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Fish! Sticks: Whole book review

This is a wonderful book with an ideal concept of any work place. However, unless this "theory" is implemented from the very top of our system down, it's a lot like the theory of communism - perfect on paper, not in practice. We probably should have started with the first book and not the 3rd.

Personally, I would thrive in the type of situation described in  Fish! Sticks, but it goes against everything that our system holds dear: power, control, and failure to listen. There are exceptions in those people who actually practice what the book outlines, but they are few and far between. If there is anyone who would like to seriously try this, I am game.

Craft Lessons:Teaching Writing K-8: Grade 3 and 4- Pages 65 - 77

Using a Parallel Story: Page 65

There are many books that have been written that have parallel stories, such as Stellaluna, The Paperboy, and Slower Than the Rest. This lesson is a challenging one and would be appropriate for students with some good basic writing skills. They would also have to have a good sense of another person's perspective. The idea is to develop two main characters or two sets of characters (i.e. 2 families) and write different plots that are related but not the same, and culminating in a joint ending.

 

Craft Lessons: Pages 45 - 73 for Grades 3 and 4

Two lessons that immediately struck me as relevant to my class are "Cracking Open" General Words (pg. 50) and Using Stronger Verbs (pg. 51). Both lessons focus on vocabulary development, leading students to more precise/specific language. Students are ecouraged to "crack open" a general word such as fun by using a more specific word or phrase: instead of, "I had fun at my uncle's house," a student could write, "I had a blast riding dirtbikes at my uncle's house." Students in my class are not allowed to use happy, sad, glad, mad, bad, good, small, or big. An activity that might be creative and would engage students is to have them write as many synonyms for a general word and put them into plastic Easter eggs and then share them with a partner or small group with each student "cracking open" a word to find new synonyms.

The second lesson "Using Stronger Verbs" focuses on improving writing by using more specific and varied synonyms for verbs instead of just adding adjectives. I like what the author said about how nouns make the picture, but verbs make the pictures move. The lesson also encourages students to use active verbs instead of passive verbs. We read one of the Georgia Award books called How the FishermanTricked the Genie and came up with at least 21 words to use in place of "said." We often encourage students to add adjectives and perhaps adverbs to enhance writing, but I had not thought of focusing on verbs.

 

Craft Lessons: Teaching Writing K-8

Pages 1- 13

Overall the book is user friendly and the activities are easily employable. The section regarding "responses" on pages 8 and 9 was especially pertinent for me as a teacher. Responding first as a reader to students' writing helps understand the content, meaning, and emotional force. Being positive and remarking more on the things students do right at the beginning of the year will help pave the way for more critical analysis as the year goes on. The students will have confidence in themselves as writers and be more open to applying new features. Trying to understand the writer's intention requires listening. By listening intently, one will be able to teach new skills within a framework of understanding and mutual respect. The best part of this section invites one to "lower expectations." Aahhh! However, as I reread this a couple of times, it made  sense to focus on a select number of skills until proficiency or mastery and then add on new skills. What a relief! I dreaded grading students' writing because I was tackling too much at once. See you next time.

Teaching Student-Centered Mathematics: Chapters 9-12

Chapter 9: In developing measurement concepts three areas should be considered when planning instruction.  Students need tol understand the attribute to be measured. They will need to understand how filling, covering, matching, or making other comparisons of an attribute with measuring units produces a number called a measure. Lastly, students should know and use common measuring tools with understanding and flexibility. Van de Walle and Lovin stated the students should be exposed to informal units of measure as well as standard units. Experimenting with informal units allows students to make comparisons and predictions about how such attributes length and area. The use of estimation is also encouraged to focus student attention on the attribute being measured and the measuring process. Activities such as Changing Units (9.1), More Than One Way (9.2), and Fill and compare (9.5) are excellent tasks for lower elementary students to develop measurement concepts.

Chapter 10: Math is filled with patterns and relationships and can involve colors, size, shapes, values, and many more. The basis of algebraic reasoning begins in Kindergarten and should move from very concrete and obvious toward symbolism and functions in upper elementary and middle school. In the third grade, algebraic reasoning is still very concrete but extending into logical thinking, making predictions, and being able to explain relationships and confirm predictions. Have students use different grid configurations to see what patterns develop with a recurring pattern (i.e. A-B-C) in a 3-wide grid, a 4-wide, and 5-wide. There are several questions to go with this activity on page 292 (Grid Patterns 10.2). Growing patterns in 3^rd grade evolves from building growing patterns until comfortable, explore and discover how to extend the pattern in the same or logical manner. And finally, extend a pattern on grid paper recording each step and writing how their extension indeed follows the pattern. Finally, patterns with numbers can go beyond merely skip counting to more involved patterns that follows rules such as "double the previous number," or "add the next square [number]." (What’s Next and Why 10.6). The "Start and Jump Numbers" (10.7) activity is also good for students to explore how patterns change by changing a start number or a jump number and then make comparisons.

Chapter 11: Too often students are presented with questions to answer and the data with which to answer them. Although the questions maybe of interest from the standpoint of data analysis, they are not especially interesting to students or relevant. Van de Walle and Lovin state that students be given the opportunity to generate their own questions, decide on appropriate data to answer their questions, and determine methods of collecting data. We tend to gather data simply to make a graph. When students ask their own questions, data collection has more value. Teachers focus on how to graph, whereas the focus needs to be on how are graphs constructed and what information is relevant to constructing one. Attention is given to several kinds of graphs that are commonly used in the marketplace (pages 331-336). Terms such as mean, median, and mode in relation to 3rd through 5th grades should be discussed and developed. Activities such as "Leveling the Bars" and "The Mean Foot" (page 326) help students investigate these concepts. The term "mean" or "average" should be laid down in 3rd grade to lay the foundation for median and mode later.

Chapter 12: This chapter emphasizes the references to probability that are all around us, from weather forecasting to medical research. The basic concept the "chance" has no memory is important to realize. "Design a Bag" (page 342, activity 12.2) will work well extending probability lessons in Saxon math. Van de Walle and Lovin stated that "percent" and "fraction" language should not be used at this time. There are many activities that provide opportunities for students example to discover the ranges of chance from impossible (0)  to certain (1) with 1/2 being an equal chance of an event happening. The concepts that events are either "independent" and "dependent" are important for students to explore and understand.

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