Literary Devices-Hyperbole, Personification, and Idioms...Oh My!

WAHOO!
The end of the school year is sneaking up on us, and if you are like me, I am starting to get really nervous about those... (whispering) state tests! AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Okay, now that that is out in the open, I wanted to share with you some of the ideas that I have been using with my 60 writing students (grades 4-5-6). Literary devices are so fundamental to our kiddos doing well on the language portions of the test I knew that a HUGE review of what we learned in our poetry unit/year of writing and push on in our preparation of our learning for the year was in order! So, I changed my literacy board to this (well, actually my WIFE was the amazing writer of the posters and charts):

You will notice that a few books are missing from the Mentor Text section. That is because I had to order some new books to fill the spots. I found a great book called, If You Were Onomatopoeia, and a couple of others. It is so much fun to have mentor texts right there at my fingertips ready for any lesson I need. To hang them, all I did was use binder clips and t-pins. Easy-peasy!
 

About two weeks ago, I started a unit on personification. It was really fun to have the kids think about and discuss giving human emotions to animals and objects. I pulled in lots of resources from professional books to resources I spent time creating. I was impressed with how well my students picked it up. We even learned a new word "anthropomorphism"! Don't know what that means? Look it up- my students can SAY and tell me what it means. Not that they will really NEED that term, but it was fun to teach them a new big word, and they enjoy saying it! The students even wrote a story that had at least three examples of personifications in them. The 4th graders did an amazing job. To help keep it fresh in their minds, every time an examples comes up in a story, a conversation, etc. I point it out to them. :)

Then last week, we worked on Idioms. Oh my word. That was SO MUCH FUN! I had the kids make posters of different idiom phrases and then the students chose three different posters and had to incorporate those idioms into a short story. Bwa ha ha. They were SO creative and fun. Students did NOT take this particular writing through all the steps of the writing process. We stopped at the rough draft. The kids were grateful for a break from full process writing, and I was grateful to have a "quick and dirty" writing project the kids enjoyed. As part of this unit, I made a set of "I Have, Who Has" Idiom cards. What a blast. You can check those out by clicking on the picture below.

This week, we have been studying hyperbole (hi-per-ba-lee). The students have really gotten into exaggerating the truth! We have had contests to see who can come up with the best exaggeration, we have read tall tales, and watched Disney's American Legend DVD clips pausing frequently to discuss all the literary devices that have been used. It has been eye-opening to them just how much the topics we have been learning are used in music, TV, movies, and writing. In fact, this week, students have been bringing in their reading books at recess to show me an example of an idiom, or a funny hyperbole. It's amazing how well they are retaining these topics! I love that the students are starting to realize that there is an overlap in the literary devices used- that a hyperbole can sound an awful lot like a simile. I LOVE it when the light bulbs over their heads click on! 

While I can't guarantee that my kiddos will rock the test, I am very excited that as our testing dates approach (two weeks away), I can say that MY students are learning, retaining, and enjoying these short units of study on literary devices.  How about you? What strategies, activities, or studies of literary devices do YOU use to prepare for those end of year, high-stake tests? Please share your thoughts in the comments below!

Cheers-

Mr. Hughes

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Morning Meeting Greeting: What's the News?

At my school we do Morning Meeting. 

Although most teachers were already pros at it by the time our current principal came along 3 years ago, it was new to me!  I felt like a fish out of water because it was such a stark contrast to Lorainne Monroe's "Do Now," teacher-directed, "leave your baggage at the door and do what the teacher says without a word" philosophy of my previous school.  My teaching style tends to fall somewhere in the middle of this wide spectrum!

By the end of the second year, I felt invested in Morning Meeting.  My principal had modeled how to run a meeting sitting in a circle in our rug area, having a fun greeting, share time, an activity, and making announcements.  I researched lots of activities to do for the "game" portion and greetings, and this year I've done a pretty good job of mixing things up.  Since every group of kids has a different dynamic, my fourth graders this year have different favorite "go to" activities this year from last year, and by far our favorite greeting has been, "What's the News?"

I have a very chatty class this year.  Even my most attentive listeners love the opportunity to talk, talk and talk some more.  So hearing their news is always interesting.  It always sparks great conversation.  And it always means that Morning Meeting runs the risk of lasting a half hour.

I know, I have the option of limiting the number of students who share.  I'm just always afraid of missing really important news.  I'd hate to listen to a kid talk about, "yesterday I got to go to the mall" while that other kid who isn't chosen that day gets no opportunity to voice, "my baby cousin was born," or "my dad was in a car accident."  Besides, everyone needs to be greeted.  And I know, I could have them partner up to greet each other at the same time...but it doesn't work.  They all stop to listen to each other and then feel bad when they run out of time listening to each other.  So once I started this tradition of sharing our news, it was hard to get out of it!

Then I thought about another strength of my class.  They enjoy technology (and as you can guess by the fact that I have several blogs, so do I).  This year was my first year using a classroom blog that is for them as opposed to their parents, and they're teaching me how to use my new iPad that was donated by the PTO.  I realized not only is technology a huge hook for them this year, but also what I really needed was to borrow from a well known website that is geared towards quick updates.  Something that would allow students to all be heard, but only for a moment. 

 

Hence the birth of our Twitter Board!

I'd seen another teacher create a Twitter bulletin board outside the classroom for the beginning of the year with sentence strips, so I thought about how I could improve on her idea.  I inherited that pocket chart when I started teaching at my current school, and it's always been under utilized.  So I laminated some sentence strips to put in the pockets.  Each strip has a student's name on it, that way they can each write only one "Tweet" per day, as soon as they come in in the morning. 

It is a work in progress teaching them how to put their news under the last person's news, and how to start fresh on a new day, covering yesterday's news but not anyone's news for today (there are fewer pockets than kids, so we have to accept there will be "overlap," but so far there hasn't been a day when more than 10 kids have news to tweet).   

Overall it's been a big hit!  For one thing, when I told the kids that, "Although I love hearing all your news each day, I feel like we're sitting in the circle for too long each morning," they emphatically agreed!  Since introducing this system, I usually get at least 6 kids who want to Tweet, so all I need to do for our "share time" is to run through the Tweets myself.  Between this and my Morning Meeting Shares sign up system, I feel like I've finally gotten a pretty good handle on managing this routine!  The kids are as glad as I am that Morning Meeting moves along at a quicker pace and we can move on to math each morning, (this month it's been fractions, which you can read about on my other blog, Shut the Door and Teach) without squashing anyone's news.   

Do you have any sort of "share time" in your class?

 

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Dream House: An Additive Area Project (3rd Grade Common Core)

The 3rd grade Common Core standards are pushing us to reach a deeper understanding of many topics. For example, area is covered in much more depth than our previous state standards specified. I've always done a "Dream House" project to help students learn area concepts, and this year I've adapted it to address the following standard: 

CCSS.Math.Content.3.MD.C.7d Recognize area as additive. Find areas of rectilinear figures by decomposing them into non-overlapping rectangles and adding the areas of the non-overlapping parts, applying this technique to solve real world problems.

I started this project today and the students are o-b-s-e-s-s-e-d. It was so funny to watch as an idea for a room caught on throughout the class - by the end of class 22/29 of their dream houses included a "Trampoline Room". Haha. Kids are awesome. 

I'll show you the directions here, along with a picture of each step. At the bottom of the post you can find a link to download the project free at my Teachers Pay Teachers store. 

1.  Outline your dream house by drawing the outside walls. your dream house should be a compound figure with all right angles. 

 2.  Partition your dream house into rooms. Each room must be a rectangle. As an extension, try making copies of your own outline and see how many different ways students can come up with to partition the same compound figure into rectangles!

3.  Label and color each room. But, Ms. Turner, where do you sleep? Why, on a raft in the indoor pool, dahling! 

4.  Find and record the area of each room. My students used a full page of lined paper to do this, and then recorded their final answers in the space provided on the project page. 

5.  Add the area of all of your rooms to find the total area of your dream house. 

Later this week, (assuming the snow ever stops here in Massachusetts and we eventually get to return to school), they'll mount both pages on a big piece of construction paper and we'll display them out in the hallway. It makes for a fun bulletin board!

I love this project because the kids LOVE it, and they are using math skills the whole time. I don't like to do a lot of fluffy projects, so this is great because even during the designing phase they are fully engaged in mathematical thinking. If you want to download a copy of the project pages, click here to grab it for free from my Teachers Pay Teachers store! 

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SPRING IS IN THE AIR!

Spring FEVER that is!

We here at ATUE are getting antsy for that warmer weather, green grass, shady trees, and refreshing rain. To help ease the wait, we thought that we would offer our amazing friends some great deals by throwing a collaborative sale- JUST FOR YOU! WAHOO!

With testing looming, we understand that your days might be booked beyond belief with cramming every last inch of your kiddos heads with those "last minute details", and that you may feel there is no room for anything more in your day. BUT- we all feel that you can never have too many ready resources at your fingertips for those moments when you need a learning 'filler'.

Check out the stores below and see what goodies you might want to add to your wishlist, shopping cart, and classroom! Don't delay- get clicking! Sales include 10% to 20% off!

4mulaFun

Andrea M Bentley

MrHughes

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2 Brainy Apples

Common Core and So Much More

4th Grade Studio

Yearn to Learn

Jennifer Findley

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Amber Thomas

As you can see, there is plenty to choose from for all academic areas and upper grade levels! Have a good time and don't forget to click on the JOIN button while you are here. We would love to have you join us.

Cheers!

Mr. Hughes

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Showing the LOVE in Math

Have you ever noticed that some students that excel on multiple choice math tests struggle with constructed response assessments that require them to show all of their thinking? This is our first year taking constructed response assessments and I have learned that I have a lot of kids just like this in my classroom. (And even more that didn’t excel at either at the beginning of the year!) Early on, I knew I needed to come up with something to help them remember to show all of their thinking (and then some) on constructed response/word problems. With that, the acronym LOVE was born. You can read more about it here.

L: Label everything! Your visuals, your equation, anything you can put a label on!

O: Our Thinking. For this the students turn the question into a sentence with a blank for the answer. This is huge for them! They know they have to do this first. If they can’t do it, they have to re-read that problem and break it down until they know exactly what is being asked. This part really helps them make sense of the problem and check their answer for reasonableness. Also, it makes sure they actually answer the question! Our current rubric takes off a point for precision if they don’t actually state the answer in words, pulling it back to the problem.

V: Visuals. Our constructed response assessments are on the Fraction domains of common core so visuals are so important.

E: Equations. They must show an equation to represent their visual or to show how they got their answer.

This acronym has worked wonders with my students this year. They know to show the LOVE on any word problem I give them, even morning work. As evidence, we just finished our 2^nd constructed response assessment for the year and over half of my kids more than tripled their previous scores. We are talking going from a score of 1 out of 20 to a 14 out of 20. That is HUGE!

As I mentioned above, they show the LOVE on all of their assignments in math. Here are some images from their morning work. Check out all of that writing, drawing, labeling….I LOVE IT!

 How do you prepare your students for constructed response math assessments?

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5 Ways to Liven Up Standardized Test Practice

We had our 4th quarter training session for the math department last week.  I was asked to talk about our ISTEP (Indiana's state test) resources. Each of the textbook series comes with a practice book of standardized test questions.  You could always just have the students work in the book and talk about the questions, but what fun is that.

1.  My students will do anything I ask them to if it is on the whiteboard.  They love to write on it.  I often use the dry erase boards when we play review games.  The group comes up with an answer together and when I say that time is up, they hold their boards up.  You could use the white boards in groups or individually.

2.  I was at the HASTI (Hoosier Assoc. of Science Teachers, Inc.) conference last month and went to a workshop by representatives of Dinah Zike. It was about using foldables for assessment.  We made the foldable that is below.  You fold over about 1/2 in. to glue to notebook.  With the rest, you cut into fourths and label A, B, C, D. When you ask the students to show their answer, they hold all but their answer choice down.

3.  My students LOVE using the clickers.  There is just something about using technology that gets the students fired up.  We use clickers from Turning Technologies. The only bad thing is trying to get the "recorder" to capture their answer.  The kids sometimes have to push their buttons many times to get their answer recorded.

4.  Last year our district had principals visit other buildings and do evaluations.  Of course, mine would come the week we were doing test prep.  I hunted for something that would be engaging for the students and look good for the evaluation.  I found Laura Candler's Buddy Test Prep.

The students work through a set of problems on their own.  When they are done they mark their answers in blue.  They then partner up with a buddy to discuss the problems.  If the student changes an answer after working with the buddy, they cross out their original answer with purple and circle their new answer.  The class then discusses each of the problems marking them with a green check mark or red X.

When I did this for the observation, I also added in the clickers...lots going on that day!!

5.  This last idea is what I call the cheap interactive smartboard.  I have a Mimio Pad. I can pull anything up on my computer, project it with the Dukane and use the Mimio Pad to do everything I would do with the mouse or keyboard plus I can use the drawing tool. You could use this to have a student work through a math problem, showing their classmates how they solved it.  I've used this when practicing for the constructed response portion of our state test.

I hope this gives you some ideas that you can use to get your students ready for your state testing. Thanks for taking the time to stop by and visit!

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Standardized Test Prep: Where's the Hook?

This time of year leading up to standardized testing can drain the life and motivation out of both students and teachers. There is so much to be learned, reviewed, practiced, etc. that school starts to feel...well, NOT FUN. We all know that students learn best when they are motivated, engaged, interested, and having fun. It's not just because they're kids. I learn best that way, too. The most interesting college classes, staff development presentations, workshops, etc. for me have always been those that were engaging and fun. It's just how I roll.

I decided that I had to infuse some LIFE into my test prep. I had to hook my kiddos so that they would be seriously preparing for standardized testing while enjoying it at the same time. I truly believe that making things enjoyable for kids is not "an extra" or an "add on" in the curriculum. You can teach and practice the most intense skills, and if kids believe they are having fun, they will focus, pay attention, and learn. That's my opinion after spending 24 years with these kiddos...and the test scores continue to prove it. 

I started out by coming up with a theme and a mascot. Meet Pirate, our test prep mascot.

I started to develop a pirate theme for my test prep lessons to hook the kids. I scoured flea markets, yard sales, gift shops, etc. for treasure chests in various styles. I even found a lovely cage for Pirate.

Students know it is a test prep day when they enter the room and find the treasure box. This is where the test prep materials are stored. If the treasure box is out and in the center of the room, they know that materials are inside. 

Now my students are eleven and twelve years old, and they still buy into this. I hear things like, "Pirate left something for us!" Kids have great imaginations, and if the teacher is motivated and silly and excited, they will be, too. Even the kiddos who think test prep is boooooring or our mascot is silly soon buy into the fun of it all. They can't help themselves!

Inside the treasure box are all of the usual test practice materials. There are passages that must be analyzed and discussed, open-ended questions that must be answered, multiple choice question practice, review of key reading terminology, etc. Miraculously, things that would otherwise seem dull somehow seem a bit magical when retrieved from the treasure chest.

Kids are motivated to do their best work on the practice. They know that possible treasures await. Sure, I know that in theory all kids would be intrinsically motivated to do well on everything without rewards. That's just not how life works in my opinion. We once had a teacher workshop activity where the winning teacher would win a "late pass" to school for a morning he/she wanted to sleep in. Do you think we were motivated? Oh, yes! Extrinsic motivation does have its benefits, and I utilize it for everything it's worth during test prep. 

When we finish the test prep and discuss/go over the answers together, sometimes the students who volunteer can select treasures. I use all different methods. For example, I sometimes fill one of the treasure boxes with colored "jewels" (well, my version). A student who has answered a question picks one and at the end of the review, he/she finds out what the color means. For example, pink could mean bonus participation points, yellow could mean one pirate card, etc.

A pirate card is a little card that a student will fill out for a chance to win a pirate prize drawing after testing is over. When a student wins one as part of test review, he/she fills out his/her name and the date and returns the card to me. I store the cards in a treasure chest and keep them safe until the drawing in April. In April, I have a big drawing at a team meeting with some fun reading prizes. The kids love it each and every year!

I also sometimes use my Message in a Bottle bin for test prep. I switch the messages depending on what I want to do for the test prep session. Sometimes the bottles contain specific test prep questions. A student must select a bottle and answer the question. If the answer is correct, the student wins a pirate card. Other times, I will put numbers in the bottle that correspond with test prep questions on materials we are using. When we discuss/ go over the answers, a student volunteer picks a bottle and is the discussion leader for that question.

Sure, it's easier just to copy the test prep, have the students do it, and go over the answers, but WHERE'S THE HOOK? There's the problem. When my kiddos see the immediate fun and reward in it, they are motivated to think, try, and volunteer. And you know what happens? They LEARN. The end result is better test scores. In this teacher's humble opinion, it's really worth the effort.

We also practice for the reading test by playing some review games. One of my favorite activities is playing reading bingo to review key reading terminology. We cover these terms so much throughout the year, but it's a good idea to review again in a fun way so kids aren't taking the test and thinking, "Wait...What's theme? I forgot!" We all know it happens.

As the test day draws closer, our pirate goes a little rock and roll on us! It's time to ROCK THE TEST! That has long been my motto for test day...probably because I am such a music buff. I incorporate some music into test prep to pump them up. 

We do activities to review test tips. I print out test tip review cards and students present one minute persuasive skits or commercials about them. We do this in a very short time, but it is always effective. We discuss the tips and why they are so important. In the past, we have even written acrostic poems featuring test tips using the words ROCK THE TEST. Whatever burns the tips into my students' minds is worth it.

St. Patrick's Day always falls during test prep, and we always find one of treasure boxes filled with good luck coins for the test right around March 17. I think our parrot friend must know some wee leprechauns and arranges that for us each year!

On test days, I try to offer my kiddos continued motivation. I have given them little goodie bags containing two pencils, an eraser, tissues, a mint, etc. with a message of confidence on the front.

We celebrate the end of testing with a little bit of refreshment as well.

Every teacher has his/her own style. My method of test prep may not be for everyone, and that's okay! I feel it is what has worked best for my kiddos. Sure, we may not love all this testing, but we CAN make the best of it. We CAN prepare kids so that we are getting ready for the test with heavy duty practice and still having fun at the same time. That's a win-win in my book because it keeps kids engaged and motivated, and that keeps them learning. I see what a difference this change in my method of test prep has made for my students and their attitude toward the test, and I think there is great validity to the idea of "we do well at things we enjoy." 

If you'd like more information about fun test prep ideas, stay tuned tomorrow for a great post by Amy from Math, Science, Social Studies...Oh, My! She has some incredible test prep tips coming your way!

If you like some of my ideas, check out my Rock the Test: Reading Test Prep Bundle and Let's Play Reading Bingo game at my TPT shop just by clicking the links below. I really hope your kiddos ROCK THE TEST this year, my friends!

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