Differentiated Vocabulary Lesson- The Water Cycle

Last week, we started learning about cycles (The Water Cycle, The Carbon and Oxygen Cycles and The Nitrogen Cycle) in sixth grade science.  I always start with The Water Cycle because most students are familiar with it, and have learned about it in the past.  However, this can also pose a challenge because there is a wide range of knowledge regarding The Water Cycle.  Additionally, about 1/3 of our students were taking a practice PARCC Test to get our school district ready for on-line testing next year.  This put a major kink in our schedule, especially because I was assigned as one of the proctors for the test and they did not get a sub for my class.  As a result, I saw all of my students on Monday and then did not see about 2/3 of them on Tuesday or Wednesday.  I decided to start with a differentiated vocabulary lesson that students could be working on independently for the few days that they would miss out on science class.

 I gave students a quick pre-test using our CPS remotes and then assigned students to one of three word lists based on their pre-test score.

Levels 1 and 2 are more basic words related to The Water Cycle and list 3 is more challenging for students who already understand the basics of the cycle.  

This is the assignment that students received on Monday-

Water Cycle Vocabulary Assignment- Due Thursday, March 27

1.  In the glossary section of your binder write words and definitions for your assigned list of water cycle words.

* Group 3- You will need to define words using the lap-tops.

2.  Choose 2 words from your assigned list.

Chosen Word 1:  Create an acrostic poem using words and phrases that define or           explain the word

Chosen Word 2:  Create a Word Poster- This must include:  the vocabulary word, a             definition of the vocabulary word in your OWN WORDS, 1 antonym of the vocabulary             word, at least three synonyms of the word.  These things should be incorporated in a               colorful picture representing the vocabulary word and its meaning.  

**Acrostic Poems and Word Posters should be colorful and completed on white,                             unlined paper.

Students shared their word posters and acrostic poems with the class on Thursday when we returned to a normal schedule.  I was a little nervous that having them present would become redundant since I allowed students to choose the two words that they would use for their posters and acrostics, but I was pleasantly surprised that students chose a variety of words and there was very little overlap during presentations.  I was also very impressed with the quality of work that my students did (especially because I did not see them for two days during this project).  Most of them worked really hard, and their final products turned out great!

I did have the opportunity to see about 1/3 of my classes for regular science class these two days, so I had students that had the assignment completed in these classes help me create a Water Cycle Display in the hall which used the students posters and acrostic poems as the labels for our cycle.  This worked out great being that we had a Parent OAA Open House last week.

On Friday, we reviewed the water cycle by playing a game of I Have, Who Has?  The Water Cycle. This was a great wrap-up to our vocabulary assignment and a great way to end the week!

Achievement Assessment Family Night

Last night, our school hosted our first OAA (Ohio Achievement Assessment) Family Night. We were very worried about what our turn out would be and how things would run, but it turned out to be a great success! The idea for our OAA night was to get students and families excited and prepared for our achievement assessments that are coming up in May.  We started planning for our Family Night shortly after the first of the year and decided that we would need to bribe families with food, and the kids with prizes. Our principal used money from a grant that our district received to purchase pizza, pop, paper products as well as prizes for the students in attendance. We tried to publicize the event as much as possible by announcing it each day, and really "talking it up" to the kids. We also sent home flyers and posted them in local businesses.

Our principal had shirts created for us, and we all wore them to school yesterday to promote our event one last time!

As teachers, we decided to do a four station rotation in each grade level, so that students could get test taking strategies in each subject area. We tried to differentiate the different things that we were doing in our classrooms so that families wouldn't be bored to death! Students received color coded tickets when they arrived at the event which told them where to begin their rotations, and included four places for each teacher to punch their ticket. Students had to get their tickets punched at all four stations in order to be eligible for the prize drawings.

In the science department, we decided to put together an OAA Night Jeopardy game for students and their families to play during the science rotation. We used questions from old Ohio Achievement Assessments that are posted on the Ohio Department of Education web-site to create our jeopardy board. I let the students (and siblings if they were in attendance) come to the board to choose the questions, and then we discussed each question and talked about strategies for tackling the question before coming up with an answer. I was worried that I began to ramble at times, but felt that each of my sessions went well overall.

Finally, each teacher gave families something that they could take home to use as a resource. We gave families a few web-sites that they could use at home to help their students and then used an "Easter"ish theme to make them look nice, and included some candy eggs.

Despite a rainy night, we had good participation for our pilot event.  I am guessing we had about 30-40% of our students here with their families.  All of the families were very pleasant and it seemed that everyone had a nice time.  We are definitely looking to make this an annual event!

March Math MADNESS

I teach five sections of science in our daily sixth grade schedule, but I also teach one period of Math Intervention. As part of our Math Intervention (or Ace, named for our mascot, period, we have been working very hard all year on basic math skills. I wanted to create something for them that would be fun, while also educational because they have been working very hard for me all year, and doing a lot of boring things. I stole the idea to do March Madness from my friend, Tim, who did this with his students back in the dark ages when proficiency tests were in March. That said, I introduce to you, March Math MADNESS! I created a bracket using grades to seed the students.

Students go head to head at the white board doing 2 and 3 digit multiplication problems in order to move on to the next round.

I was actually really surprised by how excited the students were about this! Out of 29 students, everyone participated and NO ONE (SHOCKED!) complained. Students were even cheering on their classmates and could not wait to boo (they are only allowed to boo if both students competing get the problem wrong). The best part is, all the students were doing every problem on paper without realizing that they were doing work. This was a very happy accident! In the very first match-up, one of my students said, "how do we know if they get it right?", which gave me the idea to say, "I guess you have to figure the problem out too." All in all, today was a great first day for March Math MADNESS! I'm planning to post an update at the end of our tourney!

STUDY ISLAND UPDATE

We are a little over half way in our Study Island Challenge, so I wanted to share a progress update. I originally shared about Study Island in this post, and I shared early progress here. The students are doing very well, and there are a few that are completely finished! At our school, we have Study Island for Math, Reading and Science in sixth grade. Our display is a treasure map, and students move their boats along the map to show progress for reading, add stickers to their boat for each math blue ribbon they earn, and they are "filling the treasure chest" with gold coins for each blue ribbon they earn in science. The students are really enjoying the interactive display. They love moving their boat and adding coins to the display to chart their progress. I think that it is really motivating them to work harder. They don't want to see their friends' boats ahead of them, or someone with more coins than they have. We will be doing this for 4 more weeks, and will finish just in time for our OAA test the first week of May, so I will share one more time toward the end.

Volcanoes Web Quest Project- Using Google Drive

My students have been working very hard on a new project that I am trying this year. So far it is going very well, except that it is taking longer than expected. Although, this always seems to happen with projects. The Project is called: Exploring Volcanoes Web-Quest.

I adapted the project for my students from this web-quest.  Additionally, I decided that this project was the perfect time for students to use Google Drive. They were able to get experience with Google Presentation, Google Docs and Google Spreadsheet. It was a valuable learning experience for ALL of us, especially me! I posted information for the web-quest on my web-site (I am always posting things on my web-site to force students into using it).

In class, we discussed the project and I split students into teams of 4. I let teams decide on each scientist's role (unless groups were arguing and then I chose roles at random). Each group has a reasearcher, volcanologist, historian and photographer. Each scientist was given a hard copy of their responsibilities that I printed for them from the web-site. I also gave each group a hard copy of the rubric that I will use to grade presentations. Groups turned these rubrics in to me at the time they presented their projects to the class.

I want to share links to some of our presentations because I am really proud of my students and how their final products turned out!  I feel like a proud Momma!!!

Mt. Etna

Krakatau

Mt. Vesuvius

Kilauea

DATA COLLECTION

Data collection has been a very important phrase in education for the past several years, and its popularity only seems to be growing. In the past seven years teaching science, I am ashamed to admit that I haven't done much in the way of data collection (in terms of grades, objectives and standards) with my students. This fall, I really wanted to turn over a new leaf, and I began collecting data from each test that I would share with students and then post in my classroom. I created data charts for our Rocks and Plate Tectonics test showing individual student scores for each class as well as a class average. When I passed the tests back, I would share this chart with students so that they could see where their grades were in terms of their classmates and the class averages.

I liked the idea of posting the results from each test in my classroom and being able to compare each test, however, I did not feel like this data collection was making much of an impact on my students. I planned to do the same with our Earthquakes Quiz a few weeks ago, until a better idea hit me while grading quizzes and study guides. I was very disappointed in the fact that my students did not perform well on the Earthquakes Quiz, and I was also very upset that a very large number of them did not complete the review sheet. I began to wonder (even though I already knew) what the correlation was between student grades and whether or not they completed the study guide. My good friend, Susie, who is our math teacher said, "Why don't you create a double bar graph?" Brilliant! I created a double bar graph showing the number of students for each class who completed the study guide versus the number of students who did not complete the study guide, and the letter grade that they earned on the quiz.

When I presented the bar graph to students after passing quizzes back, their mouths dropped! Their reactions were exactly what I was hoping for: one of those great educational moments! Even better, parent-teacher conferences were shortly after I created this graph, so I was able to share this with parents and students in the meeting, as well as whether or not the student completed the study guide and the grade that was earned on the quiz. Moving forward, I am challenging students to have 100% study guide completion for our Volcanoes Quiz in a few weeks, and I am going to create a similar graph for students to compare results. I am just hoping that students come through for me in completing their study guides, and that the quiz grades improve drastically! What do others do for data collection in their classroom? Next year, I would like to expand my data collection methods and involve students in the process so I am looking for some ideas.

Google Drive

My school began using Google Drive (Docs, Spreadsheet, Slides, Forms, etc.) a few years ago. I was really excited about it at first and made some forms for students to complete, but then it kind of fell by the wayside in our school and in my classroom. When our technology coordinator emailed us about using Google Drive a few months ago, it was a wake up call for me! She also informed us that all of the new computers would no longer have Microsoft Office (YIKES!), so we really needed to begin using Google Drive for ourselves and with our students. I had a brief training with our technology coordinator and I am now trying to get up and running with it. I am pleased to say that so far I LOVE IT!!! I love that all of my work automatically saves to Google Drive, and that I can then access those files from anywhere with internet (No more lugging my school lap-top or stupid flash drive around). Additionally, our wonderful technology coordinator has created accounts for ALL of the students. I can now easily share documents with all of my students in one easy step, and they can edit and share documents with each other and with me. Last week, I used Forms to create this form. Forms are my favorite so far, and here's why:
1.  They are EXTREMELY easy to create, yet look very professional.

2.  You can choose from several different answer types.  That makes forms great for surveys, voting, assignments, even quizzes and/ or tests.
3.  Pictures and Videos can be inserted into the Form.  This was amazing for the form assignment that I just created for my students over plate tectonics, earthquakes and volcanoes.

4.  All form answers can be recorded into a spreadsheet.  This makes tallying results or grading assignments easy and organized!

CHAMPS

CHAMPS (Conversation, Help, Activity, Movement, Participation, Success)  is a classroom management program designed by Randy Sprick that focuses on being positive and proactive in the classroom in order to eliminate discipline issues before they begin.  Our school began adopting CHAMPS after Christmas break this year, and I have been working throughout the year to bring more aspects of CHAMPS into my daily routine each month.  Over Christmas Break, I created this bulletin board in the back of my room (I've mentioned before that bulletin board space in my room is very limited, but I felt that I needed to devote some of it to our CHAMPS program):

When students returned from break, we took some time to discuss CHAMPS.  I explained to them that the idea of the program is to be sure that everyone knows exactly what they need to be doing at all times.  I was very glad that I had this conversation with my students because I learned that I was actually taking a few things for granted in my class.  There were times before, that I would assume (we all know what that makes = ( ) that students knew what they were supposed to be doing at a given time, when in fact they didn't.  For example, I assumed that students knew during a lab investigation that they could ask others for help.  In actuality, many of them didn't know that they were allowed to do this.  hmmm.... I wonder why I got so many questions during labs???? DUH!  Now that we have been using the CHAMPS program for a few months, I am seeing great improvement in our daily routines in the science class.  Students are much more aware of what they need to be doing at a given time and I am finding that I have fewer minor discipline issues. 

After referring to the board in the back of the room each day for a few weeks, and then writing the different CHAMPS activity levels on the board for a few more weeks, I was beginning to get frustrated.  I felt that the program was beginning to bog down my lessons (In my science class, we change activities many times per period some days) with always having to change the different CHAMPS levels.  About a week ago, I created this Smart Board Slide that I am loving.  It has been a life and time saver for me so far.  The slide includes all of the different CHAMPS levels and a highlight box that allows me to highlight each level that we are using for a particular activity.  I can quickly move these boxes around with each activity change.  I am going to have this slide as a freebie in my TpT store this week to anyone that is already using CHAMPS, or would like to get started with the program.  Feel free to comment/ email me for more info if you are interested in hearing more about CHAMPS, or if you are using CHAMPS in your classroom now and have some ideas.