Let THEM choose! Seven Reasons I Use Menus in My Classroom

One of the most challenging jobs for teachers is to meet the enormous range of needs of the learners in their classroom. Even in my self-contained gifted classes, children's skills and knowledge can be asynchronous, or very unevenly developed. Within my 4th and 5th grade multi-age language arts class alone, I had children reading at SEVEN different reading levels. SEVEN.

*Side note: It's a huge misnomer that kids are all developing and learning at the same pace in a gifted classroom. Differentiation in gifted classes is every bit as important in a classroom with only gifted students as it is for general education of special education classrooms.*

Okay, back to my point. BECAUSE it can be so challenging to meet the needs of a range of learners, using menus is a great way to differentiate!

There are several reasons I use menus in my classroom (and why I think menus are a great choice for ANY classroom):

ONE--Menus give students CHOICE. There are so very few times in a child's school day when they get to exercise control over what they do. Menus empower students to decide which activities they choose to complete.

TWO--Menus increase student engagement. As a result of increased autonomy, students are naturally more invested in their own learning.

THREE--Menus create a student-centered learning environment. Teachers truly take on the "guide on the side" role. There are various degrees of student-centeredness you can create in your classroom. Start by controlling what all of the choices on the menu are, and then maybe start providing some "free choice" spaces and allow students to decide how they will meet the learning objectives on their own. You might be surprised by their great ideas!

FOUR--Menus can meet the needs of a variety of students' intelligences--students with strengths in areas other than language arts can showcase learning using their own special talents.

FIVE--Choice menus can be a departure from the traditional worksheet activities (HOORAY for that!) Hooray! (Yep, it deserves TWO cheers! ;)

SIX--Menus are easily adaptable--they can range from quick learning activities to lengthier long-term projects. Or they can contain a mix of both.

SEVEN--The difficulty levels of activity options can be varied and laid out in a way that students can't just stick with completing the easiest tasks.

There you have it. Seven real, meaningful reasons I let students have choices!

Ready to dabble in menu options for your classroom? Maybe you'd like to try some options that are already prepared for you...Click any of the pictures below to take a peek at some of the menus I created with CHOICES in mind.




Let me know if you have any additional thoughts or questions! Leave me a comment below or drop me an email at jen@soaringwithsnyder.com

I look forward to hearing from you! 

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Meeting the Needs of Gifted Learners: Differentiating Products 5/6

Welcome! This post is the fifth (well, technically the sixth!) post in a series I've dedicated to writing about how teachers can differentiate for students in the classroom. If you'd like to read an overview of differentiation, click here. If you would like to read about pre-assessment, differentiating content, differentiating process, or to see a snapshot of how it looked in my classroom, use the words above or the sidebar to navigate to my other posts.

Today's post is all about differentiating the products that your students complete as part of their learning journey. I'll define it for you, give you some important tips, show you an example of how I did this in my gifted classroom, and I'll even give you a list of ideas you can use in your own classroom.

What Does it Mean to Differentiate Products? 

A product is what students do or make with their newly acquired learning. Products help children think
about and extend their learning. It's something that happens at the end of a lesson unit, month, semester, or even entire year of learning. It can be something as simple as having students compose a poem that reflects their learning, or compiling a portfolio of different assignments, or it can be something as complex as a student-created simulation or documentary. Products allow the teacher to assess student learning.  Products are also quite powerful tools for students to really demonstrate their understanding because they remove some of the barriers put up by traditional paper and pencil assessments. If teachers are looking to truly measure a child's science knowledge, they can devise a way to measure truly that, and not whether students have writing and organizational skills to construct a five-paragraph essay.

Differentiating the products that students produce means that they have access to completing DIFFERENT activities or projects following their learning. They complete these tasks or assignments on their own or in small groups, which allows for independence, variety, choice, and challenge. It also allows for teachers to teach the same content to their class (especially in schools where teachers are required to stay within certain grade bands/knowledge strands) while allowing for the application and synthesis of the knowledge to be expanded within the creation of the products.

An Example of How I Differentiated 

To help illustrate how you can differentiate products in your classroom, I'll give you an example from my classroom. One way I regularly incorporated product choice in my upper elementary gifted classroom was in my bi-weekly word study/vocabulary instruction. My vocabulary study for 4th and 5th graders was based on Greek and Latin roots, prefixes, and suffixes. 

1. At the beginning of each new two-week cycle, the class and I held discussions about the new roots, prefixes, and suffixes. Students made predictions about the word parts, based on their schema, and clues from words containing the Greek and Latin morphemes. 
2. Then, we looked at a list of about 20 words that I had provided them, and children rated their knowledge of the words using a stop-light color-coding system. Words that they already knew and could teach to others were coded green and less familiar words were coded yellow (they've heard of the word and/or have seen it, but couldn't really use it in a sentence or explain it well) or red (they had little or no idea what the word meant). The red- and yellow-coded words became their word study words for the two weeks. Occasionally, I selected one or two "must-do" words, especially if they were relevant to a unit of study or if they were mandated terms for students to know. 
3. We met in small groups to learn more about the meaning of the words and then added them to our word-study journals, with a sketch and/or Frayer model for each unknown word.
4. Finally, students used the red- and yellow coded words to create a variety of products. At the end of the cycle, we had product presentations. Students looked forward to presenting their products to the class, and it became a really fun bonding time and learning experience for everyone. 

You can see a couple of small examples of student work in the photos below. This is a little script from a mini-play. 

Water Words Word Study Product Choice

                         
And pictured  below is one slide from a slideshow story a student had written incorporating her words.

Bob's Bedroom Word Study Vocabulary Story

Sidenote: 

When I first introduced the product choices to students, I was careful to model for them and show them clearly the expectations for each product choice. The only time I did not do this was when a student had their own idea for a product. For these occasions, I worked one-on-one with the student to develop the criteria for the content, quality, and creativity of the product.

We also spent quite a bit of time for the first several cycles getting out the rubric that would determine their grade, and comparing the work they had done to the rubric. We carefully examined each section of the rubric and determined the meaning of the indicators for content, quality, and creativity, giving examples AND non-examples of what each indicator meant. 

Somewhat unrelated, but I'm guessing that you may be thinking that I was extremely trusting of my students, allowing them to self-select their word study words. The reality is, you're right. I was very trusting of students to choose the words on their own, but it doesn't mean that I didn't ever question them on their choices, or double check their lists while they were working. Again, all of this was a combination of the process of me getting to know my students very well (I did loop with them for up to three years at one point!), some spot-checking on occasion, some informal pretesting, and some honest-to-goodness faith in my students that they could and would do the right thing. I had very few instances of anyone trying to "game the system" and if I had, I would have modified the selection process to include some formal pretesting of the words. 

Some Important Notes About Differentiating Products...

• You should definitely allow for choice. The choice could be as narrow among just a few pre-planned options that you have for them, 
• Be sure to set clear expectations around the content, quality, and creativity/originality of the products. I have a rubric that works for many product choices here if you're interested in taking a peek. 
• Be sure that you and your students agree on a timeline for the entire process, as well as check-in points along the way. No matter what the age of your students, it will be helpful for them if you provide some scaffolding here. Obviously, how much scaffolding you provide should be adjusted according to your students' readiness. At the very least, I suggest having check-ins and/or deadlines for idea generation and selection, storyboarding or planning, creating, revising/editing, rehearsal (if needed), and final turn-in. 
• Products can be differentiated by readiness, interest, and learning profile, or some combination of the three. 
• Students might need coaching with certain procedural aspects of the choices they make for their products. For example, if a student chooses to create a video documentary or stop-motion film, they may need some assistance with the technical aspects of making the films. This is a great time to bring in outside experts--parents, community members, even other professionals in your school who can assist your students with these needs. Children can also do some research (another great learning opportunity)! 
• Using differentiated products in your classroom is a great way to build classroom community. I often set time aside in class for students to share what they had been working on with the rest of the class. Sometimes, we even ventured out to share with other classrooms in the building, too! 
• Inviting parents in for product presentations is also an excellent way to share products with a larger audience. Research has shown that student engagement and achievement rises significantly when students know that people other than just their teacher will see their work. 
• Keep in mind, though, that not every student needs to (or wants to) share his or her product every time! This is not only time consuming, but for children uncomfortable in front of the class, it can be a source of unnecessary stress. 

Some Ideas for You

Sometimes the hardest part is getting started, right? I've created several ready-made resources that include product choices in my Teachers Pay Teachers store that you can find here. This is a growing collection of choices for upper and lower elementary students. And to thank you for reading allllll the way down to here, I made a list of many of the product ideas that maybe you'd like to try out. Click on the picture below to download your own free copy of the list from my free resource library. *Just to be clear, by clicking to get the freebie (and instant access to the growing collection of free resources in my library of subscriber exclusives), you're also agreeing to be added to my email list, where I'll send occasional messages with fresh ideas, tips, and other resources straight to your inbox. You can unsubscribe at any time.*

Thank you so much for reading! 

Ready to learn about differentiating the learning environment? Click here! Thanks so much for reading!

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Celebrate Pi Day! Getting Kids Engaged in Math

Nerd alert: I LOVE celebrating Pi Day! It is quite literally one of my favorite "holidays" to celebrate with my students. Yes. I consider it a holiday. It's that important. My students LOVE celebrating this day as well--sometimes questioning me as early as the first week of school about how we were going to celebrate it this year. 

So today, I'm dedicating a blog post to this most exciting day, since it's right around the corner. I hope you'll start getting into the excitement, too! 

For students, sometimes even mentioning the word math makes them get a little anxious and jittery. Even in my gifted math classes, there were always a handful of students who didn't love math, despite the fact that they were able to score in the 95th percentile (or higher) on nationally-normed achievement tests. This makes sense, really. Just because you're good at something doesn't mean you enjoy doing it. For me, I am pretty skilled at folding laundry. I mean, I can fold a MEAN fitted sheet with the best of them. Buuuut I don't love it.  

Not even  a little. 

That's why making learning FUN is so important for the students in your classroom. They don't all walk through those classroom doors of yours with the same bubbling-over passion that you have for the subject.  Fortunately for us teachers, though, with the right combination of joy, resources, comedic timing, and great teaching, they can walk out of your classroom with an increased appreciation for the subject at the very least. And for some students, the way you engage them can mean the difference between them feeling ho-hum about your subject, and them turning your area of expertise into something they end up wanting to pursue down the road as their own lifelong passion. 

We have so much power, teachers! Our motivation needs to come from this place of our profound ability to make a difference in children's lives every.single.day. 

Okay, stepping down from the soapbox. 

Back to PI DAYYYY! 

I was fortunate enough to be able loop with my students. I got to teach them math and/or language arts for three years in a row, which was incredible.  One side effect, though, of having students year after year is that you can't really reuse the same activities over and over again. So, after a while I began to amass a pretty decent repertoire of activities to use on days like Pi Day. So today, I'll explain a bit about some of my favorite activities for the nerdiest of celebrations. 

My students loved all things pi. They especially loved eating it, so I did make it a point to indulge them each year. I even had an awesome parent who volunteered to send in the pies, which was so great because it saved me a few dollars. If you celebrate Pi Day in your classroom, I would suggest reaching out to the families of your students. I always found that parents were always more than willing to donate things when I asked. 

My students also loved this simple beading activity. I heard of the idea from a fellow teacher at a math conference a few years ago, and I marveled at the 

simplicity. All you have to do is assign a color of bead to each of the digits from 0-9, then string the beads in the order of their corresponding appearance in the digits of pi. We saved black beads for the decimal. I found that buying the Perler Beads from a craft store or Wal-Mart was the most inexpensive way to get LOTS of beads in a variety of colors. I had kite string left over from another fun math activity, and it worked well for stringing, plus it's strong, so I didn't worry about them stretching and/or breaking the string while they worked. 

Another really great activity I did was an experiment with blowing and measuring bubbles. I had seen my daughter's preschool teacher using bubbles with soap and paint to make artwork, and it got me thinking about using that same technique with bubbles in math. Only, I just needed the bubbles to be temporary (and easier to clean up!). For this activity, students blew bubbles on a cookie sheet that we wet with the bubble solution. Make sure you don't skip this step, because the bubbles pop too quickly if you don't.  Students could just do this right on the top of their desks (hello, clean desks!), but we used cookie sheets because I thought the clean up would be quicker. It's a good idea to let your students play around a little with the whole, "I get to blow bubbles in math" novelty for a few minutes before they start working on the real activity. They WILL play, so why not give them permission? 

Eventually, the bubble pops, and lucky for us, it leaves a ring behind. I had students measure the diameter of the circle with a ruler. Then they used a sentence strip or string to measure the circumference of the circle. They recorded the measurements for each bubble on a recording sheet. Once their sheet was filled with data from their bubble-blowing extravaganza, I had them find the ratio between the measurements of the circumference to the measurements of the diameter (otherwise known as PI). If they were accurate with their measurements, their ratios usually turned out to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 3.14. It's an awesome experience to see their faces light up with the realization that they found pi, and for us math teachers, it was the kind of authentic learning experience that led them to a deeper understanding of what pi really means, instead of just tossing out a formula to them and hoping they could plug in all the right numbers and 'get it.' If you'd like a free copy of the recording sheet we used, email me at jen@soaringwithsnyder.com and I'll send you a copy. I promise I'll keep your contact information private. 

Other activities we did included listening to music that was composed based on the digits in pi. I read to them Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi by Cindy Neuschwander, which you can buy here or listen to a free read aloud here. We composed poetry about our love of pi, had a pi memorization challenge, and so many other fun things. The best part of the celebration is that everyone had FUN. They were engaged, they were challenged, and if only for a brief time, they liked MATH! 

If you're as excited about celebrating Pi Day as I am, you should check out this Pi Day Tic-Tac-Toe Menu Board that I made. There are NINE of my favorite activities in the packet, including recording sheets with detailed directions for each activity, an answer key and rubric, a list of needed supplies, and a bonus memorization challenge class roster sheet. 

Maybe if someone had taught me to fold fitted sheets with activities like this, I'd be a Folding-Sheet Grand Champion, orrrr something like that. 

If you're looking to just tiptoe into Pi Day this year, maybe you'd prefer one of these other products instead...*Note, these are PARTS of the NINE PRODUCT Bundle. They're not different activities. Just providing options! Lots of options!  

Here's a mini-bundle of just three activities.👇🏻

Or you may like this this one, based on the bubble activity I mentioned above. It is always a hit. 

And here is a problem solving activity. If you're short on time, or want to assess the quality of my work, this is the way to go. 

Let me know if you have any questions! I'd be happy to help you make this day SO much fun for your students! 

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