My PDP

I feel as though I may have left my goal a little open-ended for this year. I wanted to grow and develop professionally be learning new things/participating in new things throughout the year. I signed up to do Responsive Classroom training over the summer and knew I wanted to incorporate that throughout the school year. I also knew I would be getting a Smartboard mid-year and wanted to learn about that. Finally, I signed up to do the Literacy Cohort because I would like to continue learning about how to teach reading and writing to the best of my abilities.

Basically, I was already a little "overbooked" when the school year began. Then I decided I would be an advisor for Student Council (which is a great program for kids) and agreed to be a teacher representative for the S-team in the spring. While I certainly met my goal and learned a lot, it was completely overwhelming! It felt like I had meetings every morning and I think I spread myself way too thin. (Contributing to everything but giving my best to nothing.)

Does anyone else have this problem? It's like I want to do so much and see how all of these things can improve my teaching but fail to recognize when it's gettting to be too much. I would like to say that next year I will scale back... but not sure what I will cut. Hopefully I learn from this past year though and try to give myself a break!

S-team

In March, I was asked to be a teacher representative on S-team (the referral team for special education evaluations and interventions). Since my PDP focuses on growing professionally this year, I felt it would be a good experience and would teach me more about the special education evaluation process. We met almost every Thursday morning discussing students, the interventions teachers had done throughout the year, and what steps should be taken next.

Having sent a student through the evaluation process this year, I can say it is a very frustrating experience. Very rarely does the student receive they help they need during the same school year they are brought up to S-team. This means that the teacher doing all of the work (interventions, documentations, filling out forms, going to meetings) rarely sees any benefits (assistance for the student). Since the process takes such a long time (I started the process on a student in late September and he is having a hold-over evaluation that will take place next fall.) it's sort of a "pay-it-forward" situation where I can only hope this particular student receives services he needs to be successful next year.

Does anyone have any ideas to improve the S-team process? At my school we're meeting for a half day to go over ideas and suggestions to make it more successful but it would be great to bring up ideas from other schools as well. Thank you in advance!

Testing

April was mostly consumed with preparing for testing and taking the MCA and MAP tests. While I understand the rationale for testing kids, I'm concerned the testing is taking precedence over learning. In April alone, my students spent approximately 6 days worth of time testing. When there are only around 20 school days in the month, that's crazy! This doesn't even count the content-area tests they take for a grade (math, science, spelling, etc.). So where do we draw the line? After taking the Reading MCA's for 4 days, one of my students asked, "Do we actually get to learn next week?". Poor kid!

Third grade is the first year the students take the MCA's. That means we don't just take them, we have to teach the kids how to take them. (Rules, strategies, etc.) I truly believe that teaching to a test negatively impacts what/how students learn during the course of the year, but what do we do? We're required to take them and unfortunately, there is a lot of weight put on them. Does anyone else think there has to be a better way to prove that we're doing our jobs? Also, I often wonder how taking all of these tests benefits the students? A lot of the time I feel like they're doing all of this work and going through all of this stress and not seeing any benefits to themselves. At least with content area tests I'm getting immediate feedback on what my students know and what areas I should reteach/go more in depth into.

Does anyone know if we're going to have to take the MCA's three times next year? I heard rumors of this and I'm a little concerned about what that is going to mean for the kids.

End of the Year

As it comes to the end of the schoo year I'm feeling very worn down. This year has been very difficult due to the group of children in my class (a lot of personality conflicts and many needy children). I love my job and can't imagine doing anything else but these year has left me feeling drained. How do you bounce back from a year like this? I'm always excited to start a new school year but it would be nice to leave school without a "bad taste in my mouth". Any ideas on how I can re-energize before I get my next year's class list in August? :)

Also, do any other teachers help principals create next year's classes? It seems like it would be helpful to have the teachers look at the classes before they are set to prevent an overload on one or two classrooms. (I know, I know, energy points are supposed to prevent this... but do they?)

ASD students in the classroom

This year I have had a challenge in my classroom with 3 ASD students. I have a para if not more then 1 in my classroom during the day. I have become frustrated with the communication between my self and the SPED teacher and parents. The parents seem to communicate with her and I then am not always informed of information that if important to know about the child. I think that the parents are missed informed or unaware that I have those students in my classroom all day with me and they have little contact each day with the SPED teacher if any. She is supposed to be coming in my classroom for support each day for 20-30 min and am luck if she is in my room a couple days a week. There is not enough support given to the classroom teacher for these students at the beginning of the year. I have never really been given support or information other then their IEP about techniques or ways to deal with these students in the regular ed class. I feel that it is the SPED teachers responsibility to check in with these students on a regular basis or daily at the end of the day to go over their day. I think that the district needs to do a better job of having a time for teachers to meet with the SPED teachers at the beginning of the year and several times during the year to discuss ideas and issues about the SPED students in their classroom. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to work with these types of children in the class and with the special ed department?

DRA Testing/Reading

I am working on getting my DRAs done for the end of the year. I have found it time consuming to DRA 25 students several times to get their independent reading level. I did recieve some advice about pulling a small group of students that are at a higher reading level to take the test in a small group at my table. This has helped get through more students each day and not have to wait for them to come to my table to test. The problem I am still having is picking the level to start the student at and then giving them at least two tests if not more to find their independent level. I am not sure if there is something that I am doing wrong or missing that could help with this situation. I also feel that I am testing students who don't need to be tested again at the end of the year who are reading well above grade level. I have a high reading level group of students this year and feel that this is just more testing that they have to go through only to be tested again in the fall.

Frustrated!!!!!

I am very frustrated wrapping up the end of the year with my students. I have a student in my classroom that is very negative and disrespectful to me and others in the classroom. This brings down the attitude of the students and me as well. He joined our class after winter break and has changed the whole dynamics of the classroom. I have never had such a negative second grade child in my classroom before and am not sure how to deal with this behavior. We were taking the MAP Math test today and he had a very hard time taking the test. He would ask me questions and I couldn't answer them for him. He then just would say things like "then I will just guess or fine I will get them all wrong". I continually reminded him that he needed to try his best and if he didn't know the answer to pick the best one and move on. I have tried to ignore the behavior, but have a difficult time with that when he is influencing the behavior of other students in the class. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Smart Board!

I was so surprised and thankful to get my smart board after Christmas Break. Right away I used it with our new math resources, but I haven't used it much for literacy.
As I read over my journal from the winter, I see time and time again how nervous I was about using the new technology. I wish I had a class on how to use it before I got it.
So upon reflection, I signed up for a smart board class being taught at SORLA. I am looking forward to it. I hope to get some new idea, and also I hope to feel less intimidated by the technology.
At SORLA I am also going to go to a Pattie Greene class about conferring with the reader not the book. That goes along with my PDP for this year. Every time I listen to Pattie Greene I take away something new and useful.
Is anyone else going to SORLA? What classes are you taking?

Five Paragraph Papers

I think researching and developing a five paragraph paper on a famous person in American history is not developmentally appropriate for third grade writers. I know I am not alone because my team and I have talked about this, and I have talked to other teachers about it too.
So this year we decided to write the five paragraph paper on the solar system instead. It was a much better learning experience for me as a teacher and for the science investigators. They were much more engaged with this paper. It was finished in a shorter amount of time too. They took a whole week less to write than last years biographies.
We still studied famous people this year, but the paper was only a paragraph long.
With the new standards quickly approaching I wonder what will happen in the future. I want my students to be excited about writing, and I want them to feel that they are good at it too.
I hope by this time in the school year they feel like they have grown as writers. For example, they know how to write strong leads now and solid conclusions.
The past few weeks have been so consumed by testing that I know I haven't given writing the attention I was before all the MCA and MAP madness.

Looking Back

As I look back over my journal from the beginning of the year, I see that as early as September I questioned if "Parent Letters" were helpful and productive or possibly hurtful. All family situations are different and therefore not every child has an adult at home that is willing to sit down read the letter and then also thoughtfully respond. Maybe I should go back to just having them write me letters. What do you think?
Recently, I have also thought about pen pals as a strategy for meaningful letter writing. I am considering writing to a friend's third grade class in Lakeville where I use to teach. Or a teammate and I may have our third graders write to senior citizens in Shakopee.
These are just ideas I am reflecting on as another year is quickly coming to an end.

End of the Year...

Although I'm at home on maternity leave, I have been doing TONS of reflecting on the year, and wondering how all my hard work (and students' hard work) has paid off with my long-term sub and all the end of year assessments. My goal for this year was to create an assessment binder for reading and writing. Looking back, I should've just focused on reading, because it sure was alot of assessing! I also had to remind myself that MAP tests and DRA's are not the ONLY final assessments that my students will do to determine whether or not they progressed and whether or not all my work with my conferring and assessment binder worked..there's so much more to it.

Next year, I'll do another assessment binder and continue with reading and writing as my areas of emphasis. I know that I'll organize my info a little better, and next year, focus on sharing more of my collected information with parents. The little I did, parents were impressed at the overall knowledge I had of their child and his/her academic capabilities and potential.

Final Post...

Last week I had the opportunity to observe our Media Specialist. It was great to see another specialist teacher, observe what they do in Media class, and, most importantly, see the same students I see but in a different context. I was amazed by how a lot of the students that are more timid in P.E. were less timid in Media, shouting out answers, and vis versa. I was also impressed with what 1st graders were able to do on the computer and what they knew about various authors. I think it would be so beneficial to have the chance for all the specialists to observe on another. We would be able to include each other's content area into our lessons and support one another that way.

Overall, this has been a very busy and productive year. We have made great accomplishments with creating and implementing new assessments. We just need to continue working with these assessments, testing them out and make the necessary changes.

END OF THE YEAR...

This has been a great year. I've learned a lot about myself, as well as about my specialist area. We're progressing deeper into more assessment and I've learned that we need to start small. Test out new ideas before committing to them, and we should continue to modify them to make our program better. I've learned to advocate for myself more and my students. I've learned about the need for clarity in directions, the importance of following through on expectations, and how to reach out to those students who really need extra support.

I will continue to use what I have learned to modify my instruction and to grow continuously as a professional.