I’ve just finished a card sort to go along with the money content cards. You may want to consider using both. I’ve also included four idea sheets for using the content cards with students. The idea sheets are designed to align with Virginia’s Standards of Learning (3rd grade), but if you teach the basic money concepts, they’ll work for you as well.
Download a set of the money sort cards and enjoy using them! Don’t forget to come back and share your own good ideas here!
1.There is a front and back side to this content card. Even at the third-grade level, there’s a lot of information for students to learn.
2.Use this as a study card for students. But remember that any time you have a visual for students, you want to make sure to use it as a teaching tool. I know you know this, but don’t focus on all of the parts at once. Draw the attention of your students to the card as you teach the different parts in your lessons.
3.Show students how to use a piece of paper to cover the parts of the chart you’re not working with.
Click here to download the Money Content Cards.
Questions? Just email me: Datadeb@successlineinc.com
This content card is designed for elementary school students. If you like this one, just let me know and I’ll add to the content for middle and high school students.
I’ve been working with a few different ways to unpack standards so that they are easily accessbile to teachers. This is a grade-four standard for measurement. Actually, this is PART of the standard for measurement. For this part of the “test”, I’ve focused on just the measurement of length in U.S. customary units. (The part of the standard dealing with the measurement of length in the metric system will be a different post.)
Download a copy of the entire document, which includes links to other documents I’ve created or found for this part of the standard.
Here’s what you’ll find: (1) The first “cut” of unpacking the measurement standard, (2) a link to the content card I designed for this part of the standard, (3) a link to analysis questions for the content card, (4) links to downloadable rulers, (5) links to sample released test items for parts of the standard where they exist, (6) a link to a foldable for that can be started with this part of the standard, and (7) a link to a record-keeping sheet entitled, Estimate Then Measure, that I created for one of the objectives in the unpacked standard.
You’ll find my unpacking results (which I’ll continue to tweak), a set of beginning ideas for instructional strategies and assessments, and a vocabulary list with definitions/descriptions. When you look at the vocabulary list you’ll notice that I’ve included the core terms for the whole standard – and not just what is represented in this part of the unpacked standard. So while this document deals with U.S. customary units, I’ve included vocabulary for the metric unit as well. My reasoning for doing this is to provide the core vocabulary in one place.
So I’ve got the idea started. What would you suggest to improve this? Anything goes!
If you’ve ever worked with me, you know the importance I place on the content that students learn. Of course we want students to think deeply, but we want them to think deeply about something – the content we want them to learn. Here’s another example of a content card – this one for fourth-grade mathematics. This one is for measuring length in U.S. customary units. A content card for measuring length in metric units will be next. Don’t forget to subscribe to my blog and you’ll automatically be notified when I make any posts.
Download a pdf copy of the content card.
I’ve also included a list of analysis questions for this content card. Remember that the purpose of the analysis questions is to help students learn to work with the information on the card. There are two pages to the following download.
Download a pdf of the Analysis Questions for the Content 
Card, Measuring Length.
There’s a lot of information related to the use of word walls – it’s one of those topics where you can never have enough ideas. I’ve included some of my own in an eight page downloadable handout. Check it out to see if there’s a new idea or two for you to use. In this piece, I focus on word walls for MATHEMATICS.
Here is an example of a standard that needs to be unpacked.
W.PS.01.01 Michigan
Develop personal style in oral, written, and visual messages in both narrative (e.g., natural language, specific action, emotion) and informational writing (e.g., sequence, specific vocabulary, visual representations).
Remember that part of unpacking a standard is determining what it is you want students to learn. The standard provides insight as to what to include in the unpacking. For the narrative writing, the standard states to develop personal style using natural language, specific action, and emotion. For informational writing, the student is expected to develop personal style in sequencing, specific vocabulary, and visual representations.
Here’s how I unpacked this piece after brainstorming with a wonderful group of first-grade teachers. If you’re like me, it helps to see the big picture of the standard – which includes the content.
Once you’ve unpacked the standard, you have a content tool to use throughout the school year. The list of actions gives you words at your fingertips you can use when talking with your first-grade students. The list of emotions does the same. In the sequence list, you’ll see starter ideas for the good things you’re already doing with your students; intentionally use sequencing words with students. As for the column that lists visual representations, remember to pull out those sequence words and use them again and again and again.
A part of developing curriculum is that of determining core vocabulary a student needs in order to learn the concepts we want them to learn. How important are words?
Take a look at this list of words I once shared with a group of Earth Science teachers. I asked teachers to take the list and circle the words they had confidence their students would know at the moment in timeI asked them to do the task. The time of the year was late spring – and just weeks away from a state test that students would be taking.
I also asked teachers to count the number of words they circled and figure out the percent of words they thought their students knew. (This is an easy one since I put one hundred words on the list.) We then looked at the data.
In a room of forty three teachers, not one indicated that their own students would know over fifty percent (50%) of the words on the list. Now why is this important? Because these words came from a state test; from the released test items for Earth Science for the prior year’s end-of-course test. Now why is that important? If students do not know the words, they will not perform well on the test – whether it’s a state test or one of your own. And guess whose job it is to make sure students learn the words? That’s right – the classroom teacher, who hopefully teachers the words and related concepts in a direct and explicit way.
So here’s what I like to do. Whenever I develop vocabulary lists, I like to look at the content words from released test items. This is not the only place to go, but it is one source of developing solid lists. If you haven’t done this yet for the tests for which you are accountable, give it a try. Just go through each test item and circle all of the content words that students need to know in order to answer the questions. Then use those words to refine your own vocabulary lists. You’ll end up with lists that you really like to use.
One part of unpacking standards is clarifying what it is we want students to learn. It is not enough to simply look at nouns and verbs in curricular statements; we’ve got to go beyond that and figure out the specific content that students must learn.
One way to do this is to make a content card using Frayer’s Model for vocabulary development. The idea of using the model is to figure out the key content students should learn for a standard. The visual below is a content card that I finished today.
Download a copy Content Card, Scatterplot.
To get to the information for the card, I reviewed the following for a standard from the Commonwealth of Virginia: Standards of Learning for Mathematics, Curriculum Framework, Enhanced Scope and Sequence, and Released Assessments.
I enjoy working with these and I’ll continue to post any that I do.
This is a Math Operations Chart you may want to use to help students learn key vocabulary related to basic math operations.
I also designed a brief teacher’s sheet with notes to go along with this. The teacher’s sheet has questions you can use with students to help them learn to read and use the chart.
Things to Download
