Chocolate Does Wonders For Grade 1/2 Students

Lisa teaches a combined Grade 1/2 class.  Her students have been working on measurement.  Lisa wanted to do an activity with them that would not only be meeting curriculum expectations, but also be interesting to them.  Chocolate came to mind (who doesn't like chocolate!) and a great lesson was born from there.

For her minds-on the students had to decide what pencil to get rid of.  She scribed their thinking as they discussed what their answer would be.  Notice how she has the success criteria (in very friendly Grade 1 language) at the bottom of the page.  A great way to keep it handy and make it be able to refer to it quickly and easily.

For the action is where the chocolate came in.  She gave them this problem:

The students were shown two different chocolate bars.  Lisa had made a ruler using linking cubes (which she alternated into two different colours to make the counting easier) and then the students used the ruler to help them measure the two bars.  Because there were only two chocolates, Lisa had taken a picture of the chocolate bars with the rulers underneath them.  She then created their worksheet with this picture and the question on it.  This allowed the students to write write on the photo to help them with their strategies.

To consolidate, Lisa chose a few students to come up and share their work.  She then had the class give oral feedback as to what they did that was really good, and what they could do better.  The students were really positive with each other, and listened to feedback that was given and used similar feedback with the next person.

The Answer Isn't Always Right....But I Can See Where You Went Wrong

As an intermediate teacher Antonia struggles at times to get her students to show all of their thinking.  No matter how many times she explains to them that the correct answer is only a small part of the mark they still don't show all of their steps.  For this lesson she decided to do it as a bansho and focus in a bit more on having the students give descriptive feedback to each other to help them improve upon their work.  In this problem it became clear pretty quickly that although the students were doing a good job of showing their work, they missed out on one important piece in the question and then got the final answer wrong.  But - because they showed their work, Antonia was able to see where they went wrong and help them not make the same mistake again, and their mark wouldn't suffer too much.

To start off her lesson, the class reviewed the learning goals and success criteria for this strand:

They then did a minds-on activity based on their upcoming trip to overnight camp:

The action involved them deciding what bus company they should choose to make the trip.  She offered them three choices, all with different components to think about.  What was important to remember was that the bus needed to go up to Wahanowin and back - the trip is about 250km each way.  This was what most of the students forgot to do when they solved the problem.

For the consolidation, two groups volunteered to share their work with the class.  As a group, the class gave some descriptive feedback based on the success criteria that was co-created earlier.  The feedback was recorded on our bansho and then the rest of the class set off to give feedback (on post-it notes) to one other group.

When they were done, the students then went back (and in another colour / pen) and made changes to their work based on the feedback they were given.  Here are two examples of what the "edited" work looked like.

Educational "Shoplifting"

Jennifer teaches in the same school as Lisa.  She liked the lesson that Lisa did with her class on measurement that was shared on the blog a few weeks ago.  Jennifer wanted to make a few modifications to her lesson to make it fit the needs of her class.

For her Minds on she reviewed the learning goals with them, and then co-created the success criteria.  Here is what her anchor chart looked like:

She then had her class get to work on their problem.  To differentiate the lesson a little bit, she offered her Grade 2s the opportunity to choose what problem they wanted to do.  The Grade 3 students had to choose the problem that involved standard units of measure as this is the expectation for the grade.

To consolidate, Jennifer wanted to have her students really take a look at what they are writing in their answer.  She grouped their work into groups with similar answers and then talked about what was positive in each group, and what the students could work on.  She took the feedback from the success criteria that had been co-created with the class.

The students were then given the opportunity to go back and 'edit" their work to add what they thought that they needed to in order to make their answer a stronger answer.  Here are some individual student samples.  You can see what the original work was, and see what the new comments are because of the two different colours.

This student elaborated more on "drawing a line" (original answer: blue, improvement: red)

This student used more math vocabulary in their improvement (e.g., half).

The last picture is the whole class' work.  You can zoom in and see all the different colours for "editing."  A great lesson, and a great learning experience for these students.

Kids Can Give GREAT Feedback!

Melissa has been working with her Grade 3 / 4 class on giving and receiving good descriptive feedback.  She decided to use the consolidation of her lesson as a way to help the students not only reflect on the posted success criteria, but also to have them work on giving their peers feedback. 

Here is how the first two parts of Melissa's lesson went:

She had the learning goals and success criteria displayed (they had co-created the success criteria together)

They then worked on the minds-on with their elbow partner (they did a think pair share and then "voted" on which on they thought it was.  Then they discussed why they didn't think that some of the choices were viable options)

In pairs they went to work on their action:

The consolidation is where things got creative.  Here was the set of instructions Melissa gave to her class:

The students decided that the "star" feedback (or positive feedback) would be given on a yellow sheet, and the "wish" feedback (or things to improve upon) would be on a blue sheet.  As a whole group they gave feedback to one group's work.  They then branched out and followed the instructions they were given.  Below are all of their work samples with the feedback attached to it.  You can notice the different colours to show what was original and how they acted upon the feedback given to them:

These students are really aware of not only what makes a good answer, but how to improve to get an even better answer. 

More Than Just Time

Michelle teaches a combined Grade 3/4 class.  She is nearing the end of her measurement unit and wanted to spend a few days working with her students on noticing the relationships between days, weeks, months and years.  She used a previous EQAO multiple choice question as the base for her lesson.  However, instead of it being a multiple choice question she opened it up to an open problem.  For her Grade 4 students, Michelle wanted to review what they knew about this concept and see what other strategies they were able to apply to help them solve the problem.  This concept is one that is really based in application.  Are the students able to apply what they know about the passage of time and the relationships between days to weeks and weeks to months?  And are they able to apply a strategy to help them show their understanding (e.g., adding, skip counting, fractions)?

Her lesson started off with the learning goal and success criteria clearly posted.

The students then were given this problem as their minds on:

They did a think-pair-share with their elbow partner to share what their thinking was.  Michelle then filtered in some accountable talk by having the students share the answer that their partner said.  This was recorded in blue on the chart to help illustrate the thinking on paper.

For their action the students did a similar problem as in the minds on: 

The students were reminded to use the success criteria to help them with their answer.  They also were reminded to show their work clearly and to explain their final answer.

When the students were done Michelle did a Bansho of the strategies that they used.  She had the students talk about what was similar in all of their answers, and had them name the strategy that they used.  In total the students were able to come up with 7 different strategies.  They were:

Michelle then had the students give each other some descriptive feedback on what they did well, and what they could do to improve. A great lesson with a lot of learning!

Let's Talk About The Math!

Kristen's Grade 4 class has been working on justifying their answer.  They did an activity where they had to justify which playground they thought would be the best fit for their school based on drawings that they created.

Here are three of the answers that the students gave and the descriptive feedback that they were given (at first by the teacher, then by one student, then by the class) to help them improve next time.

Teacher feedback only.

Feedback from the previous student.

Feedback from the whole class.

As the discussions were happening, the class was really engaged and offered some great ideas as to how to improve.  They did refer to the success criteria when offering some suggested feedback.  Now they are able to take that feedback and apply it to their next task, and become better at justifying their answer.

Co-Planning, Co-Producing

Carm and Jan invited me in to co-teach with them a lesson on area using non-standard units.  Carm teaches Grade 1 and Jan teaches a combined Grade 1/2 class.  Jan and I met to plan first and decided to use an idea from the curriculum document as the action part of our lesson.  We made it a parallel task so that there was a slight difference between what the Grade 1 and Grade 2 students did.  This was done to meet the needs of the two different curriculum expectations.  When Carm and I met to plan she had already seen the lesson from Jan and we decided to use the same lesson for her Grade 1s.

Here are the learning goals that the two of them had created for area:

Minds On:  The students used large sheets of construction paper to help measure the area of the learning carpet.  Before they began, they were reminded of what estimate meant and several students took turns sharing their estimates:

When they were done estimating, they found the area and shared how they came up with their answer.  This was recorded on the bottom of our chart.  You can see that the students shared 4 different ways of counting the sheets of paper to find the area.  Great examples of how they applied what they already knew to this task.

Action: 

The students quickly went to work using square of paper to help them measure the area of the op of their desk (The paper was super cheap:  550 sheets for $1.25 at Dollarama)

The students then had a picture of their desks taken, and then they used this picture to help them complete their answer.  We saw that the students used the strategies that we talked about to help them show how they counted up to 48 to get their final answer. 

Consolidate:  The students talked about how they got their answers with a partner.

We had two great lessons in two great classes!  The students were engaged and really able to demonstrate a lot of prior knowledge when solving this task.

Get An Idea and Run With It

Ellen was on the wiki and came across the lesson that was done in Zarha's class as part of our lesson study.  Since she teaches Grade 1, she decided to try the lesson herself.  She made a few modifications to it so it would work with the needs of the students in her class.  Here is her lesson:

Minds-On:  She had the students use ice cream cones and scoops of ice cream as a way to see the different ways that they could make combinations of chocolate and vanilla ice cream.

Action:  The students then came up with different ways that they could arrange different coloured candles on the cake. 

Consolidation:  The students then talked about what they noticed and came up with some good understanding of ways they could make 8.  Ellen also had them reflect on what their next step's would be and recorded them as well.  This is a great way to help bring in success criteria with Grade 1 students as it helps them come up with their own ideas of what makes a good answer, and it lets them reflect on the discussion about what they saw that made a good answer.

Ellen said that the activity allowed her to see different things about her students.  She was surprised when some students responded (and responded correctly) because they are not always the most confident or able in math.  She did say that this activity took her longer than expected.  I'm confident that as Ellen does more activities like this in the class, her students will get stronger and better at them.

Here is a full shot of what the lesson looked like when it was completed and hanging proudly out in the hall: