Managing Go Noodle in the Elementary Classroom

The Five "Rules" of Go Noodle 

in my Classroom

I found out about this wonderful and *free* resource for teachers to use in their classroom via Twitter and I have to say my students love it!

But I started to notice that some students were becoming a little too loud at times and that sometimes students had a negative attitude when an activity that they wanted wasn't chosen. 

With that said, the 5 rules of Go Noodle were born for my classroom!

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1. Students who choose to happily participate in the Go Noodles chosen by others will get a chance to pick their own for the class.

- This puts the onus completely on the students and gets rid of the negative attitudes when "girl" or "boy" activities are chosen.

2. The teacher gets to choose the minute length of each break.

-Sometimes we just need a quick energizer and other times our schedule will allow for a longer break. After students have been picked to choose a Go Noodle, they know to ask me how long our break is...this also motivates students to choose quickly so that they can enjoy the break time.

3. The teacher gets to choose when Go Noodle breaks happen in the classroom.

- I try to schedule at least 2 longer (5 minute) Go Noodle breaks each day and then 1-3 smaller throughout the day. Sometimes we fit all these in, but sometimes we have to settle for a more static brain break from another source.

4. Students who would like to have a Go Noodle break will keep their voices at a level 3 or lower.

- I have a voice level chart in my classroom where Level 3 is just above a whisper. We call this whole group voice. Anyone who raises their voice above this can not participate in our Go Noodle activity. This keeps things calmer and more focused for our classroom while respecting the fact that the classroom next door might not be taking a break when we are.

5. Have fun learning and moving with Go Noodle!

- Go Noodle has so many new activities for students to learn! I encourage my students to try out new videos and to really listen to the instructions that are given! And have fun! There's nothing wrong with singing to the songs! 

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How are you managing Go Noodle in your classroom?

Yummy Fractions!

So I started my fractions unit today by being a true risk-taker. And I'm so glad I was! We had fun with fractions while making Trail-Mix....Yum!

Pulling this off with 30 students took some planning and thinking about the proper set-up, but it was so worth it! I have five groups in my math workshops, but further dividing them into partnerships A,B,C, was a great plan. Since this was the first day of the new unit, the students belonging to partnership A were the captains. This proved to be clear for the students and quick for me when passing out materials. (Click here for more info about my math workshop organization.)
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I used some basic trail mix ingredients (minus the peanuts) for this intro fraction activity:

- One box of honey nut toasted oats cereal

-3 bags of mini-marshmallows

-one container of raisins

-one bag of mini-pretzels (that I crushed up even more)

-two bags mini semi-sweet chocolate chip pieces

The quantity you need will vary depending on how many students you have in your classroom and on how much of the mix you would like for your students to take home. 

We ended up with 1/2 cup of trail mix for each student, which I thought was just enough for them to enjoy while remembering that the true purpose of the trail mix was to think about and work with fractions.
-----------------------------------------------------------------          The Math Workshop Parts for Day 1


Math Talk
As students enter the room, they are to head to the "Math Talk" tray to grab the warm-up for the day. I used a simple and quick fractions worksheet to get brains flowing while not taking up too much precious time from the main activity.

Mini-Lesson

I started the mini-lesson with an anticipatory set. I had already asked students to wash their hands before entering the room (we had recess directly before this lesson) and they used that fact as a clue to help them infer what I was hiding inside my box. I also had some clues around the box (measuring cups and large zip-top bags) to help with the inferring. Look at that...math and reading strategies together in harmony.

Once I gave students a minute to talk about the clues with their partners, the work began. I passed out the jumbo zip-top bags and measuring cups to groups and then asked students "what do you notice?" about the measuring cups themselves.

Thinking quickly moved toward the fractions on the handles of the measuring cups (yes!) and then a student mentioned cooking...then the excited whispers started..."Food is in the box!"

Once students made the connections, I opened the box to reveal the zip-top bags filled with the ingredients for making the trail-mix.

Teaching Point: "Today I want to teach you that we can use fractions in everyday life. I also want you to think about how many ways we can represent one whole today."

Partner Math
The mini-lesson and the partner math then meshed together, as the class stayed whole group on the carpet while creating their trail mix with their groups. Each person had a turn scooping out a certain fraction of an ingredient to add to the trail mix bag. I altered the portions so that in total we had about three cups of food in the trail mix bag. When trying this with your own class, you might want to play around with the proportions to make sure the total can be divided evenly.

            Possible questions to pose during the activity:

"How do you know that you have more/less of _______ than _______.?"

"If we add 1/4 of a cup to the bag, how many total cups will we have?"

"If we need a total of 1/2 of a cup of pretzels, how many times should we scoop using the 1/4 measuring cup?"


Before each scoop, we talked about the fraction and if that fraction was less than, equal to, or greater than 1/2 of a cup.

Summary of Learning
At the end of the mixing, students had to figure out how much each person could scoop to make sure that they were being fair with the mix. 

I first proposed dividing the contents of the bag in half so that two out of the six students could take home trail mix, which was quickly shot down..."That's not fair!" one student protested, "unless I'm getting one of the halves!" She joked. Ahhh, I love when students forget that they are doing math and just decide to be present in the moment!

With students knowing that simply taking 1/2 of the bag would not be fair to everyone, I shifted the conversation into thoughts about what fraction would be fair.

I was blown away by how quickly students grasped the concept of using the measuring cups to be precise about their fairness...which then led to the discussion of precision of language...which cup? why? 

We soon found the correct language and vocabulary and students were using the 1/2 of a cup to make sure that the divisions were fair. Students then began scooping our their share into smaller zip-top bags for them to keep. Students were engaged the whole time and excited to see the connections that can be made between food and fractions. This real-world application really worked well!

Independent Math
In math workshop, I usually have the independent math portion come before the summary of learning, but the layout of this lesson did not lend itself to that tradition very well. I had another type of exit slip already planned for students, but due to how the lesson played out and time constraints, I simply used the Little Baker's Recipe Card as student's independent math.

                            I used the Little Baker sheet below as an exit slip...

                              Click on the picture for a free download!

Students simply filled out the questions and I paid close attention to which fraction was circled as I stapled this sheet onto their plastic bags. Out of 30, there were 3 that had something other than 3/3 circled...I will be meeting with them in a small group tomorrow to reinforce whole fractions!

Happy New School Year 2013-2014!

I know that many teachers will begin their school year on August 5, 2013, so I made sure that I updated my 1st day bookmarks for every one! They are a forever freebie!  Be sure to grab your copy below from my TPT store and tell your teacher friends!  AND I am having a sale until August 4, 2013!

Grab this freebie from my TPT store as a functional welcome back treat for your kiddos!

3 Easy Steps to Math Practice Success

 Teachers in many states have Common Core State Standards to think about and now also these 8 math practices?  What exactly are the 8 practices you ask?  Last year, I found myself asking that same question over and over again, which made me think, "hmmm...if I'm having trouble remembering some of these, what about my students?"  That's when I decided to go on a three step plan for implementation:

Step 1: Create Classroom Visual Aides 

Creating informative (and adorable!) posters have helped everyone in my classroom remember what the 8 mathematical practices are about. I really began to learn each of the practices through thinking about and creating each poster and having these around the classroom encourages students to use this mathematical language.

The questions version of the posters especially help when assessing students as they are an excellent gauge for the level of student understanding for each practice. Students who are able to ask and answer these questions freely understand how to use the practice!

Check out all of the posters here!

I also created mini versions of each poster to add to  interactive notebooks...as much exposure as possible to encourage retention of the practices and mathematical language! 

Step 2: Simplify math lessons

I created the page below to help keep track of when I am explicitly teaching and having my students practice each standard. This comes in handy and even has suggestions of activities for each practice!

Grab your free copy here

These practices are not a "what" to teach, but rather a "how-to" for teaching the math standards.  My goal by the end of the school year is to have all students practicing and familiar with each of the 8 practices, but we have to start off with small steps! 

The 8 math practices can get a little overwhelming when thinking about them all at once!  One fact I keep telling myself is that no one can do it all in every lesson!  Some lessons and concepts will lend themselves more easily to one or two of the practices. When thinking about and looking at your own math lesson plans with this new frame of reference, you might find that one lesson should be divided into two or three, or that two lessons should some how be combined in order to focus on a particular practice. 

Step 3: Practice makes permanent!

I recently reread some of the articles published by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) and came across an intriguing article about the Common Core Mathematical Standards of Practice.  Among the many questions that got my brain really crunching was, "What will the Standards for Practice look like in your classroom?"  Of course! If I truly want my students to use and internalize these practices, I have to model and students have to....practice! This revelation actually helped me to revise Step 2 in that I now have specific lessons devoted to practicing each of the practices (with review concepts) before embedding the standards into lessons that involve new math concepts.  The goal is to effectively and accurately use each of the practices! We want students to move on to the next grade level with successful strategies.

~Check back often for more posts about implementing each of the practices into your classroom~

Join in the discussion - What are your tips for success with the 8 Mathematical Practices?