Together We Are Better: Making Improvements

Good Morning,

I am continue to catch up by linking up with Schroeder Shenanigans in Second and Lucky Little Learners for this months Together We Are Better linky.

 

This month's linky topic goes along perfectly with thoughts that have been swimming in my head all summer. This coming school year I will be doing a teacher split with my  partner teacher. I will be teaching all the little firsties math, science, social studies, and handwriting. She will be teaching the rest of the subjects. This requires some big changes in my room. I no longer need all the reading, writing, and phonics posters in my room. Along with this I have been reading Mindsets in the Classroom, Teaching with Intention, and Learn Like a Pirate. These books have also given me lots of ideas for my classroom.

Unfortunately I don't have any photos at this time. I have only been in my room twice since school let out a month ago so it is still a disaster. It is also slow going since I bring my one year old with me.

All of my bulletin boards/covered wall spaces are receiving face lifts. I have chosen new colors (blue, green, and purple) for my room. One of my boards is becoming an "I Can" wall where I will post the statements for science, math, and social studies. I am adding a space near my classroom library for a bible wall. This will be where I post bible projects and verses throughout the year. Outside my room I am turning one of my walls into a gratitude wall. I will be having my kids write what they are thankful for once a week and then posting their thoughts on that board so that we can be reminded of all the wonderful gifts we have all been blessed with. I have not decided quite yet what the other boards/wall spaces will be yet but pictures will be posted when I finish my room.

I am also excited to have expanded my library/meeting area. It has always been small and in a corner of my room. We have always struggled to fit in that space so this year I have moved furniture around and made it larger so that we can easily fit in for class meetings and they kids have more reading space too.

That's all I have for now but I will be in my classroom all this week so I will try to add a few photos to show a little of what I am talking about above.

Ashley

Learn Like a Pirate: Chapter 5

Good Morning!

I am continuing to catch up this morning by finally linking up with The Primary Gal for chapter 5 of Learn Like a Pirate.

 

This chapter was all about the different ways that Solarz gives the responsibility of running the classroom to his students. He has a group of formal jobs that are assigned to students and everything else is considered a collaborative responsibility. I like that he teaches his students all of the things that need to be done to keep the classroom running and then empowers them to jump in to complete these tasks on their own when they see that they need to be completed.

I have thought about how to accomplish this with first graders and I haven't come to a conclusion yet. I have decided to expand the jobs that I assign to students this coming year which will give them more responsibility in their classroom. I will have to think a little longer on how to instill that collaborative responsibility in my little firsties because I love the idea of them being more observant and concerned about how their classroom looks and runs.

Solarz continues on to talk about rituals vs. routine. He states that rituals are activities that follow the same pattern but are motivational for students and make students want to be a part of it. Routines are activities that follow a similar pattern but are not motivational to students. After reading his descriptions I could clearly see the few parts of my day that are ritual and the larger amount that are unfortunately routine. I do like how he pointed out the routine parts of our days can be turned into rituals for our students. My goal will be to turn those routines into rituals for my students. I am hoping that by doing that I can make things easier for subs when they are in my classroom. I try not to be absent but I do end up staying home more with my sweet girl when she is sick and feel that my subs would have an easier time if my students took more control of the routines.

My goal for this coming year will be to expand the classroom jobs and work on making rituals within my classroom versus routines. Solarz is excellent in painting such a wonderful picture of a student led classroom that you can't help but get pumped up and ready to dive in to changing your classroom. I look forward to reading all the other thoughts and ideas over on the Primary Gal's blog.

Ashley

The inLinkz code is:

An InLinkz Link-up

Teaching with Intention: Chapter 5

Good Evening!

I took last week off to deep clean my house and then spend time with visiting family so tonight begins catch up. Tonight I am finally linking up with From Kindergarten with Love and The Kindergarten Smorgasboard  for chapter 5 of Teaching with Intention.

 

What a great chapter! This was a beautifully laid out lesson plan to help students comprehension grow and develop. I love the idea of using a poster board as a folder to post our schema (what we think we know), new learning, and misconceptions. I also love that she uses post it notes (in different colors of course) to post the thoughts of the students throughout lessons and readings. That is a great way to show them an example of moving thoughts around or evening "deleting" a thought if it is not accurate. It is also a great way to teach them to pull thoughts from their reading and write them on post it notes to share with the class. This will help them remember the information from the reading and it will give them the power to teach/share something with their classmates. This will be a great tool to use this year for my science and social studies classes.

Ashley

Five for Friday

Good Morning!

This morning I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for her Five for Friday linky party.

So this was a big week in our house. My sweet 1 year old daughter has been sleeping in our room since March. She was sick every few days the last three months of school so we just kept her in our room since her room is on the other side of the house. Well that changed this past weekend. Our sweet girl is finally back in her crib sleeping the nights away. Now if I can just get the fur baby (90 lb golden retriever) out of the bed we will be sleeping peacefully again.

I was able to completely redo one of my favorite units. I have so much more clip art now that it was really fun to go back and make my Johnny Appleseed product look nicer. It also motivated me to go back and start updating the products that I put on TpT preclipart and boy do those products need a little TLC. I am excited to see how different and more professional they look when I am finished.

I had the privilege of spending the afternoon with some amazing Arizona teachers at the AZ Teachers Brunch and Bubbly. It is humbling to be a part of a group with so many creative and talented women. I am learning so much from them and I look forward to all the things they will be able to teach me about TpT and blogging.

I got to spend another week at home with my sweet girl. My favorite part of summer vacation has been being a stay at home mommy. I love spending time with her even on those challenging tantrum filled days. I will definitely have a hard time going back in August. I love my job, but I also love being a stay at home mommy.

I love music and I love Christian music. My sweet girl and I jam to Air 1 whenever we are in the car. This is another one of my recent favorites. Enjoy!

Ashley

Learn Like a Pirate: Chapter 4

Hello!

This afternoon I am linking up with The Primary Gal for chapter 4 of Learn Like a Pirate.

I love the focus of this chapter: improvement focus vs. grade focus. My teaching partner and I have been trying to move away from the heavy focus on grades. We teach first grade and it is hard to see our kiddos getting letter grades and OSN's. We would love to send something different home to parents (more skills based) since we know that something has to go home. We just haven't quite figured out what that is yet. Hopefully we will be able to come up with something that we can get approved so that we can eliminate extrinsic forces like those Solarz states below.

I work in an affluent area so I hear students talk about rewards or punishments that they receive based on their grades. For starters, I still can't believe that I hear it from my little firsties. They should not be paying attention at all to their grades. They should only be focused on learning and having fun. When a reward or a consequence is applied to their grades then they are only working hard to receive the reward or avoid the consequence. I want them to work hard because they want to learn and because they are having fun learning.

To ensure that our students are learning we need to be present. We need to make sure that we are walking around listening and observing so that we know what our students are thinking. It enables us to give them the feedback they need to understand better and make their learning more effective. This is so important no matter what grade level we teach. Being present will also help us guide students through conflicts or observe as they use a strategy that we have taught them to solve a conflict. Either way observation, being present, is important for us as teachers. 

These were my two most prominent thoughts from this chapter. Solarz also discussed a really fabulous idea called ePortfolios, but unfortunately I don't see that as being something my little firsties could handle at their age. I think its a brilliant idea for older grades though. Having students write their assignments and reflections on a blog so that peers, teachers, etc. can read it is fabulous. Although as I watch my one year old figure out how to unlock my iPhone and play music (who would have thought) I can't help but wonder if sometime in the future my firsties will be doing something like an ePortfolio. Either way coming up with some form of reflection for my class will be something I look into for this next year. I like how it gets them to think more about what they are learning. 

Thank you for letting me share my thoughts. Have a wonderful evening!

Ashley

TpT Seller Challenge: Week 2

Good Morning!

This morning I am finally linking up with Sparkling in Second, Third in Hollywood, Teach Create Motivate, and Peppy Zesty Teacherista for the TpT Seller's Week 2 challenge. This week's challenge is about what our dreams are for the money we make from TpT. I definitely do not make much on TpT but in my dream world this is what I would do with more money earned.

 Family: My husband, daughter, and pup are my world. We are on our own, aside from amazing friends, here in AZ so we are always together. Budgets are tight given that both my hubby and I work in education so it would be amazing to be able to use money for nights out to dinner, movies, parks and events for the little one, more grooming days for the fur baby and much more. I would love to be able to spoil my little family, even just a little.

Savings: This last year has been quite the demonstration of how nice it is to have a savings when things come up. I would love to build it up more and create a larger cushion for any more expensive life moments. It would just be nice to have that beautiful peace of mind.

Travel: Both my family and my husband's family live in California. We don't get to travel there as often as we would like, especially now that we have our daughter. We would love to have money set aside to be able to just decide to head out to SoCal for a three day weekend or for special events. Right now we typically only travel for major holidays and the really large special events like weddings and such. Traveling more would allow for our daughter to know her amazing grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins. We really would love to be able to give that to her since both of us grew up with all of that craziness.

Help: I would love to be able to provide products that help other teachers the way I have been helped. I am only in my eighth year of teaching but the blogs that I follow and the products that I have purchased from TpT have helped me so much on my teaching journey that I would love to be able to help others in their journey. It would mean so much to me to be able to give to others what they have given to me.

This is a tall order for my little store but in a dream world anything is possible. We will see throughout my journey how much comes true. Have a wonderful day and thanks for reading my thoughts.

Ashley

Teaching with Intention: Chapter 4

Hi Everyone!

Tonight I am linking up with Schroeder Shenanigans in Second , Positively Learning, and Kindergarten Smorgasboard for chapter 4 of Teaching with Intention. Our wonderful hosts gave us two questions to help guide our thoughts on this chapter.

 

This has been a very eye opening book for me and this chapter is no exception. Thinking about my classroom culture was interesting. Looking back at this school year I don't feel like I displayed my thinking in all areas like I should have been. Reading and Math are the areas where I share the most and where I encourage students to share the most. We discuss stories and what we think about them as we break them apart. We talk through different ways to solve a problem or what tools we can use to solve a problem. We write things down a lot in our journals or on our desks. Most of those are not displayed so this next year I will need to make sure that more of these moments are displayed in the classroom for them. Only a few activities each month were posted in the classroom. All the other subjects will need to be improved upon when it comes to more thinking being displayed by myself and my kiddos.

To help us with displaying our thinking and our students thinking Miller gives a lot of scenario examples. I loved it. In here examples she words everything so wonderfully and she makes them think through everything and say their thoughts out loud. I also loved how she handled the attention seeker students. I have met the sweet kiddos who will be in my class already and I can see a few who have the potential to be that attention seeker who will say anything whether it is on topic or not. Asking students to provide evidence for their statements is perfect. I wish I could say that I had been smart enough in the past to do that with those attention seeker students. I believe that I responded mostly with a little frustration because they were not paying attention. That will change this year.

Throughout this next school year I will also make sure that I am present more. I walk around observing and helping pretty often. I am rarely at my desk, but there are still too many times that I can remember where the assessments, meetings, tests, technology problems, and all the other craziness distracted me from being present with my students 100% of the time. I think this will be the hardest thing for me to work on because I can be easily distracted with the tech issues that my classroom has and unfortunately there are a lot. It will be worth it in the end to make sure that I am present more. It will help me display my thoughts to my students more often when they are partnered or in groups. 

 

During our reading time we discuss the stories. We stop every couple of pages and start by discussing Who and What. From there we talk about why we think things are happening, what we think will happen next, what characters are thinking, etc. I love hearing their comments. Some are very out there and some are really in depth for such young minds. It makes the stories more interesting to me. This is probably where the most discussion happens, well here and devotion/Bible story times.

We also discuss a lot in math. I had the privilege of teaching Singapore math for a year and fell in love. It opened up a whole new way of teaching math. I loved how much it made the kids and myself think about the methods of solving and how many different ways a problem could be solved. I think it made kids more open and creative in the way they look at math. I no longer teach Singapore but I still use a lot of the strategies in my room which leads to lots of discussions on how things can be solved, number talks, etc.

Other subjects are not as open as reading and math but discussion do happen is smaller capacities. This will definitely be something to work on for this next school year. 

Thanks for reading my thoughts on chapter 4. I look forward to reading your thoughts!

Ashley