Division Using Different Strategies

To end my unit on division, I had students work through different word problems. They were quite good at understanding the problem but the challenge was that they had to use a variety of the strategies we learnt in class to solve the word problems. Here is some of their work:

 

In this example, this student showed how to solve division problems using sharing, inverse operations, and repeated addition.

Chapter Books for New Readers

This has always been a struggle for me and I know for many other teachers:

What texts do you give to students in your class who need extra assistance in reading or are EAL students? How do you select a text that is at their reading level but also at their interest level?

I did endless searching this year to find chapter books that caters to new and developing readers. And surprisingly there are excellent books out there that are chapter books and have a larger font, easier vocabulary and simple concepts but still interest students. 

Below are some examples that you can try to use in your classroom. And the best thing is that each book comes in a series, so if a student takes interest, there are more books to follow.

Series: My Weird School Daze                                       Series: Billie B Brown

            by Dan Gutman                                                    by Sally Rippin

 

Series: Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew                       Series: Boy vs. Beast

 by Carolyn Keene                                                          by Mac Park

          

Series: Zac Power                                               Series: The Go Girl Difference

by H.I. Larry                                                       by Chrissie Perry

 

Probability Statements

This activity comes from George Booker's book "Teaching Primary Mathematics"

In the early stages of our unit on probability, students were placed into mixed ability groups and given the following cards. Each card had a statement that could be made in reference to probability.

 

In groups, students had to place the cards on a probability scale in order from 100% chance to 0% chance. It was interesting to see their answers and how they interpreted the vocabulary on the cards. Especially "fat chance", as most students thought this meant a big chance. A great diagnostic tool as well. 

EAL Students in a Mainstream Class

I had a student in my class who was a part of the language centre and was a very new arrival to Australia. His English was extremely limited, and that is where I am faced with the challenge. How do you incorporate students with limited English into a mainstream class? If they've had the same amount of schooling in their native language, than they should be able to work at the same level as the other students who are native English speakers. 

Lucky for me, I have an Education Support staff that speaks/read/writes Turkish which is the language that this student spoke. She was so helpful and handy to have and we tried to ensure that he was doing the same/or very similar activities as the rest of the class. Although you want EAL students to learn English, it is still important that you use the native language in the beginning stages of English language acquisition.

For a deconstruction activity, my ES translated the writing into Turkish. Then, in working with the student, they wrote out each part of the deconstruction in Turkish and next translated it in English. This way, the student could understand each part of the information report and also know what that part was called in English.

Another example of this was in our integrated unit on the Olympics. The student completed a KWL chart, just like everyone else, but began in his language and then translated the words he knew into English with assistance. 

Teaching Division using Inverse

I often find division the hardest of the operations to teach simply because I think I struggle myself to simplify it for students. This time around I really tried to break it down and provide students with as many strategies as possible to help them understand the concept.

Our strategies included: vocabulary, sharing, repeated addition and repeated subtraction and we have now moved on to inverse operations.

Repeated addition and subtraction provided a great segway into inverse operations as students were able to make the connection between multiplication and division on their own. It is great when students can make these connections as you see the lightbulb switch in their head.

My students also love making posters in maths, so we rarely do worksheets and take a simple activity and turn it into a 5 star project. So here, I present to you, our inverse posters:

Developing a Character

One of the first things we worked on in narrative writing is the development of a character. I wanted students to come up with as many descriptive words they could use to describe personality and physical appearance. A wonderful idea that my team came up with was to present students with a picture of a person and have them develop a character based on that prompt. 

After finding a bunch of photos online, each student was given a picture. The pictures represented people of all ages, genders, races, religions etc. etc. 

Students had to describe the physical characteristics of the character in their photo. They then had to create a personality for this person, state the role (career) of the character, their challenge and achievements and whether or not they would like to be friends with them. 

It was crucial that students knew there was no right or wrong with this activity, and that it was their own character that they were creating. 

AWESOME activity!!! Please use this in narrative writing :)

Writing Ladder - Updated

For information report writing, I used a writing ladder which worked wonderfully!

For narrative writing, I have updated my writing ladder and it looks like this:

This time, I've made it look like a ladder and the students have to "climb" up the ladder as they progress through writing their narrative. 

Each students' name is placed on a little laminated card that they move up the ladder as they finish that part of their narrative writing. 

Our ladder steps from the beginning to the end are:

Plan, Develop the Characters, Set the Scene, Orientation, Complication, Resolution, Self Editing and Revising, Publishing, Group Editing