Etch 'n Sketch Reflections

Well, Easter is upon us, and for our school that means a long weekend. We have off Thursday, Friday, and Monday. This is our spring break. For me personally, I don't mind our spring break being just a long weekend (my family doesn't do the getaway vacation), but I can understand others wanting a week-long break.  Even when we do have break, I end up dedicating some of the time to school anyway, and that day was today so that I can enjoy the rest of the weekend and family time. I like having a quiet day at school to get some long-term planning and prepping done (I'm pretty sure I probably said something similar around Christmas break). This week I gave a spelling assessment to check the students' overall progress with spelling skills, and I use the results to create leveled spelling groups. I took the time today to prep the spelling lists and tests that I will need for the rest of the year. It is a great time saver from a week-to-week standpoint. I can't take credi...

I was doing a little spring cleaning of my email inbox the other day, and I came across an email notification that was from our school district message board for professional staff. The subject for the message was "What Kids With ADHD Need to Learn." I can remember that it had piqued my interest (due to my classroom population), which is why I saved the email with the intent to read it. Clearly that hadn't happened, but I am glad that I kept the email. To my utter joy, I opened the message post to find the article was centered around personalized learning, an educational path that I have been traveling on for the last few years after attending a few conference seminars led by some dynamic teachers. And the author of the article was none other than Katie Novak, who helped to kick-start our school district's UDL journey (which makes sense why the article was shared on the message board in the first place). Katie's articled highlighted several aspects of personaliz...

Last week I wrote about a special problem-solving meeting I participated in to help with some specific behaviors I am seeing in my classroom with a student who has some issues with self-control. During the meeting, the school counselor brought up a forced choice survey that she would do with the student. A forced choice survey gives the students pairs of motivating options in which the student needs to pick one of the options for each pair; the survey then provides data about what motivates the student in the form of receiving adult approval, competitive approval (being able to "show off", peer approval, independent rewards (free choice), and consumable rewards (treats). With the student in question, the results showed that she prefers peer approval followed by adult approval. When thinking about these results, I felt like they really shed some light on some of the things she has said and done in the past. Along with the survey, the website http://www.pbisworld.com/ was als...

If you read last week, you'll know that I had a pretty good week. This week, however, was a busy and exhausting week. There was a lot of energy in our classroom this week (was it the snowstorm on Monday night that did it?), so classroom management was definitely on high alert. This isn't to say that the students were mean to each other or anything like that (they have continued to be fairly respectful to one another), but there was definitely some disrespect when it came to classroom expectations and routines. So, we did a lot of mindful breathing activities and tried to use up some excess energy with GoNoodle videos, along with some consistent reminders and practicing of expectations. I had a problem-solving meeting to discuss a students who has had some pretty serious behavior issues as of late, and it was nice to brainstorm possible solutions with this group. One great resource that I got from the meeting was http://www.pbisworld.com/  It's a nice website that identifi...

...but I think our daily discussions about kindness and respect are finally starting to sink in! I can honestly say that I didn't have a single day this week where I had to scratch my head and think to myself, "Am I just wasting my breath with some of this stuff?" Now, that's not to say that I didn't have some instances this week where I needed to redirect students and explain that there are kinder ways to express their frustrations, but I didn't have to calm a shouting match or separate students to opposite sides of the room. I also didn't have any negative reports from the playground (which is where a lot of the shouting matches stem from to begin with). So, I'm chalking this week up as a win, currently knocking on the table in hopes that I haven't just jinxed my day for tomorrow, and am hoping that we've turned a corner in order to make these last 3 months really successful! Problem solvers of the future! In writing right now, the student...