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!