Measuring the Miles on a Map

Last year, I stumbled upon a way to have my students measure the miles that Uncle Reuben traveled in his adventures in the 1920's and 30's for The Uncle Reuben Project that I thought I would share here.

We studied the map key on the large wall map that we used to mark Reuben's travels. I showed them where the key showed how long 100 miles is on that map. We talked about whether that would be the same for our small map in our notebook or the large carpet map in our classroom until I felt they understood that the map key was for that particular map only.

Then, I gave each student a 12 inch length of ribbon (the curling, gift wrap kind) and a tiny piece of paper the length of 100 miles on our map. The students marked ten 100 mile marks on their ribbons with a pen so they had 1000 miles on the ribbon.

They learned very quickly how to measure using the ribbon.

Read about their success during the first year of the project by clicking here.

Challenging and Rebuilding Mental Models - Conceptual Models

My students study the road while traveling to the YMCA for swimming lessons. 

Why?

Because they have studied the route, back in the classroom, on Google Earth and are working on their mental map models!

Sometimes we have to break something in order to fix it. When someone visits a doctor for a nose injury, there is a good possibility that their nose will need to be broken again as part of the treatment.

As teachers, we must often go through the process of breaking through the misconceptions and incorrect models that our students have built, in their minds, around an academic concept. These are called mental models. And, we all have them!

What I'm calling a mental model is the representation, or picture, seen, and sometimes "felt," in the mind, when thinking abstractly. For example, the picture you see in your mind when you think about a year divided into months. Is it a line? A circle? A calendar? 

Mental models begin to develop early on in our lives and we test and correct them from then on. By the time my students get to my room, they have all kinds of models that they are using. Many are correct, but some are flawed and can cause problems when learning new concepts. 

Shari's Nerd Corner:

You might be surprised to know that everyone has a slightly different model. What I perceive may not be what you do.

I asked a friend what her model looks like (Yes, I’m nerdy like that!). It took her a minute to understand what I meant but when I asked her to show me where we are right now, (April), she looked down at the place she would put April and pointed at the space in front of her. She described a linear representation that looked like a timeline that repeated every year. When her eyes focused on the space in front of her, I knew she was experiencing what I do. The model is more than a picture. It's an invisible object that she can move and refer to in her mind. 

I suppose my tendency to drift into my Intra-personal Intelligence (Gardner) makes me more aware of these models floating around in my head, but I can't help but notice them! I've been surprised that most people I have asked about their model of a calendar year have taken the time to look and describe it to me. 

The model of a year that I see in my mind looks something like a Ferris Wheel that I travel around during the year. I move counter-clockwise around the wheel as the year goes by. Winter is at the top and summer is at the bottom but don’t ask me for details because the actual visual is a little vague. 

When I mentioned this idea to my sisters last month, one described my model in nearly every detail, which really surprised me, and the other described a timeline model with months in a row. My son describes his as a pie chart. 

What DOES your model look like?

Using Popular Music to Improve Reading Fluency

I traveled to New York City a few months ago and was given a
children’s book by Billy Joel called, “New York State of Mind.” Yes,
it’s the lyrics to his famous song, illustrated with city scenes and two
cute dogs that meet in New York. I didn’t think much about it at the
time but when I got to my classroom, I decided to put the CD in and show
it to my students. They immediately fell in love with the song! Day
after day they would beg for that book.
I gave them their own copy of the lyrics, from the internet, and then
began looking for other music that might engage their minds and hearts
like that song had. Friends helped me come up with lists of songs with
the same rich sound and interesting lyrics. Before long my students each
had a 3-ring notebook filled with song lyrics; not just children’s
songs, but real songs with rich music, challenging words, and content
they could sink their teeth into!
For more on this strategy and a list of songs to start with, visit me at Top Teaching on Scholastic.com by clicking on this link! Using Music to Improve Reading Fluency

More ideas on using music can be found on my newest Scholastic post at Using Music to Improve Reading: Close Up and Fluent!  Visit me there!

A New Leg to my Journey!

I have some very exciting news to tell you today. In a few weeks I will begin blogging for Scholastic.com! It was such a surprise to be asked to do this and I feel very honored to be a part of such a great company! I don't have the link yet but I will let you know as soon as I can. You can find the general area of where I will be by going to scholastic.com and clicking on the Teacher tab. I will still post here part of the time but will be blogging every week on their site. If you are my friend on Facebook you can look for the links, as I post them, to see what's happening in my classroom!


I'm headed out to New York City for training at their offices in Soho. I've never been there before so I have some sightseeing time scheduled into my trip. It will be fun working some of my trip into my "journey" theme this fall. I've been email-visiting with the other 7 teachers who are joining me in this adventure and I can't wait to meet them. It's going to be a great year!


Along with packing, I worked in my classroom a couple of days last month. My furniture is arranged, for the most part, and, since I'm keeping the journey theme, I can begin focusing on the first 2 weeks of school. That first day is just around the corner!

Uncle Reuben's Journeys Part 5 - The Time-line

Uncle Reuben lived to be 100 years old; “and 1 month,” a student would usually remind me. What a great number for 2^nd graders! Time-lines were being introduced in the math chapter we were working on so we decided to make a timeline display of Reuben’s life. We would be able to develop skills for working with time-lines as well as number lines. I had a few pictures to contribute to the board and stapled a strip of white paper, marked off in 5 year segments, and the pictures to the board for them. A second strip was placed below to represent the 10 years of travel that he did starting in 1924. I then began handing the project over to a group of students.

Every child in the class illustrated some part of Uncle Reuben’s journeys. The group began organizing the pictures. I noticed some girls working with the illustration cards on the carpet one day. Our carpet has a large map of the United States on it. They were placing the illustrations on that giant map and telling the story of his journeys to each other. It was interesting to see what they remembered and whether or not they could find the places on a different type of map. (They could!)

Two students, and several helpers, typed captions for each picture and illustration and those were printed off, cut apart and taped in place. Here is a picture of the finished timeline.

The timeline became a very useful tool and was referred to often when a date would show up in something we were reading. 

Uncle Reuben's Journeys Part 4 - The Model T

The pictures I’ve posted so far show about half of the class so some of you are probably asking, “What were the other students doing while this was going on?”  They were busy!  I had just shown the class how to make a video with pictures, text and music using PhotoStory3 but I hadn’t let them work with it on their own yet. 

Not long before, I had run across a Model T Coup like the one Uncle Reuben had ridden in, all the way up into Canada, following the harvest. It was sitting right next to me, in the showroom, while I was waiting on my car to be serviced one Saturday. Ignoring the looks I was most likely getting from other “waiters”, I pulled out my phone and started taking pictures of it from every angle. I wanted the kids to get an idea of how small it was; especially to hold three twenty-something young men for more than 1000 miles along bumpy, dirt roads. We had already watched some videos I had found online of a Model T going down the road so they were familiar with the car and the way it looked and sounded.

We loaded the Model T pictures onto a computer and I let some students work together to move the pictures around, edit them and add text and music while standing around the SmartBoard. It worked great and they got to practice their PhotoStory3 skills before they started on their individual video projects at the end of the year. They got skills and I got future trainers to help everyone else learn! What fast learners! We didn't get a finished product but they learned the basics.

Uncle Reuben's Journeys Part 3 - Counting the Miles

Lucky for us, Uncle Reuben kept a journal during his traveling years. We divided his journeys into 30 parts and started mapping them out with colored yarn. We used brown for train travel, red for motorcycle, green for car and blue yarn for steamship and canoe. The questions kept coming! 

Teamwork!

Lots of discussion!

The next step was to figure out how many miles he traveled. That was a big job but my students dug in and, enthusiastically, got to work! They each made a “map measurer” using a gift ribbon and a marker. They marked 100 miles 10 times according to the legend on the map giving them 1000 mile measuring ribbons.The first group began measuring using their estimating skills. One person stood at the board and wrote the miles for each leg of the journey. Another group measured the next day and either agreed with the measurements or wrote their miles next to the first miles. A third group settled 2 measurements by measuring again. The discussion I heard as I passed these groups was wonderful! I was so happy to see evidence of their growth as learners and inquirers!

Measuring and Recording Data

Another group determined the type of transportation for each trip and coded it with a letter; c for car, ca for canoe, m for motorcycle, etc., on the board.

Transportation Team

By this time I was ready to have my board back so I decided to set up three laptops facing the board and assigned students to type the information we had compiled into Excel. Each typist had a partner to check, point and help make sure they weren't skipping data. Some traded places after awhile.

Working in Excel and adding up the miles.

When they were finished, I combined the three files into one. The class was excited when we put the data up on our Smartboard and I showed them how Excel lets us sort and filter. They used their calculators to add the miles of each mode of transportation. When we were finished, they had figured Uncle Reuben traveled about 19,200 miles between 1924 and 1934. Now they could display the miles according to transportation!

[As a side note: I was curious to find out how close they got to the actual miles with their little ribbons. I took the data file and compared it to actual miles using http://www.freemaptools.com/how-far-is-it-between.htm . I just about fainted when I finished adding them up for myself. They had gotten within 200 miles of the actual mileage! I don't think the kids actually understood how cool that was but I'm sure they recognized the look of pride on their teacher's face!]

Coming Up For Air!

I'm not much of a swimmer and have never been in a race, but if I had, I can imagine that it might give me the same sensation as I have had during the last 4 weeks. I prepared for this race most of the summer. The first weeks of August were full of planning and preparing. I was doing what I could, but nothing that would help me enough to allow me to win the race without getting in the water. I feel like it shouldn't be a competition but that is exactly what it feels like so I'll continue using it.

On the morning of August 17th, I plunged in, along with all of my other colleagues, and began the underwater portion of this race. I wanted to avoid the word "race" when writing this because  It has taken me several weeks to feel like I might finally be coming to the surface for a breath of badly needed air.

Teaching has definitely changed since I was last in the classroom. As a coach, my brain always knew that teachers were being asked to step it up more and more each year. I admire all of the teachers I have worked with over the years for their hard work and expertise. It truly is one of the most taxing jobs I know of, although worth the labor because of the people who benefit - our students. 

It's the sudden dive into the water after so long, the unnerving silence as I realize how much responsibility I have in the final outcome, the struggle to keep my eyes on the goal while staying aware of where I am in my lane by constant assessment and observation. The knowledge that, as a former coach, there may be people watching to see what I have to offer to the team. The long pull as I force myself to work as hard as I can before I catch that first breath in hopes that it will get me out in front by the time I reach the surface is exhausting. I'm longing for that anticipated first breath and signal that the race is off to a good start.

I believe it will be worth the effort if I remember to swim strong and smart without panicking and flailing. The rewards will follow.

In the meantime, I want to enjoy this experience. I love the feel of the water as I move among my students and get to know them. The exhilaration of flexing my muscles as I craft my lessons and deliver them, and the small reward of a move ahead with each successful strategy that pulls us forward in the trip across the pool in our first lap, motivate me to keep on swimming.

Coming up for air and still swimming!

The Journey Begins

Here are the newest additions to my classroom. Don't they make you want to begin a journey? This last week I searched several used stores and ebay for suitcases just like these to use as props and activities. I was watching several on ebay but I hated the thought of spending $30 - $50 for one. I was about ready to give up when I spotted these two sitting at a Goodwill store. I couldn't make up my mind and, after several minutes of opening and closing each one, I decided that they needed to stay together. They are a perfect, stackable pair. A few travel stickers will add the right amount of intrigue to capture the imaginations of my students.

It looks as though they have spent some time waiting in an attic or down in a basement, but in their prime, I can imagine that they took many journeys. Trips in the trunk of a car traveling down route 66, in the cargo hold of an old prop plane, maybe on an ocean liner excursion to Europe.

I wonder where they will take us this year...

 - Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone which is a very advanced skill! ;-)

The End of an Era (This may be too sentimental for some people.)

Today I presented what is probably my last inservice presentation as an Instructional Coach. I am really going to miss this particular duty. I know... I'm an education nerd but I just can't help it!

I have always felt fortunate that the people that make up the staff at my school are very patient and supportive. I try to engage the staff with useful and timely information, humor, interesting activities or media but these people have also sat patiently through some less than perfect sessions, technical difficulties and an assortment of other misadventures. Sometimes the speakers aren't working well and they must lean in and listen intently to the soft sounds coming from my computer. My bright ideas don't always work out exactly the way I had planned but they display flexibility and understanding and it works out. Inservice and PD days are never long enough for what I'd like to get accomplished. What I have to present isn't always what teachers want to hear but they laugh at my jokes, ask honest questions, speak their mind without attacking and take it all seriously. (Well, as seriously as they should.)

Researching, connecting, preparing, PowerPointing, creating, introducing, instructing, discussing, questioning, directing, facilitating, wrapping it up - I love it all.

It's a really good thing that I don't have to give up any of those favorite things.

Next year... I will be in a different setting. My students will be younger. The topics will be from a different point of view.

Next year... I will be able to research the best teaching strategies and interesting content to use with my own students, make connections from learning to my students' lives, prepare engaging lessons, choose just the right technology, create a successful learning environment, introduce my students to new concepts, teach them how to learn, lead them into discussions so they can learn from each other, invite them to question, direct their activities, facilitate opportunities for my students to feel successful, and wrap it all in a love of learning.

Next year... I will rejoin the ranks of the hardest working people I know. And... I'll continue to teach.

20th or 21st Century Educator?

I read over my list of things I didn't have last time I had my own classroom today and realized that most of them are technology based. I didn't have a lot of technology in my last classroom. Over a decade ago, I had one computer for 26 students and a teacher. Even though technology is important and necessary for teaching in today's schools, there is much more to being a 21st century teacher than bringing out a piece of technology and then trying to "work it into" my lesson.

I will soon have a chance to step into the many roles of the 21st Century educator. It won't be easy. I expect to have times when I fall back into traditional methods but I will try to stay in the correct century and engage my students in a way that will help them learn best.

Technology provides many of the tools but teachers provide the opportunities to learn and apply 21st century skills. The diagram below will be my map for the next year.

A Change in the Wind

For the past 10 years I have served my school district as a building-based Instructional Coach. During that time, I planned and hosted professional development and inservice training for the staff at the schools in which I was based. My job also included time for coaching teachers in teaching strategies, providing resources, facilitating book studies and guiding teachers in conversations about pedagogy and data.

Last Friday we got word that the coaching program will be cut significantly because of a budget crisis. There will be fewer coaches which means traveling between buildings and less time to build relationships with teachers. In the shadow of these looming changes I have made the decision to return to the classroom next year.

This blog will chronicle my journey.