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Fifth Grade Teachers Chatboard

IL Laying Off Teachers, Huge Budget Shortfalls

by Elizabeth

Mar 5, 2011

Unfortunately, IL districts have huge budget shortfalls for the upcoming 2011-2012 school year and have to lay off a lot of teachers and administrators to try and close million dollar gaps in their 2012 budgets.

District 205, Rockford schools, will close 6 or 7 schools and let approximately 600 go in an effort to close a 50 million gap in ...See MoreUnfortunately, IL districts have huge budget shortfalls for the upcoming 2011-2012 school year and have to lay off a lot of teachers and administrators to try and close million dollar gaps in their 2012 budgets.

District 205, Rockford schools, will close 6 or 7 schools and let approximately 600 go in an effort to close a 50 million gap in its upcoming budget. One of the schools on the chopping block is an early learning center. School closings alone are estimated to save about 6 million dollars. Teacher layoffs are also expected to affect tenured teachers as well.

U-46, Elgin schools, has recently approved layoff notices for 132 employees in the first round of annual cuts. Notices will be sent out to those 132 employees next month. Of the 132 being cut, 53 are teachers, most of which are in positions that are funded by grant money that isn't guaranteed for next year. The layoffs take effect next school year. Some, but not all of the 132 laid off individuals will be invited back for the 2011-2012 school year. The district is trying to were close a $4 million gap in its 2012 budget.

District 50 cut 13 teachers last month and has approved the cut of 7 more teachers this month. Among the 7 to be cut this month are 4 eighth-grade core classroom teachers, 2 kindergarten teachers and 1 gifted-program teacher. 2 technology advisor positions and an 8th grade team leader position were also cut. With these cuts, it brings the school board’s total cuts to nearly $1.5 million. Two Kindergarten positions account for just under $90,000 in savings. Even with these additional cuts, the district’s 2012 budget is still more than $2 million in the red.

District 159, Mokena, is laying off 7 teachers and 8 teacher aids in an effort to to help plug a $2.7 million budget deficit. In addition to these kayoffs, the district will cut cut all extracurricular activities for the 2011- 2012 school year and increase some fees. School lunches will be affected as well; parents can expect a 50 cent raise.

Sadly, IL isn't a place anyone should be relocating to teach in anytime soon.

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Sidewalk Story by Sharon Bell Mathis

by Anyone read this book with your class?

Mar 10, 2011

I am starting this one next with my class. Cannot find any lesson plans online regarding this book. Has anyone used it before? Thanks for any ideas you can share!

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Teaching Kids the News

by Jonathan Tilly

Mar 18, 2011

Hi,

Four years ago, when I first started teaching, I found the job to be hectic and all consuming... to be honest, it hasn't gotten all that much easier.

That's why I want to share with you the website I've developed. It's a really simple website aimed at making teaching language, reading, and current events straight forward and ...See More

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Do you web 2.0??

by Ally (LI, NY)

Mar 19, 2011

Hi everyone! I am currently working on my second masters in an educational technology program.

For a final project for one of my classes I am researching the effects of web 2.0 tools on teacher/parent communication (ie. teacher websites, blogs, wikis, podcasts, vidcasts, youtube channels, etc).

Part of the project is collecting ...See More

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Retired Teacher-turned-Writer has a question

by Chloe Giampaolo aka JonPaul

Mar 21, 2011

Hello Everyone! My novel, which is ready to be published is about 4 fourth grade teachers - 2males, 2 females - whose lives get turned upside down in the course of a school year.

I would love some feedback and I would like to share the Prologue and character/setting profile with anyone who might be interested.

If you are, you ma...See More

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How goofy are your boys?

by cma

Mar 21, 2011

I've been teaching 5th grade for 15 years. Each year the kids (especially some of the boys)are so totally clueless about what expected 10-11 y.o. behavior is, that I just don't know what to think. I have one who dances around the room to get from here to there, while the more mature boys say things like "stop embarrassing yourself" and the girls ju...See More

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Mae in Texas I'm completely convinced that boys go through a goofy stage the same way girls go through hormonal stages. It begins around 5th grade and continues until about 10th or 11th grade (and sometimes until they are nearly 30 years old). I have 4th grade boys who have started entering the goofy stage in the past month. They have gone completely silly! I t...See More

May 29, 2011

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Pen Pals

by Ward

Mar 22, 2011

I am beginning a writing unit with my 5th graders and was in need of a class willing to exchange letters with them. Please let me know if this is something you are interested in. I am in Georgia so I was looking for a class maybe on the west coast or upper east coast.

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OMG help my fifth grade students are SO LOW in math skills!

by Frenzied in Seattle

Mar 24, 2011

HELP! My fifth greade students did not get the skills they needed in fourth grade. So, fraction lessons are painful! I am kind of lost, because the students need to be up to level by...May. They have learned a lot in the past few weeks, but not to mastery. We've worked on equivalent fractions, adding/subtracting fractions, mixed numbers, improper f...See More

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Amanda It is too late for this to help this year, but I found that if I suggested to the fourth grade that a fraction is actually another way to write a division problem, the kids catch on much faster. They did that last year, and this year the kids got it very quickly. We then looked at how to write a reciprocal, how to calculate a percentage score on a ...See MoreIt is too late for this to help this year, but I found that if I suggested to the fourth grade that a fraction is actually another way to write a division problem, the kids catch on much faster. They did that last year, and this year the kids got it very quickly. We then looked at how to write a reciprocal, how to calculate a percentage score on a test, and how to look at ratios as relationships (part to part, part to whole, whole to part). It also helps to teach properties of addition and multiplication in different ways over and over again all year.

The issues seems to be that sometimes the kids learn a rote way to do something without realizing that math is really about number sense and the relationship of numbers. We use a lot of manipulatives, drawings, graphs, and charts to go over these concepts.

Chants are also useful. For example, we chant this: "never, never, never add fractions unless the denominators match" and "never, never, never subtract fractions unless ____". The kids fill in the blank in the chant while wagging their fingers to the never parts. Even the low kids get into it, and they remember it. We make it a game. The more fun they have with it, the more they remember. The kids often make up chants of their own related to the topic we are covering.

When we do long form multiplication, we pretend we are in the middle ages building a cathedral with no calculator to figure out how many units of something we need to order. I show them long form, as well as lattice and partial product multiplication. Once they see there is more than one way to write the problem and get the answer, they get into it. To learn more about Fibonacci's lattice method, see [link removed]

We also watch math videos. One useful and amusing one was made by a Monty Python actor. It is called _The Story of One_ starring Terry Jones.

The point of all of this is to lighten up math and make it fun. I used to be very serious when teaching math, but I changed my tune when I saw a college professor teaching a remedial Algebra course and making patterns using lightning bolts and hand prints to teach recognizing sequences in a series. Every time he wrote a bolt, he made a sizzling noise. Every time he wrote a hand print, he said, "splat!" The college age students started copying what he did, and it dawned on me that they were having fun while also learning to see patterns. "sizzle, splat; sizzle, sizzle, splat, splat; sizzle, sizzle, sizzle, splat, splat, splat" meant the pattern was nsub1=1 nsub2=2 nsub3=3 or 1,2,3...Nsubn+1 so the idea became nsubn+1= the next number in the series. I figured that if 19 year olds enjoyed it, 10 year olds would love it. He was the one who told me about _The Story of One_.

I hope this kind of approach helps you next year. It has certainly improved my students' performance by leaps and bounds.

Apr 27, 2011

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Pil On 4/16/11, double OMG wrote: > I usually try and be supportive when I post on this site, and I'm sure > the person who posted this was just busy and typing fast, like we all > are... but this response contains a lot of common errors in teaching > math, and I'd like to take a little time to acknowledge it. Our U.S. > children are fai...See MoreOn 4/16/11, double OMG wrote: > I usually try and be supportive when I post on this site, and I'm sure > the person who posted this was just busy and typing fast, like we all > are... but this response contains a lot of common errors in teaching > math, and I'd like to take a little time to acknowledge it. Our U.S. > children are failing in mathematics across the nation, and we need to > help them enter a global economy in just a few short years. > > Yes, cross multiplication works, but it leaves the students with > absolutely no conceptual understanding of what they are doing. Tricks > shouldn't be taught until students have an understanding of what they > are actually doing, and even then -- think twice before teaching > shortcuts. > In 5th grade, students should learn and be able to recognize in all > forms the benchmarks that are used for estimation (1/4, 1/3, 1/2, 2/3, > 3/4, .25, .33 show them how and why it is a repeating decimal and needs > to be rounded, .5, .66, etc. ) -- > > In regards to "the Secret One trick. for example: .257 = 1,000. So you > say 257 thousandths." .257 never equals 1,000. It is two hundred and > fifty seven thousandths or 257 parts of 1,000 parts of one whole. > > Mathematical language should be integrated into everything you do. > Never refer to fractions as the top or bottom numbers -- always the > numerator and the denominator, and teach that percent means "per" out of > "cent" one hundred (as in cents, century, centipede) > > I don't agree with this either... >> Make sure you have them add and subtract fractions vertically, so it >> will prompt them to get common denominators. > Solving horizontal calculations require a higher level of thinking. > >>Tell them the big number goes on top. > PLEASE always refer to numbers and greater and lesser, not bigger and > smaller. Bigger and smaller relates to size, greater and lesser > describes value. > >> Multiplying is not too bad, but they have to learn how to make mixed >> numbers improper. That takes awhile > > Something you may want to try to have students figure this concept out > for themselves with your coaching. Start with manipulatives such as > fraction circles or bars, then drawings (bars are easier to partition > than circles) and doing a lot of it mentally first -- keep reminding > them that fractions are division problems and when you check division > problems you use inverse operations and help them see that that's what > they are doing, just in a different form. > > I hope this didn't come across and b*tchy, it's just a topic that's > important to me. > Thanks for listening....

LOVED your post!

Thank you for taking the time to point out these things. If standards for mathematical learning are not set very early, students will suffer for the rest of their lives. Middle school, high school, college will all be much more challenging for them and, if not successful, will severely limit their opportunities later in life. I know it's difficult when we have to play catch-up from a previous year, but that is because shortcuts were taken in those prior years. Unfortunately, once in a while, someone decides it's "not that important" or feels uncomfortable with the material themselves to teach it properly. The result is a compounding of problems for the next teacher in the next grade.

Aug 9, 2013

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ebooks

by t

Mar 27, 2011

I am looking sites to download resource ebooks to use in class for math and social studies. I have looked at evan moor, key bookshope, and teacher created. Anyone know of other sites?

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Bridget [link removed]

Mar 27, 2011

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PedagoNet You can search here to find all the resources you need

Apr 20, 2011

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