This will be my first year teaching at Midway Elementary School. These pictures depict what my walls looked like upon entrance to my new room. Lot's of work to do, right? Stay tuned to see my progress!
It has been over 2 years since I utilized my blog and thought this was a great time to start again. During my two year hiatus, I moved from teaching third to second grade at Sunset Acres. This year I'll be teaching second grade at Midway PK-3 Literacy Center. I am excited about the opportunity to work with new students, as I am each year, but this year will bring new challenges. The partnerships and connections that were made will be missed, but I look forward to what's on the horizon. Below is our final class project from the 2013-2014 school year.
While teaching, we find ourselves differentiating instruction to meet our student's needs on a regular basis. In addition to differentiation, we are finding ourselves going back to teach the prerequisites needed in order for our students to be successful on their third grade GLE's. Instead of assuming that they were taught these skills, we are introducing concepts that our Comprehensive Curriculum says should have been previously taught. We are also paying more attention to the vertical alignment of our objectives and how they are to be assessed so that we are better preparing them for
I was asked if having a theme is beneficial in encouraging class unity. My decision to have a bee theme this year had nothing to do with unity. When I thought about my classroom this year, I questioned whether or not I could find a mascot that could provide a positive correlation for my students. I didn't want to send any subliminal messages with monkeys or monsters, so I thought bees would work well. Bees are hard workers and yes, they do work together for a common goal. My initial thought of bees were "Busy bees". For unity, I'll be facilitating a lot of class building and team building activities to encourage unity. My previous theme was "Become a part of our puzzle" and the students decorated a piece of our class puzzle and we put it together. It's remains an underlying theme and will each year because as the "Bee-come a part of our hive" they'll decorate a piece of our class hive puzzle piece and we'll put that together as well. Our theme will be reference throughout the year (staying busy, using time wisely, working together, and etc.). So to answer the question, yes, a class theme can be used for unity, but it was not selected originally for that purpose.
Although we'll be off a week from our graduate courses, the school year begins for us next Thursday. I've taken the last couple of weeks to make sure that my classroom was somewhat organized. I put up all of my bulletin boards this week, and will spend next week planning and making sure all of my handouts and student information is prepared. Of course, this will only happen after I'm finished with the wonderful staff development meetings. I can breathe somewhat now, but now it's time for the hard stuff. Below are some pictures of my progress (compare to where I started below).
For this year, we were moved to another wing of the school. When told about the move, I felt that it was a great idea and I was delighted to move to this area because this was the newest building at the school. The only problem is...unpacking. We boxed everything up and moved them the last day of school last year. Now I have the lovely job of unpacking and reorganizing this madness. Daily, I'm making dents in the piles of books and manipulatives that I've collected and it's coming along. I truly believe teachers are the ultimate pack rats and looking at my mountains of items is forcing me to purge. I will definitely think again before accepting items that I know that I don't have an immediate use for. I'll keep you posted on my status. This picture was taken after 2 days of unpacking. It looked somewhat better when I left today. I believe I'll actually be able to start decorating on Monday.
This week we are having our 5-Day Kagan Cooperative Learning Workshop. My last year in Marshall, there was a big Kagan initiative, so I had previously attended a 2 day training there. I brought from it quite a few ideas and structures that i felt would work in my classroom. The things that I learned did help engage my students during some activities, but because this was just a 2 day training, I did not receive training on all of the structures and methodology for the program. So, of course, I did not use the entire program.
The first couple of days were refreshers of what I'd learned previously, but were beneficial, because I can actually remember some of the research based information that was shared. I actually listened and remember the difference between cooperative learning and basic group work. Because, I'm attending the full 5-day training, I'll actually get to see all of the structures in action and can maybe take more away to use within my classroom. From this training I believe that I will be able to take away a few more tools for my toolbox. I'm just glad I had the opportunity to attend the full training, because two days gives you a jaded view of everything, and basically touched only the tip of the iceberg.
In our Reading in the Content Area class on Tuesday, Dr. Sargent allowed us to participate in an activity that modeled some of the same components of a strategy that was mentioned today in the workshop. It's interesting to me that now that I am in this program, I listen more intently to the explanations of how and why the activities or resources being introduced at workshops are beneficial to my students. When presented with evidence of research, whether or not I understand it all, I pay attention, because not everything works for my students and I must determine if the practices being introduced were tested and are proven to work.
My, oh my, where has the summer gone. The school year is quickly approaching and I can't help but question how will I balance my graduate studies with the "Back to School" duties. Normally, I'd be planning my classroom layout and attempting to decide on a theme for my classroom. At this point, I have no desire to do so. My grade level met earlier this week to discuss our lesson planning procedures, and still I can't get into the swing of things mentally. I know that ultimately, I'll make the adjustments needed to manage both worlds, but it's not going to be easy.
After the first day of Differentiated Instruction training, I was a little flustered as to how I was going to fit the documentation into our lesson plan format for the Leveled Questioning and Leveled Reading passages because it seemed like it would be an excessive amount of work. Fortunately, on Day 2 the presenter showed us other ways to differentiate instruction and basically told us that "everything wasn't for everybody" and we could pick and choose what works for us. We were presented with various foldable techniques as well as the format for using Choice Boards to facilitate differentiated instruction. I was somewhat familiar with using Choice Boards, but now I understand the structure. We had been leveling the actual assignments on the Choice Boards, but the presenter advised us that the goals should be the same. This way, each student is working towards mastery of the particular standard, but at his or her ability level. In addition to Choice Boards, she spoke of Tiered Assignements and centers (Workstations) that we had been using. This workshop was really beneficial for me, because it was nice to have a better understanding on exactly what differentiation looks like and what I had been doing correctly and what needs to be done to better meet the needs of my students. I also was able to collaborate with other teachers in the district and got ideas for my data wall and increasing its value to the students.
Today, was the first of a 3-day Differentiated Instruction training held by our District. Differentiated instruction is one of those topics that has been an issue amongst teachers in our area because the specifications have been inconsistant. One day, we're told to do one thing and the next, we have to include something else. So, this training will give me the insight that I need to make sure that I am prepared to differentiate my instruction while working smarter, not harder.