Frustrated

I have  a student in my class who is low not the lowest but low and he continues to not pay attention. I feel like I have to stand over him and point to everything as we work or sit right next to him at all times for him to get his work done. He is not getting any support at home and doesn't turn in homework. I pull him everyday for reading small group and work with him as much as I can, but I have two others that need the same thing all the time. It is just really wearing on my patients and need some suggestions on how to deal with this type of child. This is very different then what I am used to seeing in my classroom and not sure how to deal with this type of child. I feel like I am complaining, but just really want to help this child and am frustrated over his lack of attention and focus.

Rowdy Kids

Today our 1st graders were a little crazy. I'm not sure if it was because today was the first day back from a long weekend or what, but they were having behavioral issues. Numerous kids were tattling on each other, asking to go to the bathroom during the warm-up, and struggling with keeping their hands to themselves etc. We finished the warm-up but instead of transitioning into the lesson, we did an activity with a CD. We performed two exercises to the song "knuckles knees" and "spin again." This seemed to help get the wiggles out. We did not get to the lesson as planned, but I felt the class was more productive with a modified lesson after the songs. I think it's important as teachers that we know it's okay to deviate from the lesson plan. If we notice things are not working that typically do with our students, it is perfectly fine to switch things up and we have to in some situations.

Writing

I am really struggling with a small group of kiddos on the topic of ending punctuation. They are becoming better at writing down their ideas but still do not include punctuation at the ends of their sentences. When I prompt them to find something that is missing from the sentences, they have no idea. HELP! I have tried having them dictate their sentences to me and then they have to copy what I have written. But, even then, they seem to not even see the punctuation mark at the end. I have tried having mini lessons centered around periods, exclamation marks and question marks and they grasp the concept in isolation. However, when I want them to transfer the skill to their writing, they do not do it. Has anyone else struggled with this and found a way to help them understand the concept?

Positive Conference

I was discussing with my colleague about some positive conferences we've had this year. As physical education teachers, it is our goal that our students build a life-long love of learning and physical activity. We were pleased to be visited by a parent that was asking us for exercise ideas for their son so he could exercise more and play on the computer and do sedentary activities less. They acknowledged he would be going to the middle school next year and that he'd need to get stronger and build his confidence. My colleague and I were so refreshed to see parents advocating for their children and recognizing how school changes would impact their son. Hooray for involved parenting!

Word Study

I am sorry to bring up word study again but a few members of my team came across something today that really upset us. We were looking at the December phonics lessons in the Red F&P book and they want us doing letter matching with First graders in December! We are starting to look at this book and we were shocked to see letter matching in December. That is a skill that 99% of students can do in Spetember! Those of you who have used this book or are first grade teachers, how do you feel about this? Did you skip the lesson? What are you doing to give your students a strong phonics background? I am always looking for help and suggestions!! We just feel like this can't be the first time someone has brought this up!

Magnetic Letters

Just wanted to share the excitement kids get when we just let them be kids sometimes. I had a fancy lesson plan with all these steps and procedures and I noticed that the class was enjoying the first step and really thinking about the process of making words. I realized that sometimes we forget to make learning simple and fun. The concept was difficult but since they were having fun manipulating the magnets and making real words and Dr. Suess words they forgot about how challenging it was and really thought about each word.

Small Grouping

I have been working with small grouping with my kids in reading. I think that this is going well overall, but tend to spend a lot of time pulling resources for my small groups. For my average and above average groups, I have been using the book room and Reading A to Z. These are "ok" for reading with my low groups, but I feel that I am pulling from everywhere for these groups. Does anyone have any ideas that I could use for these low kiddos? They need help with vowels, high frequency words, sentence writing, and the list could go on and on. I pull this group almost everyday and try to read with them everyday, but need to be working with them on more intervention things. It would be nice if we had a intervention program to go with a reading curriculum to help support these low kids in reading and writing.

Student Goals

Goal setting can be a positive and motivating technique to use with students. However in the past I have not given the proper attention to these goals. At conferences we talk about MAP/MCA scores and our scores that we want to achieve by the end of the year. Yet, for the students this number is so hard to relate to and understand how they can be a better reader/math student/student in general. This year I wanted to do a fun twist on goal setting to make it more personal and fun for the students. We made a goal for first quarter and wrote them on the gecko lizards that make a tessolation when you put them all together. They thought this was really neat and it was an easy way to tell them that our goals are all connected and we need each other to learn (community). For the second quarter we are making Japanese Daruma Dolls. I had the students be real specific with what their goal was for the quarter, why was it important, what are they going to do to achieve this goal, and who is going to help them achieve this goal. I want to do a goal setting activity for each quarter. I was wondering if anyone had any fun ideas for goal setting projects/writing ideas?

Love & Logic

I am having great success with love and logic this year. Of course I am mixing in parts of Response classroom, but L & L is really helping with those challenging kids. I am noticing my two students with anger management issues are starting to understand that every time they break down there is a consequence and the consequence is not related to me. It is a direct consequence of their behavior and they are getting better at solving their problems themselves and coming up with a consequence that is appropriate for their behavior. I still have trouble staying out of it and sometimes I give them the consequence for sake of time, but most of the time they are doing it on their own. It has been wonderful because it creates a positive relationship between myself and the students because I am not the one making the consequences. I am simply a bystander. I am sure to let them know that it is very sad they made that choice and this has aloud them to still enjoy school and keep their self esteem intact. Give it a try. It really frees up time for teaching!

S-Team and IEP's

 This is my first experience with more than one student on IEPs and/or being referred to S-team services. I am finding myself spending what feels like 75% (although I know it is less) of my time on these students. I am having great success with Love and Logic and the students causing problems are solving their problems and making progress everyday with their behaviors, but I am having trouble finding ways to follow through with consequences and still give the rest of the class the attention they deserve. I have done my best to be sure only the students causing problems are missing out on the fun activities to solve problems and come up with their own consequences but it just doesn't seem fair to the rest of the classroom. We also do a lot of problem solving on my lunch and prep but it would be nice to have one or the other. I want to be sure I don't budge and start at the beginning again but I also what to be sure to balance it all. Any suggestions?

L&L and Challenging Parents

This past summer a group of colleagues went to Colorado to a conference at the Love and Logic Institute. We have had monthly staff development mornings where they introduce a skill that we could put to use right away. Recently we had a morning where they talked about having success with challenging parents. As we all have had experience with parents, some of us have had good ones and some of us have had "challenging" ones. The article compared dealing with parents in the same ways people deal with death and the five stages of they go through. I had never looked at dealing with parents in this type of way. Here are some highlights of the techniques our fellow teachers shared with us.

Denial

Parents may say things like "We don't have these problems at home." "Not my child. What were the others doing?"

Anger

Parents may things like; " If you knew how to teach, he wouldn't be having these problems." "You'll be hearing from our lawyer!"

Bargaining

At this stage, many parents begin to admit that there is a problem yet search for some type of "quick fix."

Depression

Understandably, they begin to feel very sad and hopeless when these treatments don't solve the problem. We often hear them say, "We've tried everything, and nothing works!"

Acceptance

At this final stage, parents begin to understand that their child's problem is a real one that isn't going to be solved with quick fixes. They also come to a point where they can love their child for who he/she is...not who they want them to become.

The techniques that the teachers shared was in the form of an acronym PARENTS.

P - practice preventative relationship building. Using "one sentence interventions" and contacting parents before their is a problem and share something positive with them.

A - ask for permission to describe your concerns "May I describe?" works better than "Let me tell you..."

R - remember that underlying the parent's anger are feelings of grief and loss. Don't make the parent's reaction personal. (Hardest one for me). I recently used a line with a difficult student and parent that, "I want to help" and "here is what I can do to help..."

E - end any attempts to give good factual information. Here are some things you can say when you feel stumped: How long have you felt this way. Tell me more. What would you like to see here? Help me understand.

N - note-taking has many benefits. Take notes on your current conversation so you can repeat what they say back to them. This allows for the parents to hear what they are asking from you and how they are coming across.

T - test the parent to see if they are calm enough to hear your thoughts, simply ask, "Would you like to hear my ideas?"

S - solve the problem, must show the parents that you care!!

Hopefully reading this might trigger some connections and maybe give you some new ideas on how to approach parents and the difficulties with dealing with them sometimes.

Word Study

I have added a new goal to my list of professional development plans for this year. WORD STUDY! For the remainder of the year I will be meeting with the lovely Ann Dettmann (our LC) for coaching sessions. We will be meeting every month to go through the red Fountas and Pinnell Phonics Lessons book and talk about how to best teach the lessons to my students and then she will observe me teach the lesson. I am excited about this because if any of you have taught from this book it does not go in order and it jumps all over the place. This drives me crazy because I like things in order and nice and neat! Ahh! Those of you who have used this book for teaching phonics.word study. What do you think about it? I am excited to dive deeper in to this book and learn new ways to teach me students!

Autism Conference

I had the opportunity to attend an autism conference two weeks ago that was led by author Michelle Garcia Winner. I have read her books before on social skills but, in person, she is so much more inspiring. She brought up so many wonderful insights into the minds of kids (or individuals) with autism. She not only presented many ideas for lesson plans but she had real-life scenarios that helped to reinforce her ideas.

I had the chance to buy many of her books that she referenced throughout the conference to help with running my social skills groups. I feel like all of the information I learned is applicable in the classroom.

Learning in "Stations"

My colleague at Jackson spends a lot of time having students learn music concepts using "stations" in her classroom.  Small groups of students travel together through several different activities throughout the class period, completing a different task or objective at each.  She encouraged me to give it a try, which I did during the last cycle of fourth quarter...

For two lessons, my fourth grade classes rotated through 4 stations each day:

• Station #1 was a SMART Board activity to help them practice note names on the music staff
• At Station #2, I assessed the students on their Orff instrument skills (a different benchmark each of the two days).
• Station #3 was a board game also focused on note names.
• At Station #4, students completed a worksheet (one side each day) with the various written benchmarks for the quarter.

Two of my three sections of fourth grade handled this format very well, while one really struggled to stay on task when they knew I wasn't "right there", especially at the SMART Board station.  In my other groups, though, I was really impressed by how well the students were working together - I really enjoyed seeing students help one another with concepts.

One thing I am realizing as I grade the worksheets, though, is that written work may not be a good fit for this model (especially when I need to be in a different part of the room).  Students really struggled to follow the directions on the worksheets, which means I am having a hard time distinguishing between the "I didn't understand the directions" folks and the "I don't understand the concept" folks - and the directions were pretty basic steps!

Have any of you had success with work in stations?  What kinds of activities work well with your classes?