Homework: On-line vs. Paper and Pencil

20 Day Blogging Challenge, Day 12:  Talk about homeowrk. Do you give it?  What types do you give it. How do you balance it with other demands?

My school is a public school that is also a school of choice.  We are a traditional school.  That means we have a dress code, we have strong parent support, and we have mandatory homework three nights a week. A few times each year we do a homework project that is completed over a few weeks.  Our castle project is one of these projects.  Sometimes we use some of our homework time to prepare for book talks.  Most weeks I assign spelling work on Monday, reading or writing on Tuesday, and math on Thursday.  Many nights I offer the choice of completing homework on-line.  Since some of my children do not have internet access at home, I always offer a pencil and paper option as well..

In my last post, I wrote about Spelling City.  On Monday evenings, students may use Spelling City or they may choose one of these Fun Ideas for Spelling Practice.  They need to have a parent sign their planner indicating how they studied.

Tuesday night is often writing or reading.  This month I am having them read, and then we are doing a status of the class the following morning.  I also talked about this in an earlier post.  Some nights I have students write a blog post.  We use Kidblog, and you can see some of our posts here.  We welcome your comments.  Again, I provide a paper and pencil option.  Students may write their post in their writer's notebook and blog from school.

Thursday night is math night.  Sometimes I assign a worksheet, but other nights students may work on XtraMath, which is basic fact practice or they may go to TenMarks.  For TenMarks, the teacher selects the skills that need to be practiced.  If I assign XtraMath or TenMarks, I also make a worksheet available for those without internet.

With all these websites, I have a classroom version, so I can monitor who is on-line, and in some cases, how much time they spent on line.  I have our Kidblog account set so nothing publishes until I okay it.  With TenMarks I can see how they are doing with the various skills.

Most of my kids like to do the on-line assignments.  I expect them to work for 20 to 30 minutes.  I would like to begin using Edmodo  for homework as well.  We currently use it for book discussion and social studies and science research.

Beginning in February, I am going to begin running a before school computer lab so those without internet or computer access can come in to do on-line homework.  It would be on a voluntary basis.  I did this last year, and I had some kids that came in all the time even though they had internet at home.  They just liked using the websites.

If for some reason I do not assign homework, I send a note home explaining why.  Our parents are supportive and many will call to check if there is no homework.  On the flip side, I am flexible.  Sometimes things come up, and kids forget supplies or for some reason cannot complete an assignment.  I do not want homework time to extend beyond a half hour.  Kids need time to just be kids.

I am always looking for new ideas.  Do you assign homework?  If so, what works for your students?

Spelling City Makes Word Work Fun

20 Day Blogging Challenge,  Day 11:  What is a website that you cannot live without?  Tell about your favorite features and how you use it in your teaching and learning.

We are between testing weeks, so my class has had an entire cart of laptops in our room all week.  That means we have been one to one this week, and we have loved it!  Most weeks I have to rotate students through the nine computers that we usually have, so it was nice to have everyone working at the same time.

One of my favorite websites is Spelling City.  You can find it at www.spellingcity.com.  Learning how to spell correctly is an important skill for reading and writing, but we are usually limited in the time we can devote to it.  Using Spelling City gives kids additional opportunities to practice, and they are enthusiastic about using it. There are activities for both spelling and vocabulary.

It also makes it easy to customize lists and activities to meet the needs of individual students.  I currently have students divided into three spelling groups, with varying numbers of words and difficulty levels.  All lists emphasize the same skill.  For example, this week all our words end with a long e sound.  We spend time learning about the different spelling patterns that make that sound.  I still do classroom lessons, but the games and activities on the website are great reinforcement.

You can use Spelling City for free, but I willingly pay for the classroom version.  Then I can monitor what students are doing.  Most Mondays, I assign Spelling City as a homework option.  The next morning I can check to see who practiced using Spelling City, and who chose a written option.

Most weeks we take our spelling test on line, using Spelling City.  There are some great advantages.  Students work at their own pace, they get immediate feedback, and the tests are graded for me.  You can view and/or print their completed test, so you can see exactly where they were successful or need additional work.  Lists I set up for this year, can continue to be accessed and used in following years, but it is also easy to make changes whenever needed. Students can also create their own lists, and you have the option of using lists that have been created by other teachers.

If you have never used Spelling City, check it out.  Then let me know how it worked for you. 

Reading Homework for Tonight: Read!

20 Day Blogging Challenge, Day 9:  Share a topic or idea from class this week. Will you do it again?

Our homework for tonight is to read.  That's it!  Just read.  There are lots of nights that I ask students to read for homework, but usually there is some type of written response that they have to do as well.  The thing is, if they know they have to do a written assignment that will take ten to fifteen minutes more, how much actual time will they spend reading?

I've been thinking a lot about the ideas from The Book Whisperer and Reading In the Wild by Donalyn Miller.  She makes a good point that so often, kids don't get much time to read.  We are always teaching reading strategies and skills.  We have them responding to literature, so we can be sure they are reading, and understanding what they are reading.  I've done book logs to keep them accountable, but how much actual time do we let them choose what they want to read and just read?

So tonight they are supposed to read, and tomorrow morning I will ask them to record their progress on the Status of the Class form that we added to their reading notebooks today.  We practiced today.  Along with the student form, which I took from the Reading In the Wild, I created a record sheet for me.  I will record just their book title and page number.  I am also interviewing them about the genre.  Rather than going through the entire class each day, I will interview about 1/3 of the class. I did that today, and will touch base with a different group tomorrow.  This is a great time for students to hear about books their friends are reading.  I have 29 students, and trying to get through everyone every time will be too time consuming.  I think kids will lose interest if it takes too long.

The only thing that students have to do besides read, is to have their parents sign the assignment note.  This way parents know what the homework assignment is.  It's a school policy to do homework on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday night.  I plan to make this same assignment once a week for the next few weeks.  Then I will have a better idea whether it's working, and the kids are really reading.

As far as the Status of the Class is concerned, I don't plan to do it every day, but we will give it a try at least two or three times each week, sometimes in whole group, sometimes in small group.

Do you use reading logs or some sort of written response for reading?  What works for you?

Puzzle Break

20 Day Blogging Challenge, Day 10:  Share ideas that your classroom uses for brain breaks and/or indoor recess.  (I skipped Day 9, but I will come back to it soon.)

Last week was an entire week of inside recess.  I was hoping the kids would be able to get outside on Friday, but it didn't get as warm as the forecast predicted, and we had freezing rain which turned our playground into an ice skating rink.  Top that off with no specials on Friday, so we took a brain break and got out the jigsaw puzzles.  It fit with our math as well, since we are working on geometry.  Solving jigsaw puzzles is a great time to talk about flips, turns and slides.

My puzzle collection is made up of inexpensive hundred piece puzzles.  It's always interesting to see which kids have experience with solving jigsaw puzzles.  We talk about possible problem solving strategies, like sorting according to color, finding the outside edge first, using the photo on the box to identify key parts of the picture.  Then we work in teams to solve our puzzles.

Some groups had each member work on one section of the puzzle and then they put the sections together. That worked well for the Sponge Bob group.  Poor Patrick Star is missing a piece, as are many of my puzzles.

This time I let the kids pick their puzzle and pick their partners.  It's relaxing, fun, and we are still learning.

Helping Students Become Lifelong Readers

20 Day Blogging Challenge, Day 8:  Tell about a professional book that has had an impact on you.

Thanks to a Christmas gift from one of my students, I was able to pick up Donalyn Miller's new book, Reading in the Wild.  I am just fifty pages into it, but already I am finding inspiration.  I wrote in an earlier post about her first book, The Book Whisperer.  I have been trying to provide my students with lots of real reading time, but in dealing with school district mandates, I frequently lose focus and stray from what I know kids really need.

I know that I can teach all common core standards using quality literature, but I'm required to use Houghton Mifflin, Journeys, and I am expected to teach the small readers that go with each story in the anthology.  These readers are not quality literature, and they are BORING!  So I keep trying to balance meeting district requirements, and having my students read real books.  Most of the time, I feel like I'm not doing either very well.

Donalyn reminds us that

Research indicates that time spent reading correlates positively with students' performance on standardized reading tests (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1998)

When I was a kid, I read all the time.  The literature I read has been an important foundation for the person I have become.  As an adult, I rarely read just for fun.  I want to renew that love of reading, and I want to develop it in my students.  Already I'm feeling inspired to recommit to the reading workshop model, and make sure my kids are reading engaging literature that they want to read.  Donalyn articulates many of the things I am feeling.

"Our zealous national focus on standardized test performance, often at the expense of meaningful reading instruction and support, has caused us to lose sight of our true obligations regarding children's literacy:  fostering their capacity to lead literate lives."

. . . . . "Clearly, developing life-long reading habits matters not only to the individual but to society in general.  We all benefit when more people read."

Even though I am only fifty pages into this book, I've already found a few ideas that I plan to implement right away.  We have written reading response letters in our reading notebooks, but I love the idea of posting these entries to Edmodo.  My kids already have Edmodo accounts.  We have used them to discuss books, as well as do research.  They are enthusiastic about using Edmodo, so I know they would be eager to post their reading response there.   It's easier for me to access than 29 reading notebooks, and they have a much wider audience.

She also has a form that I'm going to use.  Instead of a reading log, she starts each class with a Status of the Class roll call.  This idea comes from Nancie Atwell's, The Reading Zone.  Students record the title of the book they are reading, the page number they are on, and a one-sentence summary of what is happening in the book.  I really like this idea.

I will write more about Donalyn Miller's Reading in the Wild as I get farther into it.  January is a month that we do lots of testing.  This book is just the shot in the arm that I need.

Book Shopping Day

My classroom library used to be the favorite hang-out spot in our room.  Unfortunately there was very little reading or even selection of books going on.  Every year I had students who spent large blocks of their independent work time talking while they pretended to be searching for a new book to read.  Not only did they waste their work time, but they disrupted those who were trying to work.  The other issue was that the library was always a mess.

One night, I complained about this problem during a discussion on #4thchat.  If you aren't familiar with #4tchat, it is an online meeting and discussion held every Monday evening on Twitter.  It is made up mostly of fourth grade teachers, and each week has a different topic for discussion.  It takes place 8:00 eastern/7:00 central time.  A few people in my PLN talked about limiting visits to the library and having book shopping times.  I was somewhat skeptical, but I decided to give it a try.

I've been teaching for 27 years, and over the years, I have accumulated a large collection of books.  I used to have them organized in tubs by genre.  The problem was that students had trouble getting them returned to the correct tub, and it had become very disorganized.  I also did not have space for all the tubs.  Instead, I reorganized the books according to fiction and non-fiction, and with the exception of the tubs on the top of the bookcases. I got rid of the tubs and placed the books upright on the shelves.  I also made curtains for the front of the bookcases. The curtains  have a a simple rod pocket on top, and I hang them with an inexpensive tension rod.

When it's time for book shopping, I remove the curtains.  Groups of students have 5 to 10 minutes to look for books they are interested in reading.  We use a pocket chart for our check out system.  Each student has a pocket labeled with their name.  They write down the titles of the books they are borrowing on a 3 x 5 card, and place it in their pocket.

This has worked amazingly well. We have book shopping twice each week, and now when it is their turn to shop, they look for books instead of just hanging out talking.  Not only that, but independent work time is much more productive.  I thank my PLN for this excellent idea.

Confessions of a Clutter Queen

My Christmas gift from my best friend.

It's official!  I will be retiring from the classroom at the end of the next school year.  My application for Early Retirement was voted on and accepted by the school board last night.  I have been teaching at the same school for the past 24 years, and I have been teaching 4th grade for the past 16.  It may take 517 days for me to clean out my classroom.

Clutter is an issue for me.  Take a look at my desk.  I rarely sit here, so it ends up being a dumping ground for all the papers and other junk that I use throughout the day.  Managing the paperwork, whether it is student papers or district reports can be overwhelming. To be honest though, grading and completing reports in a timely manner has always been an issue for me.  I would so much rather be  planning and creating something new, that I often procrastinate on dealing with paperwork.  I am also slow when it comes to checking papers.  While I see others whip through a stack of papers, it takes me a lot longer to read and think about student work.

What are your secrets for dealing with classroom clutter and paper work?

This is Day 6 of the 20 Day Blogging Challenge:  What is one thing you wish you were better at?