Content and Language Objectives

I need to try to post my content and language objectives more! After taking SIOP last year, I was good about posting them for my first grade classes (I decided to focus on one grade at a time). However with five different grades, I feel overwhelmed to post them all. Plus we only have two whiteboards in the gym (which are usually being used) so it's hard to figure out an area for them. Maybe I could get an easel and just flip through the pages for each grade? Whatever I decide, I need to get back in the swing of posting them!

Can we really fit it all in? Dec./Andrea

Last week I observed Elisa Brent Faire do an hour reader's workshop lesson in a second grade classroom. She managed to do a mini lesson, confer with 3 students, and do 2-3 strategy groups. I have NEVER been able to do that in my classrom. (Mostly because I lose half of my kids in the AM for pull out). I also realized that she did ALOT of planning for only one day of instruction. I know she did alot of planning and prep, especially since she was modeling. I honestly don't think I could do/plan quite that much for just one day. It was nice to see how she used data from a binder (assessments) to drive instruction for a strategy group. I manage to get in two guided reading groups, and conferring with 1-2 students.

In a one hour reader's workshop, what does your hour look like?

Andrea

Overwhelmed with Assessments

My teaching partner and I have been trying to implement a lot new assessments (that are both formal and informal, formative and summative) into our lessons. We are doing some written tests with the older students and checklists for all students. It is so overwhelming to keep record of all the students! We have so many students and such a varying schedule that it is hard to keep track of who has assessed what and when, and who still needs to be checked off. Classroom teachers, do you experience this overwhelming feeling since you have so many assessments to do or is this because we see all the students in the school? Any other specialists have any ideas for record keeping?

Disruptive Class

I have a first grade class that is chatty ALL THE TIME. There are times when I will be teaching and they'll sit and talk with a neighbor. I then ask those who were talking to sit by the wall. Many times when I ask him/her to sit out by the wall, they will sit there for a little while and then they take it upon themselves to crawl around, slide around on their backs on the gym floor. I then remind him/her to sit on their pockets by the wall. I seem to be having the same issues with the same kids consistently. I have had individual conversations with each kid about what is expected, how their grade is impacted, and I remind them frequently to make good choices.

My question: Does anyone have any good management strategies to decrease the frequency of some of these continuous problems?

Andrea/Assessment Update

This week we meet with Elisa (literacy guru working with the literacy cohort this year) to discuss our assessment binders and watch another lesson. I'm excited to see what her strategy groups look like, guided reading, and whole group as well. I recently met with my LC at school, and discussed my progress with an assessment binder for reading/writing. Turns out, my binder is going well, I'm conferring and having lots of guided reading, but I'm not doing much with strategy groups as I planned. I realized that I'm finding more strategies to focus on within my guided reading groups, rather than finding them during conferring. I've realized that regardless of reading ability, all of the students in my guided reading groups need to either review or practice certain strategies.

Are any of you doing full-blown strategy groups for literacy, as well as conferring, AND guided reading? I'm finding it very difficult to find a balance, especially since I lose 13 kids during my literacy block for a half hour for ESL/Title. Thoughts?

November Update

I have been working on my goal of posting and verbalizing content and language objectives during our literacy block. I have found it easier to write down the objectives for our comprehension units than phonics and grammar. I am still verbalizing the objectives during phonics and grammar, but I am working on writing them down as well so I have them ready for next year to just pull out of my files.

 I am also posting the essential questions for first grade by our morning meeting area. I go over the essential questions of the day for reader's, writer's and math workshop as well as our phonics. I am working on completing health, social studies and science.

One thing I am finding is that it is difficult to fit the objective on one sentence strip. My next step will be to start with the essential question in one color, then the content objective in another, and the language objective in another color. In this way it will be easier for me to write and easier for the students to follow.

 

I have been hanging the objectives from my easel so they are ready to go for the lesson.

Let me know if you have any strategies to make this more manageable and user friendly.

2nd Year

This is my second year teaching. It's amazing what I've noticed about myself and how comfortable I feel teaching even with only one year of experience under my belt. I've worked at three different schools with four different PE teachers. It has been a lot of fun being able to observe several different PE teachers and to see the different teaching styles. I've learned what I like and what I don't. I'll take what I like and incorporate it into my own teaching to improve my skills as a teacher. I'm excited to see what I will learn this year!

Fitness Testing- Should we take the weights of students?

Over the past year we've been in transition from administering the Presidential Physical Fitness test to the Fitness Gram. The tests and standards for the tests are different, and the way in which the data is collected/scored is also different. One aspect of the Fitness Gram is that the heights and weights are included in part of the assessment. I teach at two schools. At Pearson we did take the heights and weights of the 3rd-5th graders and at Sweeney we did not. This is one topic of discussion at this point. Some parents/administrators are concerned that doing so is not necessary. One parent explained last year to a teacher at Pearson that taking the weights can be damaging to the students because they are so young. Any thoughts about this?

In September I was so overwhelmed with the new Math Expressions curriculum that I did not put as much focus on literacy as I had planned to originally. My focus was more divided than I expected. I have not even drafted a rubric with the students yet. I wanted to draft a personal narrrative rubric with my class. I think I am going to end up using the one I used last year that is based on the six traits.
Hopefully, I will make the time to get back into my Amy Buckner texts and then create writing rubrics with my writers this year as I aspired to do. I am feeling glad that I made it through the "First 20 Days." My class has also been experiencing the Daily 5 and that has gone well. I am trying to find the bright side.

Pretending It's Still October...

Now that October is done, I'm feeling a bit better about things. Math is becoming easier and I've finally been able to pay more attention to literacy like I had wanted to. My team and I sat down and discussed the possibility of switching and leveled grouping by classroom for reading groups. Unfortunately, we realized we had to do it on a smaller scale (just switching students who are outliers) since our reading times don't completely align due to our lunch schedules. On the positive side, I now have 5 groups set up in my room and have figured out how to meet with 4 per day. (My two above grade level groups meet every other day.) My binder is all set up and I've even done running records on two of the groups!

I think my favorite thing that I'm doing is connecting my reading groups to what the kids are learning in science, social studies, and health at the time. It's like getting double the amount of time for those subjects and the kids are able to build really great schema for the text books (which are a little difficult for most of them). Luckily, we have a pretty extensive book room here at Sun Path (thanks to Cindy) and I haven't run into any problems yet finding books that are about the right topics.

I still haven't starting conferring. :( Maybe that will come this month?

Up and Running

So I just recently got this blog thing up and running and now I owe some posts! Whoops! Well, here goes:

In September I was just trying to hit the ground running. I was trying to focus on really improving my balanced literacy (specifically adding in new ways to teach reading in the way of conferring and new mini-lessons) but got completely thrown for a loop by the new math curriculum. Unfortunately, (as of the end of September) I didn't feel like I'd added too many new things to my teaching of balanced literacy because I'd been so concerned about all of the math stuff and just trying to get my DRA's done. Was anyone else having this problem?

Documentation of students

I worked in October on using a form to create a one page document of my students. I got this idea from meeting during the literacy meeting this month. I took all the information I had on the kido's and complied it into one page with the test scores, observations, hypothesis, and things to work on. This really helped me get ready for conferences this fall. I could quickly show the parents this one sheet rather then pull out a bunch of test scores. I have then been able to form small groups and begin interventions on those students who need them. I plan to continue to update this form through out the year to show the growth and progress of the students. I just thought that this was a quick way to look at a child so that I can pull small groups and confer with them on their strengths and weaknesses.

Continuing on with Assessments

At our Oct. 13th Staff Development Day, all the elementary PE teachers came together to create more assessments. This time we focused on 4th and 5th grade and wrote formal, end-of-the-quarter tests for each grade and each quarter. I felt really good about these tests that day and felt we had a very successful day. However, a few days later when I preparing to give the tests, at the end of the quarter, I started to rethink these tests. All the test questions were short answers, where they either had to list three points or explain an idea. These types of tests are not very conducive to my ELs and my SPED students. They are also more challenging for a lot of the students. So my colleague and I decided the students would benefit from different types of tests. We decided it was best to ask the classroom teachers which types of tests are most successful with 4th and 5th graders. I think I need to remember to do this more. I don't need to reinvent the wheel, I should just turn to my colleagues who have experience in formal testing. We were able to get some great ideas and created a Venn diagram test for this quarter.

With the younger students, we are continuing to assess by utilizing the checklists that we created. At first, we were just checking off if the student could do the skill, or leaving it blank if the student could not. This was a good start but after reflecting and reviewing the assessments, I determined it would be nice to have more specific info. Now while assessing a skill, I either give the student an "A", a "S", or a "N". A= always execute skill properly, S= sometimes, and N=never. This way I can see the students that sometimes struggle with the skill or always struggle with the skill and then make sure to work with them more.

Overall, I've been very pleased with our progress in creating and executing assessments. It has made me more focused on the specifics of the skill which allows me to guide the students and give them more feedback. We'll just keep trying new assessments to see what is successful and what works best for us and our students!

Andrea/October

Well, my literacy conferring binder is officially made for reading/writing and I have starting conferring. Although I haven't started any strategy groups, I've been seeing some good things. After attending the 6 Traits writing meeting yesterday, I realized that I am focusing too much on the "nitty gritty" things in students writing. For example, capital letters and punctuation. So, I think I'm going to have most students focus on 2 other goals, which hopefully will be more meaningful. They would be to have students reread orally out loud to themselves after they're done writing to check for understanding, and then while they're doing inventive spelling, try to stretch out words more to hear more sounds. (Rather than focus on only the correct way to spell a word, just try your best to stretch out all the sounds. This will transfer to reading too if they come to an unknown word.) Happy Fall!

September Posting

Good Mornnig Teachers!

So after a lot of thinking I have decided to make my professional development goal geared towards the Writer's Workshop.  I plan to implement the 6 traits into my writer's workshop this year.  I also plan to meet with small groups that are based on what I see when I am having teacher conferences with students.  I plan to get my small groups started by November.  I am still meeting with individual students to assess their needs.

Adjusting Assessments

As we continue to use our assessment checklists, we are making adjustments and many changes. First off, we assessed most students during our soccer unit. What we assessed was different for each grade, depending on the skills we determined they should be able to successfully execute at each level. We started off by checking off if they could perform the skill appropriately; however this raised some questions for us. First off, what if a parent wants to know specifically what their child can and cannot do? Also, as a teacher, I should know which aspect of the skill the student needs help with. That way I can work on the specific movement and then the skill as a whole. Because of this, we decided we need to break the skills down and create rubrics for each skill. We are going to create rubrics (1-4) with "4" being they can do the skill perfectly and "1" being they can't do the skill at all. Obviously we will be specific for each skill and know exactly what to look for. With the rubrics, we will be able to look back and see which skills the students excelled at and what skills they struggled with. This then will affect our teaching; we will spend more time on the challenging skills while only having to review the skills they are more proficient.

Since this is a lot and is new to all the PE teachers, we are working together to develop the rubrics. Over the year, it is going to be a lot of tweaking this and changing that, until we get our overall assessments to a point that is most effecient for us and most effective for the students.

Andrea/September

Can you believe that September is almost over? I just had my meeting with my principal about my PDP goal (which is to create an assessment binder to create more strategy groups in literacy, rather than just guided reading groups) and I am starting to create my binder. I have started DRA testing, and decided that I would use DRA's to create my first strategy groups. After I do a test, I decide what areas of instruction are needed to improve a student's reading. I think I'll create an excel spreadsheet of data that tells me what strategy each student needs. After that, I'll be able to create groups based on a strategy, such as "comprehension" or "predicting," etc. So for now, I keep on chugging with my DRA's, and then try out some strategy groups! It'll be interesting to do more conferring and strategy groups, rather than alot of guided reading this year, but I think it'll be for the better. Classroom teachers--- are you feeling the pressure to do more strategy groups, and less guided reading?

Changed PDP

All the elementary PE teachers are really focusing on assessment this year. We are looking at where we are in terms of assessment, where we want to be, and how we get there. Because of this, I changed my PDP to focus on assessment and implementing new assessment techniques in class. My current PDP is now:
"I want to incorporate various assessments into our lessons by following our "Assessment Schedule." These assessments will cover all three domains (psychomotor, cognitive, and affective), while focusing on psychomotor. Today we began these assessments with our 3rd grade classes and our 1st grade classes. I felt that all the PE teachers were worried about using checklists for skills because we don't want to include skill testing at the elementary level (since they are so new to these skills and are just being exposed). However I believe that this assessment improves my teaching and specifically my feedback. It is a more focused way to give feedback to my students and I now have a hard copy of who can do which skill. By the end of the year, I should know that all the students can do the skills that were designated for their grade level. This has become a more formal way to give feedback, along with keeping records and holding myself accountable that every student should be able to do their grade level skills. At the very least, when the 5th graders leave us in the spring, they should have a checklist of all the elementary skills and hopefully they all should be checked off. So, so far, so good!

My 2010-2011 PDP

This school year, I will implement a Reader's and Writer's Notebook as well as rubrics for each, these will be based on the strategies I learned from a book study on Aimee Buckner's Notebook Connections and Notebook Know How.
I highly recommend these terrific resources!
If I successfully obtain my goal I will reward myself by getting something special for the classroom. For example, improving my listening center or buying more clocks for math.

My PDP

My PDP is to continue to incorporate literacy skills in my PE warm-ups and to do these warm-ups at least two out of the four lessons in each unit.

Classroom teachers feel free to post any literacy ideas for grades 1-5 that can be used in an active way! This is something we started last year and we really want to build on it this year and make it something that benefits the students (especially the kinesthetic learners) and something that can help improve their spelling scores and maybe even possibly their MAP/MCA scores.

Goal 2010-2011 Laura

My goal this upcoming school year is based on information that I learned from the Literacy Institute. I have worked on Writers Workshop in the past, but am going to be focusing in on a part of Writers Workshop that I struggled with last year. My goal is to use conferring in my classroom to build knowledge on my students to drive instruction using small groups and mini lessons. I am hoping to be able to confer with my students early in the year once classroom management is set up. I hope that conferring will allow me to know my students quicker and gain more knowledge about them as a student.

PDP Goal 2010 - 2011 ... Kathryn All

My professional development goal for the 2010 - 2011 school year is to create authentic assessments that demonstrate the stated growth on student IEPs within IEP due dates.

My motivation for choosing this goal is to not only teach the students that I work with skills that they use in school, but to give them opportunities to transfer the material that they have learned to other locations and situations outside of school and make applicable assessments.

Your Perfessional Development Goals for 2010-2011 School year

What is your goal for the upcoming school year?

PDP Goal 2010-2011

After attending the summer literacy institute, I decided to create a literacy goal for this year. In overview, my goal is to improve my literacy teaching through the use of an "assessment binder." While I confer with students during reading and writing, I will take notes on student progress. In turn, I will focus on making "strategy groups" based on students' needs, rather than solely grouping kids in guided reading groups based on their DRA levels. I look forward to sharing my assessment binder with you, and collecting any advice you all may have!

Andrea

My professional goal is to define and post literacy learning objectives for students and keep track in my plan book. Any ideas on the best way to post? I was thinking some sort of flip chart. Perhaps a flip chart for the essential question, the objective and if I am really organized a language objective. Any ideas on how to make this more time efficient?

Back to School 2010!

Hey fellow Shakopee Teachers!

I can't believe the school year is approaching, the summer has flown by.  I look forward to all your posts throughout the school year!

Happy blogging!

Leann