UPS Math Strategy

As a reading and math interventionist, I work with students who are having difficulties in class. They somehow manage to develop misconceptions from the most well-intentioned best practices. Some of my students were ineffectively utilizing the CUBES strategy that they had been taught for word problems. I did some research and found that many people discourage its use because it can be problematic.

I especially enjoyed reading a post by Annie at Show Your Thinking Math. You can read her full post HERE. She gives some great examples for when CUBES fails to work and some helpful guidance on teaching word problems. Here's an example from her that reflects what I was seeing in class:

Annie takes away 3 cookies from her brother. She puts the cookies in her pile of 7 cookies. How many cookies does Annie have?

Most of my students would circle the numbers 7 and 3, underline takes away, and subtract to get 4 cookies. However, this is actually an addition problem. It should be 3+7=10!

She convinced me to abandon CUBES and find something more focused on getting at the heart of understanding word problems.

I found the UPS Check strategy was recommended often, but it needed some adapting to meet the needs of my particular students.

The first step is the hardest!! UNDERSTAND

I will start with NUMBERLESS word problems. Using this format forces students to focus on what the problem is actually saying instead of jumping into values and a solution too quickly.

Laura from Where the Magic Happens Teaching has an AMAZING post and it has a FREE set of numberless word problems that were perfect for my kids! You can visit her HERE for your set. 

My goal during this phase is to get my kids to read problems one sentence at a time. We will draw, act out, or explain what happened. We will keep rereading and adding a sentence until we know what actually happened in the word problem. Then, we will construct a number sentence and I will phase in one value at a time until the unknown element is clear. 

The Second Step should be easier then: PLAN

We spent the whole first semester working on fact fluency and addition and subtraction strategies. They should have strategies ready to use "on the run". Once we have our number sentence, my students will plan how they wish to solve it. We try to use the algorithm as little as possible. Most of my MTSS math kids are more visual and prefer other strategies, but it is a viable option for some. 

Lastly, we will SOLVE AND SHARE. 

This is where I made some changes to the UPS Check Strategy. I embedded the check part into the questions for this step. Since my school is working on the 4C's I need my kids to communicate mathematically. I also want to hear them use domain-specific vocabulary. So, they will explain their thinking to someone (me, their partner, the group), and we will scaffold that towards explaining their thinking in writing. 

Since I will camped out on word problems for a while, I needed a bulletin board to use routinely. If you would like to have mine, you can download it through Dropbox HERE or on the picture below. It can be converted into an anchor chart on chart paper or bound into a flipbook if you lack bulletin board space. 

I would love to hear from you! How do you approach instruction in word problems? 

The Love Letter by Anika Aldamuy Denise

Oh my goodness! The Love Letter by Anika Aldamuy Denise is my new favorite book for Valentine's Day! The author has written a charming story jam-packed with innocence and sweetness! Lucy Ruth Cummins's illustrations are soft and exquisite, too. They blend together beautifully! 

In The Love Letter, grumbly Hedgehog finds a love letter in the woods and it makes him oddly cheerful. Lazy Bunny finds the letter and she feels oddly helpful. Anxious Squirrel finds the letter and he feels oddly carefree. What will the friends do with the letter? Who wrote it? Who was it really for? You will have to read it to find out! Click on the picture above to find samples from the book on Amazon. Order it today! You won't regret it! 

This book is so full of literary rich activity ideas! I just posted a book study for The Love Letter on TPT. You can check it out HERE or by clicking a picture below. 

You can also grab a FREEBIE from the unit in Dropbox HERE or on the picture below.

I hope you found a new favorite, too! 

Tacky the Penguin

Tacky the Penguin is one of my favorite stories for winter! He's just so loveable! I love how he is true to himself and doesn't care what others think of him.

I found this awesome professionally done video read-aloud. The sound effects add a lot to the story.

I also created a book study for Tacky the Penguin. You can find it it my TPT store HERE. It is full of fun literature-based activities! A FREEBIE from the unit is included below. :)

I also included it in my Helen Lester Bundle. If you already own this bundle, you can redownload it and get the Tacky unit for free. It now contains 3 book studies and 3 scoot activities. You can check it out HERE. 

I am a huge fan of integrating literary texts with informational texts. My unit for Tacky would blend beautifully with this non-fiction study on Penguins. It has text in 3 formats: real-world photos, colorful clipart, and a line art student booklet. You can see it HERE. 

I hope this freebie from Tacky the Penguin will be useful to you! You can download or print it through Dropbox by clicking HERE or on the picture below. 

Enjoy! Be true to yourself! 

The Snowy Nap

I received a copy of The Snowy Nap by Jan Brett for Christmas. I couldn't wait to read it! It did not disappoint! Jan Brett has done an amazing job bringing Hedgie and his friends back for another adventure. This talented author created a new folktale full of charm, exquisite illustrations, and rich vocabulary.

If you haven't had the pleasure of reading it yet either, here's a link to a sweet read-aloud on YouTube.

I made a book study for The Snowy Nap. It is now available in my TPT store. It is full of activities that involve reading strategy practice. You can check it out by clicking HERE or on the picture below. There are FREEBIES from the unit included in this post. 

I love integrating literary texts with science and social studies content. If you do too, you may be interested in my Hibernation Bundle. It combines The Snowy Nap by Jan Brett and Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson with my non-fiction unit, Animals in Winter. It covers the hibernation, migration, and adaptation skills of many animals. You can check it out HERE or on the picture below. 

I hope you will enjoy these freebies for The Snowy Nap! Just click HERE or on the pics to download them through Dropbox. 

Basic Reading Assessments {Free and Editable}

Over the summer, I redesigned my reading inventories that I use for pinpointing reading difficulties and tracking progress throughout the year. I am happy to share them with you. They will be fully editable by you. That way you can tailor them to your specific intervention program or requirements. WARNING: Don't worry if the file looks all "wonky" in Dropbox. It will look correct when you open the file in PowerPoint.

If you missed my math post, you can read it {HERE}.

These assessments will cover the main areas where kids encounter reading difficulties: phonological awareness, phonics, sight word knowledge, and fluency. I keep track of all of this data on a cover sheet that you can grab and edit {HERE}.

First, I give a phonological awareness inventory. This one is a blend of several that I have used over the years. It has been an invaluable tool to me. I have never had a child score low on this inventory who didn't have significant issues with phonological awareness. Each word/question equals one point out of 50. You can download your own copy {HERE}.

Next, we do a quick sight word inventory. The student receives a flip book of sight words so that they are not overwhelmed by too many words at one time. I used the Dolch list, but you can edit this to use Fry's list. List 1 = preprimer, List 2 = primer, etc. I don't use a score sheet. I just keep count of errors with my fingers. When I reach five, we stop at the end of that page. If they make no errors, I record the date of mastery on their cover sheet. You can get your editable copy of the flip book {HERE}. After you download/edit, just print, cut, and bind them.

Then, I give a phonics inventory. It starts off with letter identification and goes all the way to multisyllabic words. Each section has its own page in the flip book so you can stop whenever the student has reached a point of frustration or excessive errors. During our first session, I try to do letter id through real long vowel words. The flip book pages look like the one below. It always amazes me how you can separate the sight readers from the kids who can truly decode by comparing their ability to read real v. nonsense words with the same sound patterns. You can download the student book {HERE}.

As the child reads each page, I either mark out correct responses or circle incorrect responses. They are less anxious when they hear you making a mark for everything they read. I use this inventory to pinpoint specific phonics deficits. Then, I use it to pre/post assess each skill as I teach it. You can download/edit the 3 page score sheet {HERE}. 

Lastly, we do a one minute fluency read using a passage from DIBELS. You can get the student text and the assessor's sheet for free {HERE}. 

Many thanks to Kimberly Geswein and A Perfect Blend for their amazing fonts! 

I hope that these will be helpful to you! If you have any questions, please feel free to email me or comment below. :)

Basic Math Assessment {Free & Editable}

Over the summer, I designed a quick math assessment to use for both baseline data and progress monitoring of my Title I math students. I needed it to have a few key components.
1. I needed it to involve NO reading.
2. I needed it to give me a quick picture of strengths and weaknesses with BASIC math skills.
3. I needed it to align to 2nd grade standards and our curriculum.
4. I needed it to be quick and also portable.
5. I needed it to grow in complexity throughout the year.

I came up with a spiral bound flip book and some recording sheets that met all of my needs. I hope that you will find these to be user friendly. If you need to tweak a few things, I am also making these editable with PowerPoint.

I printed, laminated, cut, and bound all of the student pages to make a flip book. It has been my experience that students are far less anxious about testing when they can hold something in their hands.

For tasks A - L, students should (at a MINIMUM)  be able to do the red tasks. If they could, I went on to the blue. If they did the blue correctly, we attempted the green ones.
Here's a brief picture walk through each task in the flip book.

Task A: red: count from 1 to 20, blue: count from 84 to 112, green: count from 285 to 310.
Task B: Tell how many hundreds, tens, and ones make each number.

Task C: red: count by fives, blue: count by tens, green: count by tens using 3 digit numbers
Task D: Each set involves: reading the number, telling h/t/o, and expanded form.

Task E: For each number, tell one more/one less, ten more/ten less
Task F: Basic addition facts

Task G: Two digit addition (with one regrouping problem)
Task H: Three digit addition (with regrouping one time)

Task I: Basic subtraction facts
Task J: Two digit subtraction with no regrouping

Task K: Three digit subtraction (with regrouping one time)
Task L: Odd/Even (MUST explain their reasoning)

Task M: time to the hour, half hour, and five minutes
Task N: counting coins (dimes/pennies, larger total, total over $1)

Task O: Counting bills and coins
Task P: Students will interpret the graph to answer 4 questions.

Task Q: Name fractions (1/2, 1/3, 1/4)
Task R: Name each plane shape.

I used the following forms to record student responses. I keep my paper hidden from the students so that they cannot see what I am writing. I give checks for correct responses and write down what they said for incorrect responses. They seem to be less nervous when you make marks for every response. Recording their incorrect responses gives me powerful data about their errors, too. Here's a quick demo student packet.

Let's take a quick peek at the data on "Amy Smith".

 Page 1: Amy's overall score was 18. I set the bar at 27 in the fall. So, she would definitely benefit from math interventions. She had difficulty with rote counting over 109.

 Page 2: Amy needs help with expanded form and 10 more/10 less than a given number.

 Page 3: Note the F and N I wrote in on the addition section. Amy relied on either her fingers or a number line on the wall to solve these problems. She needs help with automaticity. She clearly needs help with subtraction. She added. Then, she added incorrectly. Then, she saw no change at all.

 Page 4: Odd/Even: Amy probably guessed even. She couldn't give a rationale for her answer. She inverted the hour and minute hands on time to the hour. She couldn't count dimes and pennies.

Page 5: Amy has some basic data analysis skills. She is on the verge of combining two items, but really struggled with finding a difference. Fractions were a foreign concept. She needs a little brush up work on her plane shapes.
Lastly, I added a "notes" section where I can record anything that I need to remember to mention to her teacher or bring up in our next RTI meeting.

Benchmarks: As I said earlier, I expect a minimum score of 27 in the fall. I increase it to 50 in the winter. I expect the full 70 points in the spring.

If you think that this editable flip book and scoring sheets would be helpful to you, please download the student flip book {HERE} and grab the teacher's scoring sheets {HERE}. Don't worry if the files look "WONKY" in Dropbox. They should look perfect when you open them in PowerPoint. :)

I have also fully revamped by reading assessments. I hope to share those later this week. If I can answer any questions you have, please comment below or email me. Thanks!!

Weekly Editing and Grammar Practice

So, my grade level was having a discussion during our weekly meeting about our 2nd graders' writing. We all seemed to have the same significant concern.

**While we love our daily grammar/editing practice unit and we agreed that the students needed to practice individual sentences, they were not transferring their knowledge into their own writing and editing. They could tell you that a sentence needed a period at the end, but they failed to notice that same need if there was more than one sentence running together. They could find a noun in one short sentence, but again they couldn't find 3 nouns in a short passage. **

So, they asked me to come up a quick once a week opportunity for their students to have text-based grammar and editing practice. They wanted to have a more in-depth supplement to their morning work routine. So, I created a Common Core standards-based editing and grammar program for us to try. 

**The product includes 36 weekly passages with various genres.

**I intentionally left out directions on how the corrections should be made. I know that each teacher has their own requirements. You could require traditional editing marks, or have students just make the corrections with colored pencil. 

**The first nine weeks are spent reviewing the first grade standards. Then, the 2nd grade standards are introduced in nine week sections.

**No spelling errors were included. I didn't want to affect the text's readability. 

If you would like to see a scope and sequence of the standards and get 3 FREE SAMPLE PAGES with answer keys, you may download them {HERE}or on the picture above. You can see the full product on Teachers Pay Teachers by clicking the picture at the top. 

If you have a need like ours, I hope this will be helpful to you in the coming school year!