Etch 'n Sketch Reflections

Well, I'll be honest, today was one of those "just breathe" days (feel free to review my post from a couple weeks ago :-) For our Daily 5 Literacy structure, we've practiced...and practiced...and practiced...so it was time to incorporate some choice into the students' literacy block. We recently started slow with just a couple choices, and today they had three (Read to Self, Work on Writing, and Read to Someone). There are certain expectations that the students should abide by during these times (keeping a quiet volume, staying on one place, working the whole time, etc), and we practice building stamina for our Daily 5 rounds so that the students can maintain the expectations. For the most part, the students as a whole did pretty well, but there were some definite instances during our rounds today that would have resulted in my having to ring the signal bell to indicate that stamina had been broken. There were a few cases of students quietly talking during indivi...

I'll be honest, I'm not big on talking on the phone. I'd rather put my thoughts into an email or a text. But when it comes to school issues, sometimes a phone call can be a powerful tool to fix a problem. Not to mention that there are some situations where trying to describe an event that happened at school is too challenging to do in an email. And let's not forget how the phrase "Do we need to call your parents?" can cause a change in behavior pretty quickly. For the past few weeks I've been collecting some data on a few students who are "frequent flyers" to the nurse's office or have an "emergency" need to use the bathroom (when the parents haven't already indicated an issue with these areas). Making a few phone calls to check in with parents on these emergencies has helped to clear up many of these unnecessary exits from the classroom. Let's be honest-it's the beginning of the year and some students want to see what...

I'll be honest, today was a tiresome day. My students seemed more amped up than usual. So I tried something today that I haven't been able to do with my class in awhile--mindful breathing. I had attempted it several times last year with my class, but I had several boys who seemed to make it their mission to get their classmates to laugh during our mindful breathing sessions. So after some reflecting, I decided it was best to not offer them an audience. But this is a new year, and a new group of students, and I don't really have those attention seeking entertainers, so I thought it was worth a shot. In my daily schedule, we have a TRIBES/Mindfulness time to allow for community building opportunities and moments of reflection. This time period is right after recess, so I figured some mindful breathing might be good for them to cool down a little. When the students came in from recess, I put on some music from the Nature Sounds channel on Pandora. I let that softly play...

Launching...that has been the big buzzword around school the last couple of years. It's the new way of identifying that oh-so-important process of getting the students acclimated to the routines and procedures of the classroom, and as every teacher knows, it's about practice, practice, practice. This morning all the students had special assemblies for launching behavioral expectations, and while we were in the lunchroom, our food service director mentioned that it takes 6 WEEKS to develop a habit. 6 WEEKS! I thought that was interesting, so I looked it up, and that was pretty close to what I found (my brief research on the topic was that, on average, it takes 66 days). But, of course, every child is different and hardly "average". Our new before-school procedures, choosing a seat in a flexible seating classroom, creating a cooperative environment, eating in the cafeteria, walking in the hallway, playing on the playground, riding on the bus, Math Daily 3, Reading Dai...