End of Year Reflection

As the end of the year approaches it gets you thinking about how your students did this year. I was listening to NPR this morning (as I do every morning and I highly recommend doing so) and they were talking about all these education issues coming up such as holding teachers for accountable for student success. This got me thinking about how my students have grown and how I would be judged professionally. As I look at my students and where they started at with reading in math everyone made substantial growth. Then it made me think well what is substantial growth. What is expected growth for a student who came in a year behind. I can't even imagine how third grade teachers do it with some students coming to them at a 1st grade reading level. So my question to all of you is how do we reflect on student growth in a data driven way in this new philosophy of teachers being solely responsible for student academic success? Do we look at growth? Is there an expectation to get all students at grade level even when several start a year behind? And if we do reflect on ourselves professionally....what is appropriate growth for a student starting so far behind?

Grade Level Meetings, Curriculum, and Sped

A barrier we, as a special education team, have been struggling with is how to best collaborate with teachers/allign with curriculum content in our small group settings. This year we have been attempting to attend every 2nd and 4th grade level meeting to discuss curriculum and data. However, scheduling has proven to be a big issue (i.e., IEPs, evaulations, and feedback meetings). The sneek peek has been VERY useful for where exactly classrooms are for the given week of instruction. One struggle we are having is being able to identify when one of our students are low within a content area that we do not provide service. For example, we may see them for math instruction. But, their reading begins to dip in relationship to standards and reading is not on their IEP. Any brain storm ideas for communicating these areas of weakness when it may not be clearly identified on the IEP.

I know that communicating the area of struggle is the straightforward answer. But, frequently we do not hear about it....until the problem becomes significant.

Consequences

It is getting that time of year when students know what consequences will come if they choose to be off task. I have been doing my best to be patient and continue my love and logic strategies. At this time of year I find myself trying to get through all the testing and often choosing the consequence for them. I need to keep remembering that consequence won't have as much impact or meaning if they don't come up with it. I am going to try my best to stay patient. Anyone else have trouble with this at this time of year? Any ideas?

3D Shapes

One of our math expectations in Kindergarten is identification of shapes.  These include 6 of the basic 2D shapes as well as 4 of the 3D shapes: cylinder, cone, cube, and sphere.  I'm finding that many of my students who were not exposed to these in preschool or at home are struggling to remember the vocab.  If I say a shape name aloud, they can identify the correct shape, but if I hold up a shape and ask for the name, I get blank stares.  Most of them have got "cone" down (thank goodness for ice cream), but I would love any tricks that you have for remembering the other 3.  Any ideas?

Team Collaboration

Over the past two months, Sarah and I have been working with some of our teammates to create units, math stations, and creative writing projects for next school year.  As a team, we sat down and looked at our standards and objectives in each content area.  We each took a few units/projects to create and enhance meaningful lessons/activities that meet the standards of first grade. 
We have been meeting weekly to plan out next year, month-by-month.  Although, this process has been time consuming and at times overwhelming, we have accomplished more in the last two months than we have in the last two years.  We have found that collaboration is key to success in many ways.  As professionals, we are able to bounce ideas off of each other.  We are also working on accomplishing our goals that we set on our professional development plan at the beginning of the year.  We made a goal to use technology in our classrooms, and we feel that we have exceeded that goal.  Collaboration has helped us become a stronger team and better teachers.  All this collaborating with benefit our future students!
~Heather and Sarah

Literacy in PE Continued...

I had posted earlier about working on incorporating literacy into PE. I had my 5th, 4th and 3rd grade students complete a fitness work scramble. For my 1st and 2nd grade students, I gave them a worksheet in which they had to read a list of PE words and circle the words that were verbs. I found that the 1st and 2nd graders had a much more difficult time. Not all of them, but there was a handful of them that couldn't read the two sentences I had written for directions.  I noticed the reading aspect was difficult for some. I thought my directions were simple, but maybe I will have to look at simplifying the wording more. I met with our Literacy coordinator to discuss some strategies for incorporating literacy into PE. I was told by our LC that 1st and 2nd graders should know what a "verb" is. I worked with them on how to eliminate a word, or to ask themselves, "can I do that?"  I also had the polar opposite, and there were students that flew through the worksheet, so I am trying to think of a way to make it more challenging for them.

The word scramble was a little difficult for 3rd grade. I modified on the fly and made a little word bank poster and posted it on the wall. If they needed a clue, they could lift the flap to see the word bank. I found that this made it too easy for them and they were looking under the flap for help before they had even attempted to figure out any of the words. I need to find a balance between the two.

Overall, I liked doing the literacy worksheets. I also liked the fact that PE has several verbs or activities that we "do" so it made it fun!

Testing Rewards

I have really been working hard with my kids to get ready for their MAP test the next couple weeks. We have been working on reviewing how take a test and some strategies that we might use on the test. I will continue working with the students until testing is finished. I will be meeting with them over the next couple days to go over their test scores and their goal that they need to meet. I feel that they should be reminded and be aware of their goals on their tests. In past schools that I have worked at, testing and reaching their goal has been a bigger deal. I had kindergartners pledging at the beginning of the year to try to get a certain score on their NWEA test during the year. Each time they took the test, which was three times a year, they were able to win a reward if they passed the score or meet their goal. This reward was worked into the grade level for each time we took the test. The students could win things from happy meals to a picnic at the park depending on what the teachers chose for the year. I am not sure where this money came from for the students to receive this reward, but the principal always made it happen. I am planning on giving my students who make their goals in reading and math a reward. I have not come up with one yet, but might have the students come up with ideas and then have a vote. I do understand that all of my students are working towards their goal, but I feel there should be a reward for those who made their individual goals. Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions on this topic?