Mrs. L's Leveled Learning has Moved!

Please visit mrslsleveledlearning.com 

to find my latest blog posts and information.

Games in the Classroom! FUN! FUN! FUN!

This time of the year with test pressure behind us, lots of teachers are looking for fun ways to review or unwind. I have always loved using games in the classroom, but they can easily get out of hand or become huge time-wasters if not structured the right way. The best way I've found to structure game times is to use a timer!! This is very simple, very effective in getting a cooperative response from your students, and keeps you in a facilitative role instead of looking like the bad guy for stopping the fun!
These games are intended for grades 3-8 and include:
1. Math Madness: An Interactive Power Point Quiz Game.All answers are linked to a "Correct!" or "Oops!" page so students can play independently. (Grade Level Specific)
2. Overloaded Liters where students work through a visual representation of the place value system while earning cash for answering simple conversion problems.
3. Metric Mountain, a more advanced game that I developed for my high and gifted elementary students to practice metric conversions with decimals. This game helps students to develop an understanding of the inverse relationship between the size of pieces and amount of pieces being compared in equivalent decimal numbers such as 5 decimeters and 50 centimeters.

Sorry, this Raffle has ended, but you can still find these games by following the links below.

No Prep Math Madness Interactive Power Point, Overloaded Liters, and Metric Mountain! 

(These games were designed for grades 3-8 aligned to the Common Core Standards).

Visit my online store to download a free copy of Equivalent Fractions Games, a Power Point presentation that will teach your students how to add and subtract unit fractions using blocks. Templates are included so you can print your own blocks if you don't have plastic ones.

             

Thanks for stopping by!

5th Grade Common Core Math Quizzes for FREE!

Last week's freebie was the 4th Grade Common Core Math Quizzes, this week 5th grade is done and posted!

Grab the 5th Grade Common Core Math Quizzes for ALL Standards for FREE before they become a paid product. The Quizzes can be used as another document of mastery in your Student Portfolio Binders, or sent home to share progress with parents.

       

One of the most difficult standards for me and my fifth grade students is the big jump from operations with whole numbers to operations with decimals. Fourth grade introduces adding and subtracting fractions, but in one year, fifth graders are expected to master all four operations with fractions and decimals, including visual representations. Ouch! Not to mention the other clusters! This can be tricky and students need a really solid understanding of number and place value concepts first.

Some of my favorite tools for teaching fraction and decimal operations are:
1. The National Library of Virtual Manipulatives Fraction-Rectangle Multiplication which teaches students to break apart an array into fractions along each axis, just like multiplying whole numbers. If the axes are labeled correctly, students can find fractional products really easily!
The application allows you to visually solve proper and improper fractions, as well as test students. They model the algorithm next to each rectangle array.

The only downside is that the application will not allow you to set up a 10 x 10 grid for multiplying decimals. Once students are familiar with the set-up, they could easily use graph paper to model tenths.

2. Decimal Squares
The program worksheets may look out of date, but the representations are timeless! There are different packets of skill practice that help kids build the background knowledge they need to solve decimal operations with models and algorithms.

If you're not able to purchase another program, you can use the idea of modeling spaces on graph paper. Once students can do operations in one place value (.5 + .2; .07 - .03) then they can learn to break apart multiple place values (.25 + .13) with the same operations.

I also found the idea of open arrays to help with modeling. An open array is just rectangles divided into labeled spaces by place value. It allows kids to multiply in smaller pieces and then add them together.

The 4th Grade Bundle was just published last week in my TpT store. The 5th grade Bundle will be available mid-week, once the Quiz Freebie expires.

I will announce each grade level set as it is finished, so please KEEP in TOUCH!
The quizzes will only be free for a few days, and then they will become paid products. You can see the updates on my Facebook page, my Pinterest boards, or here. Just click the "Follow Me" buttons.

                                              Thanks for stopping by!

4th Grade Common Core Math Quizzes - Freebie Frenzie!

Last week's freebie was the 3rd Grade Common Core Math Quizzes, this week 4th grade is done and posted!

Grab the 4th Grade Common Core Math Quizzes for ALL Standards for FREE before they become a paid product. 4th grade is one of those tough years where you are covering skills like measuring angles, for the first time ever, and your students may need a little extra practice to ensure mastery. The Quizzes can be used as another document of mastery in your Student Portfolio Binders, or sent home to share progress with parents.

         

            

The 3rd Grade Bundle is also ready and will be published tomorrow on my TpT store.

I really want to give a gift to those of you who have already been using the Math materials with Learning Goals and Scales. You shouldn't have to buy another item when new buyers will get it all in one discounted bundle.
I will announce each grade level set as it is finished, so please KEEP in TOUCH!
The quizzes will only be free for a few days, and then they will become paid products. You can see the updates on my Facebook page, my Pinterest boards, or here. Just click the "Follow Me" buttons.

                                              Thanks for stopping by!

Working on it Wednesday Night - FREE Quizzes for Common Core Math

Okay, most of you are in bed already, but here in Arizona I still have 53 minutes left of Wednesday! Yeah!

I usually start working when my husband comes home from work and can take the little ones; our son is 4, and our daughter is 18 months. They are adorable!!! but seem to extract every ounce of energy I have most days. If I can work until midnight without my eyes glazing over, it's a good night!!!

What have I been working on? Well, I try to honor teacher requests for materials as best as I can working part time, but I am really excited that my new Quizzes are coming along quickly! Partly because I started them in January, the free Math Quizzes by Domain - but they didn't cover enough to be helpful. If a teacher is going to have more than one way to document student learning, then the quizzes really have to represent the core skills and knowledge of each standard at grade level. These quizzes have 3-6 questions for each standard, and can be done after the pre-test, but before the post-test (if you're also using the Assessments with Learning Goals and Scales). They can be sent home for some immediate student feedback, or added to the Student Portfolio binders as extra evidence of student mastery. The content of the Quizzes represents mastery of Level 3 of the scales, since that is the grade-level expectation.

Here's the 3rd Grade Common Core Math Quizzes for ALL Standards - coming up first! Follow this link to grab your free Quizzes before they become a paid product. I plan on bundling all of my grade-level materials once the quizzes are done, but I really want to give a gift to those of you who have already been using the Math materials with Learning Goals and Scales. You shouldn't have to buy another item when new buyers will get it all in one discounted purchase. Just trying to make things fair!

    

                 


I will announce each grade level set as it is finished, so please KEEP in TOUCH!
The quizzes will only be free for a few days, and then they will become paid products. You can see the updates on my Facebook page, my Pinterest boards, or here. Just click the "Follow Me" buttons.

                                              Thanks for stopping by!

You Oughta Know About - Marzano's Learning Goals and Scales

One of the most transforming and challenging bit of professional development I've ever received was when my district asked us to create SCALES for our learning goals. What is a scale? and who is Marzano? Robert Marzano's work in  The Art and Science of Teaching: A Comprehensive Framework for Effective Instruction, highlighted some principles of education that most teachers know, but easily forget in the business of everyday duties. One of the chapters specifically talks about tracking student progress in a learning goal by breaking it down into consecutively more difficult pieces. In another work he suggests that implementing this strategy can increase student performance more than any other strategy you could try! 

He also suggests a meaning for each scale.  Scale 1 designates a very beginning level of exposure to a skill or concept. Scale 2 represents someone who is still working on mastering a concept, but has some basics down. (I like to use skills from previous grade levels for scales 1-2 whenever possible. I can quickly check on what they were supposed to learn!) Scale 3 shows mastery of grade-level expectations, and Scale 4 could be either an advanced knowledge, in-depth explanations, or an ability to apply the knowledge to more complex situations.

Here's an example of a posted Learning Goal and Scale. 

Having a scale begs the question, how do I decide which students are where? When I introduced a new topic and scale, I asked students to show me where they thought they were by holding up fingers. Then I would take a mental note and try to segment them into 2-3 smaller groups for practice activities and instruction. I didn't feel very confident about this method and it was very messy and difficult to track. I wanted something more concrete and poured a few hours into making an assessment for each scale. (See below.)

When I introduced the Assessment as a pre-assessment, they enjoyed the fact that there was no pressure to know everything right away. They completed as much as they could, and I graded it so I could share their progress with them. The next day I would return it so they could see how far they'd gotten. Depending how much time I had, I would either return it individually, let them peruse it for a few minutes, then move onto the daily lessons; or I would return it in small groups based on performance level (1s together, 2s together, etc.) and meet with them to go over the test and skills. I would usually spend time going over the next skills so they would have an immediate goal to focus on in class. I would only fit in a meeting with each group about once a week, but it was better than nothing. The kids seemed really motivated to progress and felt like they were 'cheating' because they got to see the test in advance.

I used the same exact test as a post-assessment, and the kids really loved being able to see the scales they'd already mastered and skip ahead to finish the test faster! Those who had gotten really far only had to complete scales 3-4. Those who had more to learn, had more work to do, but this was okay because it also helped me to manage the environment. I would have 1-2 "When You're Done..." activities up on the board for the kids I knew would be done quickly. I made sure there were quieter areas of the room for the kids who would need the whole period to finish.

I didn't feel like I was letting the kids "cheat" because first of all, there were usually 2-4 weeks between the time they took the assessment as a pre-test, and a post-test. It was very unlikely they were going to remember the problems. Secondly, kids learn through repetition and practice, and the more they get to see and hear the learning goals and examples, the more likely they will be conscious of their learning. When kids are conscious of their learning, they are much more likely to take ownership of it! THIS IS THE GOAL! Teach kids to realize that they have charge of their learning, not just me! 

I can't tell you how proud and happy they were to SEE their progress and feel like they had more than one chance to master it!!

Each student should complete the test for one math standard in one sitting, doing as much as they can independently. Then the test is corrected and scored. The first score is not for grading purposes. It is only to give you a starting place for planning and differentiation; and the student some acknowledgement for what they already know. The first score simply tells you how many scales (sections) the student has mastered. They don't necessarily need to have 100% correct to "pass" a section. It's up to the teacher, who knows the child, to decide what passing looks like. Scoring them can be tricky if you have a child who masters scale 2, but not scale 1, like the student above. I would have him color in the scale 2 box, but not the scale 1 box on his Portfolio sheet.

After the students receive their scores they can look them over and record them on their Student Portfolio sheets. The sheets provide a brief statement of each standard, coloring boxes for each scale, and a goal setting space on the back. You can decide whether or not you have time to write goals and reflections, but it does help the students become more conscious of what they're doing well in, or need to be more attentive to. I had my students keep all of their Portfolio pages in a binder, and we would add each test as it was completed. The Portfolio pages were created to be binder dividers for each cluster of math standards.

On the back side of the Portfolio page, the student above could think about what he found difficult about scale 1, and write one sentence about what he would like to learn. He might set a goal to be able to do these kinds of problems in the next few weeks, or to pay extra attention to problems like this in class. She might set a goal to ask more questions or practice these problems more.

After the pretest students can be grouped for instruction and differentiation. I like to use color-coded spreadsheets for easy sorting. You can find some FREE ones pre-formatted with color-coding and links to the Common Core standards for quick reference. Visit Mrs. L's Leveled Learning Store and click on your grade level in the Custom Categories tab, or scroll though the list of products. The sets of Student Portfolio pages are also FREE and can be found here.

The teacher decides when students have been given ample time to learn the content from each standard, and then the same exact test is given again as a Post-test.  I waited anywhere from 2-4 weeks to give the post-test. Students should be given as much time as they need to complete the entire test. Depending on your students, you may or may not require all of them to complete scale 4. This is also the time when your students  have the opportunity to complete and correct any mistakes they made on the pretest. Students will pick up right where they left off. Since some have a lot to learn, and others don't, it's good to plan a silent activity for individuals who finish early.

The post-test is scored and graded this time. Here is a suggested grading scale. An explanation of the grading scale is given in more detail here.

4.0 - 100% A+
3.5 - 95%   A
3.0 - 90%   A-
2.5 - 80%   B/B-
2.0 - 70%   C/C-
1.5 - 65%   D
1.0 - 60%   D-
0.0 - 50%   E

After the post-test is graded, students can go back and color in more of their scales to show what they've mastered. They may also revisit their goals to record whether they "reached [their] goal,"  "made progress,"  or are "... still working on this."  Giving some reasons may also help students become more aware of their learning. These Assessments and Student Portfolio binders are excellent for parent conferences and administrator evaluations! I found that I didn't have to spend as much time explaining what we were doing in math class. Each child's progress is so clearly and simply documented. Find FREE samples of every Assessment, Portfolio, and Posters on my FREEBIES page.

Click Here to see a Video Tutorial using Scales.

                             Thanks for stopping by! 

Thanks to Jasmine from Buzzing with Mrs. McClain for hosting this blog hop!

and Jackie Sutcliffe from Real Learning in Room 213.

An InLinkz Link-up

Conferences and Communication

Linking up with Love Always Diana Lynn for Math Madness Monday to share my favorite products.

On  March 16, 2015,  Tonya Hackett (TpT Seller) said:

"This resource has saved me! I love using the scales as a pre and a post check. They are kid friendly and a super tool to use during parent-teacher conferences. Thanks!!"

    

This bit of feedback from Tonya who is using the 4th Grade Common Core Math Assessment with Learning Goals and Scales, just reminded of those days when I sat through 30 plus conferences trying to explain in 10-15 minutes what we'd been working on for the last 5 months, and how their child was doing. Until I started using my Student Portfolios I didn't have a simple tool to help you communicate student progress with students, parents, administrators, and other teachers. 

Six years ago I was working at a Title I elementary school as a gifted resource teacher 75% of the time, and a reading interventionist 25% of the time. Talk about different spectrums! Luckily for me I worked with small groups, but since my students came from five different grade levels, and there were at least 3 teachers for every grade level, communication meant a lot of data and meetings! Ugh. I'm one of those weird teachers that found staff meetings to be fun because I got to talk to other teachers! But, data meetings - definitely not fun. Lots of numbers next to each name, but no examples of student work to help understand the fine details that could shed light on why each child was performing at their own level. It seems that with all of the inclusion, clustering, interventions, and enrichment programs being implemented, most classroom teachers have a whole team of co-workers to share students with. This means that communicating about student progress doesn't just happen a few times a year, but possibly every week! 

How nice would it be to have one organized place to display student performance data that explains itself! The Math Assessments with Learning Goals and Scales plus the free Student Portfolio Pages that go with each grade level, were created to be a visual tracking aid for documenting student progress in a really simple and consistent way. Click on the video link below to flip through the 4th Grade Portfolio Sample that Tonya used for parent-teacher conferences. Visit my FREEBIES page to try them out for yourself first. Grades 3-8 are available now. Check out the work samples below!

If you'd like to see a quick tutorial about how to put together the math assessment binder with the Student Portfolio pages, visit my YouTube playlist. 

Make Differentiation Easy with Learning Goals and Scales

Differentiation can seem overwhelming when you think about having to plan for 3 or 4 different levels all at the same time. I used to think about differentiation as far as high and low, but that was about it. Often I didn't end up modifying that much and I definitely didn't keep track of who started where or how far they'd progressed. Differentiation seemed like a luxury, that I didn't have time for. Until I learned to plan ahead in a more detailed way. Research shows that students who start with clear and specific learning goals can concretely SEE their progress, and will show more learning at testing time! This sounds great, but how do you organize multiple levels of performance?

Learning Goals and Scales can help!

When you create a scale, each learning goal is broken down into five levels, from 0-4. Proficiency in each math standard is represented by a score of 3. A score of 4 indicates an advanced knowledge of the skill, usually above grade level. The goals assigned to scores of 2 and 1, are either derived from sub-skills of the standard, or from the background knowledge of earlier grade levels. A score of 0 on the learning scale is useful to document for students who really need intervention to grow.

It takes some time and some thinking to put them together at first, but once it's done, it's done!! You can create scales for any subject area and make them a little more general ("I can perform any fraction operation.") or more specific ("I can add and subtract fractions with different denominators.") I found math to be the most difficult to differentiate for, so I spent the most time creating them. I also chose to focus on the standards as my main learning goal so that I wouldn't have to create a separate one for each discrete skill!
                                                                 Here's an example:

When I started posting Learning Goals with Scales for our math standards, it became more obvious to them where they were starting from and where we were headed.  

We started by informally deciding where they were based on their own opinion; "Show me on your fingers if you think you are a 1-2-3-4 right now." This worked fine to get them used to the idea, but wasn't helping me to assess or plan as much until I created some concrete Assessments with Learning Goals and Scales which presented specific tasks for each level 0-1-2-3-4, so the kids had a way to show what they knew already. I spent over 120 hours creating Math Assessments with Learning Goals and Scales for grades 4, 5, and 6, which I was currently teaching the most. I spent these hours reading, researching, and creating Learning Goals and scales for each standard that drew from previous grade levels and future grade level skills. Since I had taught so many different grade levels of math, I had a good idea where to look for standards that progressed.You can see examples of Mrs. L's Assessments by visiting my blog: http://mrslsleveledlearning.blogspot.com

I can't tell you how proud and happy they were to SEE their progress and feel like they had more than one chance to master it!!

Here's the 3 biggest benefits I found from using learning goals with scales...

1. Kids and parents will know exactly where learning and grades are coming from! After every single test, as if it were some unwritten ritual, students would brag, hide, and compare their test scores. Sound familiar? The most painful thing is to see those little jaws drop and faces turn red when they didn't score as well as they thought. "But, why did I get a 'C' Mrs. LiCausi?" (Even B's were a disappointment to those high-achievers!) I received a lot fewer questions from students, parents, and administrators when I could point out the progression of skills that a student had mastered or not, to get them to that place. When scales are aligned to specific grades, students can make a clear connection to their level of mastery and their final grade.
Visit my website to see an example of how to align traditional percentages to scales for grading!

2. Clear and specific guide for planning and assessing student progress. If you aren't lucky enough to work for a district that thoroughly plans your curriculum and mapping guides, then you know the painfully time-consuming process of sitting down with a year's worth of standards and trying to organize all those ideas, and break them down into manageable chunks for your students. The school year gets busy fast, and every time you switch topics and pre-assess your students, you're starting all over to figure out how to teach them where they're at, differentiating for different levels, and assessing again. If you've got learning goals and scales in order, the process goes so much faster because some of the thinking is done for you! You can move onto the fun part like planning and searching for awesome lessons!

3. Research supports it! Check out some of the following citations...

"The starting place for all effective instruction is designing and communicating clear learning goals."

"If teachers aren't sure of instructional goals, their instructional activities will not be focused, and unfocused instructional activities do not engender student learning.

 - Marzano [2009]

"Our collective goal is that the largest possible percentage of our students get there. To reach that goal we must define for ourselves and for them where "there" is. "

- Stiggins [1994]

"Learning targets convey to students the destination for the lesson - what to learn, how deeply to learn it, and exactly how to demonstrate their learning. In our estimation [Moss & Brookhart, 2009] and that of others [Seidle, Rimmele, & Prenzel, 2005; Stiggins, After, Chappuis & Chappuis, 2009], the intention of the lesson is one of the most important things students should learn. Without a precise description of where they are headed, too many students are "flying blind."

- Moss, Brookhart, Long [2011] Knowing Your Learning Target. Educational Leadership.  

68 [6]. pp.66-69.

Who has time to waste on ineffective approaches? 

How do Australian Math Standards compare with Common Core? Are we doing it right?

I'm linking up today with Middle School Math Moments for Workin' on it Wednesday!

Recently a teacher from Queensland, Australia found my Math Assessments with Learning Goals and Scales. They were written for Common Core, and didn't align with her Year 3 classroom, so she asked if I would make one for her. Wow, that would be interesting I thought. I would love the challenge, and since I've spent so much time preparing the Common Core Assessments, it shouldn't be too bad, right? NO, it wasn't bad, it was phenomenal!!!

Ever ask yourself, "What in the world did these kids learn last year?"

Well, if you've had to try and align math skills and concepts from different grade levels in Common Core, you might notice that it is terribly un-sequential. A few grade level groups such as 1-3, 4-5, and 6-8 have some skills that build on each other, but many many of the grade levels will introduce material that wasn't directly taught in years before, and aren't called for very long afterward - meaning that children do not have a consistent opportunity to build mastery in every area from one year to the next. Why was the Common Core written this way? Good Question!! It was explained to me like this; there is x amount of material to cover in x amount of years, so let's divide it up between the different grade levels and make sure they all have about the same amount to cover. Brilliant!

The Common Core committee that wrote the standards also produced a series of documents called the "Progressions Documents for the Common Core Standards"which was essential to me in writing the scales for each standard. They explain that...

The Common Core State Standards in mathematics were built on progressions: narrative documents describing the progression of a topic across a number of grade levels, informed both by research on children's cognitive development and by the logical structure of mathematics. These documents were spliced together and then sliced into grade level standards. From that point on the work focused on refining and revising the grade level standards. The early drafts of the progressions documents no longer correspond to the current state of the standards. 
(See link for citation info).

I think they made an effort, and it seemed logical enough to me, although still very difficult to align different grade levels to show a sequence of skills. Here's a few examples from the 4th grade standards - measuring angles, that is introduced in 4th grade with no previous background knowledge, and then disappears from 5th grade standards just as quickly. In my work I always cite the standards from different grade levels when they apply. The only one I could link to these 4th grade standards was 3.MD.7; adding and subtracting areas. Which really only counts if students are conceptualizing angles as the space between lines, and not the lines themselves. 

Then I saw Australia's standards... here's something comparable. This is a poster from a Year 3 standard that shows an actual progression of skills from Year 3 through Year 4. You can see how each one gradually builds on the next. This is typical of the Australian standards. B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L!

I am currently working with the teacher who made the request to revise the assessment document  to fit their phrasing and methods. The complete assessment, posters, and portfolio pages will be published on teacherspayteachers.com by the end of this month! 

I realize that the Common Core Standards, like everything else in education, will change again. And when that happens, I will have a lot of revising to do! But, hopefully if enough of us have a say in it, we can arrive at a progression that works better for students and teachers. That would be nice. :)