Guest Post Lucy Ravitch: How Decimals and Fractions are Related

Hi, I'm Lucy Ravitch and I blog at kidsmathteacher.com!

I'm excited that All Things Upper Elementary is having me as a guest today.  I am currently a stay-at-home mom with a degree in Elementary Education and I LOVE to teach math.  I also write children books with math concepts too, but they are not yet published (believe me I've been trying--for four and a half years now).

Today I'm blogging about a concept that I feel can be confusing or unknown to fourth and fifth graders.

Decimals and Fractions can represent the same numbers!

I remember as a young kid (probably 2nd grade) thinking--Are fractions and decimals related?  My teachers are showing me fractions.  But I know 1/4 is a quarter and a quarter (coin) equals $0.25.

It wasn't until I was in fourth or fifth grade that decimals were finally introduced, but I think it could have been introduced earlier (but not every kid was or is as math inquizative as I was).

As a teacher now, Common Core puts base ten and fractions both as Numbers and Operations but does separate them (at least they are next to each other).  I want to show you a way to teach your students so they can understand how these two concepts (base ten and fractions) are related.

I have a book I've written titled Maurice's Mozzarella: A story of tenths, hundredths, and thousandths (yes, still not published) that I'll summarize the concept of the decimal place value system.  With this story you use base ten blocks, starting with the large cube (typically identified as the thousands).

You can tell your students.... Maurice (a mouse) is a master Mozzarella maker and one day he needs to make an order for a customer that will be given to 1,000 students.  One of his big balls of cheese will need to go to 10 schools, which each have 10 classes with 10 students each.  He discovers if he cuts the ball into a square block it will be much easier to divide.  He cuts the block into 10 equal slices (tenths), then each of those into 10 equal sticks (hundredths), and then the sticks get cut into 10 equal mini-cubes (thousandths).

I made a quick little video showing the base ten representation...


So, this story displays the base ten system.  But still, how does that relate to fractions?  Wait, there's more...

Now that Maurice knows how to make slices (tenths), sticks (hundreds), and mini-cubes (thousandths) he can use this strategy when he has customers come in that want to share or not have a whole block.  Students can make up their own stories and figure out their answers.  I still have to write the sequels to the book, but here are some ideas...

Triplets come into the shop and each want an equal share of one of Maurice's blocks.  They will each get 1/3 right?  Here is what it looks like when the kids show it with their base ten blocks.  Of each three pieces, one will go to each sibling...



What if one customers only wants half of a block?  1/2 equals 0.5 (and you teach the kids how to say the decimal correctly as five tenths)

Then you could try something challenging... A large family comes in and wants it divided equally for all eight members of their family.  Can your students figure out what 1/8 in decimal form is?  Here's another video in case students are stuggling...



Once your students understand how to find fractions in their decimal forms you can also show how equivelant fractions all equal the same decimal.  1/2 also equals 2/4, 3/6, 4/8, 5/10, 6/12...  They all equal the decimal 0.5 or 0.50 or 0.500 which can be simplified to 0.5.

FYI: I used the base ten papers from this site with blackline masters.  I also have a place value book reinforcing the ones through millions place.  It is a printable book on my teacher stores at TpT, TN, and BST.  Additionally, I founded a Google Plus community for Elementary School Teachers (feel free to join if you want).  On Facebook you can follow my author fan page if you like : )  and if anyone has math posts they would like to share I have a weekly linky called Math activity Thursday (with a different elementary grade focus each month).

Thanks again to All Things Upper Elementary for having me as a guest!  And thank you for watching and reading!  How do you teach fractions and decimals?  Do you use any manipulatives?

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Persuasive Writing (Tuesday Throwback Post!)

Hi, friends! It's Blair from One Lesson at a Time. Today I'm going to bring you an oldie but goodie - this post about persuasive writing was originally posted last January. So without further ado, here we go!

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Since Massachusetts transitioned to the Common Core standards, I've had to rethink my writing block. The Common Core really emphasizes persuasive writing and this is an area that had been lacking in my previous instruction.

At a staff meeting last year, I had a big "ah-HA!" moment. We were asked to brainstorm a list of real-world sources of persuasive writing. As our list got longer....and longer....and longer.....we realized that persuasive writing is EVERYWHERE. In order for our students to be successful in higher education and beyond, it is so important to equip them with the skills to share their opinions clearly and convincingly.

I'd like to share some great resources to help teach persuasive writing. My absolute favorite resource is Karen Caine's book, Writing to Persuade: Minilessons to Help Students Plan, Draft, and Revise, Grades 3-8. If you do nothing else as a result of this post, get your hands on a copy of this book. It is AWESOME. Our writing lead was able to order one for each teacher in the school. If you can't get a copy of your own, check it out from the library. Caine does a great job of mapping out realistic, engaging, and easy-to-implement minilessons to help you plan your unit from pre-writing to publishing. 

Click to grab these prompts for FREE!

Now, let's get down to brass tacks. Pre-writing! I've found that students need a lot of opportunity to practice persuasive thinking before diving in to a full writing unit. To help build background knowledge and develop persuasive thinking skills, I created 24 prompts to get students thinking, talking, and writing. You can find them for free at my TpT store!

There are a million ways to use these. I like to put one prompt up on the document camera at the beginning of writing each day. I give students a few minutes to silently think and jot down notes. Then, students find a partner and get back-to-back. When I say "turn and talk", students discuss the prompt with their partner. At the next "back to back" call, students find a new partner and discuss the prompt again. After several rounds, I ask students to return to their seats and record how their viewpoint was reinforced or how it changed after talking to their peers. 

I also make sure to give students tons of exposure to persuasive writing in different forms. I bring in newspapers, show videos of political speeches, and read mentor texts. One of my FAVORITE sources of persuasive writing? Facebook. I print out my friends' persuasive Facebook statuses--e.g. a friend that posts a picture of a dog asking people to consider adopting him from a local shelter, a graduate student asking people to take a survey for her, etc. Persuasive writing really is EVERYWHERE!

Here are a few ideas for some good persuasive read-alouds:

I Wanna Iguana by Karen Kaufman Orloff

Thank You, Mr. Falker by Patricia Polacco

Click, Clock, Moo Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin

Earrings! by Judith Viorst

Can I Keep Him? by Steven Kellogg

Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems

Hey Little Ant by Phillip M. Hoose

My Brother Dan's Delicious by Steven L. Lane

Should We Have Pets? by Sylvia Lollis

Should There Be Zoos? by Tony Stead

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Make sure to check out my blog for more persuasive writing ideas - and TONS of free printables! Click on the picture below to check out my post on One Lesson at a Time!

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Guest Poster Shearer-ly Sadler: RACE Reading Responses

Hello ATUE Readers!  This is Tobi from Shearer-ly Sadler 4th Grade guest blogging today!  This is so exciting to be over here to share! I am fairly new to the blogging and TPT world but not to the teaching profession.  I have been teaching elementary school for 14 years and a National Board Certified Teacher for 5 years.  So... I'm going to jump right in today. 

Do your students have difficulty expressing their thoughts when responding to reading?  Mine do and traditionally have experienced this on Kentucky's Common Core State Standards assessment (K-PREP).  This is my districts third year with Common Core so our principal steered us toward Genre Based instruction.  Biographies is my fourth genre based unit this year and since Kentucky has been hit very hard by Ol' Man Winter, I decided to start with a new classic, Snowflake Bentley.  This biography accomplishes many of the Common Core reading informational standards:  I took these from www.corestandards.org: 

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.4.1 Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.4.2 Determine the main idea of a text and explain how it is supported by key details; summarize the text.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.4.3 Explain events, procedures, ideas, or concepts in a historical, scientific, or technical text, including what happened and why, based on specific information in the text.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.4.4 Determine the meaning of general academic and domain-specific words or phrases in a text relevant to a grade 4 topic or subject area.     
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.4.5 Describe the overall structure (e.g., chronology, comparison, cause/effect, problem/solution) of events, ideas, concepts, or information in a text or part of a text.

K-Prep questions are very deep thinking questions, even the multiple choice questions.  However, you can put MCQ's in front of my students and generally they can answer them well all day long.  But you put an constructed response question in front of them and they freeze.  MCQ's show they know the content, but when asked to apply and retrieve text based evidence, the show significant difficulty.  Part of these genre based units, at least for me, have been to really focus on written responses to reading.  I have been developing task cards with DOK (depth of knowledge) Level 1 & 2 questions for most of the year, but not focusing on them well.  I have been making them part of the daily 4-5 rotations while I teach small group guidedt instruction.  They have been general questions that pertain to any given text.  These questions for Snowflake Bentley were text dependent and required some mental effort on the students part. 

So after the questions were written based on the above mentioned standards, I had students pull out their basals.  I am NOT a basal teacher unless I have to be.  However, this story was included in our Treasures basal in its entirety and that makes for some easy access to multiple copies! 

I always have students read something multiple times.  Our first reading is first and foremost for enjoyment.  So, I allowed children to get into groups of three to four (which allowed for peer reading support).  then each group discussed what they enjoyed about the text.  I circulate during these discussions and eavesdrop!  After each group finished their initial reading and text discussion , they were allowed to choose one of the task cards with the direction that after the choice was made, a second reading of the text would take place with the purpose of finding text evidence in support of their task card response.  I was amazed at how much these very focused questions had them taking notes from the text and REFERING BACK TO THE TEXT OFTEN!!!  Why this is so difficult for my students, I don't know...

After these notes were taken, each person in the group was to formulate a response using our RACE extended response organizing strategy.  Restate, Answer the question, Connect to text, Extend to yourself or the world...They compiled all responses to hand in, choosing one and placing it on the top of the stack to be a part of the Snowflake Bentley Gallery Walk.  These chosen responses were reviewed by me and handed back the next day for revisions by each group. 
Here are a few examples of their written responses:

 This couldn't be the end of the session because there were just too many standards and each question was only correlated to one.  Thus the Gallery Walk was born.  I took the chosen response from each group and placed them around the room.  Students were then given this response grid

This allowed nearly all questions to be answered by each student.  It also stretched their little bloom's taxonomy legs getting students to evaluate other students' answers.  Here are the kiddos in action on their Gallery Walk

 

Here are some samples of the evaluation tool

 To make sure this activity was accessible for all, I paired students up with a peer if they required a reader or scribe and I also circulated to coach students through their answers. 

I was so pleased with this lesson.  It took me about 3-4 days to work though it and then I gave an assessment over the standard.  Great responses this time and I could see so much more close reading and attention text details in their assessment answers.  I plan to include this in a larger biography unit include some wordwork and other standard specific/congruent activities.
As a thank you to ATUE readers click here to get my RACE poster for FREE!  Also, this Snowflake Bentley Biography Lesson will be available at my TPT store as a flash freebie for the next 24 hours!!!

It was great to be here at All Things Upper Elementary today!  Come on over to Shearer-ly Sadler 4th grade and leave me some love and I might just have another little freebie for you!! 

Shearerly Sadler 4th Grade
Shearerly Sadler 4th Grade TPT shop

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Bring History to Life For Your Students...and Integrate Reading into Social Studies!

If you recognize the first part of the title of this post, you most likely already know about an AMAZING resource called DocTeach. I have been using this resource for some time, and I feel like I have just barely scratched the surface! Like many of you, I have been teaching an integrated curriculum for many, many years. I have always believed that you teach science and social studies concepts at the same time you teach reading skills. You magically find more time in your day! For example (and I will be brief because this isn't the point of my post), my daily schedule my last year in the classroom allowed me to teach small reading groups and centers for an hour and 40 minutes, 75 minutes of math, 50 minutes of grammar and writing, and 50 minutes of science/social studies. Granted I was lucky because my lunch, recess, and specials all backed up to each other so I had minimal wasted transition time. My admin really wanted to lessen the 10-15 minute loss between grade level things such as recess and specials, so every grade level was fortunate enough to have their lunch, recess, and specials during one chunk of time.

Notice the one thing missing from my schedule? Whole group reading......not that I didn't teach whole group reading, because I did. While I firmly believe in meeting with small reading groups EVERY single day, even in the upper grades (small reading groups shouldn't just be a primary grades kind of thing, and it shouldn't be a "meet with each group once a week" kind of thing, either), I also believe that sometimes you have to meet whole group. I don't want to teach a main idea mini-lesson to each of my groups when I can teach it to the whole class for 15 minutes and be done with it (well, not "done" with it because we do practice that skill in our small groups and that is when I differentiate). But one year, a L.O.N.G. time ago, I realized that many teachers pushed science and social studies to the side because they weren't as "important" as reading, writing, and math. And I do think there are some teachers who still think this, and it is understandable because while science and social studies may be tested on an end of the year state exam, we all know that more emphasis is put on that reading and math score. But I knew, in my heart, that for some children, science and social studies is what they look forward to the most every day. I couldn't take it away from them. Enter integration of reading into the content areas. Something the Common Core encourages teachers to do. Which I love. And I hope more teachers are doing this today than yesterday. If you aren't integrating yet, you aren't sure how to, you are trying but can't quite seem to get it down, or you are but you need some fresh ideas, then keep reading!

I could write forever about how to integrate reading into the content areas, but for this post I will focus on social studies. So, now let's get back to my point of this post. There is this amazing resource called DocTeach. If you haven't checked it out before, I highly suggest you sit down this weekend if you have time, and just browse the site. Like I said earlier, I have been using it for a while, but I feel like there is still so much more I could be doing with it. Using authentic historical documents for teaching social studies isn't a new idea, but it is an idea that can be hard to implement because you have to find those historical documents. And then of course you have to write up the lesson you are going to teach using the authentic document, and then figure out the activity and follow-up.....here is where DocsTeach is such a helpful resource. For starters, this site has thousands of historical documents that are easy to search for using parameters. Second, it has already-made lessons to use with specific documents. Third, you can build your own lessons!

Let's say you are currently teaching about the Civil War and you are also teaching the reading skill of differing point of views. You can use the "Comparing Civil War Recruitment Posters" lesson. This lesson includes 2 posters used during the Civil War to recruit African-Americans into either the Union Army or the Confederate Army. Students can compare and contrast the perspectives regarding the role of African-Americans during the Civil War. You just did double-duty of teaching your reading skill and social studies skill at the same time. Woo-hoo!

I am the type of teacher that likes to make my own lessons. However, the lessons on this site are awesome! For each lesson, you get the author of the historical document, an image of the document you can show on a projector or Smart Board (or if your school is a BYOT school, students can pull it up on their devices), the historical era, the reading skill, the historical thinking skill (for the above activity it is "historical analysis and interpretation"), Bloom's Taxonomy level, a synopsis of the lesson, AND author's notes which usually include higher-level questions to ask before/while/during reading of the historical documents (so for all you Close Reading fans out there, you can do a Close Reading of the historical documents, too!). Even I know that if I were to create a lesson like this, it would take me a LONG time. This is such a time-saver! And the best part is it really is a great activity! I am telling you, when I found this site, it was like hitting a gold mine or winning the lottery. Here is a screen shot of the above activity.

photo credit: www.DocsTeach.org 

And if ALL that weren't enough, if you create a free account, you can actually modify the lesson including blacking out part of the document, to make it fit your needs. So if you like the lesson, but feel like it needs something more, you can tweak it. It will then be saved in your account.

Let's say you would rather start from scratch, you can create your own lesson, too. You can choose which historical thinking skill you want and it will narrow down the tools that would be best to use (i.e. sequencing, finding details, compare/contrast). This is a great option for those of you who know a lot about your social studies topics and feel comfortable creating your own integrated lessons from a specific historical document.

photo credit: www.DocsTeach.org 

If you are even more adventurous, you might want to check out the National Archives Digital Vaults. I am fairly new to this site and have yet to use this site to create a lesson, but it is pretty cool how you narrow down what you are searching for. If you feel comfortable with just selecting a historical document and creating your own lesson, this site would be great for you. 

photo credit: www.digitalvault.org

I hope I have given you either some starting points or some fresh ideas for integrating reading into social studies. If you already use one of these sites, I would love to hear how you incorporate them or what you think about them! I also love nothing more than helping teachers figure out how to integrate reading into the content areas, so if you would like help, tips, or suggestions, I would be MORE than happy to help you! I loved (and miss) my time as an instructional coach, so I would LOVE to help out! You can leave a comment below with your email, or you can email me at hleblanc@2brainyapples.com. 

Thanks for letting me share one of my favorites with you all!

Heather

2 Brainy Apples

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An Upper Elementary Take on Author's Purpose

At a staff meeting about five years back, our principal had us look at the previous year's test results, identify one or two areas of weakness, and then write a plan of action for improving that weak strand.  Well, my colleagues and I recognized that Author's Purpose was a weak area for our third and fourth graders that year.  We wrote what we thought was a fabulous plan to help our students to better understand the concept of Author's Purpose... and thus be better equipped to score higher in that area on the annual standardized tests.  Our plan even included placement of a huge "pie" in the central part of the hallway where each class wrote the titles of books they had read that fit into each category!

As teachers, our confidence soared as State Assessment time approached!  (You know what's coming...)  Well, assessment time arrived, and as an ESL teacher, I was providing the accommodations of reading the test questions aloud to limited-English proficient students.  I got a sinking feeling in my stomach as I read various questions related to Author's Purpose.  I realized that the test authors did not limit the answer choices to persuade, inform, and entertain.  Rather, I saw answer choices that included words like explain, describe, and occasionally even illustrate. 

Furthermore, I realized that sometimes, the test authors required students to differentiate the main idea.  For example, answer choices might include:
          A.  To inform the reader about the formations found in caves
          B.  To describe the formations in a cave
          C.  To entertain readers with a story about a cave
          D.  To inform the reader about how caves are formed

It was then that I set out to do more than just teach the basic PIE method for Author's Purpose!  I found the PIE'ED method online, and from there created several materials to support that method.

What is the PIE'ED method of Author's Purpose?

P-persuade (to convince the reader of something)

I-inform (to provide the reader with information)

E- entertain (to provide a story readers will enjoy - it can be sad, scary, or happy, and often includes dialogue)

E-explain (to give the reader directions)

D-describe (to appeal to most or all of the reader's five senses)

Clipart by Krista Wallden.

I invite you to check out my Author's Purpose PIE'ED 
FREEBIE available at TpT!  (The last page of the free download contains a listing of all the PIE'ED resources I have available at my store, including my top seller  PIE'ED craftivity, shown to the right.)

Finally, I also invite you to head over to my blog.  Actually, I am finishing up a raffle with a fellow blogger today, but tomorrow (Friday), I will start another raffle giveaway of my Author's Purpose PIE'ED BUNDLE - craftivity, task cards, worksheets, games, PowerPoint and more!  (Stop by both days and enter both giveaways!)

                                                                                                                        

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Until next time,

 

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The Ups and Downs of Common Core

Wow, what a year! I have just finished my first year teaching the Common Core Standards. Many questions that I started the year with are still unanswered. It has definitely been a learning experience for me, but I have so much more to learn. I am aware that many other states, counties, and schools adopted Common Core long before our county, but this year was my first diving into the standards and putting the pieces together.

Why Common Core? Last summer I set out to conquer the Common Core so I would be fully prepared to teach the standards when my students walked through the door on the very first day. The first place I went was, of course, the Common Core State Standards Initiative website. As I perused the site, several things became apparent to me: this was going to be quite a learning curve, students would come to my class without some pre-requisite skills, and rigor would definitely be increased.

I knew that this would be a learning curve. All summer I read everything I could find about the Common Core Standards for English Language Arts. I read blogs of teachers who were already teaching the standards. I kept a journal of ideas I could use when teaching certain standards. When we would meet for county meetings, no one could really explain to us what was expected. I know that this year would be a challenge, but it was a challenge I would accept because I wanted my students to walk out of my classroom at the end of the year with all of the knowledge and learning experiences they needed to be successful in the next grade. I learned so many things this year. I learned that my instructional time needed to be adjusted. This took a little getting use to because I was so familiar with our old Georgia Performance Standards. I also learned that my assessments needed revamping. I added a lot more written responses to everything we did- comprehension questions, quizzes, tests, etc.

When diving into the standards last summer, I immediately knew that a lot of my students would come to class without the background knowledge needed for certain standards. Luckily, our state put together a "transition" guide with skills we would need to teach in addition to all of the other required standards. My bell to bell classroom became even more jam-packed. I felt at times my students were a little overwhelmed. Whenever I would feel I was putting too much on them, I would take a step back and incorporate a fun assessment for the students to demonstrate that they were really grasping the content. When they realized they were getting it, they became more confident and were willing to hang in there with me.

Rigor, rigor, rigor. This is one word that sums up what comprised our year. One concept that took my students a little while to master was citing textual evidence. They always wanted to go straight to the answer without having to tell why. We worked on this all year. By the end of the year, I can honestly say they began to get it. My students were pushed to dig deeper and cite more than they have ever had to do in the past. When our test scored came back, we were all jumping for joy at the results. They had aced that test, and I couldn't have been more proud of them and all of their hard work.

How has your classroom or teaching changed due to the implementation of the Common Core Standards?

Don't forget to come back tomorrow for our Fun 4 All Linky!

Have a fabulous weekend!

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Who Says Teachers Have the Summer Off? Book Clubs in Session and a Summer Reading Linky!

Summer is here for most of us! I have already seen a ton of blog posts and facebook comments about summer reading taking place. The best part about summer is this is the time when we finally have time to enjoy some books: professional reading or personal reading.

Many of us here at ATUE are participating in some awesome book clubs this summer. Not only are the books chosen rich with knowledge and very relevant to today's teaching, but they are perfect for upper grade teachers. We even have something for (hopefully) everyone with a literacy book and a math book.

First up, 4mulafun, MissMathDork, Fourth Grade Studio and Teaching to Inspire in 5th will be hosting a math book. This book written by NCTM President, Linda Gojak's is called What's Your Math Problem?  

Here are the scheduled dates for this book club:

Next, we have some Common Core literacy action going on with Teaching with the Common Core Standards (Grades 3-5). (When you get to Amazon the picture shows that it is the K-2 book, but it really is the 3-5 book).

Here are the dates for this book club:

And here is the reading schedule. Each chapter will be hosted by one of the following amazing bloggers:

Chapter 1 Host

Chapter 2 Host

Chapter 3 Host

Chapter 4 Host

Chapter 5 Host

Chapter 6 Host

Chapter 7 Host


Chapter 8 Host

Chapter 9 Host


Chapter 10 Host
We hope that you will join us as we explore these books! Even if you don't buy the book, check out the posts for some fabulous information and get in on the discussions.
 

Have any professional summer reading plans? If you do, we invite you to link up with us! You can be either hosting a book club, participating in a book club, or reading on your own. Link up your blog post below and grab the graphic above to put on your post! It would be wonderful and in true collaborative spirit if you commented on some of the other blogs linked up. We can't wait to read about what YOU are reading about!

 

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MobyMax It Up!

First off, to all of you who are already on summer break or will be in a few days, congrats! You made it through another school year! For those of you who still have a ways to go, hang in there, it will be here before you know it (yeah, right, I know), and spend some time with us at ATUE for some engaging ideas and activities you can use with your students while you survive enjoy the last few weeks of your school year.

First, let us preface this post by saying that we in no way endorse that a computer program can replace a living, breathing, warm-bodied teacher. However, we do believe that on-line learning tools can be a very beneficial addition to your classroom instruction. There are lots of on-line learning aides out there. We have used IXL, Study Island, and RAZ Kids to name a few. While our students have enjoyed and benefited from using all of them, there is one slight hitch.....they are not free! You have to pay to use them. Gotta have a subscription. $$$$$. Not a big deal for us as our school foots the bill, but not everyone is as lucky to have the available funds. Now, we are not saying that you have to have your students use an on-line learning tool, but it does help and we all have a few students who will balk at the idea of math or reading, but, put them on a computer program, and they can't get enough! We were fortunate enough to have a colleague discover MobyMax and she sent the website our way. THANK YOU!!!

While MobyMax does have a Pro subscription that you have to pay for, there is a free edition. I know what you are thinking, "2 Brainy Apples, free editions are junk compared to Pro editions!" Not so fast! Earlier this year I decided to give the free MobyMax edition a try, and, I gotta tell you, I loved it! So did my students....and so did the parents of my students. While the free edition doesn't have all the bells and whistles of the Pro, you do get 30 day access to these bells and whistles so you can see if you think splurging the $59 is worth it or not. Me, well, I didn't splurge because I felt like the free edition had enough bells for what I needed to use it for.


What is MobyMax, you ask? Well, it is an on-line learning tool that encompasses math (including fact fluency), vocabulary, grammar, and reading is coming soon. You sign up either as a school teacher or homeschool teacher, and after you create your account, you can watch a short tutorial on how to use the tool, or, you can be like me and skip the video and just start clicking on what you like :) It is easy to navigate and easy to begin using. You enter as many students as you would like (yes, even in the free edition), and then you have the option of modifying the settings if you would like (I didn't), then your students are ready to pre-test.

Sounds like a winner so far! How does it work, you ask? Well, Once your students take the pre-test, it places them on their current grade level in that subject area (math, grammar, and soon-to-be reading are determined by mastery of the CCSS). Sound like some other on-line learning tools you have used before? Yep, sounds similar to Study Island.

But, here is the difference that we loved about MobyMax! It then determines upcoming lessons for students to complete. It places lessons in a sequential order from basic skills to more complex skills, so your students aren't just willy-nilly choosing lessons to complete. Yeah, we know you can assign lessons for students to complete in other on-line learning tools, but students and parents ultimately determine which lessons are completed. You can't restrict student access to certain lessons. They have the freedom to choose which ones they want to do. And we aren't saying that's a bad thing, but we know which lessons students need to work on, and it can be time consuming to assign students a lesson because not every student needs to work on the same lesson...but MobyMax makes it easy. If students are in 3rd grade, and they are still having trouble with addition and subtraction, they can't choose multiplication and division lessons because they aren't ready for those yet. MobyMax lists the upcoming lessons students will be working on. As students pass a lesson, they get to move on to the next one. What if you want students to work on a lesson that isn't listed at the top of the list? Well, one of the benefits of being a living, breathing, warm-bodied teacher is that YOU can override the program's decision. And it's very easy to do, we might add, if that is what you wish. We didn't, though.

We even love the way students practice those skills. MobyMax uses a Teach Me, Feedback, and Read Aloud cycle that our students greatly benefited from. Each lesson begins with an animated teaching bit, then students can practice with immediate feedback, and for students who may struggle with reading, there is an option for the computer to read aloud parts of the problem. Perfect for center time at school or independent practice at home.


Now while you do get the Progress Monitoring piece free for 30 days, you still get the scores from each of your students' lessons, so you can easily take those grades and plop them into Excel (or another program) to create your own graph if you decide not to upgrade. This is a great piece of data to have for the RTI process!



There are more great features with the Pro upgrade, but you will get them free to try out to decide if you think it's worth the splurge. Some of the upgrades I used for the 30 days included the Messenger (where you and your students can send secure messages back and forth to each other concerning their progress. I actually had one student ask me to "unlock" a lesson because he wanted extra practice.); badges (if you use Edmodo, then you are familiar with badges...basically the more a student participates, they earn more badges...great motivator for some students!); contests (either between students in your class or your class versus other classes in your school who use MobyMax...we know some students need competition to be motivated); parent portal so parents can see their child's progress and growth; goal setting with progress monitoring which is excellent for kiddos in the RTI process or students with IEPs; and there are many more.

Now, like I said, I didn't upgrade to Pro after 30 days, but it could have been because I found MobyMax so late in the school year I didn't see the benefit of doing so. Will I go Pro after 30 days next school, year..... if I had a Magic 8 ball, it would probably say, "Outlook Good"!

So why am I writing this post now, as so many schools are getting out for summer, and not at the beginning of next school year? 

Summer learning opportunity!!!!!

I wanted to let you all know about MobyMax so you could spend some time this summer navigating, but also since you have an unlimited number of students you can assign to your class (and an unlimited number of classes you can create to which you assign students), what better way (and motivator) for your current students to continue keeping their skills sharp over the summer and continue to grow??????? Just because school ends doesn't mean your account expires. If you set your students up now, they will have access to MobyMax over the summer months and you can  continue to encourage them to keep improving. Parent letters are a snap to print out and send home, and many parents love to have something for their children to do over the summer so they don't regress (and we know most students will regress some over the break). And the best part is YOU don't have to look for practice pages to print, staple into packets, and send home. Too time consuming when MobyMax is ready and waiting. If a student doesn't have a computer or Internet access at home, most all public libraries allow patrons to use their computers and Internet as part of their library privileges.

What do you think about MobyMax? Will you be giving it a whirl? Have you already used MobyMax? What did you think? Let us know your thoughts and if you have used it before. And if you will be using it, please remember to come back and leave us a comment below about your experience!

And don't forget about our Free For All Linky tomorrow! Be sure to come back and link up some great FREEBIES to help everyone get through the rest of the school year!


Until next time!

2 Brainy Apples

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