Etch 'n Sketch Reflections

Last week I posted on how frustrating writing time had been to get the kids settled in for the mini-lesson and that I was going to be getting help with ClassDojo from some of my awesome colleagues who spend time in my room during writing time. Well, I am happy to say that it has been really successful! I'm talking like "night and day" successful! You wouldn't believe how nicely those kids sat when I pulled out my Chromebook, handed to Mrs. Higgins, and said that she was going to be giving out Dojo points to students who were showing attentive listening :-) So I want to give a big THANK YOU to Mrs. Higgins, Mrs. Neerhof, and Mrs. Dahm for all your help with this! I've used ClassDojo in the past, and I'll be honest, I've had my ups and downs with it. I think it is more challenging to use consistently when you aren't able to give points as they happen (trying to remember points after a lesson is tricky, and I don't think teaching a lesson and handli...

Trying to teach an energetic group of third graders is tough. Doing it while being sick is even tougher. Now, I'm not talking about "race-to-the-bathroom-praying-you-will-make-it" sick; this is just a case of stuffiness, an occasional cough, and a bit of a sore throat that gets pretty raspy by the end of the day. Just that good-old common cold that comes with the territory and what DayQuil was made for. I'll be perfectly honest--this was not my most productive week. I longed for those quiet moments of the day. Taking a day off to rest up probably wouldn't have done much, and making sub plans is sometimes just as much work as being at school, so the short week really helped make it easier. This week brought about some changes in our classroom, and it was exciting! We are into our Daily 3 and Daily 5 groups for math and literacy. I've been chomping at the bit to get these going, and the students are handling it pretty well (for the most part). There are a co...

I'm going to keep this one pretty short because, well, it's late and I'm tired. It's been a really busy week with some ups and downs. I had my first sub of the year on Tuesday while I was doing my reading testing on the students. Overall, it was a pretty successful day! The sub said she would be willing to come back if I needed her again :-) I knew it would be tricky with the whole not having assigned seats and not even regular classroom seats, but she was a trooper and saw the benefits to the setup based on the needs of the students. I also identified something important for this year when planning for a sub: I need to get my sub plans finished early enough (when I know in advance) so that I can share them with the sub before she even gets to my room. With the soft start to our school day and students being in the rooms, it doesn't really provide the sub with time prepare and read over the plans as it did in the past. So that is definitely something to work on... ...

Last week my post was about how I had finally started incorporating choice into the students' Daily 5 rounds with a rocky start. Well, I'm happy to say that we've seen some nice improvements. Yes, obviously, we aren't going to see perfection, which would be impossible, but I was really proud of what I've seen from my students as we increase the amount of choice this past week. The eventual goal is for me to be able to run small groups with students while the rest of the class is on task with their Daily 5 literacy activities (and Daily 3 math activities, which we've also been practicing). As of right now, I'm not running these small groups until the students are capable of independently managing themselves during our math and literacy times and I have collected more reading data to create the groups. I'm doing some individual reading testing next Tuesday, so I'll have a substitute in the classroom while I'm testing students (I imagine my first su...

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...