Planting Seeds...Again!

We are honored to be beginning a new garden project. The garden work I have done at other schools and in the community continue to be a great source of pride for my students and myself. Personally, being in the garden with students is my favorite place on Earth. Thank you elders, staff and students of New Kituwah Academy for always going along with my ideas!

New Kituwah Academy Students Plant Garden

Another Actual Conversation

Monday, September 29, 2008

An Actual Conversation

(Names have been changed to protect the innocent.) 

During writing journals in my class I often give the students a prompt to get thinking started. Today I gave the question "If you were an animal what would you be and why?" After the allotted writing time was up I asked several students to share their answers. I got the typical assortment of "I wanna be a cat so I can sleep all day," and "I wanna be a dog so I can bite people," etc... But the best happened just this way:

Me: So Mark, what animal would you want to be?

Mark: I want to be a gorilla.

Me: A gorilla! That's awesome! Why a gorilla?

Mark: So nobody will judge me when I scratch my butt.

Me: (LOUD LAUGHTER)

An Actual Conversation

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

An Actual Conversation

student: We love you Mrs. M for teaching us so much!

me: Thanks! I love you guys too! What's one thing you liked learning this year so far?

student: I don't know. I forgot.

The Note

(originally written September 22, 2008)

The Note

Part of my classroom management duty as a teacher is to collect miscellaneous distractions from my students during lessons. Often those distractions are created from sheets of notebook paper I thoughtfully provide as an attempt to save time in the classroom. These distractions take many shapes, tiny triangular footballs, Freddy fingers, airplanes, fortune-tellers, and the classic..."The Note." 

How many times were you terrified when the teacher took that note from your hand, or picked it up after a failed toss, petrified she might read it, or worse, read it out loud. I have a strict policy. I never read notes out loud. Most of the time I put it in my pocket and forget about it until I am peeling the soggy remnants from my washing machine. I do however occasionally reach into my pocket and find a treasure. This week I had that experience. Here is what was written on the small pink piece of paper I remembered was in my pocket at 3:00 today. Two girls with a lot of wisdom...

L: When Kobe fell he got up and looked at me! And when he did other things he got up and looked at me!!!!

D: Aaaaaaaaaaaaawwwww Young love, isn't it magical, lovely, and beautiful

L: yes it is all those things

D: OK GROSS but magical

Blog Challenge 5: Assessment

The assessments I use most often come in the form of entrance and exit tasks. Every day when students come into the classroom, they know that the routine is to get out their science notebooks (I require composition notebooks), something to write with and begin answering whatever "starter question" I have on the board that day. This serves a couple of purposes, but it is mainly a quick way for me to assess students in a variety of ways. Depending on how a question is written, I can use it to assess the students' prior knowledge of a subject before beginning a lesson, what they remember from the day before, if they are making connections between new and known information, if they know and can use vocabulary...and all by just reading over their shoulder for a minute or two after I take attendance. I started setting a timer for between 3 and 5 minutes depending on the question and students are required to keep writing the whole time. I quickly take attendance and then move around the room reading over shoulders, making notes. Once the timer goes off, I usually ask for a few people to tell us about or read us what they wrote. Then use it as a focus, hook, springboard, review to begin that day's class and am much better prepared now knowing where to start and what to focus on. 

The other assessment I use is what are commonly know as "exit tickets." My version is usually 1-4 questions on a half sheet of paper that takes 5 minutes or less to fill out before the bell rings and they rocket out the door. This again helps me tailor my instruction to the class's needs and assess the effectiveness of my lesson as well. 

For me the important piece that makes both of these effective in my classroom with my style of teaching is the speed and immediacy of response and data. Things that are longer usually end up sitting in a stack on my desk until the feedback I would receive is no longer relevant and the time needed to grade them seems insurmountable. Even if there are 60 exit tickets to look at, I can easily get the needed info without feeling overwhelmed. Usually patterns emerge pretty quickly and I plan or adjust accordingly. 

Lastly, I have found that while being useful assessment tools, having a ritual for the beginning and ending of classes is essential to classroom management at the middle school level where there are so many transitions during the day, and the children have the attention span of a fruit fly. Quick and simple yet thoughtful and loaded with information, "starter questions" and "exit tickets" work for me. 

NOTE: I keep one long Smart notebook file through the year and just add starter questions to it each week. It works as an amazing review that way too. 

Blogging Challenge 4: In the Class This Week

I tried to write this entry several ways, but none of them seemed just right. So, because I love lists (see entry 2) and my brain works best this way, I am going to list a few highlights from this abbreviated, welcome-back week.

1. I started using a digital timer with a loud alarm on it to manage LOTS of activities in my room and it has worked amazingly well on a lot of levels. It has help students to stay on task and complete work and helped me to make sure I am getting everything done and said in a class period. 

2. Got a new student who has already covered the objectives we are doing now, but has not learned the objectives we have already covered. This is a new issue I am not sure how to tackle.

3. I laughed uncontrollably for a few minutes, when a student listed "corn" on his paper as one of the layers of the Earth. Then regained my composure and realized I need to do more visual and less auditory for some students.

4. I taught my kids the sign language letters for "t" and "f" so we could  do some true false questions together without screaming out answers. Worked great! For sure a keeper. 

5. I stopped fighting and just started buying pencils.

Have a great weekend everyone! 

Blog Challenge 3: Website I Cannot Live Without

I am sure this is not news, but here is is. The website I cannot live without in my classroom is Discovery Education. I use it nearly every day in one capacity or another. As a teacher I use it for getting ideas from other teachers, making sure I am not missing any concept I need to hit in a unit, showing videos (especially clips 2-5 minutes long), using ready-made power points, or finding just the right photo of something.  Then I began working with a wonderful colleague, Kelly Hines, who opened me up to a million more things this website can do to bring excitement and creativity into my classroom with the help of an amazing network of teachers and professionals collaborating on the site. It is an ever changing, ever growing invaluable resource for me as a teacher.

Additionally, as a learner, I have to give a shout out to Discovery Ed because I literally could not be teaching science right now without it. When I found out that a middle school science position was coming open, I only had 8 days to prepare for and pass the Praxis in middle school science. I started looking at the study guides and prep books and knew there were some concepts I had solidly, but others I knew it had been way too long or maybe I had never learned it at all. Discovery Ed became my tutor. I looked things up, and read about them, watched videos and practiced vocabulary all on the discovery Education website. I really don't think I could have been prepared for that test the way I was without that website. Discovery Education helped me change my classroom, my career and my life!