Reflections

January 2nd, 2015 marks the end of my first year of teaching. What a year, filled with ups and downs, tears and smiles and most influential, lessons learned. I was fortunate to see two groups of young scholars grow as readers, writers, thinkers and leaders during my first year. Nothing ignites my passion for education more than seeing scholars fall in love with reading, thinking, learning, and leading. 

This first year of teaching has been the most challenging of my life, in so many ways. Those challenges pushed me to what I thought were my limits countless times, then I learned I had new limits. 

The challenges of my first year of teaching, not only pushed me, but taught me so much. 

You're going to make mistakes. I spent the majority of my first year attempting to avoid any possible mistake I might make. I spent endless hours thinking what could go wrong to avoid it happening. It was exhausting. This year I've learned to trust myself and my decision making. 

You can over-plan. This year I've spent countless hours on Sundays planning out my week step by step - to avoid any mistakes. I can't get back the time I should have been spending with my husband or taking care of myself in other ways. 

Don't forget to pee. That's self explanatory. Teachers, we have the strongest bladders of anyone out there. 

Take care of yourself. This a big one. When you're a perfectionist, trying to avoid mistakes, and putting all you having into your job, YOU get lost. While the job is demanding, I learned I need to take time for myself to do something I love, besides teach! Am I perfect at this now? No way, but I try my hardest. If you don't take care of yourself, you're useless to those you need to take care of. 

A deep breath can go a long way. I like to think that breathing changed my life. In college I suffered from an anxiety disorder. When I sought help, I wasn't told to take medication, I was taught how to breathe and how to meditate. This one goes along with taking care of yourself, just breathe. 

Put your family first. My husband is my number one supporter. I never want to experience the regret of missing time with my husband and our future children. 

Finding a balance that works is hard, but worth it. 

Guess what 2nd year of teaching? 

Push me, challenge me - I'm ready for you! 

I'd love to hear from you - what lessons did you learn your first year of teaching? 

Keeping Guided Reading Organized

Guided reading is one of my favorite times of the day. My students also love hearing their guided reading group called! This time of the the days definitely would NOT be my favorite if I didn't keep it organized, its would be chaos and my students would suffer from it!

Before school even started in August, I began thinking about how I would keep myself organized this year. I knew I wanted to have between 5 and 6 groups and I planned how many times a week I would meet with each group. This chart was made before students walked through my door.

Once I did my initial Fontas and Pinell testing, I decided 5 groups would suffice and took away the Blue group. 

One of the tedious, yet necessary parts of guided reading is the initial assessments to determine student levels. Following the initial assessment, I grouped students based on their reading levels and got started working with my groups as soon as I could. 

The basics: 

Every group has a color, each color has a folder with all their groups materials

 Inside each folder:

Notebook (for recording observations)

6 copies of the text

Comprehension Questions 

Group pacing guide

Fluency Routine (not included in the photo)

It's important for students to know the purpose of their guided reading time. Here's how I display my guided reading objectives

When students come to guided reading, I want them to know the routine and it's important to me to keep the routine the same throughout the school year. 

We start our with our fluency routine, a one minute reading of a text at their level, I test one students while the rest whisper read to themselves. They record their words per minute on a graph. 

Then we move into word work, the amount of time spent on this varies depending on the reading level that I'm working with. We like word sorts for some groups and word analysis for others. 

Then I move into explaining what good readers do, show them what good readers do and them loose to try it on their own. While they are whisper reading, I meet with one students at a time and we practice together and I record their reading behaviors and goals for their next visit. 

In the end, we come back together to either discuss our reading and our objective. 

I found guided reading very challenging last year, but I'm loving how it's going this year - and having an organized system has played a huge role in that. If you're having trouble keeping your guided reading time organized, I hope you found this helpful - feel free to leave a comment about your loves and struggles with guided reading - I'd love to chat with you!

I've been busy adding items to my store this weekend, check out some of my goodies AND a freebie!

Text Dependent Analysis Reference and checklist bookmarks!

Here's the FREEBIE!

Have a great week, teachers!

Currently October!

I've linked up with Oh Boy, 4th Grade for Currently, October edition! Loving this month already!

Click below for your treat! 

Why do the Rules Make Sense?

This is a long overdue blog post! This year has gotten off to a great start, but like any other teacher it's been so busy! My energy is lacking due to some nasty germs invading my body, but I'm too excited to share this post to care!

Let me be honest, I have never really loved teaching math. I struggled with math as a child and still find certain mathematical concepts challenging, but this year has changed my mathematical mindset.

Here's why.

When I was in school, I was taught mathematical rules, such as how to borrow in subtraction, carrying in addition, looking at the digit before when rounding.  I used these rules to accurately, sometimes painstakingly, solve mathematical problems. But I never knew WHY the rule worked, why it made sense.

This year, my students are learning WHY certain mathematical rules make sense and HOW to represent these rules in different ways - and so am I!

Today was a particularly remarkable day in math class because I observed students representing 'carrying' using their place value charts.

We began by reviewing our objective (above) and exploring our Launch together in table groups. 

At this point, I did not tell them what a tape diagram was, I just asked them to use the figure below when they solved. I noticed most students using the  3 sections for the 3 numbers, those smarties!

As students worked collaboratively on the problems, I circulated  and observed some students rounding to the nearest thousand, and some to nearest ten thousand. When we came back together to share out, I had two students who rounded to different place value model their work. 

Students came to a concensus that rounding to the nearest thousand gave a more accurate estimation!

Next, we read the addition statement together and represented it on a tape diagram, labeling our unknown with the letter 'w'

Then we modeled it on our place value chart - here's where the magic started to happen. 

As we were adding up our number disks, we realized that there were more than 10 in our tens place. To represent the rule of carrying, we bundled a group of ten tens and drew an arrow to make one hundreds. Here is where students could visually make the connection between carrying when adding multidigit numbers! 

They had some practice with partners, and I was really impressed - check out this awesome, smart mathematical thinking!

Tomorrow, I'm excited to have my students dig deeper into word problems using tape diagrams!

Need some place value resources? 

Check out my newest product!

Currently September

I've linked up with Oh' Boy 4th Grade for my FIRST 'Currently' linky!

Listening -  The violent gun shots got on my nerves and have changed since I type it, haha! Calvin Harris is playing now! 

Loving - my husband and I got an espresso machine for a wedding gift and I just love steaming my milk and adding it to coffee :)

Thinking - I started my first year teaching mid-way through the year last January, so this is my FIRST year starting out in the fall!

Wanting - seriously, I need to do my laundry

Needing - I've got all day, but my anxiety will quiet down if I feel fully prepared!

3 trips - I LOVE going on vacation, but it hasn't happened too much, my honeymoon to Charleston was my first real vacation since before college. I've been to all these places except Boston and would love to go back, especially so my husband can see these beautiful spots! Boston might just be a birthday trip this year ;)

Thanks for stopping by!

Classroom Reveal

I've linked up with The Primary Gal to reveal my classroom!

School starts in less than 24 hours and even though I'm feeling fairly high levels of anxiety, I know it's going to be a fantastic year and I'm beyond excited to get started! I can feel that this year I'm am going to grow leaps and bounds as an educator and leader!

My classroom was finished on Friday - a few small tweeks will be made tomorrow morning after having 3 days to ponder over it, but other than that I'm pleased with it!

Classroom Reveal, here we go!

This is the view from the door of pretty much the entire room! I should note that I teach ALL GIRLS, which explains why it's extremely girl friendly!

Let's go a little deeper into the elements of the room. I tried to be very purposeful as to what I put on the walls and where I put it.

This is my classroom clip chart, you can find that here!

At the end of each day, students will fill out their calendar which is initialed by me and their parent. 

It looks like this!

Next is the Math Wall. On this wall is problem solving strategy posters, Magic Math Words, T-chart and space for anchor charts to to be rotated out. This anchor chart will stay up for the first two days. It'll be switched out to a "math talk" anchor chart, probably on Thursday or Friday! Underneath I have posted the eight Standards for Mathematical Practices. 

Next, we have the Writing Wall/Center

Posted here is writing charts, Lucy Calkin's Narrative Writing Checklist & Rubric and my Writing Process Posters that may be used to track student writing, but for now it's just a reference to the process. I might end up blowing up the writing checklist and removing the "Let's Write" poster. 

Next, CAFE wall and Buddy Reading Center. I'm using the CAFE wall a little differently - I will put arrows next to the strategies my guided reading groups are currently working on (great idea from my literacy coach!). Also, during buddy reading, students can refer to the strategies.  

Thanks IKEA for the affordable and adorable rugs and pillows :)

You can get a peek at my word wall here - there's an alphabet word wall for literacy and content area wall for math, science and social studies. I have a close up but don't want my kiddos name's out for all to see :)

Here we have my ugly cabinet that I tried to brighten up - we have homework club, lunch count and the bottom is where my guided reading groups and schedule are posted. Guided reading objectives might end up being posted there or behind my guided reading table! 

On the door we have a "books we love" wall where students can use a large index card to illustrate and write about a book they love. 

Parking Lot - was not mine, a colleague was getting ride of it, this will be used for post-it exit tickets!

And my center rotations for Literacy (blue) and Math (pink) are posted here! 

Center rotation pocket chart:

Center bins for Literacy and Math. The small frames label my center locations and our class hand signals are posted here!

I decided to brighten up and add some wall space by covered the bottom of two of my windows, these will be for science and social study charts, concepts, etc. 

This is the Literacy Wall and Library area! 

The front of the room: 

My alphabet needs a little adjusting!

And our focus wall, this got a makeover about halfway through. It was already done, but my perfectionism kicked in and I just had to redo it. I'm much more pleased with it now!

This is our Data Wall. Here's I'll track local assessment data, standard breakdowns and Fontas and Pinnell data. 

Reading Data up close: 

Some random room photos!

We're all set for the first day! My husband helped get folders and books INSIDE the desks to limit the amount of stuff on their desks when they first enter. 

On there desks will be the take home folder, welcome letter, parent questionnaire, and homework packet. Also a student survey to complete after the folder gets put away while I collect supplies and other things and a sweet letter from my students last year to the new fourth graders. 

       

Cheers to a great school year!