daily five ((all the chapters i've slacked on))

I am so slack.  I could say I've been busy with work (true,) practice (*gulp* I entered in the Masters Zone Championship,) the conference I went to (that sucked but was at the beach so it evened out,) watching the Olympics (my minor claim to fame is that Michael Phelps once pushed me into a pool,) or making stuff for my classroom (which will be more accurate now that my macbook is fixed,) but I don't really have a good excuse.

Except for naps. And shopping for school supplies. I think I've purchased sixty glue sticks. I might have a problem.

Anyway, no excuse.

I have a problem with not finishing things so, even though I'm not sure I have anything meaningful to contribute, I'm going to toss in my two cents on the rest of the book. I'll make it quick.

Chapter Four

Read to Self. My class was pretty good at this last year. We talked about the Three Ways to Read a Book, built stamina, made an anchor chart, and such. One of the things I think we need to improve upon are checking in after practicing. Also, I want to help kids make connections between the reading strategies they learn with me to the books they read. This is more difficult for my littles who are in Reading Mastery Kindergarten (different orthography) than my first grade and up Reading Mastery littles or the ones who just do reading conferences/guided reading. Finally, I want to make sure to emphasize that this is independent reading to the other adults in the room. Sometimes, adults have trouble leaving the kids alone to read. I want to make sure that we all know that Read to Self and Read to Someone are both important, but are separate things.

Chapter Five

Read to Someone is harder to implement in my room because there can be so few children. This was mostly accomplished last year by littles reading to my wingman paraprofessional or to other adults who visited. I want to try to encourage them to read to each other more this year and set my schedule up in a way this will be feasible.

Listen to Reading is something that we kind of tapered off with throughout the year. I cringe at this, but it was mostly because the littles that were in my reading block by the end of the year were not there at the beginning when we went over how to use the materials. I want to also expand past our CD player to using the iPod nano I don't use anymore and Tumblebooks.

Chapter Six

Work on Writing might have to be a once-every-day thing in my room. Because of our schedule (I essentially teach an extra subject) and some other external factors, I'm not sure I can do a separate writing time. I think one of the mini-lessons during D5 is going to be a writing one, then they can choose when during D5 to work on writing. During my post after reading No More I'm Done I went more into depth about some things I wanted to change about my writing instruction.

I've given some thought to Work on Words this summer, because I want to make sure I have engaging options for the littles to practice with. I've purchased some stamp pads and letter stamps, unifix letter cubes, cheap stickers, letter beads, and play doh with stampers. I also have some of the standards: white boards, magnetic letters, markers, etc.

Chapter Seven

This is kind of a non sequitur, but I'm having this nightmarish anticipation that, when making an I chart, one of the littles will say that the teacher will be on the computer or at a meeting. Urgh. I don't have a planning period (or a bathroom break) all day, so sometimes I'm doing non-instructional things out of necessity when I wish I didn't have to.

Instead of me taking the notes on who's doing what during check in, I think I'm going to have them keep track on a sheet on their own. I also think I'm going to make a little clip chart with the choices for them to show what they're working on.

I'm really excited about getting started with using this format for our literacy block. Everyone who participated in the book study had such great ideas, I'm glad I could learn from everyone. :)

daily five ((chapter three))

I'm linking up with Mrs. Freshwater's Class and Thinking Out Loud for Chapter 3 of the Daily Five book study.

Gathering Place

I have a rug right in front of the SmartBoard in my classroom that we use as our gathering place. I believe I under-utilized it this year. Because I have such a small number of students in my room at once, I sometimes was tempted to do our gathering at the kidney table. Since a lot of our work is done at the table (even when other locations around the room are offered,) this didn't become a Brain and Body Break. I want to make sure we do our whole-group lessons on the rug this year.

Picking Appropriate Books

At the beginning of the year last year, I did some lessons on Good Fit books. As a new teacher I didn't have very many books in my classroom, and those I had were not at an appropriate independent level for my students. (I later was introduced to our literacy library with the leveled books, a month or two into the year.) We mostly focused on "reading the pictures," "retelling the story," and finding books we were interested in. I am planning on using the "I PICK" method and the shoes lessons that were detailed in the book this year.

We were lucky to receive a large leveled library from DonorsChoose this year in January. I want to continue adding to it this year and focus on using those levels as a guide for where to start looking for books that they will "know the words" in. I also want to add more options to each of the levels in our library.

Setting Up Book Boxes

We have these book bins from Really Good Stuff in our room. You can see the neon ones above in ou leveled library. The children each have a blue one for their notebooks, and they have a second one for their book boxes (if they come to me during literacy block.) I am. . . not crazy about them. Really Good Stuff has been great about customer service, but several have broken in my room even with normal use (ex. no one threw or kicked them.) The second set I ordered even arrived with many broken in the box during transport. They've sent replacements and a gift certificate; the RGS people have been super-nice but I wouldn't get that particular product. I've heard the ones without the wings are more sturdy.

As far as the actual books in the boxes, I'm lucky to already know my children's reading levels and have some idea of what they may be interested in reading. I want to get to know the interests of my littles this year, and have them discover interests of their own. I used the public library a lot at the beginning of the year to bring cool, new books into our room, but slacked off after I built up our classroom library. I want to make sure I continue bringing in library books throughout the year this year.

Anchor Charts

This is something that I want to start making with the class again. At the beginning of the year when we did more whole-group work, we made anchor charts to display our learning. As we did more individual academic work and less whole-group, we made fewer anchor charts. I've said that I want to do more whole-group mini-lessons this year in addition to our individual instruction, so we will return to making these.

Short Intervals of Repeated Practice

I already do this a lot in my room. I totally agree that practicing the wrong way will not help students learn the target behavior. 

Signals

Alright, I am incredibly bad about transition signals. I got  a chime last year as a new-teacher gift . . . and promptly put it out of reach, swearing to take it back out in a few weeks when things were more calm. I know, I know . . . that sounds ridiculous (but you were also not in my class on day 1, so don't judge.) I am considering using the chime from Day 1 this year (because I know it will be much better this year.) Or. . . . I'm also thinking about Whole Brain Teaching's Class/Okay. ((I may just use this part of WBT, but I do have some questions about using WBT in a resource class and how to mesh it with PBIS.)) 

I like the check-in signals suggested in the book. I think I want to use more visual signals and gestures this year, both as signals/responses and in my instruction in general. 

Correct Model/Incorrect Model

Okay, this is one area where my behavior instruction education conflicted with the book. I always use the correct model side, with students and myself demonstrating the correct behavior for the class. I've also used nonexamples, or the incorrect model. I've never let a student do the incorrect model, because I've always felt it is like letting them practice the wrong way. My professors would cringe. Following this up with demonstrating the correct behavior, though . . . I'm still considering this.

Final Thoughts 

This chapter talks about needing to "move slow so we can eventually move fast." I think that, similar to other classroom procedures, more time at the beginning of the year will save time in the end. 

My one concern is new littles that miss this time. I had five students in my literacy block at the beginning of the year and six at the end with many in between . . . and only one of the first five was in the last six. Because my students are young, they are usually being initially identified for services. Some respond quickly to intervention and need to reduce service minutes. . . or add when there's insufficient response. Some need to switch their service time as tolerance for different activities becomes apparent. Some need to be served in a more intensive environment and are transferred to me from their home-school. Some need even more intensive services and go on to another program. Others are found to actually need services from a different type of program, like academic resource. While keeping students in the Least Restrictive Environment is the best thing for them, it can mean some changes while the most appropriate setting is determined.

If you have a class that has a lot of student changes (maybe a transient population?) how do you handle this? I've been thinking of many ideas on my own, but I'd love to hear from someone who has experienced this and has any tricks.

photoshop-ish?

I'm kind of new to the whole creating-my-own-materials game. Or, at least, the fancy side of it. Most of my teacher-created materials this past year involved Boardmaker and MS word. Occasionally, there was even glue/scissors/white-out and multiple photocopies. Not fancy.

I decided I wanted to branch out this year, and I mentioned a few posts ago that I was trying to make my own classroom decor set in Power Point. I'm not sure I'd used PP more than five times in college, and I didn't have that mad of skills in middle/high school. I watched a few YouTube videos and went at it, though. My big thing was: where do you find cute shapes to put over the background? Like, frames?

Well, I found some, after poking around a few sites. Check.

But, wait! The insides are transparent! And using Fill in PP makes the whole thing filled in. Grrr.

To google!

. . . I need Photoshop???

Okay, yeah. I'd love photoshop. And my own swimming pool. And for a 7-11 around here to actually carry regular Mango (not sugar-free!) Slurpees. And lots of other things. I don't have the money for photoshop. . .

But, I found this website, Splashup. It worked really well, for my purposes. And it was simple. And free.

So, now I'm on to making classroom labels for my arts/crafts stuff, literacy supplies, math manipulatives, and whatnot. Wanna see?

Okay, I don't have a CU license for the graphic from Scrappin Cop, (mostly because I'm trying to decide between the unlimited one or individual one) so I can't give away/sell these. (Yet. Let me know if you'd be interested.) I think it's kosher to post a screencap like this, though.

I know most teacher-bloggers are already doing much more creative stuff than this, but I was proud of my small accomplishment. Hopefully someone out there can benefit from the Splashup link, too.

daily five ((chapter two))

 In between some embarrassingly slow swimming (a 3:08 200 fly, gah that's like 55 seconds off my best time!) I managed to gather my thoughts on Chapter Two of the Daily Five. Here we go!

1 .What goals do you have for your classroom as you work to implement the principles and foundations of the Daily 5 discussed in chapter 2? What support do you need to do this?

My Goals:

- Provide instruction that supports independence

- Find more ways for children to take ownership and responsibility in their learning and in our classroom

- Provide a structure to support literacy learning and allow learning to continue outside of direct instruction

Supports Needed:

- A procedure for teaching D5 to mid-year placements. I'm thinking of making a class book/social story with photo support in addition to whole class "reminder lessons." I think adding new students is a bigger deal in my room, because they usually have severe behavioral or emotional needs at first. How does your class handle acclimating new students, in general?

- I need to add some additional supplies to my room to have some choices for Word Work. 

- How can my paraprofessional and I support students with difficulties without "getting in the way?" If you have one, what is the role of your parapro/assistant during D5?

2. What stands out as the most significant aspects of this chapter? 

I think the anecdote about staying out of the way is significant. I think this will be a challenge for me, because my students expect me to intervene with everything. I have been working on it with them this year, but need to refrain if I want them to become independent.

3. How do the foundational principles of the Daily 5 structure (trust, choice, community, sense of urgency, and stamina), align with your beliefs that support your teaching strategies and the decisions that you make about student learning?

Trust: I think this is a big area for me to work on. I think that I am hesitant to trust some of my students sometimes, because they sometimes say and do things that reinforce the belief that they are not completely trustworthy. Yet if they're never trusted with independence, will they ever learn it? I think that I need to operate under the assumption that all my students can be trusted with more responsibility if they are given proper instruction and support. 

Choice: This is definitely one of my beliefs that I try to incorporate into my teaching practice. I want to continue improving on this year by making sure that I provide activities that students want to choose. This is sometimes hard for me, because I have to think "outside the box," so to speak. Many of my students do not enjoy activities that other students might enjoy. We spent a significant amount of time this year learning to play games together. Although all but my most recent arrivals can participate successfully in a group game, some don't seem to have any fun doing it. Except for my students with specific special interests, many of my littles cannot identify anything they are interested in or enjoy doing. This makes it a little more challenging, and I want to get better at finding things that interest them. 

Community: My room's population was not stable this year. We had our paraprofessional leave early in the year, and the second adult in the room was new every day for a while. Finally I got an awesome long-term sub, but she was unable to take the actual position. We didn't have stability in that sense until after the semester-end. With the littles, we had one out for a long-term, four leave, and six placed after the year began. Even among those there all year, we had many service minute and service schedule changes. Our community was not stable and, with my program including resource/itinerant students, community-building in my room looks different. I think that I will make sure to make an effort to build a sense of community program-wide, so that all my students know each other. This will translate to support for littles that are suddenly put into my literacy block; their classmates will help support their learning Daily Five procedures.

Sense of Urgency: Everything seems easier to accomplish when you know the why, I think. My challenge is in giving meaningful why's. I need to be better at convincing children that reading is fun, as most of mine arrive to me firmly planted in the reading-isn't-fun camp. Convincing them of necessity is not a valid fallback. Why do I need to learn to read, if my mom and dad can't? Expectations in older grades are irrelevant for them, and bad grades are not deterrents. When I told one little that he would need to be able to read a write to get a job, he seriously informed me he wanted to be a hobo when he grew up. I have to be able to convince them it is fun. I have done so with many of them, but others are still unconvinced.

Stamina: We practiced building our stamina with Read to Self last school year, and this makes so much sense to me. To go off the exercise metaphor in the book. . .  I just started swimming again, after taking most of four years off. One of my coworkers, who had only ever swam summer league, expressed surprise when I got in at the beginning of the summer and kept up with the high schoolers for their first hour of practice. "Do you- you haven't been swimming?" But I had a lot prior experience, I used to swim 90 minutes in the morning and 2.5 hours at night. Our kids are like this, too. Some have that experience of occupying themselves at a task independently, some are the metaphorical kid squalling at the side of the pool because they've never been in the water. Taking the time to build stamina brings everyone up to speed.  

clip clip

So, here's where I've been hanging out lately . . .

All my teacher-y friends have been bragging about sleeping in and such. None of that nonsense is going on around here. I have to be at the pool, which is 30 minutes away, by 6:45 every morning. Gah. Yeah.

Earlier in the summer, I was debating about purchasing more classroom labels, decorations, and such from one of the many talented people on TpT. I looked at two sets particularly, agonizing about colors. Andhow they didn't match what I already had. And how certain items in the set were non-multiage-compliant. And how the clip chart levels weren't named something I could live with. (And, and, and. . .)

I set out to learn to use PowerPoint to design some things to go in my room, using the color scheme I already had loosely going on. First order of business: a new clip chart.

You can find it here on Teachers Pay Teachers. *gulp*

In the file, I said I would write on my blog more about how I use the clip chart in my classroom. I feel like so many teachers who are more experienced than me have written on this, but I'm not one for empty promises. Here we go.

Since I haven't yet hung and laminated my new pretty chart, here's a photo of the one we had at the end of the year.

My chart is huge. If you can believe it, our chart was even bigger during first semester. Considering the small number of children in my class, you may be surprised. Let me tell you why.

If you're new to the clip chart party, the basic idea is that students each have a clip. It goes up the chart for appropriate behavior, goes down the chart for inappropriate behavior. You can go up/down all day. Past that is subject to teacher discretion. It seems to be customary to clip up (or down) by moving the clip one color-level up/down. With this in mind, most teachers don't need much space on each level except green. In my class, this works a little differently.

I try to move clips very frequently. If I moved children up in levels every time I wanted to use the chart to recognize their behavior, I'd have kids off of the chart before an hour was up. Our moves on the chart are smaller, and being higher up the color is better in my room. This allows me some leeway in the size of the clip up or clip down that is received. A small infraction might get your clip moved down a mere centimeter, leaving the room without permission is an automatic red. Being in your assigned space might get you a half-inch, working while ignoring big distractions might get you three inches.

When I decided to do it this way, the drawback was that the teacher is moving the clips. This was more on me, and less on the students. However, after a lot of modeling (and lots of other social/behavioral interventions) my students were able to clip up/down by themselves and would, with supervision, were beginning to choose a move up/down proportional to their actions. This didn't happen in my room until the last quarter of the year, (but I also didn't give them a chance to do it earlier.)

Some people have a different consequence at each level, both positive and negative. I currently only have positive consequences attached to our chart. Early in the year, we had a leveled treasure box for littles on Good, Rockin', or Superstar. Later in the year, we upped the requirements for earning treasure box for most of my students. Each of them had a agreement of how many days at a certain level would equal treasure box. Children needing more support could earn prizes more frequently. We also use the chart to determine who has earned Fun Friday. Depending on their current needs, littles have a certain number of days that they must be "above green" to come to our party.

With different small people earning rewards at different intervals, I would probably go crazy trying to keep up. So I don't. They each have a calendar in their notebook that they keep for the month. At the end of the day, they color code their calendar. They may be spot-checked when I fill out their daily behavior log, but I've never had anyone be dishonest about it.

The little people are pretty motivated by our chart. It's not even completely attributed to the tangible rewards. Truthfully, the rewards do not change for a little who is on Rockin' versus one on Superstar. There is no special prize for getting to the very top, yet they all want to. They also do not like being below green, even though there are no specific negative consequences for it. I don't call home automatically if a child is on red, and I never take away recess. They still do not like it.

One little, when prompted to draw something that made him feel sad, drew this:

Clipping down equals sad, folks.

(yes, I am a blob with hair and short arms.)

I will probably post more on behavior management as the summer goes on, since I have a lot to say and would like a lot of input. I also (should) be back tomorrow with chapter two of Daily 5.

boxes

I returned from the beach today. I'm kind of dreading going back to work next week, mostly because I know I'll be asked, "What'd you do on vacation?" I'm working on answers that sound more exciting than "I read nine books and worked on making stuff for my classroom in PowerPoint."

I got home today right in time to meet the UPS man. Our friendly brown-wearing bearer of packages had two for me. Twee. Dos.

Package one was from Amazon:

(I know this is not a swimming blog, but deal with it, please. Otherwise skip down a little because I promise something teaching-related will surface later.)

I got a new equipment bag, pull buoy, and fins! I have been saying I was going to do this for a while, but had been bumming stuff off of other people and out of the communal supplies because I didn't have the money until I got a big-girl-job. When I retired, I left my equipment bag at the pool with everyone else's. . . and didn't return. For nine-ish months. My (now-former) coach switched to a new team at the same time. With no one around to tell them no, my bag and equipment were gone through and requisitioned by other swimmers. I'm still kind of bitter about it, especially about my kickboard and the surgical tubing I had in there. Grrrr.

So, now I have a replacement bag and fins that are the same style (different color.) I couldn't find the exact pull buoy that I had, but I liked the pink and turquoise and it was close enough. I still need paddles (although maybe a smaller size than I had?) and a circular resistance band. And I'm currently using a Finding Nemo kickboard from Target. Don't judge.

Also, here's the other package that made me squeal (not literally.)
The one that you would actually care about:

The Luna Projector I won! I'm extremely anxious to try it out, but I think I may keep it boxed up here until I go back into my classroom next month. I don't have much desk space to try it out here. It looks spiffy, though!

On another note, I've been playing around with PowerPoint this week. And I may have made something. Two somethings. A behavior chart that matches my classroom colors (as in NOT bright colors) and a Daily Five choice chart. I'm debating about putting them up on TpT, but I'm not sure anyone else would want them. Hmmm. We'll see.

Let me know if your interested. If you've seen the calendar set I use, they match that color scheme.

integration

I think it's against some kind of rule of etiquette to post twice in one day, but it's not covered in Social Primer and I promise I'll make this quick. Well, it's been mentioned that I've been battling to finish The Out of Sync Child since . . . maybe, August? Last August? I mentioned that, you know, maybe . . . ugh.

I don't quit things, as a general rule. I don't.

But, there is this.

Can I use that as justification?

*ducks*