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I'm hoping the collective wisdom of this blog can help me. I'm teaching in a small private school. There are 15 students in my class, grade levels 4 - 6, with ability levels from 1st grade to beyond 6th grade. I'll be teaching the content areas to the class as a whole, but will be grouping students for math and reading.
My question is, what can I have the other students doing pretty much independently (there will be an aide in the room for most but not all of the group time) while I'm meeting with each reading and math group that is not busy work or a waste of their time? There is close to two hours a day for which I need constructive, yet independent, learning activities. I can think of many things to do, but they all require some teaching, or at least some introduction, from me. I need work that can be done totally independently.
Thanks for your help with this.
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19 comments:
oh my gosh ---- why is the class so mixed???
I have ONE piece of possibly very good advice (not my own).
This is a program Lynn's school uses & that I believe redkudu is thinking of adopting.
Let's see....have to remember it.
Here it is: Reading for Understanding from SRA. (That's the UK site.)
It sounds fantastic to me - and it was created to be done as independent activity, I believe.
I have a collection of math workbooks that I've felt were terrific. Let me see if I posted that somewhere....(not sure they'd be the way to go, but they are definitely something kids can do independently.)
Also, I'm thinking palisadesk, redkudu, Concerned & Karen H & others may have good sources for very short writing assignments kids can do on their own.
Given what I've been looking into & thinking about this summer, I might simply ask students to write VERY short answers to questions on reading. C's new school did that for the summer reading assignment. The kids had to do a vast amount of reading (2500 pages) and a fair amount of writing --- BUT all of the writing was extremely short.
I was amazed to see how much more sophisticated C's sentences are when he's writing a short answer as opposed to a "paper" or an "essay," neither of which he knows how to do.
hmmm....math workbooks -- I'm not finding a list.
Here are the ones I own & have thought were quite good:
oh wait -- I have a huge list in my file -- I'll email.
I'm actually trying to solve a similar puzzle on a much smaller scale. As soon as I put together some viable solutions I will share them. The first thing that came to mind was the program Lynne had talked about. Catherine's got you covered there.
BTW There's an interesting French documentary about a one room school house I just watched called To be and to Have, you might find inspiring right about now.
http://www.haro-online.com/movies/to_be_and_to_have.html
p.s. If you have a Netflix account, you can watch it on your computer on demand.
IF I were trying to keep kids busy for some period of time, I’d probably go with the Spectrum Grade level math books at EPS, which I believe instructivist once recommended to me.
(I've emailed my list - let me know if you don't get it)
Catherine's on to something with the short writing assignments. That's definitely something that my 3rd and 6th grader will be doing regularly on their own. The third grader is reading short passages and then has to summarize what he read in 2-3 sentences. The sixth grader is either asked to write at least a paragraph or work on an outline. There is some pre-teaching but I think almost anything you set up is going to take some initial set-up before the kids can be self-sufficient.
I also like the logic exercises from the Critical Thinking Co. If you check out their websites you'll find a number of good sources of independent work that tends to span a number of grade levels.
I also tend to use the computer in these types of situations, but with 15 children that just may not translate well. I have the kids do math review like Math Blaster, the Singapore Math CD-ROM software, Spanish, Spelling Mastery, Headsprout, etc. That way I can do direct instruction with one while the others are doing something constructive that is not busy work.
We're still refining this though. It's a little tricky and I can only imagine that 15 children that represent such a wide range has to be a little overwhelming at first.
RIGHT!
SUMMARIES!
How could I forget?
I wonder whether, if k9sasha doesn't find other materials she prefers, the Six-Way Paragraphs books might not be a terrific resource. I love those passages.
The books have multiple choice questions, but I suspect you could ask kids to write short answers instead.
oh, gosh!
Text Reconstruction exercises are perfect for this purpose.
Text reconstruction and sentence combining.
I love, love, LOVE Analyze, Organize, Write by Arthur Whimbey and Elizabeth Lynn Jenkins & Sentence-Combining Workbook by Pam Altman et al.
Unfortunately, we'll probably never finish either book. I'm going to have to start tutoring or teaching writing!
(k9: both of those books are written for college kids, but both were fine for C. by the time he was in 6th grade I would say. HOWEVER, I now realize that he was fairly advanced in terms of reading ability & I just don't know enough about kids & reading levels to have a sense of where the cut-off is.)
There are sentence combining sources for all levels of kids, I believe.
Not sure about text reconstruction, but you could easily create your own from reading passages at each student's level.
Back when I first was trying to use text reconstruction with C I cut up a Science New for Kids paragraph and asked him to put it back together. Unfortunately, I was using something too long. iirc, you should use paragraphs no longer than 4 sentences....(I need to check).
One thing that's kind of fun about "paragraph puzzles" is that there is sometimes more than one way you could put the sentences together that would work --- but has a different cast of meaning.
Ben Franklin taught himself to write using text reconstruction. If you'd like the URL for the online article about it, I can find.
Typically, it's more than just putting the sentences together. You also write the paragraph more or less from memory -- and then you write your own paragraph using your reconstructed paragraph as a "template."
I think there's a text reconstruction label you can click on to see all the posts.
concerned -- if you have time (hah!) you should share some of your notes.
The local paper had a terrific article about a Scarsdale mom homeschooling her 3 kids, who are very different ages. I thought of you.
I'll get some excerpts typed up and posted.
You guys are great! Thank you for all the ideas. I'm going to follow up on all of them and see what I think will work for my situation.
I bought the Analyze, Organize, and Write book when you mentioned it before (I also bought Double Your Grades), and I've already had my students do the first set of sentence combining exercises. Most of them understood what was expected, but a few of the fourth graders had trouble with it. A lot of what is in the book is too advanced, but I intend to use whatever I think will work with my kids.
I also found my copy of Writing Strands 3, as well as a workbook about elaborating sentences and ideas. I'll use both of those for some of the seatwork as well.
I think the Institute for Excellence in Writing uses paragraph reconstruction as their teaching method. I bought the materials a few years ago, but have never watched the DVDs. I guess it's time to do so.
The class is so mixed because the school is so small. There are 102 students from pre-school to 6th grade, and most of them are in pre-school, pre-K, or kindergarten. The 1st grade class has 7 students. The 2nd/3rd grade class has 11 students, and the 4th/5th/6th grade class (mine) has 15. Also, the school takes all comers - there is no kind of test to get in - which means some of my kids are low and have been put in a small school for extra attention.
My daughter is doing progymnasmata exercises, one of which is outlining a fable by picking one or two words from each sentence. She then has to rewrite the fable using those words. Is this something akin to text reconstruction?
Yes, I'm googling 'text reconstruction' right now!
Memorize poetry at their level.
We're starting poetry and Bible verse memorization this year. There are all kinds of good reasons for this--if you're not convinced this is productive, I can elaborate.
You could have them work in groups of 2 and quietly read to each other after they have read it to themselves for a while.
There are lots of classic poems that are copyright free now, anything published before 1923 is free for unlimited copying.
You could also train up some of your older students to work with the younger ones. If they're doing something like Webster's Speller, they could be learning to spell a few of the words that they are teaching the younger students to read and spell.
I'll try to think of more things. I can also ask around, I think I may know of a few people who actually were in one room schools as children.
Math worksheets in pairs that can be checked by the other student.
and copy work of those poems is useful too to improve their handwriting. but not only poems. history documents like the declaration of independence, famous speeches by presidents, etc. should be used. it builds towards rhetoric and improves the ability to speak out loud, and improves reading in one's mind's voice, so to speak, as you learn the rhythms, cadence, proper pronunciation, etc.
Some seatwork assigned by my kids' fantastic Grade 2 & 4 teachers while reading groups were going on:
Write to a given prompt: something related to a event that happened on this day in history, a thoughtful question that the child could reflect on, a current event, your thoughts of the recent field trip or assembly, & occasionally a submission for the school literary magazine
Write a letter: to the principal or a specials teacher about whatever is on your mind, to another staff member as a thank you, to the student in the class in another state that the class is corresponding with, to the host of the most recent field trip, to the room mom in appreciation for her latest help etc
Read - assigned passages in science, social studies, reading, or Time for Kids and be prepared to dicuss intelligently
Summarize an assigned independent reading assignment (social studies text or resource) and be prepared to discuss
Study your math facts (all classrooms here have some fun solitaire manipulative type games that can be used, so it's not just looking at a table and reciting to yourself).
Learn your states & capitals
Learn your countries & capitals
Spelling seatwork
LA workbook assignment or assigned reading
Math problem of the Day If you don't have any, try these for a starter: http://www.dillon3.k12.sc.us/mathstars.htm
Sunshine math is also a fun supplement: http://www.paec.org/AboutPAEC/departments/clearinghouse/inventory/listing.aspx?c=3
Nonreaders work with the aide on skills but do work independently on writing (copywork for those that can't kidwrite; if the assignment is a summary they draw and the aide helps them come up with a sentence which she writes/they copy).
I had some similar things while I was in small rural schools in these grades, but we used more workbooks so we generally did the workbook assignments or did the text reading assignment while the teacher was with another group. When done we read independently or visited the library & did research for a report.
A site for those interested in text reconstruction:
http://www.topwriter.info/text_reconstruction/
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