Five Great Things for December 17, 2015

I forgot to get this done earlier, but am taking a moment to reflect here now. Five great things from today (and yesterday):

• In math we did some quick group presentations teaching each other to simplify algebraic expressions using models. Every group was able to clearly explain how to use a model to simply their expression. 
• Students worked on comparing the governments of a few early civilizations using an H diagram. They had the information and I ultimately was just getting out of their way. All they needed from me was to give them time and help them stay focused. I tried to ask a few questions as I watched them work to further some thinking, but ultimately they seemed to have the task down. 
• Today we accomplished a closing circle activity and dismissal better than any day I can think of in my entire career. The efficiency and volume of dismissal today was fantastic. 
• I'm pretty sure I figured out who my Secret Santa is!
• I attended a parent conference for my son at daycare. It's amazing how just being present and caring can make a huge difference. It felt good to just hear some specifics and get to sit with his primary teacher 1:1, even if he is 2 (turning 3 in March). 

That is five for now. I'll try to jump on and get five more tomorrow. We have school next week for three days though so I'm sure I'll make at least one post then. 

Five Great Things for December 14, 2015

Five great things about today:

• I made it through a Monday. It really seems this year Mondays are just tough. Once I get rolling though the rest of the weeks seems to work pretty well.
• I met with two small groups in Math and think I got most of them to master the concept of evaluating expressions with adding and subtracting integers. They all got the problems right, but some took a few more tries than others and needed additional feedback/teaching.
• I think my new "guided reading" structure is starting to work. I just use ten minutes. 5 minutes teach, 5 minutes read, then a quick share. I try to meet every day and squeeze it in. So far in three days of adjusting my structure I have had much more productive meetings.
• Again I did conferencing on writing through Google docs and saw much more engagement in working on their writing. Hopefully we can get these essays done before break. 
• I wrote five great things about today! 

See you again tomorrow!

Five Great Things for December 11, 2015

Today I did a lot of great things ... here are a few:

• I got back on top of my class updates and wrote then sent one out to parents!
• We did writing in a Google doc today and I was able to conference with a lot more students when attempting to do it through Google Docs. I also had a nice relaxing atmosphere. It was a little too quiet, but I think with continued work we can create a buzz around the writing where kids are having quiet conversations and providing feedback as well as just writing. However, I feel like I was a lot more productive and had more quality writing conferences to help my students today using Google Docs as the tool.
• I have my plans set and am ready for Monday (I just realized I forgot to set up my board, so I'm going to do that now and come back to this.)
• I am finally getting around to having my students finish organizing the room.
• I was able to have some effective math conferences and help students make more sense of the distributive property when working with algebraic expressions. 

Have a great weekend!

Five Great Things for December 10, 2015

I should probably just do a bulleted list and not bother with this introduction ... I am never sure what to write here. Here are the five great things from today:

• After reviewing, reflecting, and making adjustments to our arrival procedures students are really getting the hang of it. All agendas have been accounted for for three consecutive days!
• I made plans with two students to get their agendas signed each day. 
• We showed excellent assembly behavior again while watching a chorus concert.
• I had some fun conversations with students during outside time.
• Math class did a great job starting to go from the concrete (algebra tiles) or the abstract (just drawing pictures of them).  Hopefully now my video lecture tonight will serve them well building on their skills with simplifying algebraic expressions using the distributive property. 

That's five for today. I am hoping one tomorrow is that I finished my lesson plans!

Five Great Things for December 9, 2015

Here are five great things about today ...

• I am taking time to make this post about five great things for today!
• I have all my students registered for my class on code.org!
• Today in Math we introduced algebra tiles and it went pretty well. The students were excited and learning how to work with the manipulative. 
• Today students were very successful during our daily 5 working time. I met with a reading group and students seemed to be working productively.
• We did some reading on some environmental issues for science and students did very well highlighting support for their answers in the text. 

That's five! Time to go pick up the kids from daycare!

Five Great Things for December 8, 2015

I am back and here to reflect on five great things. I was home with my sick son yesterday so I'll focus on today.

• I rolled out the use of code.org and started to have kids register for my class on code.org.
• We had some powerful reflection and a great morning getting ready for the day.
• We attended our first school wide assembly today and our behavior was fantastic.
• I am writing these five things!
• I made it through the day and didn't receive a phone call from daycare, so my son must be healthy!

That's all for today, I'll be back again tomorrow. 

Five Great Things from December 3, 2015

Today was an awesome day! I am a bit late in getting to this, but just prepping for taking a half day tomorrow and next week ...

• Today students presented science fair projects that were done entirely at home and blew me away. I wasn't sure what to expect and had low expectations, but they just blew me away. Good to know for future at home assignments. 
• I finished grouping students and analyzing data for my SLO (teacher evaluation thing) to target some specific skills in Math. I am excited to really hit the ground running with these groupings and data collection. I can't wait to see the kids growth. 
• Math class today did really well with a strategy of pass the problem. They also asked some great questions about plugging values into expressions and using calculators. 
• Today we started using some calculators in math and it went really well. I got to show a few kids how to use the exponent button and they thought it was cool.
• I am going to go home before the night time science fair display starts (so I get to avoid the incoming parent traffic).

That's all for today, have a good night and see you tomorrow!

Five Great Things from December 2, 2015

Alright today was a day where I didn't see my students at all so five great things is extra challenging!

• I didn't have any bad news from the sub covering my class today while I attended meetings!
• It looks like students were able to complete a math scavenger hunt without me! Thanks to my awesome video probably. Or maybe a few of them understood the concept and helped everyone else out (that would be ideal).
• We were able to really get close to planning out our next unit today during our meeting. Hopefully we can have the whole things planned before we start teaching it!
• I participated in a book study on Inquiry Circles and really took away some powerful thinking about how to teach students to be inquirers along with use of digital resources in the classroom. I have work to do, but have reflected and seen that I am already doing some powerful things. 
• I'm almost done organizing data from a math quarterly assessment so I can plan small group instruction for students over the next several weeks!

Woohoo! Time to head home! See you tomorrow!

Five Great Things For December 1, 2015

Two days in a row time to keep the greatness streak going!

• Today I am leaving fully prepped for tomorrow and am leaving the sub with some activities that should actually be beneficial for students and not just busy work. 
• I read aloud to my students for a second day in a row and they are really listening to and working toward understanding the text.
• We used to read aloud to make claims about traits the main character has using a Google Doc. The students are getting used to a brainstorming strategy I've used as a whole class a few times. Where I give them all access to a blank document and ask a question. They then respond in the document and I call out their responses whole class. This can be chaotic, but once they get used to it it really generates some great ideas for whole class writing. 
• Students went from our meeting area to having a blank Google doc open and attached to the assignment in under 3 minutes. This is huge progress and very close to the amount of time it would take them to set up their notebook.
• I feel my writing lesson really made students better writers today and am really excited to see how we progress and grow on our literary essay unit.

See you again tomorrow! Have a great night!

Five Great Things from November 30, 2015

I am glad to be back from a nice long Thanksgiving break. I am really thankful to be able to make the time to reflect each day and keep doing great things every day. Here are just five that I want to celebrate today.

• I made it through the day. Sometimes the toughest days are the ones returning from breaks. That and my 2 month old daughter started at daycare today. I am going to go pick up both kids at daycare for the first time in a few minutes once I finish this post, but no news all day is probably good news. 
• I am taking a few minutes to reflect and highlight the positive parts of my day. That is a success, especially since I missed the last day of school before break.
• This online program we use for math today worked very well thanks to someone organizing the laptop cart. I am not sure exactly who did it, but it helped tremendously and hopefully will ensure we can log in every Monday when it is our day for using the software. I was actually able to meet with several small groups while students worked. Meaning I wasn't troubleshooting technical issues and actually teaching math most of the class. 
• I got read aloud back into my daily schedule. I read for about ten minutes, and am very happy as I think I can keep it back in as part of the daily routine. 
• I was able to integrate Google docs as part of students writing notebooks today during our writing workshop. I hope to transition to these exclusively and today was a big success in getting over the technology hurdle. That and the lesson went pretty smooth.

Have a great evening and I'll be back tomorrow!

Five Great Things for November 18th and 19th, 2015

Last night I stayed until 6 ... but I get to have Tuesday off as a result so yay! Anyway, I'm just going to combine the last two days since yesterday was so full I didn't have time to reflect before I left.

• Today I got to reflect before I left work! That is such a critical piece to look back and pick out the positives.
• 100% of students who signed up for conferences attended student led conferences! 
• I found some good resources for laws in ancient civilizations to teach the class from after Thanksgiving Break.
• We close to being back on schedule with our current unit on early civilizations after falling behind to build some awesome digital portfolios of our work. 
• I was just told I needed to go home on time today and not stay until 4:00 like I usually do. By administration. So that is pretty good and I'm going to go home now. 

See you tomorrow!

Five Great Things for November 17, 2015

Well after losing a lot of sleep last night due to a crying baby and toddler deciding 3 AM was time to play, I will start off today's good things with just making it through the day.

• I made it through the day.
• Students did an excellent job of taking notes on the characteristics of civilization. 
• Students in math became curious about the order of operations which is our next topic. This is great so they will hopefully be able to learn them easier since they are already curious about it.  This happened organically though some classwork that involved some different operations, and I made a mistake in the problem. So we had to figure out how to fix my mistake and learned the appropriate order of operations. 
• Most students were working hard and diligently at listening to their dystopian novel and writing down questions to discuss in groups. 
• I am starting to get some comfort level with the content on Mesopotamia and early civilizations from teaching, research, and planning. Thus allowing me to maybe start creating some video lectures to help students access the information and apply it in a way to fits our unit and standards. 

Tomorrow is student led conferences after school. I hope to find a chance to write a post, but they last until 6. Let's hope I can get on here and post five great things!

Five Great Things for November 16, 2015

Today  had plenty of great things so I'll try to capture a few of them in these five.

• I successfully met with "small groups" that were large, provided some instruction, took an exit ticket and lowered the group size down to something more manageable to work in small groups with. There were some students who were having trouble adding integers and determine how to handle each problem based on the signs of the numbers. So we reviewed, did an exit ticket on an index card, and I called back to the small group table those who still needed a bit more help to review some more. 
• Students have really grown in their ability to take two and three column notes. I am seeing a lot more engaged and focused note taking. This is good because I feel like my modeling is starting to pay some small dividends. 
• I managed to record a math video on dividing rational numbers with my new stylus pen and it was awesome. I can't wait to keep using this pen to make more videos. I'm really doing well with this work flow and this pen will make the videos easier for students to understand. My handwriting is messy enough with a pen. Having to decipher it when I write with my finger is tough. 
• I reached out again to all my parents to schedule student led conferences. I have almost 100% scheduled.
• I am working on a second week of daily reflections listing five great things about the day. It is a fantastic way for me to reflect, highlight the positive, and head home on a good note.

See you all tomorrow! 

Five Great Things for November 13, 2015

Today went really well! Doesn't ever day? Here are five things that were great today.

• I again started math class on time and told every student they mattered.
• In math we worked on a puzzle and students really persevered through the problem even though is was pretty big and challenging. I told them how awesome that was of them.
• I met with all of my "literature circle" groups this week. Yeah, I know if I'm meeting with them it isn't literature circles. I'm modifying it to help build success later in the year. 
• I found a problem in my schedule and have a plan to change it. Just switching which groups I pull during daily 5 time to make sure students are all here for their group.
• I have more than half my students done with their portfolios and ready to plan their student led conference on Monday afternoon! The rest are close to finishing as well, we were mentally drained from all the intense reflecting today!

I do have a question I need to work on finding the answer to though. While I am trying to create every day and share my positive thoughts (mainly to build my own positivity muscle), I would like to share with the world. I need to find a way to quickly tweet out my blog posts when I make them. Maybe the If This Then That thing I have heard about? I'll explore that next week. Have a great weekend!

Five Great Things November 12, 2015

So looking at three days in a row ... does that count as one of the great things? It always could!

• I was able to start math class on time again, starting with a ten minute warm up/greeting. This is where students rewatch last nights homework video, work on finish/starting notes (if they didn't do them), and I check homework. Most importantly I individually tell each student that they matter. It seems like a silly thing, but the kids actually enjoy and appreciate it. 
• We made some more growth and progress in setting up our digital portfolios and one student has uploaded and reflected on the six main pieces of work needed for our student led conferences!
• The students suggested that we change our writing assignment to writing about characters they are more interested in (I had assigned a text to read from). So we are going to be writing about the characters from our Dystopian novels instead. I look forward to hearing about the characters from The Hunger Games, Divergent, and The Giver. 
• I have established some healthy workflow routines in creating math and word study videos. This includes videos for five word study groups. Although I usually can use old videos for 2/5 groups so I'm only making three a week. Basically I'm averaging 3 math, and 3 word study videos created each week. It is feeling pretty manageable at this point too. 
• My parents are coming to visit the our new baby this weekend and are arriving a day before we expected them!

Here to to coming back tomorrow to write five more things! Have a great day!

5 Great Things For 11/11/15

Today reflecting back on five great things that were accomplished today.

• I actually am making this post again. Yay!
• We rolled out digital portfolios and every student started their portfolio including three subpages for their work.
• I found a few resources on Ancient Greece for student research and to teach from.
• Met with a book story group and received some good feedback about a teaching strategy involving listing prior knowledge and then crossing out misconceptions as you learn about the topic. You also then add in what you learn in another column. 
• I contacted all the parents who hadn't signed up for Student Led Conferences to try to get them to sign up.

On that note, time to get ready for tomorrow!

Five Great Things for 11/10/15

Today I noted five great things that happened in my classroom. Here are are:

• 100% of the students got out their agendas upon arrival to school prior to our morning meeting.
• Students for Math entered the room and began reviewing the previous video/notes while I checked homework and greeting students. We were able to start math promptly ten minutes after students entered the room. 
• Most groups in math were able to correctly identify the rules for products while multiplying integers. Two positive factors is a positive product, one positive and one negative factor is a negative product, and two negative factors is a positive product. 
• Almost the entire class completed notes on interactive maps about the Fertile Crescent and Ancient Egypt. They used a new strategy where they generate prior knowledge or predictions in one column then add what they learn in a second column. Students then crossed out, checked, or placed question marks by their prior knowledge to indicate if it was confirmed, a misconception, or still not sure. 
• During our Daily 5 work time two reading groups successfully met with me. 

Woohoo! Great work today!

Busy Work to Grade?

I have left this blog to the side while I rearrange some priorities in my life and made some significant changes. I wanted to put up a quick post and assure anyone who does follow this I am working on a series of posts about some of my thoughts on the differences in education I've noticed in working in 4 different states professionally and two more if you include student teaching. For now my post is short and poses a question I'm not sure many teachers ask themselves.

Picture yourself overwhelmed with work, say for example grading. You go home at night and you have your family to tend to. You mange to get dinner on the table and the kids aren't throwing a fit. In fact you found a way to keep them busy by letting them watch TV (or insert of activity designed to keep kids occupied and out of your hair). Now you finally have a chance to sit down and do that grading (or what ever other work you brought home). What a relief to be able to accomplish it and your family is perfectly happy. It feels great to be so productive.

Turn this around ... You are in your classroom and found an activity that keeps all of your students occupied, on task, and happy.  Great, now you can go sit down and grade papers.  Wait? Is that what is defined as quality teaching? Yet as teachers we can define that same practice as quality parenting? What would you do give your students busy work so you could grade? Or give your own children busy work so you could grade?

My personal response is that I more often do things to keep my son busy so I can sneak off to "do business" as he puts it. Mainly because it is so frowned upon professionally to keeps kids busy during class time allowing us to do work that can be done outside of class time. I know one priority I have in my head, but don't enforce much, is that my own children are higher on the list than my students. If I were to give students busy work and grade papers it would be doing work at work, so it's not like I'm getting paid to do nothing. Then I'm freeing myself up to spend more time mentally and physically invested in my family.

It's like in education it is frowned upon to try and accomplish any work that can be done when students aren't there while students are there. Doing this may leave us with large burdens to take care of outside of work hours. Which then makes us practice the exact same thing with our own families. Why do educators do this?

Planting Seeds

I sit here after reading an article about my grandfather and think I’ve put some of the pieces together. I am a lot like my grandfather. He was quiet and unassuming. Always looking to make something work better and trying to help make the world better. There are probably a lot more similarities that I'm not aware of too.

Lately I’ve been thinking about my current journey through life both personally and professionally. Honestly, I don’t think there will ever be a clear separation with the two based on my career path in education. I’ve been listening to the EduAllstars podcast and the stories of other educators while thinking of my own story almost daily on my commute into work. All in hopes of gaining clarity about my direction, purpose, and maybe help others here is my story.

It all started when I was a teenager thinking about what I wanted to do with my life. Most of my life had been spent wanting more and desiring more money than what I was used to. I figured I could go into business or sports journalism as I was a huge sports fan and loved money. Then in high school something changed. I went to volunteer at St. Francis Farm where my grandfather ran a catholic worker farm. It was basically a place that churches would send groups to do volunteer work, connect with the community, and connect with the world around them. I really enjoyed my work there, and was able to meet someone who I have lost touch with but influenced me more than he knows (recently found him on Facebook though). His name was Mike (he had a good name) and he ran a free soccer camp each summer for local kids. Mike asked me to volunteer there even though I had never played a minute of organized soccer in my life. That camp made me realize I wanted a profession where I could work with kids every day to influence and make their lives better. I felt I had a lot of life lessons to teach them and could connect with anyone. Seed planted.

Fast forward about 12 years later to when my son was born. That was almost two years ago now. The journey of the next two years I think has led me to finally begin sprouting some of the seeds my grandfather planted throughout my life even without his knowing. I do want to say that when this two year journey has been tough I just imagine how hard it has been for my cousin Meghan who has gone though a much tougher journey the last two years and we share my sons birth date as special for completely different reasons. Thanks to her for her unknown inspiration to me.

When my son was born I started to think about all the great things I wanted to show him and do with him, but I was too focused on myself and too far from my family to see what was coming next. When my son was 9 months old I lived in North Carolina and was a 12 hour car ride or a 2 connection plane ride from most of my family in New York. It was a few days before Christmas when my grandfather passed without the chance to meet my son. I already knew I wanted to be close to family, but I also wanted to continue on in his legacy serving others and helping make the world better. I am a lot like him in that we were both low key, I am becoming more easy going, and we would often times sit back and watch then get up and do it. I was learning the real value of being close to family, but struggling with trying to make an impact in education.

Then a few months later I got started on Twitter. It was a great way for me to connect with other educators. What I am realizing now is that I fit in because of lessons learned from my grandfather. While this was going on we were looking to leave North Carolina and move to Maryland so we could be closer to family. Then I decided that my impact on education would be greater if we went to Texas. I failed to account for the impact having family near by can have. While this journey in Texas has helped me change lives, influence others, make lifelong friends, and made me a better person I think I have learned the value of having family a car ride away. Which is what cost my son a chance to meet one of the greatest people I have ever known.

Here I am now, with a mission. I want to plant seeds in as many people as possible. I need to further my grandfather's cause and purpose to change the world and help others. Imagine if he could have leveraged social media to help him. That is my mission to help others. However, the people on top of that list to help right now are my family. I want to spend most of my time and energy making sure I am making their lives better. Then I will pour myself into education: helping students, teachers, and community members who need me. Hopefully in connecting these dots as I move forward will help me to properly thank my grandfather for all he has done.

Professional Learning

I have been thinking about what professional learning is for a few weeks now. If I were asked this a year ago I would have had a quick answer. It is learning related to my profession. However, now my ideas have changed some.

Professional learning in the field of education is learning about how to be a better teacher. To be a better teacher I need to learn about learning.  Then wouldn’t going through the process of learning improve my teaching? I keep thinking back to a time I had to change the starter in my car which was stuck in our garage. I remember searching online and researching for hours trying to find out how to do this. After spending most of a day I had accomplished the task and fixed the car. This whole process of doing a household chore taught me a lot about learning and failure. It took a lot of failure and retrying to figure out how to get the job done. So was this day a day of professional learning? I think so.

In addition, I know that learning and engagement are strongly related. Also we are most engaged when we have choice, autonomy, and purpose. Too often in our field the autonomy and even the choice is taken out of professional learning. In a field where the purpose is so obvious and important we should do a better job of providing educators with autonomy and choice in their professional learning.

My thoughts are that true professional learning is something done on your own choice with your own time. However, schools need to do a better job of providing educators with more time to pursue this learning. There are many days I find myself too tired and run down after what seems like endless scheduled meetings or things that must be done to complete my own learning. I wish as a teacher I could get some 20% time each week to work on whatever I wanted related to my profession. That would allow my teaching skills to really take off.

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#LoveTeaching

Alright so this week is celebrating the love of teaching by having teachers share why they love teaching. I’ll start out with a blog post and then try to tweet out some examples and maybe have a few more creations throughout the week. 

I love teaching because it allows me to build relationships with kids and create. I can make all sorts of cool things like quick instructional examples to help improve my teaching. Not only that, but I get to test out new ideas and constantly work on improving my instruction as I continually get to know my students. The science behind teaching is what makes me love it. Getting to know what makes your students tick and trying new things to help them learn. When you find something that actually works and motivates students is just amazing. Then I love teaching even more when the thing I found is something I created myself. Well maybe not created myself, but stole and adapted myself. 

Being able to build relationships and create such a wide variety of educational tools or resources for students is why I love teaching. I am excited for this week to keep reminding myself everyday why I love teaching and this has really come at a great time for me!

Reading Menus Part 2

So another week down trying to implement more choice and independent reading in my classroom. I have learned a lot this week about my students. They want to do their work on these menus that I have made for them. Unfortunately, they aren't sure how to select a book to do it with. This is probably due to them always being told what to read and not being asked to select their own text. I also realized most students have trouble picking a book. I asked them why they picked a book and most were not even sure. When I followed up with “What would you like to read?” most fell silent. These barriers have led to some mixed results and also information on where to go next. In addition as I continue my way through The Book Whisperer I gain more inspiration and confidence that I can find something that works for me and my students.

Here are my plans as I go forward.

I am going to get my library reorganized by genre the best I know how. This will help the kids and help me recommend. I started just picking up books reading the blurb and discussing what genre it was only to find half my students wanted to try that book. My students want to read, they just need practice picking their own books. I need to get things more organized for them and help them figure this out.

I am also going to simplify their response work. I will have a skill we focus on during the week and something related to that. Beyond that we will just write blog posts about their books. I'll work with them and encourage their blogging. Basically each week I'll have my students complete something to practice a skill we taught and then write a review, recommendation, or summary on their blog about their reading.

Finally, I am going to utilize some other reading programs that students have access to to help give students some other types of extra practice. In addition only giving me about a third of the class to work on reading with.

These changes might help make some improvements over the last few weeks. We will see how they respond next week.

Reading Menus

The past week or so I took to Twitter to regain some inspiration. I have regained a lot! First of all I want to blog a lot more often, but in shorter chunks. Second I decided to revamp my reading and writing block into something that resembles workshops combined with some Daily 5 structures.

To dive into this I figured I would use reading choice menus. I am not sure what I’ll call them, because they go by many names. I gave out one to students that I had found and made no changes to because it accomplished what I wanted this week anyway.

On the first day the students were told they were to select a nonfiction book of their choice, read it, and complete $50 off the menu. The one I had chosen was broken down by price of nonfiction reading response activities. Immediately the students began doing items from the menu without having read a book. Part of this was due to excitement and part due to the fact you can probably do a lot of nonfiction responses by skimming and scanning without reading an entire book. I facilitated, gritted my teeth and watched things not go entirely as planned. Many students weren’t sure what to do, they began acting out, complaining, or just doing other things. Eventually, most of them got it together and gained some direction in terms of text they were going to work with and which assignments they might try.

Day two went a lot better. Students had direction, and began working on assignments. I circulated asking questions and providing feedback on their work. When we both ended up lost and needing some direction I would suggest they go back and just read some of the book. One huge success I noticed on day two was the poems that students began writing. One option was for students to write poems about the topic. I had a student on day one write a poem about elephants around the whole “Roses are red, violets are blue” style. It rhymed, but the book wasn’t about elephants and it didn’t demonstrate any comprehension of the text. On day two students began writing acrostic poems or looking up poems on the similar topics online and trying to create their own. One set of students were looking for example poems on diamonds and found out how to write a diamante poem. So they began work on writing one of those about a diamond.

Now, things are going great yet, but there has been a lot of improvement in two short days. I can’t wait to see what a whole week brings as I make adjustments to the assignments and time frames. The kids are getting excited and taking advantage of the choice being provided. Hopefully this will continue to grow.