A Few of Our Favorite Poetry Books

Since April is National Poetry Month, I thought I would do a short post on some of my current students' favorite poetry books. Last week, I hosted a Link Party where everyone could add their favorite poetry resources, lessons, blogs, or projects.There were a total of 46 links added.

My students have had a great time collaboratively publishing poetry with some third grade students. Here are some of the (maybe lesser known) books they enjoyed reading as mentor texts in addition to the ones they read digitally on our LiveBinder.

This year, our school hosted author and poet Diane Z. Shore. She is an amazing speaker who really gets the students enthusiastic about writing. Her interactive presentation teaches the young writers about the power of figurative language in writing. Many of her poems have been published in Highlights magazine or turned into picture books for younger students. These two books are anthologies from many different poets, as well as her. You can tell from the titles why kids love these poems.

 

As a self-contained teacher who teaches all content areas, I bring literature into all content areas. My students love the writing of Greg Tang. We read many of his books in our math lessons. My students were so inspired by Math-terpieces, that they created their own digital version for their collaborative writing partners.

Another fun math poetry/riddle book that my students enjoy is Riddle-iculous Math by Joan Holub. Two of my students were so inspired by this book, that they designed an entire lesson (that actually took two class periods) of math riddles to help review some of the math standards that we had already explored earlier in the year.

These are our current favorites, but we are always looking for more inspiration. Do your students have a favorite poem, poet or poetry book? I'd love to learn some new titles to share with my learners.

Making Math "Yummy"

This year I have continued my quest to find challenging mathematical problems that related to real life. This has been a real challenge. Most of what I've discovered has been too difficult or too easy for my fifth graders.I know that learners need to discover the relevance of what they are learning to their lives; it gives those standards a personal meaning to them. They realize that these aren't just a bunch of random procedures/processes/problems they are being forced to learn. They are relevant and useful. It totally changes their perception of learning.

This year, I was fortunate to stumble across a site called Yummy Math. I must admit that the title is what caught my eye from the beginning. At first glance the two words may seem at odds...unless you're talking about using some food items as manipulatives. Their tagline is "We provide teachers and students with mathematics relevant to our world today …"   As I investigated further, I realized these were a collection of "math stories" that set up a real-world scenario; then they pose questions for the students to ponder and problem-solve. They are timely with current events. Currently, there are math stories on March Madness, Pi Day, Green green Chicago River, and Shamrock Shakes. You can search by month or by math standard. Each math story involves multiple math standards and new stories are regularly added.

To be honest, these standards are a bit over my students' heads, but I loved the whole concept of real world scenarios that focus on multiple math skills while adding some interesting trivia or information; I decided to try it with my young mathematicians anyway. My students were immediately engrossed in these problems. We begin each of the stories by discussing the  beginning "set-up" together. Then they set to work in small groups as I travel from group to group to listen to their conversations and ask questions to discover their thought process. We periodically have a whole group conversations to share their discoveries. They get so excited about "figuring" something out, they don't stop to question whether or not this is a 5th grade standard. I never hear my students say, "This is too hard."  They see how the different math standards overlap and relate to one another.

They are not just solving problems with numbers either, they are having to write explanations for how they got to their conclusion. We all know that it is one thing for a students to just go through a  process...that doesn't denote a true understanding of a concept. It is a totally different thing if a student can explain not just what they've done to find a solution,but also why they've done it.

It's highly engaging and interesting for them to see how math supports life. It's relevant. Whenever we do a Yummy Math story, our math class goes on for over an hour and a half. When it's time to move to another subject, a chorus of "Awwwww, can't we have 5 more minutes?" ensues. One student told me that he loves yummy math because it's math for life. He is so right. Kids begging to keep solving problems? Absolutely!

~To the Yummy Math teachers, I hope I did justice describing your site. Please feel free to make comments adding any important information that I might have omitted. Thanks for such a great site!

Best Laid Plans...of a 5th Grade Class

Yesterday didn't go as planned...at all. I had a plan of what I thought would be an enjoyable and engaging math lesson. I recently bought the book Math-terpieces: The Art of Problem-Solving by Greg Tang. I planned on reading the book and letting the students have some fun solving the problems that related to the masterpieces of art on each page. I thought it would be a nice change of pace and a way to review previously mastered skills in a new format.

My students came up with other plans. Although several of them immediately "closed down" when I first got out a book to read (see this post), by the second page, they were all glued to the pages waving hands in the air to find different solutions to the problems in each of the poems. Before we could get through the book, they started offering different ideas to our day's plan.

View their Math-terpieces Storyjumper

One student asked if they could create math poems like the ones we were reading. Another student chimed in and said that for them to be like the ones Greg Tang wrote, they would need to use art masterpieces as the inspiration. Then another student suggested that instead of using a famous masterpiece, maybe they could create their own. To which another student suggested not only writing the poems and creating the art but publishing them in a StoryJumper so that all of the students that they collaborate with could read their book too.

Wow! This all happened so fast it was amazing. My learners had found inspiration in a book that I thought would hold their attention for about thirty minutes and turned it into a two day project that tied together reading for inspiration, writing for an authentic audience, creating for a purpose, and publishing it to further the learning of their peers across the country.

Within a few minutes, they were searching for inspirational artists to begin creating their own masterpieces. They asked to get out different art mediums, each one wanting to be unique. Once their masterpieces were done, they began searching for math concepts within their art and began brainstorming ideas. As with all of our writing projects, we had conferences throughout their writing process where they explained their ideas and they searched for vivid language. Then my students set up a new StoryJumper and began guiding their peers through their publication of their own math-terpieces.

Did we follow the prescriptive curriculum? Um...not these two days. Shhh! Don't tell on us. My kids were so excited and learned so much, how could I possibly have taken this away from them? I guess we'll have to keep all this learning tightly under wraps. Next time I make out my lesson plans, maybe I should turn it over to them. They all definitely come up with much more clever ideas than me. I'm so glad that my day didn't go as planned. I wonder what we'll do tomorrow. I can't wait to find out.

I smell...a Math Scavenger Hunt

Standardized Testing is over! We are all celebrating. However, a challenge we face now, at the beginning of April, is that all of the standards have been taught. Many of our district’s pacing guides have us reviewing and re-teaching the exact same standards that we did before testing.

For math, we’ve already spent the year in small groups, doing a variation on Math Workshop, and project-based learning. What do we do now? I wanted it to be relevant, engaging, and enjoyable for my students. As I was pondering it, the television show The Amazing Race was on. They were doing a scavenger hunt type of challenge on the streets of India. All of a sudden, a brainstorm hit and I decided to adapt that challenge into one we could use for math.

First, I created 5 stations within my classroom. Each station had two challenge problems that the teams of two had to solve together. Once they solved the problem and checked it, they could bring their solution to me and explain how they got their answers. If their answers and explanation were correct, I gave them a card with two letters on it. Then they travelled to the next station. The goal was for each team to successfully complete all of the problems correctly and then take all of their letters and arrange them into a phrase.

I let the learners chose their partners, but they had to choose a partner with whom they had not worked on any projects this school year. Since we do so many activities and projects, it was a bit of challenge for them to locate a suitable partner. I wanted to encourage my students to get to know another student. Also, it broke up my high, medium, and low math students forming heterogeneous pairs.  Without me assigning partners, each pair had at least one very strong math student to guide their partner through challenge problems. However, both students had to explain their solutions to me.

On the day that we did this, I had all of the stations set up and I staggered the pairs at the different stations to avoid everyone working in the same area of the classroom. We had a discussion where the students set the behavior/procedural practices for this activity. Then off we went.

I figured that they students would enjoy this Math Scavenger Hunt. What I didn’t expect was that they would be so focused and engaged in solving these math challenges that after and hour and a half, they didn’t want to stop. They followed their behavior guidelines and didn’t even realize that guests had come into the classroom. Also, I was able to assess their abilities without having to give and grade a practice page, workbook page, worksheet or test (not that we do much of that anyway...but that’s what their peers in other classes are doing). The energy and enthusiasm was palpable.

Although they were trying to unscramble the letters to find out what their prize was, that wasn’t their focus. It was the challenge of completing the task successfully. Their prize was a “lunch bunch pass” which means they get to choose two friends to sit with at lunch and go through the lunch line first. They always love that pass, but they really enjoyed completing the Scavenger Hunt more.

They are begging to do this again and it can easily be adapted to any content area and any grade level. So next time the television is on, you might want to pay attention. You never know what inspiration might hit. My kids had every bit as much fun as the pairs working together in India on The Amazing Race and from what the pairs on TV said, I think our Scavenger Hunt smelled better.