Make a Home Video

No, not that type of home video. In college we had to film ourselves teaching from time to time. If you haven't done it, I highly recommend it. Don't make it just 10 minutes either. Make it a full lesson. Then, take the time to watch yourself with a place to take notes in front of you. Show it to another colleague or invite someone in to watch you teach. I reach out to my cousin who is also a teacher or other teacher-friends of mine to observe my teaching. The truth is, administration can't come watch you as often as they probably should to help improve your teaching. So, take it upon yourself to see what your teaching is like.

When I first watched myself, I found I was talking WAY too fast and I frequently said 'um' and 'ya know.' I also realized what the kids were doing while I was teaching. Of course I assumed they were all highly enthralled with my teaching. The reality was that they were doodling, chatting, folding paper, and pretty much anything else you could imagine.

You're never too experienced to do a check up and see if your bad habits have crept back in.

A Whole New View on Math Practice

You know how it goes: You teach the lesson then assign 30 problems for the kids to practice out of the book. Maybe it's a worksheet that came with your teacher's manual. The kids are dreading 30 of the same problem over and over for myriad reasons. The smart kids find it redundant. The middle of the road kids find it boring and the struggling kids want to give up before they start because you've pretty much asked them to climb Mt. Everest without oxygen.

Rather than assigning 30 problems they'll never finish, I started running my math practice as such. This idea is stolen from another teacher and I don't even remember who at this point, so thank you. Once the direct teaching portion of the lesson concluded, I would ask would was still completely lost (usually those Mt. Everest kids). They would meet me at a separate table for a small group reteaching and practice with teacher support. Everyone else would start practice. However, I would not give them 30 problems. They had two choices: they could do 6 problems I selected which encompassed the concepts from the lesson at low, medium, and high levels or they could do all 15ish problems (usually I would assign 1-30 even or odd). I would then put out my teacher edition answers with a marking pen. The kid who finished first with 100% correct answers would be in charge of the pen and grade everyone else's work.

I know what you're thinking: Why wouldn't every kid just do the 6 problems? Well, here's the catch. If a kid chose to do those 6 problems, he/she would have to get 100% on the first try or he/she would have to do all the problems, not just the evens or odds, but ALL the problems 1-30. So a kid had to have some serious confidence to give that a shot. As for cheating, when that first kid got 100%, he/she would have to bring it to the teacher to double check to make sure cheating wasn't going on. However, that is the only interruption during that small group time because once you have a kid who is checking work, he/she is the person the kids go to for checking. If someone turns in a paper and gets a certain number wrong, let's say 5, that kid gets sent over to the teacher to get help in small group.

As a side note, when it came to homework, I'd assign A, B, & C homework. If a kid wanted an A, he/she had to attempt both sides of the homework page. If he/she wanted a B, it would be side 1 of the homework and a C would be side 2 of the homework only. You could adjust this by grouping your kids and just assigning them A, B, or C instead of letting them choose.

Ones & Tens Chart: Earned Reward

This is more my kind of marble jar.

I'm sure a lot of teachers use or have heard of the marble jar. Personally, I never cared for the marble jar probably because I'm very qualitative and a stickler for guidelines and rules in a lot of ways. I never knew what warranted how many marbles. Johnny helped Joey clean up. Is that a two-marble job? Does every kid get to put in one marble? Should I just throw in an arbitrary handful? Really I needed a marble jar with individual spaces for each and eveg paint dry to fill up the marble jar and you know that if I felt that way, the kids probably felt like it was eternal torture. Thus, the marble jar is not for me. Maybe it'll suit you better, feel free to google it.

Really I needed a marble jar with individual spaces for each and every marble so we knew exactly what kind of progress we were making. Then, one day, I came across the ones and tens chart. It was something I read on a website and I thought I'd give it a try. I decided that numbers could never be taken away. It was just an exciting ritual that began each math session.

Here's how it went. The ones and tens chart was simply a piece of laminated posterboard that was divided into 100 squares from 00 to 99. I had a jar with scraps of paper in it from 0-9 and a jar with all the kid's numbers (every kid in your class should have a number, it makes your life SO much easier). I would draw three numbers from the jar with all the students' numbers in it and those kids would get to pick a number for the ones place and a number for the tens place out of the jar with numbers 0-9.

Mine was like this but with 00 before 1
and it stopped at 99

The kid would then have to figure out what number he/she drew and we would cross it out using a Vis-a-vis marker. We would do this everyday until the whole chart was crossed out at which point the kids earned something. It might be cookies or pizza. Sometimes, if a kid was doing something really nice or helpful, I would say he/she could pull an extra turn from the ones and tens jar.

A couple of things, if they drew the same number, it counts and they just would cross anything out for that turn. For example, if 67 is already crossed out and a kid pulls a 6 for the tens place and a 7 for the ones place, it's just too bad; they don't get to redraw. This might seem kind of rough, but let me tell you, the explosion that happens when that last kid gets that last number is like Vesuvius.

The benefits are numerous. The kids practice place value everyday which, from my experience, is a constant struggle. They learn delayed gratification. It's practically free depending on what reward for which they're working and it sets a wonderful tone for your math lesson each day. For me, I enjoyed that we could see the progress as the squares were crossed out. It far exceeds the marble jar, but that is just my opinion. You have to figure out what works for you.

The Number Game

I took an improvisation class when I was in college. That really has nothing to do with this except that it was in the same building as this other class about play. We learned a bunch of games, but the one that stuck and was easiest for me, especially when I was a sub, was the numbers game.

You have the kids count as high as they can and there are two rules. 1) No two people can say the same number. 2) No one person can say two numbers in a row. 

If they break either of these rules, they have to start over again.

The only thing I caution is that if you do it while they're in a line, they'll catch on pretty quickly that they can just count in order.