blue butcher paper.  Somehow, giving myself a time limit allows me to feel like I don’t have to be a perfectionist about things.  They were all sorts of wonky and ridiculous, but I was in a hurry! Next, I traced a fish using my overhead projector. I used that template to cut a few more.  Then, I started hanging things up from the ceiling.  I used some plastic tablecloths to make a backdrop for the fishing area.  Done–with five minutes to spare.

At home that evening, I used paper cups and pipe cleaners to make the “readers.”  My son’s old walking stick and some twine became the fishing pole.  After searching the house for a hook, I settled on an over the door hook stolen from the organizer holding my shoes.

On the morning of the lesson, even my sparse decorations created a buzz of excitement.  I called the students to my rocking chair and explained the purpose of an introduction hook.  I then gave them a handout I made with different examples of a few strategies.  We talked each strategy over. Next, I divided students into groups of three.  Giving each group a piece of blue butcher paper, I tasked each group with choosing a strategy and writing a hook to go with a Thanksgiving thesis. They wrote the strategy on a bobber graphic.  They glued the bobber near the hook and a fish near the thesis on their poster.

 

After sharing their work with the class, each group got a chance to fish for readers using the fishing pole.  I have three class rotations and decided to have each class compete for the most points while fishing.  I put points on the back of each reader.  The fishing portion of the lesson took about ten minutes, but it was WORTH it to just have some FUN!

The final posters hung in the hallway for the next day’s lesson.  The next day, we all began writing an expository essay using the Thanksgiving thesis from the day before.  Before starting, students read all the posters in the hallway and chose their favorite introduction to copy.  They loved seeing the work from the other classes, and I loved seeing them talk about each hook as they read.

I plan on leaving the examples in the hallway until almost Christmas break and allowing the students to go look at them if they need inspiration for their next couple of expository essays.  Hopefully this lesson will “net” good results in the future!

STAAR Writing Amazing Race

This is the time of year both teachers and students dread the most.  The weather is beautiful, spring activities make us all tired, and all of us are supposed to spend our time getting ready for the dreaded STAAR test.  Over the years, I have done many different things to help make this less stressful and more fun.  I have done camp, Olympic, and video game themes.  I decided I wanted to do something different and remembered a friend doing an Amazing Race theme in her math class.

So, I went online to see what resources I could find to work for me.   There are  many ideas for birthday parties with this theme online.  In addition, there are  many resources on TPT that use this idea.  This is my take on the idea–which means it is cheap and takes   less than two conference periods of work to pull off.  Yes, I really timed it. Well, when I remembered anyway.

The first thing I did was send out a mass email to my campus asking for volunteer classrooms to help us with the race.  Six teachers responded.

Next, I talked with my fourth grade team about using our RTI time for three weeks before the test for our race.  Since they are total treasures, they agreed to help. Our RTI time is 30 minutes.

I then let the students vote on which countries they wanted to visit during the race. The students write me a letter each week for homework, so I asked them each to pick a country and tell me why in their letter.  They chose: Mexico, England, China, Russia, Japan, and France.

Here is where I started the timer:

Six  minutes:  I sat down with my Google Calendar and put each teacher volunteer and a country on every Tuesday/Thursday for the three week period.  I sent out the calendar invites with a short description of what they would do.  Tuesday groups were designated as detours, Thursday groups as road blocks. Here is the short note I copied and pasted in each calendar invite.  The only thing I changed with each one was the name of the country assigned (not shown, I put it at the bottom) and roadblock/detour.

Three minutes: (I got lucky with no line)

I went to the Dollar Store and purchased a few rolls of crepe paper, some plastic tablecloths in different colors, and some painters tape.

Thirty Minutes on my conference period:

I sent two multiple choice STAAR practices down to the copier from my computer.  Each practice was 14 questions long.  While they copied, I took a chair and draped crepe paper up and down the hall in our hallway.  It might take you longer if you need a ladder.  I had already decided I wasn’t going to spend more time than 30 minutes.  You could do more.  I’m just not a decorator person.  I can assure you the students were super pumped with just the crepe paper.  I also put a strip of painters tape on the floor at the finish line and glued two magnets to the back of two clothespins.

Ten Minutes: I copied and pasted some clip art and numbers into Google Slides.  I printed one copy of the numbers on various colors of paper.  I printed copies of  detour tickets on blue paper, roadblock tickets on purple paper, and the Amazing Race logo on yellow paper.  I also begged small envelopes from the secretary when I got the papers off the copier.

Six Minutes: I typed up the clues for the first two countries and a few more directions for the host classroom.  I printed those out along with a word search for the first country, Mexico.  Here is a link to the word search.

Three Minutes: I used a Sharpie to write individual letters on note cards and put the letter sets in plastic bags.  This was all the materials I needed for the first week of the race.

Total Time for the First Week: 58 minutes

Things I delegated and got help with (not included in the time because I didn’t do it):

I asked some of my early finishers to cut and glue the Amazing Race logos onto the brown envelopes (not included in my time).

I also asked my WONDERFUL teaching aide to make a few extra decorations for the hallway with her after school ACE group.  You could honestly do without these if you needed to and just print off a flag for each country.  We used these decorations to mark each door so that the students wouldn’t barge into the wrong classrooms during the race. She also made the letters for the finish line backdrops.  If you wanted to make decorations, but you don’t have time…you could always enlist your students.

I asked my after school bus group to help by making the number signs.  They used a lid to make the circles, cut out the numbers, and taped Popsicle sticks to the back with the painters tape.

Things I forgot to time because I was in a hurry:

I divided the my students into groups of four.  I have 52 students, so I did 13 teams.  We have three homerooms, but I didn’t keep them grouped that way.  I tried to mix up the abilities so that there wasn’t a “stacked” team.  I did this one night while watching 60 Minutes.  It was probably the most time-consuming task, but I feel like it took maybe twenty minutes.

Stuffing the envelopes with the clues each afternoon.  This was under five minutes.  I would guess three.

I also didn’t include in the time the first day of the race when I forgot to ask my aide to make letters for the backdrops.  I grabbed a piece of construction paper, drew some block letters, and cut it out as I walked around conferencing with writers.  They sort of looked like someone hacked them apart with safety scissors….because that’s what happened.

Grading the papers on Monday/Wednesday.  I grade every day anyway, so I didn’t even worry about this.  I just added it to my giant English teacher stack.

Here is how the race worked:

Monday: Each team went to one of the three fourth grade teacher’s rooms.  They received a STAAR packet and were told nothing more about the race other than their teams and to do their best on the packet. I sat the teammates away from each other.  No one was allowed to help anyone else.  This was all independent work. They were super hyper about the whole thing.  Some of them were lost and took awhile to get to the correct room/group.  Others forgot supplies.  Many spent some time just goofing around…..and I just watched it happen and waited for the next day.  At the end of 30 minutes,  we picked up the packets and put an X on each wrong or unfinished question.

Tuesday:  The teams meandered their way back to the room from the day before.  No one seemed in too big of a hurry.  Until I told them the rules.

Rule One: No talking.  If you talk, your group receives a five minute delay or you are sent to the back of the correction line.

Rule Two:  No team receives the clue envelope until all team members make a 100 on the STAAR packet they began yesterday.

Then…the game was on.

I gave the packets back to the students.  They made corrections and finished any left blank from the day before.  They got in line to have me recheck.  The other teachers in the other rooms did the same.  When they had a completely correct paper, they got to sit in a designated spot and wait for their team.  It was totally silent.  Once a team was complete, they were given a clue envelope and sprinted away.

Once they found the correct room (a sixth grade room marked with Mexico), they entered to begin the detour.  They chose between a word search and saying two grammar rules (a vs an and apostrophe s rules).  When they finished the task, they were given the blue detour ticket and sprinted back to the finish line.

I was pretty much done checking my class by the time the first group crossed the line.  I asked them to sit in the hallway with their place number and group.  It got pretty loud and crazy.  I then took photos against the plastic tablecloth backdrops I had clothes-pinned up to the lockers next to the finish line.

That first Tuesday, there were many groups who never even made it out of the room to race.  Many had just not taken the STAAR practice seriously the day before and missed too many to have time to do all the corrections.

 

Wednesday:  When it was time for RTI, you can imagine how fast everyone got to their groups.  No one in my room wasted a second.  Teams that placed first or second the previous day earned the advantage of having questions marked off that they didn’t have to complete (two for first and one for second). Placed three through five had an answer choice marked off of one or two questions. If they tried to turn in their packets too fast, I reminded them that any mistake on the practice would cost them time in the race tomorrow.  As you could imagine, the amount of missed questions on the packets DRASTICALLY dropped.

Thursday: Race Day Two…students had very few corrections to make and almost all teams raced.  I think we had maybe four teams who didn’t finish in time.  Students raced to a second grade room to England.  They were given note cards with letters to the words “tea time.”  They had to use those letters to spell five different words.  The second graders checked their work, gave them the purple road block ticket, and sent them on their way.

Friday: We had  a great class discussion on Friday about how taking your time and concentrating makes a HUGE difference in how many you miss.  When we did our class practice that day, we were all surprised and happy with how much better everyone did.  I think they realized that they could do better than they ever thought if they just focused.

Here are some of the other Amazing Race activities we enjoyed during the following weeks:

China-This was a detour.  Students had to say a grammar rule or move 35 beans from one bowl to another with chopsticks.

Japan–We are went to a Kindergarten class for this roadblock, so I didn’t want to do a word puzzle.  My students had to  read the directions and make sushi out of play dough.

Russia–On their race through Russia, students had to cut the pieces apart and assemble the stacking dolls. Here is a link to the template.

France–We haven’t completed this one yet.   We are using the library.  I’m rolling out a piece of cloth I have and pinning it to the floor.  I have a box of old jewelry, coats, dress shirts, and dresses. Teams must put on a fashion show (which will be photographed) in order to get the detour ticket or say five grammar rules.

Good luck with the last weeks before the STAAR.  Run a good race!

 

Coding in the ELAR Classroom

According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, there will be a decline of over 21,000 computer programming jobs in the U.S.  Why?  Is it because the demand will decline?  No.  The answer is that computer programmers can be hired to do their job from anywhere in the world. The sad fact is that future businesses will fill those jobs with people with more experience than our workforce.  They will have better training AND be cheaper.

What does the Bureau base this on?  It’s already happening.  Our students are years behind those in other countries in this area.  A college degree isn’t going to catch them up.

Even though our job is to teach the standards mandated by the state, it is an even more important part of our job to get our students ready for life after us.

How do we do that AND teach the standards?  We figure out a way to do both at the same time.  Thankfully, there are a lot of resources out their to help.

One resource is Vidcode.  Vidcode has paid courses to help school-age children learn to code.  It also has some free courses available through the Hour of Code initiative.  The idea for my lesson came for a coding course offered at Region XII with Josh Essary.  During the course, a representative of Vidcode told of a teacher using the Bestie Greeting Cards project to send postcards to characters in literature.

Link to Bestie Greeting Cards

Since I was scheduled to teach persuasive techniques and persuasive writing about this time, I decided to blend those with the project.

First, I created a video.  I pretended to be myself from the future and asked the kids to send messages to my future students to convince them to read.

View the Video Here

I then loaded the video into a free app called Let’s Recap.  I created a Journey in which students researched persuasive techniques and also facts about the importance of reading.  Students then wrote a script for their video to send to the future.

They recorded their videos using a free web camera online that allowed them to save the videos to their Google Drives.

 

Then, the moment of truth, we went to the Vidcode website to “mail” our messages to the future using the Gestie Greeting Cards.

I felt like the project was a success because students had taken ownership over learning the persuasive techniques to “save the future.”  They took it really seriously.

This student spent a lot of time researching reasons why reading is important.

View Example Here

This student used a testimonial as her persuasive technique.  I’m not totally sure she is accurate, but she DID use a persuasive technique.

View Example Here

What I didn’t anticipate was the reading lesson Vidcode taught them.  We had only studied procedural text a couple of weeks before this project.  In order to learn how to code and complete the project, the students had to do A LOT of reading.  They also had to follow the directions exactly.  No skimming!! It was teacher heaven.  I kept saying, “Did you read the ALL the directions?”  After failing a few times, most of them gave up and started really reading.  Look at these directions!

 

Students learned persuasive techniques.  They wrote scripts.  They learned the importance of carefully reading procedural text, AND they learned a little bit about computer coding.

Not every day in my room feels this productive, but I’m working on it. The future of my students may depend on it.

 

 

 

Lego Makerspace and Writing

A makerspace activity in Language Arts??? Seems a little out of place doesn’t it?  Maybe in a science or math class, right?

Wrong.

I will admit that I was intrigued by the idea of makerspace activities, but I also am a realist.  I know that my students have a reading and writing state test hanging over their heads.  I’m reminded of this daily when I go home with my shoulders bent with the weight as well.  However, I have great respect for the presenter at the makerspace workshop I attended (shout out to Andi McNair).  She asked us to give it a try, even if we only offered the activity to early finishers. So…that’s what I did.

The Assignment:  Students who finished early were asked to take a story they had previously written and illustrate it with a Lego creation.  Since we were working on summaries at the time, I also asked them to create a ten word summary to go along with the illustration.

Yeah, I know.  It took me literally no effort or creativity to come up with this.  It was the week before Christmas break.  I figured this was as good a time as any to waste some time if this activity turned into a giant fail.

The Results:

#1:  Students were more focused on their assigned work than ever.  I have never even had candy prove that motivating!  Everyone wanted to work on an illustration. I swear more was done in that week before Christmas break than any I had seen done before in over twenty years of  teaching.  Not one person wasted a breath to complain about having to “work before a break.”  It just was magically done.

 

#2:  When they finished their summaries and illustrations, there were some interesting conversations about both editing and how to write summaries.

For example, many students were immediately concerned about this summary.  My favorite comment was, “How do you expect us to understand the problem in this summary?  WHY is her house too short?”

This illustration was by FAR the favorite of the class.  They loved that the skunk didn’t eat her greens.  One student kindly offered to “help edit this so that more people can understand it.”  I’m sorry that I didn’t get a photo of the three-times-edited version.  In my defense, it was two days before Christmas break.

 

The Down Side:

It was messy (so messy).  It was loud (so loud).  There were arguments.  People had to start over several times.  Some rushed to finish regular classwork and had to start completely over because I wouldn’t take it.

Was it worth it?

Yes.  I learned that even an activity that I barely put any thought into could have a lasting impact on the culture of my room.  Now, students bring the ideas to me.

“Could we build a replica of the House of Dies Drear?”

“Could I show you how my character could build this invention in the story?”

“How do you think this attic looked, Mrs. Shanafelt?  Could you build it with us?”

“Could we build our own underground railroad secret room?”

Who has time to say no to that?