What's Different? LINK-UP!

Every teacher has that "I'm doing this again!" or "I'm not going to do _____ this way again". It's part of the natural process of reflection, which I believe is critical in developing into a stronger teacher. I'd love to hear what you're doing differently this year versus last year! I'll get it started!

1. Daily Behavior Rubric

I loved my clip chart last year, it functioned well, it was cute and my students knew the expectations surrounding it. I've read all the hype on clip chart or no clip chart and it's important for me to say that these ideas didn't influence me. I'm not judging anyone with a clip chart or without one, this is just what works best for me and what I desire my classroom climate to be like. 

Here's what's new this year: 

What I love about the rubric is that students must self reflect each day before I sign. I love too that I can attach reflection sheets for students who needed to complete one that day. I can't wait to see how this runs in my classroom this year!

2. Literacy Centers

Yes, I LOVE literacy centers just like the majority of teachers. I love the drawer of task cards, I love the organization of the rotation groups. I love that just after one day of practice, students can rotate and know exactly where they are going! But, it is SO much work to keep up with updating centers each week, and it's a lot of $$$ because I purchase task cards a lot. Also, I worry that too much of it turns into busy work because it's so time consuming to prepare...maybe, just maybe...

So I decided I wasn't for it this year, but don't worry, I have a plan for what students will do while I pull Guided Reading groups - Student lead book clubs! Here's how I hope it will go: I create groups (based on reading level), each group is assigned to a book (five copies per group). I choose students to be the Book Captains. These captions are responsible for guiding their group through the book. I also purchased these Tri-Fold Novel Studies to help them out. What's great is while the group is with me for guided reading, the captains will have planning time - just like teachers...expect we don't get in school planning time ;)! The captains will use post-its to mark up their book, write questions for their chapters and even get time to conference with me to go over vocabulary, questions or concerns about their group! I'll blog more about this later!

3. Changed up Morning Work

I consider the morning to be one of the most critical times of the day (and right after lunch!) because it sets the stage for the rest of the day. When my students enter the classroom it's vital for them to know exactly what to do and for this to be consistent EVERY day! Last year I used grammar morning work and I loved the product, however, I longed for my students to have deeper morning work. So I purchased this for students to complete each day AND I'm going to create a Math booklet of morning work as well using this!

I'd love to hear from you! What are you doing different this year?
Here's your blank copy - get started!

Empowering Readers, Leaders and Thinkers

One of my goals this year as a teacher was to empower my students as readers, thinkers and leaders. To move away from teaching reading as a method (do this, then this, then this), and instead teach reading as a whole. For example, I struggled with the idea - do I teach individual skills/standards? Or do I encompass several skills/standards within closely reading a text and chapters of a novel? After a little push and a good chunk of money spent on standard based assessments on TPT, I came to the conclusion to take a holistic approach to reading and student led thinking/discussion/annotating. I have to admit, I still have this inner battle to this day, yes, it's March.

It's been challenging. A transformation had to occur in my thinking and teaching for this holistic approach to be possible, which would be challenging for anyone. The challenge is not just in my thinking and teaching, a challenge has been created for my students. I notice and still notice that my students have trouble guiding themselves through a text, it's almost like they are waiting for step my step directions to begin reading. I noticed this occurring just this week with a few of my students and it scared me! How can my students be successful in college if they are looking for steps to understanding a text?

So what did I do? After a brief moment of anxiety, I reflected. I asked myself, where did I get off track? How has my instruction helped students become independent, close readers and how am I holding them back? 

I took some time to outline what I have been doing since day one to empower my readers, and something amazing occurred. I figured it out - I let the anxiety of "the test" get me off track and regress to my "I'm going to model this skill, they are going to practice JUST THIS SKILL collaboratively, then try on their own". What I lost was the amazing wide thinking that I had witnessed just weeks before.

So now what?
I'm refocusing my instruction on the text, and encouraging my students to use their Reading Toolbox to make understanding of the text. I know what I will see happen - my students will be annotating their thinking and NATURALLY using reading skills (making predictions, summarizing, etc.)


Reflecting on how I've empowered my readers since day one was vital to getting my thinking back on track. Take a look at how I've empowered readers this year.

Reading Empowerment Timeline

Beginning of the year:

• introduced students to close reading strategies such as annotating your thinking, identifying key information and marking it up, using context clues to determine meaning of unknown words. 
• modeled and interactively marked up texts which reading literally and more deeply
• fostered independence in marking up texts through positive reinforcement

Middle of the year: 

• all of the above
• encouraged independent novel reading and marking up text with post its. 
• encouraged a wide range of marking up on post its (summary thought, theme thought, new words, connection thought). All of this is occurring NATURALLY as students read novels and are not limited to one type of thought as they read. 
• facilitated "book talk" that allowed students to share their post-it thoughts with classmates in whole group discussion. Passionate debate often occurred during this time!

At this point: 

• again, all of the above
• encouraged deeper thinking during reading, record on post-its
• facilitated discussion analyzing literal versus deeper thinking
• observing students naturally apply reading skills within novel reading
• students create a reading toolbox of strategies to use with any text. I allowed students to create the toolbox on an iPhone template and they took SO much ownership over the names of their "apps"! For instance, one student created the app named "The Makeup App", when I asked her what it meant, she replied this reminds me to mark up, or "put makeup" on my text. How awesome! 
• daily reading conferences/independent or small group modeling with students on the cusp of proficiency 
• facilitating before, during and after conversation to build essential understanding of the a text, naturally hitting on reading skills and standards.

Until next time,