I am home. I am alive. I am safe. I didn’t die on the plane. I’m stuffing myself full of delicious cupcakes and my dad’s amazing chip dip.
More information about books, math team, and the awesome world of education coming soon!
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NPR did a neat story on The 39 Clues. You might want to listen to it.
Click here to expand your mind!
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We talked today about the idea that Ben Franklin’s famous key and kite experiment was not actually struck by lightning. Instead, he felt a small zap of static electricity that was not enough to harm him, but was enough to prove that lightning was related to electricity.
We talked about the fact that nonfiction means not fake, but you still sometimes need to double check information, especially if the book is old. We then saw the Mythbusters video showing that Ben Franklin’s kite experiment was not quite what it seemed.
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CONGRATULATIONS TO THE WILDWOOD MATH TEAM!!!!!!
I just got off the phone with Mr. Brown (I’ve been holed up inside all day dealing with doctor/insurance/money drama, so I missed the competition), and Wildcat Math is a force to be reckoned with!!!
In the team competition, WILDWOOD PLACED FIRST AND THIRD!
1st Place
Sam
Hannah
Tyler
Connor
3rd Place
Eli
Brian
Darien
Jasmin
And in the individual competition, Sam and Hannah TIED, then on a tiebreaker, Hannah received 2nd and Sam received 3rd.
All your hard work and teamwork continues to pay off, Wildcats! Last year, the team competitions were our weakest point. Looks like we’ve shaken that off!
It’s also exciting to note that Jasmin and Eli placed at their FIRST math team competition ever!
I am SO PROUD to be your coach, and I am SO PROUD to be a Wildcat!
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Every Monday, I highlight a book from our school bookroom along with lesson plan suggestions.
Jalapeno Bagels. By Natasha Wing
You can find a copy of this book in the red Multicultural Fiction bucket in the bookroom.
No lesson plans are included with the book, but if you visit this site and click “Lesson Overview,” Kathryn Felten shares her ideas.
Learn more about the author at her Web site. You can even set up a Skype conversation with her!
If you’d like to see some vocabulary and comprehension PowerPoint presentations related to Jalapeno Bagels, check out this site.
If you’d like to study the vocabulary in this book, a virtual stack of flashcards is available here.
There is a CAFE menu included with this mentor text, and I’ve highlighted these as suggestions:
Comprehension
Expand Vocabulary
Comments and constructive feedback are always welcomed. Please let me know if these lessons were useful in your class!
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Every Monday, I highlight a book from our school bookroom, along with lesson plan suggestions.
Tomorrow’s Alphabet. By George Shannon, illustrated by Donald Crews
I yesterday e-mailed a list of environmentally-related texts in our bookroom, and I thought this mentor text would also fit into a theme of thinking about how today’s actions affect us tomorrow and in the future.
In Tomorrow’s Alphabet, A stands for Seed, B is for Eggs, and C is for Milk. What? Well, tomorrow, the seed will be an Apple, the eggs will be Birds, and the milk will be Cheese! How smart — you could use this text in so many ways! There are no lesson plans included with this mentor text, but there is a CAFE menu included in the bag, and it’s highlighted as follows.
Comprehension
Accuracy
Expand Vocabulary
If you’re following the units of study for the writer’s workshop, your students may have already been introduced to Crews’ work. Lucy Caulkins loves Donald Crews. I hadn’t heard of him prior to that, and my appreciation has grown rather slowly. It’s more of Toby’s style. His art is bright, bold, and accompanied by the Helvetica text that Mr. McKes adores.
If you’re interested in using more Donald Crews in your classroom, our bookroom has a big book copy of Freight Train. We also have three student copies of Freight Train, and three student copies of Truck. Both of those texts can be found in the blue bucket marked GR LB (where we keep wordless books and low-level books).
Comments and constructive feedback are always welcomed. Please let me know if these lessons were useful in your class!
P. S. We also have a book set by Donald Crews’ daughter, Nina. We have seven copies of Snowball, and they should be in the small office next to the bookroom. See me if you’d like the set.
P. P. S. I lost a little bit of respect for George Shannon when I discovered his entire Web site uses Comic Sans. Barf.
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Today, Wildwood competed in the 4th annual Thomas Jefferson winter middle school math contest. What an exciting day for our team! I think I was proudest of how well we came together as a team.
Congrats to Sam, Tyler, Hannah, Brian, and Connor!
Wildwood’s mathematicians dominated! Tyler placed 4th in Ciphering, Sam placed 5th in Ciphering; Sam, Tyler, Hannah, and Connor all placed in the Individual Test, and Sam, Tyler, Hannah and Brian placed fifth in the Team Test! I should also mention that the Team Test was a 5th/6th grade competition! Great job, Wildcats! We’re SO excited that your hard work has paid off so spectacularly!
Wildcat Math!
Many thanks are due to Tom Norris, who put this whole crazy event together, to Tom Clymer, who writes challenging but fair tests, to James Brown for being a mathematical force to be reckoned with, to the TJ volunteers who work with our kids every week, and to our students’ families! It’s truly remarkable to be a part of Wildwood’s math community!
Next week, I’ll begin a series detailing how James Brown and I have put together a functioning and fun elementary school math team!
**Students’ families have explicitly given me permission to use photos and their students’ first names.**
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Part 1: Thinking it Through
Congratulations! Thanks for being a teacher, family member, administrator, or volunteer who loves and values math! Copious amounts of research verify that our kids (and teachers!) need to change their attitudes toward math, particularly as they get older, and particularly if they’re female. An elementary school math team is a terrific venue for improving those perceptions, and they also foster teamwork and school pride.
Math Teams are fantastic for a billion reasons. Wildwood Elementary started its 3rd – 5th grade math team in the fall of 2008, and the amount the kids (and we adults!) have learned in three years is remarkable. In this series, I’ll detail some of the ideas and resources we found to be the most useful.
Before you get overwhelmed or get ahead of yourself (or both), ponder these logistical questions:
Who’s going to run this thing? If it’s you, sweet! You don’t need to have calculus under your belt in order to be an effective math team coach. If you want to help but you think you need someone else to take the lead, contact existing math teams at your district’s middle and high school levels. Often, coaches will have suggestions for you, or they might even volunteer to help you get started! Of course, your elementary school principal, math facilitator, or other interested teachers are great resources too. Personally, e-mail is the best way for a family member to reach out to me. If you’re more of a phone person, calling after school is best. Before school, my brain is filled with the day ahead of me.
Where can we meet? How often? If you haven’t already contacted an administrator or classroom teacher, talk with your school’s office manager about securing a space and a time. Wildwood meets on Tuesday afternoons for an hour after school. During competition season, we also have an optional Thursday practice. We started our practices in the library, but it wasn’t always available. Now, we meet in my classroom, but my students always grab a few extra chairs before the end of the day so everyone will have a seat for Math Team.
What paperwork do we need to fill out? For our math team, we needed to send out the district’s blanket Activity Permission Form. (we had to explain to a lot of families that it was just a generic form, as it included statements relinquishing liability for “bodily harm.” “Is this a contact sport?” one parent asked us) We had to fill out a facility use request for our meetings. We also needed to file field trip requests and collect permission slips for every competition, even if students were responsible for their transportation.
How many people do we anticipate? How many can we handle? We had a TON more people our first year than we anticipated. Part of that was because many parents believed Math Team was a tutoring assistance program rather than a challenging enrichment experience. Clarity in your initial conversations with interested families will help your program run smoothly regardless of the number of students. Our first year, we were able to handle 50 students with two teachers. We enlisted the help of high school math team members, and meetings this year seem significantly less draining.
What does transportation look like? When Wildwood had an after school program, we spoke with transportation, and on Tuesdays our Math Team kids were able to hop on the after school bus. Now that that program has been scaled back, we give our kids a carpool form at the beginning of the year to link kids who aren’t able to secure a ride with nearby teammates.
How will we reach all our eligible students? We translated our math team flyer into several languages and we had an information table open at Open House and at conferences. We talked with teachers about personally encouraging their exceptional students to join. I talked up math team in my daily class meetings.
How will we communicate with students and families? We send home flyers in students’ weekly Thursday folders. We use the district’s automated call-out system for reminder messages. Next year, we’re going to request families’ e-mails on our beginning-of-the-year permission slip.
Come back and visit us on Tuesday, and we’ll help you plan the year ahead of you. Be there or be the rectangle with the largest area!
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Ms. Houghton's Class 