Spring Quarter is here!

All last week, I spent in my 2/3 classroom. I didn't have to be there five days until Monday, March 22, but I had a feeling that I should be there with my mt for five days. I was right. I am teaching alone on M, T, 1/2 W and F next week. No sub, just me! While I am flattered that my mt thinks that I am ready for this. I am a bit nervous. I have lessons planned and it is the week before spring break, so Friday we will make art, have cupcakes and make easter/spring cards for their families. I am teaching dragonfly haikus and art as a final lesson to our insect unit. We released the painted lady butterflies on Friday. The FOSS kits get picked up this week. It is high time to start on our community Social Studies lesson and Flat Stanley. I will also begin addition and subtraction with my 2nd grade students. We are going to play some games. I know the pass codes to get attendance to the office, I have bandaids and lots of extras at the ready for them to work on. I am excited, I am nervous, I am terrified. I think that I am ready. So here I go.....into teaching!

End of Winter Quarter and on to Spring!

As I limp my way out of Winter Quarter, I have to say a fond farewell. I will miss seeing my cohort each week and I will miss having classes and professors each week too(though right now this sounds pretty good). Here I go, it is time to get in the class and teach....While I have been teaching for some time, it hasn't been all day. The focus, the stamina, how I admire all of those who make it look easy. I am ready to start and eager to be their teacher and terrified all at the same time. Will I do them justice, will they be ready for 3rd and 4th grade? Will they succeed? Will I have what it takes?
I have a plan for seating, classroom management, lessons and units. I am slowing moving into teaching reading, writing, science, math and social studies. The FOSS unit on Insects is almost over and I survived all the mealworms, milkweed bugs, and Bess Beetles. So, for today, I am looking forward anxious to start, ready to begin, and hopeful.

Science Inquiry- Google Presentation

Cara's Science Inquiry Project: Popcorn Wars-Google Presentation

Mesmer and Mesmer on RTI and testing

While reading Mesmer on RTI, I can see that students are given a variety of tests from grades K-3. These universal literacy practices can be tied to federal funding and assess the student at least initially on speed, word identification, and phoneme awareness. Using this testing and running records, the teacher can begins to get an idea of the students' accuracy. "If the benchmark score does not meet the grade-level minimum, then additional diagnostics are administered and collected."(Mesmer, p. 284) Response to Intervention is a great way to get special education students the help they need while the assessments are being administered, instead of "admiring the student's reading problem-discussing the problem, and collecting data on it months before they can do anything about it " (Mesmer, p. 289) as in the current discrepancy model. I can see two points of worry here. First, is what about ELL students who may even after exiting ELL not perform well on standardized testing, are we pushing them into special education when they need the syntax and word meaning backgrounds to increase their comprehension? Also, I worry about the lack of acceptable testing for reading comprehension and too much reliance on standardized testing with too little time for informal assessments. Routman says that "we need to make sure we are documenting student's progress at the classroom and school level. We must balance formal assessments with informal assessments." (Routman, p. 111) It is a fine balance to have to walk between the meeting the needs of our students and assessing them as the state, fed and districts tell us to. RTI provides another way to help our students sooner than later, and that is probably a good thing.

Here is the link to Kristen's blog at http://kristen-bringonthebooks.blogspot.com/.
I found Kristen's questions on how RTI can help older students in middle school and high school to be thought provoking.

Tovani on Strategies to help reluctant readers

Reading Cris Tovani this week in I read it, but I don't get it; I have a better understanding of what is happening inside the heads of reluctant readers. I can also see that simply asking students to re-read isn't too helpful to them. Just like sounding out the word is only one of many strategies to teach word identification; re-reading is only one of many strategies to help students develop their reading comprehension. Tovani tells of her own experience with her fifth grade teacher, " We were doing fractions, and I was struggling to learn how to find common denominators. After many incorrect attempts, I asked for help. My teacher knelt down beside my desk and through clenched teeth said, " Think harder! Thinking harder about something that I didn't understand was a strategy that I couldn't sink my teeth into, and neither can my students"(Tovani, p.50) If our students aren't comprehending what they are reading they need alternate methods of how to understand better. As teachers, it is our responsibility to demonstrate and model how we read for comprehension and guide our students until they can begin to comprehend more fully and independently. By teaching our students how to make predictions, connect text to your real life and retell, we are helping make connections for students to read with better meaning.

Math Conversations

In reading Ballenger Chapters 4 and 5 and thinking about my students, what comes to mind is our calendar mini-sessions using Calendar Math. My MT brought all the kiddos to the carpet and had them discover the calendar for January on the first day back from break. What patterns could they see? What number groupings? Could they count by 7's? Which way did the pattern emerge. They must of talk with each other and come up with 40-50 different patterns or observations. Some of them didn't always make much sense at the time. My MT is very experienced at asking for clarifications and asking leading questions. I wish I had taped that session. After reading Ballenger, I am sure there was so much more going on. " This conversation and many of the others explored in the book, demonstrate, I believe, that when one shifts the kind of talk encouraged in classroom discussion, a different pattern of talent and achievement emerge."(Ballenger,p.79) By approaching this as a class together and letting the students come up with their own understandings, such a nice moment happens in the classroom. Students are making sense of the math meanings through their own lens. The students get very excited. In reading this and thinking about applying it, I think of our science methods class. Our professor is video taping us and reflecting on it later. I can see that now, that this would be a great way to understand us all better.

Student Teaching with a sub

In reading Tomlinson, I am reminded of the diverse landscape of a split classroom. In any classroom you will have very diverse learners each striving to master the subject in their own ways. The spectrum in a multi-age classroom really exemplifies this. I am currently struggling with this in my classroom. Tomlinson says, " Teachers in a healthy classroom continually invite their students to be a part of the teaching."(p.33) Yesterday, My MT was away and we had a sub. We also had 15 crayfish in tub waiting for a habitat. I am teaching the 2nd grade FOSE unit and my MT is teaching 3rd unit FOSE which includes the crawling crustaceans. I wasn't the expert, I didn't even know what I was doing, so we plunged in together and we observed, touched and figured it out together. By night fall the crayfish were nestled in their habitat eating lettuce and bacon. I didn't know they would eat bacon?!? We had all had a chance together to share our past experiences with crayfish, to pick them up safely and place them in their habitat and to figure out what kind of habitat they might like. It was chaotic, it was loud, it was fun! " While (teachers) know their leadership role, teachers in these classrooms understand that their students come in with vast amounts of tacit knowledge, a clear sense of what works in their world."(p.33) Obviously, this is not a plan for everyday, but it took this lack of planning to let me know it is less about the plan and more about the kiddos and helping them to make connections to their real life.