Timing is EVERYTHING

Today is December 12th, and as of today, we have totaled 11 and half inches of snowfall this week in good ol' GR. Last year, it took until January 21st to get to this amount. And WHEN has this delightfully delicious snow been falling may you ask? Oh between the hours of 7:30 am and 4:30 pm each day of course. Thus, timing is everything. If this snow had chosen to make its grand entrance during the wee hours of the night at any point, we would have had a snow day or two. Instead, we have had indoor recess, frigid dismissal, and interesting commutes home due to the freezing windchill and nonstop snow. I take that back, it does stop snowing, AT NIGHT. :) Gotta love that whining you hear from all the teachers kids about not having a snow day. Now before I start sounding like a meteorologist, let's talk about what we have been doing all week during this time AT SCHOOL. :)

A few weeks ago, I blogged about increasing the amount of writing my students are doing for math as well as making sure this writing involved rigor and critical thinking. To do this, I created C-E-R (Claim-Evidence-Reasoning) journals for my students, and I am really starting to see my students take flight with this.

Each day, my students respond to an open ended story/prompt by making a claim (What do you think?), providing evidence (What proof do you have to support your claim?), and tying it all together with some reasoning (How does your proof support your claim?). Check out some of their work!

My students were given the prompt, "Carl uses base-ten blocks to represent numbers. He makes the number 72." My students came up with different claims like Carl had 5 tens and 22 ones, or Carl had 6 tens rods and 12 ones cubes. They were using the concept of trading beautifully, and I could hardly stand it when I saw a student make a data table without any prompting!

To download your own copy of the CER template to use, click here.

Now it's time for me to put on the boots and go shovel up some of that snow! :)