Sparking Student Motivation: Being BRAVE

I have written this post a bunch of times in my head. I was really excited about the topic, but never sat down to actually put the words on the screen. 
This post is about what I did with my grade level, in February and early March, to motivate our 5th graders, as we prepared for the big state writing test. 
Let's face it, testing stinks! 
It is stressful for teachers and students. 
This year I was determined to make our writing test prep a little more fun and use our time efficiently. 
During a team meeting we talked about how to motivate and excite the kids about the upcoming writing test. It is one of the 3 promotional tests for 5th graders, and they dread it. 
All year we worked hard on presenting the curriculum in unique ways. 
Our school has a unique approach using technology and closed circuit television. We broadcast a weekly lesson on topics that we know will help them succeed. Each teacher takes a turn leading the televised lessons. 
Our Live Writing lessons went well this year. As a grade level we knew that every student (and teacher) was exposed to the skills and techniques that are crucial to good writing. These lessons are helpful, but as February neared, all of us wanted to focus on the specific skills of our kids. We were feeling the pressure and wanted to be able to differentiate and stick with the flow and needs in our rooms. 
As you all know, a stressed out teacher, is not the best teacher. Step 1 to motivate our kids was to recognize our limits so we could be the best teachers possible. 
Our weekly Live Writing lessons starts out with an opening song and credits, just like you would see on a television show. This year's opening song was Brave by Sara Bereilles. All year we focused on the lyrics, "I want you to be brave. Say what you wanna say, Let the words fall out." 
As the year progressed, the kids sang along and knew all of the words. 
When we tossed around ideas, we decided we wanted to do something around the theme of being Brave. Step 2, capitalize on something they were already familiar with. 
During the discussion, we tossed around how to present a final motivating lesson before the test. One of my teammates came up with the great idea of holding a Writing Boot Camp. Step 3 was to come up with a theme that would appeal to both the boys and girls. We figured a boot camp theme, was motivating for both boys and girls. 
As we talked, we decided that during boot camp we would teach 4 final lessons before the test and have all of the classes rotate through the camps. (Step 4) Review and remind them of the key skills they already know, do not teach anything new. This meant not introducing new acronyms, use what every class was already utilizing. 
That is where we expanded on the song and idea of Brave again. We used the title, turned it in to an acronym that they could walk away and apply on the day of the test (step 5). What do you need during boot camp and a high-stakes test? To be Brave!  

Step 6: Add visuals that students would remember. 
Step 7: Make posters for the students to see every day leading up the to test. 

To make the boot camp more fun and memorable we decided to dress the part. All of the teachers wore camouflage shirts with our school logo, the phrase "Be BRAVE" and a 5 for 5th grade.
Step 8:  I created the iron-ons with my Silhouette. 

(This was time consuming, but well worth it! I am still a novice with my Cameo, with experience I am sure it would have been quicker.)

I even made a shirt for our principal and assistant principal. It was really difficult to find those camo t-shirts, so I made camo logos and ironed them on black shirts (black is one of our school colors).

They proudly wore them that day and the day of the test. Our principal made a point during our morning announcements to talk about the shirt, the meaning, told the students to be BRAVE and that she was proud of them.
The shirts were worn again during our other high-stakes tests and on the day we told the students the test results. 

Step 9: Make the boot camp lessons brief, engaging, and fun. We spilt our teachers in to 2 teams, split the lessons in to 4 sessions lasting 30 minute. Each teacher paired up to plan their lesson connected to the BRAVE theme. 
During each session we did a fun filled writing activity, and gave out a prize. By rotating the classes through different teachers we knew that they would be open to hearing things. Better to change the presenter every 30 minutes than having a 2 hour session with their regular teacher. The kids did not even realize they worked on writing for 2 hours, and we knew they heard the most important information. 
Step 10: Give everyone a takeaway gift to remember the day. Camo pencils and Be BRAVE dog tags (also cut with the Silhouette).
   

Our writing boot camp day was awesome. The kids had fun, did not feel overwhelmed, they were instead were pumped up and prepared for the test. We motivated them to the be BRAVE, to do their best, and to feel good about the upcoming test. 
Student feedback was excellent and we received several emails from parents about the excellent work we had done. Students were talking non-stop about their camo-dressesd teachers and the boot camp. The pencils were cherished and the dog tags were worn proudly throughout the remainder of the school year. 
Did it work? 
Yes, we motivated the kids. 
Did it help test scores?
Yes, it did. Our kids blew away the test and the scores were impressive. 
Were the great results all due to our boot camp? 
Well, probably not. But, I did notice that this group was the most relaxed of all of the groups I have worked with. They were prepared and they knew what to do. 
The teachers also felt they had done everything they could to prepare them and they felt relaxed. 
The best thing we did to motivate them was to be excited about the way we taught writing on the final days before the test. The boot camp approach was fun, exciting, and definitely motivating. 
Next year, we plan to present another boot camp since it was such a success. I know testing is never fun, so it is always good to find something that eases the stress, motivates, and makes everyone feel prepared!

Are you looking for more ideas on how to motivate your students? Check out Joanne's posts and the links at Head Over Heels for Teaching.  

As always, thanks for stopping by to read my post. Do you know what motivates me? Comments! If you have questions or ideas, please feel free to share them!

Math Madness: Spark Student Motivation

   March and April are tough months for teachers because of the looming {dreaded} standardized tests that are in the near future. Teachers start worrying about how the kids will do, and the kids stress about taking tests. Not fun for either party! Testing is not a party nor is preparing for testing. 

    This year has been a little more stressful because our district extended our school days, due to all the lost snow days,  by 30 minutes daily. Our school decided those extra 30 minutes would be for test preparation, with the primary focus on reading and math. I know some teachers secretly wanted an extra 30 minutes of recess, and I wanted 30 minutes to catch up in science and social studies. Well, what's a teacher to do?
   Extra test preparation time has its benefits, and if you plan for it well you can make the best of the situation. Catch up in science by reading or writing about a science concept. Read a fantastic article highlighting a topic you have not taught in social studies yet. Kill two birds by reading the social studies passage with reading skills in mind, then ask them to look back for evidence on a social studies concept. Or better yet, make the review in to a game so the kids forget that you are working. With this approach to the longer day, it has become a little more manageable and the time flies. 
   Playing games and making review fun is always a motivation for students. Not only have I used this approach in the last part of my day, I am capitalizing on this approach to motivate the kids during math class.
   To inspire and motivate my students to work harder, they are competing in a Math Madness competition. I am using the awesome Basketball Madness packet from Diane at Fifth in the Middle. 

   Each page is differentiated with three different levels of problems. Students can earn 1 point, 2 points, or 3 points depending on the problems they complete correctly. There are a total of 6 sheets that are all based on math skills including operations and algebraic thinking, number and operations in base ten, fractions, and measurement. 
  The sheets follow the basketball theme so they are most definitely a winner in the minds of my athletes. 

   The amount of problems is not overwhelming either so there are very few complaints about it being too much. I have granted mine a choice of how many they complete, which also cuts back on some of the whining. Instead what you hear in my room when they are working on their sheets is pencils racing across the page and the wheels spinning in their heads. Because they are working, my smile glows and I do a little happy dance! 
  No, I have not sprinkled some magic dust nor threatened them, instead I motivated them with choice, a prize, and competition. And, it is working! {Swoosh!}
  I knew I wanted to display the results, but was uncertain of how. If I went with a basketball tourney bracket, like the March Madness bracket, I would have had kids out in the first round, then their effort would have dwindled. Instead, I made a chart with each round, their names to the side, and I post the points earned daily. From that group the top score(ers) earn a red star, then from that I pick a random winner to earn a yellow star. The red star indicates that they won that round, and the yellow that they earned at least the minimum and are the random winner.

  To become eligible for the yellow star they have to earn at least 6 points. Each day I have my son pull a paper from the eligible papers. 
  I do not give prizes out very often, so it is a big deal when I offer one. They can earn coupons that are good for 5 bonus points on a math assignment, get an answer to a test question for free, or pick out a snack. 
  I have allowed them to make a choice on each page as to which problems they complete. They know that points are important so many are trying to complete the whole page. Some start with the 3 point problems and work their way down. Some quickly solve the 1 pointers and work their way up. I set a time limit of 13 minutes. 
  The math sheets have become my morning warm up activity. They have been the perfect motivator for my kids to get started right away. They do not want to waste their time; time equals opportunity to earn points. They are striving to complete the whole page instead of avoiding the work. 
  The sheets are also eye opening for me. I am able to assess which skills we {desperately} need to review. You may not be able to see all the details, but round 2 resulted in low scores. The simple skills of rounding, expanded form, and written form are weak. We did those at the beginning of the year, and many seem to have forgotten what to do. Round 3 was multiplication. With the time limit, it was harder for them to complete the whole page, but many were also making careless errors that we can remedy through a discussion and daily review. Luckily we are about to dive in to volume and I always reteach multiplication with decimals during that unit, now I know that I will really have to emphasize that skill. 
  The packet includes an answer key making it quick to check, a definite bonus for me. My students check that board every morning. I wait to post until they leave so they are not distracted during the rest of the day. One boy even asked me if I had scored his paper, minutes after finishing, I guess he was really motivated. 
 To celebrate the perfect scores I am posting those sheets next to the results. 

  At the end of the madness, I am going to have the students review finding the mean of a data set, and add their mean score to the chart. They will then compete in a paper basketball shooting contest. They will receive 1 sheet of paper that equals their mean score, they can then shoot it in the {trash} basket. 
  This packet is truly a winner! My students are working hard - score! They are striving to do better - three-point score! Having fun while reviewing is always a score! Add in the bonus point of being able to quickly pick out the penalties in their work. 
  I may have lost the tourney bracket I selected this season, but I am winning in my math class with this Math Madness! 
  If you are looking for a way to motivate your math students, check out this packet at Fifth in the Middle. It is on sale this weekend (3/29-3/30/2014). If you are looking for other ways to motivate your students, check out the links at Head Over Heels for Teaching. 

Hope you have a fantastic Saturday! 

Slowing down to Spark Student Motivation

In this day of education everything seems to be fast-paced.

• Push your students to read sooner. 
• Get them to write sentences younger. 
• Count farther in earlier grades. 
• Tackle higher level thinking earlier. 
• Write long essays in elementary school. 
• And perform under stressful constraints. 

Let's also not forget high-stakes tests, time constraints, connecting student performance to pay, surveying students for their opinions and pay teachers based on what ego-centered kids think of their teaching styles.
All of these things add up to tough times for teachers and students. It also means there is lots of pressure to work and the emphasis on tackling a lot in short periods of time. 
I am not complaining. I am more stating reality. I see the importance of many of the things we do, and agree with the need to dig deeper. I just don't always see the efforts paying off and I feel that stress is causing some major anxiety. {Kids in our county really dread 5th grade because we have a high stakes writing test. That is sad!}
I also see the looks of being overwhelmed on the faces of my kids. So I was relieved and excited to learn that my principal was supporting us in slowing down. Ok, so before you all rush to transfer to our school, I should probably explain further. 
This past week we had a professional development day with a special guest who came to talk to us about writing. He lead a presentation on how to approach writing for our state writing test so that the kids would be successful. He is an expert on the topic and spent some time getting to know us. And he never rushed us. It was refreshing. 
He got to know us first, learned our names, answered our questions, and listened to our thoughts. He did not have a secret agenda and was very supportive of us. What he did most of all was he inspired us and got us excited about teaching writing by showing us how we can do more by asking the kids to do less. 
We discussed the different genres and how the common core is slowly changing writing. He modeled his technique and had us play along by getting us to write. We shared with the class and built up our writing in steps. 
We also looked at DBQs and how to tackle them with our students without overwhelming the kids. Because let's be honest, some of the DBQs out there are enough to overwhelm adults let alone elementary age kids. 
His advice, take each DBQ and break it apart in to steps. Break the question in to one sentence questions asking for one sentence to walk the kids through the steps and at the end they will be amazed (as will you) at what they can produce. As you add a sentence lead them to add more specific details to support the first generic sentence. Simple and brilliant! 
By tackling paragraphs and DBQs in this manner, kids feel more capable and will actually produce more. 
After we spent time discussing this method he then modeled it for us with our 5th graders. They produced some awesome sentences which lead to very detailed and specific paragraphs. It was exciting for the kids and for us. 

• The topic the kids wrote to was something they want but do not have the money for. One girl wrote about wanting an iPhone because of the cool apps and features. She talked about the games she would play and who she would call, her teacher. 
• Another girl also wanted a phone and wrote about how she would find a way to pay for it, "by doing dreadful chores and helping to clean other people's houses." 
• A boy really surprised us by writing about a Rolex and clearly described the specific one he wanted. 

The workshop was amazing for the kids and us. We all felt super excited, ready to tackle our curriculum further, and best of all were thrilled to know that we have been doing the right things and with a few tweaks, we would be able to accomplish a lot more. The perfect formula for motivating our teachers! And we all know, a motivated teacher has a huge impact on students. 

Aside form all the great things I learned at the workshop I was secretly proud of myself. I had recently run across a method for helping students cite text and add evidence to their writing. I mentioned the idea to my co-worker and together we both decided to try the method with our classes to see if it helped our students. We are still working with our students on the technique, but both agree that they are more aware of the need to cite text and add evidence to support their writing. The method is neat, straightforward, and followed along the lines of the highly recommended process of our guest speaker. 

A few weeks ago I ran across this awesome interactive notebook lesson by I'm Lovin' Lit. The ACE discussion questions are part of her Interactive Notebooks ~Sentences and Paragraphs for the Common Core pack. Or find it in isolation in the Citing Text Evidence Bonus Lesson. 

Read Erin's post about this method here

The method is perfect and can be easily differentiated for your kiddos. A: Students answer using the question in in their response (a skill I am still practicing with my kiddos in every subject - they so much prefer 1 word answers). C: Cite text to support your answer. When I practiced this with my kiddos I gave them sentence starters for their notebooks and encouraged them to start with that and to focus on citing text (we are practicing quoting and paraphrasing). E: Explain the text evidence to support your answers. And voila, you have a solid, well stated, well-supported, and specific paragraph! 

Some of the things the kids said in response to the lessons with the ACE technique: 

• IT is easy! 
• Wow, we only have to write 3 sentence. 
• OOOH, I can do this! 
• Here, read mine!

Both of us love the lesson so much we incorporated it in to our formal observations by our administrators and both of us received excellent reviews. My AP really liked the crafty cards and interactive notebook action. 

When responding to the DBQ each child received 1 of these templates and filled in 1-2 sentences in each section. 

The kids think we are asking less of them, but what they don't know is we have are tricking them in to working slightly harder and producing better results. When we point it out to them, they seem surprised at what they have come up with and are more excited about their work. 

Image courtesy of Amazon

The other day we used the ACE cards to share our response to a DBQ on the book "Tight Times" and I seriously had to hold back the kids as they rushed up front to share with the class. {Sorry they worked so quickly, and were so excited, that I did not get pictures of them sharing their work with the class.} I had also written out my answers and they were so excited when our answers were very similar. I was really impressed when I read sentences with the following phrases:

It is evident from the text...

You can clearly see that...

The author stated...

You can tell that the character wanted....because....
I was able to quickly assess who understood the text, who understood the DBQ, and who understood how to cite text. A quick assessment that was completed while I walked around the room interacting with the kids. A double bonus for me! 

If you are looking for a technique to elicit more specific responses and for students to cite evidence as is promoted by the common core I highly recommend checking our Erin's lessons as I'M Lovin' Lit. They are are awesome and doable in the eyes of the kids. It is one of the ways I am motivating the kids to produce more writing, detailed responses, while making it seem like I am asking for less. They are becoming aces in writing and responding to text. 
Don't forget to check out other ideas at Head Over Heels for Teaching.