A New Addition - SOL#16

old friends are comfortable

purring, sleeping, snuggling

old friends like routine

inside, outside, inside

old friends like quiet

a new addition

no more quiet

no more routine

walk in the door -

attacked

eating dinner - 

attacked

trying to sleep -

attacked

such is life 

with a new addition

This is the new addition.

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Slice of Life: An Uncomfortable Time

I work in a private school. Every year we have to turn in a letter of intent. It's always this time of year that I begin to feel uneasy and unsure. Should I stay another year? Should I look for a new job in one of the public school districts nearby? I have a lot of anxiety around this. I love my classroom. I love my kids. I know that there are demands on you wherever you teach. I know that there are politics wherever you teach. Being in a private school though, you are dependent on the tuition from the students.

Some parents can be exceedingly demanding. We currently have a parent that we cannot make happy no matter what we do. Her child had an accident and had a concussion from it in October. He has had headaches and cannot track visually, so he cannot read anything. We are departmentalized, so each of his four academic core teachers meet with him during one of our planning times for one-on-one instruction daily. He will come to our class with other students for 10 minutes maximum one day a week. We have restructured requirements to the bare minimum for him. We try and invite him to class parties, community meetings, project work with other students, but the mother always has an excuse for him not to attend. Nothing we do is enough for the mother. We cannot make her happy. She constantly talks poorly about all of us, saying we don't care about her son. We are not including him. We are at a loss.  It is parents like these that make me not want to return. We try our hardest to help the child, to meet his individual needs, to go out of our way to do what we are being told is best for him right now. We cannot win. I know if I return next year, I will be teaching the younger sibling. I don't know that I can take another year with this parent.

On top of that the demands placed on us for retention are enormous. There is another school that begins in 5th and continues through 12th. Our school is 4K  through 8th. Every year we have a few students that leave between 4th and 5th.  It is a battle our school has waged since we first opened our doors.  We are losing 4 students next year. The administration has asked us to listen, to talk to parents when possible, to get genuine feedback as to why they're choosing to leave. The feedback we are getting over and over again is that the students have had their best year yet, but they know they're not going to keep them at our school for middle school.  The two reasons we keep hearing is because of the middle school math teacher not preparing students as well as they should be when they move to other schools, and the middle school program isn't strong. We've given this feedback to the administration. They are not listening. We keep asking ourselves, how can we fight a battle to keep our students through middle school when no one is addressing the issues with the teaching in those grades? It is incredibly frustrating. We are losing 4 students between 4th and 5th grade for next year. We are losing 16 students between 7th and 8th grade alone next year....and yet, nothing is said or done.

It's always this time of year....I don't know what to do.

Thank you to The Two Writing Teachers as always for hosting Slice of Life!

When We Get Stuck

I signed up for a Sixty Book Challenge this year. I've fallen behind already! I started a book due to reading the many, many, many recommendations from different bloggers I admire. It's a science fiction YA book, which I usually enjoy. I find I'm having trouble really connecting. I haven't reached that aha moment when a book really grabs you and you just want to read more. I'm only 60 pages in, but I feel like I shouldn't be struggling to pick it up this much. I am finding other things to do. I'm not crazy about the point of view and the narrator's voice. I have discovered that I tend to not enjoy books written in first person as much as third person. The character that narrates is a teenager, therefore she speaks like a teenager. I appreciate the true voice coming through, but for engagement - it's not happening. So I have a dilemma...do I plow ahead or do I abandon? I have a hard time abandoning. The guilt gets me...but I find I'm doing what my students do...I'm not reading. Any advice? What do you do when you get stuck in a book and have trouble moving forward?

Thank you to the Two Writing Teachers for hosting the Slice of Life!

Committed to Writing

Join the Slice of Life Tuesday @Two Writing Teachers

This is my first time joining Slice of Life. I've committed to writing each and every day, so I thought I'd post in Slice of Life on day three of writing. I'm thinking how very hard it is to be a writer - not even a good writer, but just a writer. I ask my students to write daily. If I ask them to do it, why shouldn't I? I know that it is important for my students to write every day in order to become better writers. This is why I've committed. Kathleen had a post on Two Writing Teachers calling for teachers to join together in a conversation about writing daily, and because I have been a follower of hers for a while and really admire her, I was motivated to improve myself...It is January and I should have a resolution, right? I don't know that anything I write will be worthwhile, but I'll never know if I don't try. Then there's putting it out there for the world to see. I post on this blog, but not very regularly. I'm in awe of the blogs I read - I am always so impressed with how knowledgeable these people are and how much they have to say and share with the world. Hopefully, if I write daily, I will come to see myself as a writer, and I will have more to say and share that will hopefully inspire, help, or make a connection with other teachers.

Project Work vs Project-Based Learning

At the beginning of the 2014-2015 school year, our administration brought in a speaker for professional development from the Buck Institute. We were introduced to BIE's version of project-based learning. During the day, we learned about how we should develop and implement a project. It seemed as if there were many rules to follow and that the structure was quite rigid. During the afternoon, we had time to begin planning one that we would implement in our classrooms that year. The overall feeling in the room among the faculty was a sense of doom and feeling overwhelmed.

I will not kid you. I struggled with what our speaker said. He indicated that in order to have a project unit that was worthwhile, it had to be solving a real-world problem. I chose to focus on my opening unit in social studies, exploration. My essential question was: How was the world changed by explorations of European nations? I felt my students would have choice and voice during this unit, but when meeting with our speaker, he indicated that I was missing that authentic problem and the unit wouldn't work without it. His suggestion was to relate the explorers to street names in our community named after explorers, noticing what direction the streets faced - if facing south towards Mobile Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. I have to say, this very off-putting to me. I did not see how relating the explorers to street names made the unit more relevant and/or how it made it authentic.

My students completed the unit anyway. They each chose an explorer in which they were interested, researched him, wrote a biographical piece about him, and created an illustration to go with it. The students wanted to put their finished pieces together creating a book, which we then shared with a school in Montgomery.

Fast forward to this year. The same speaker came back. He no longer works for BIE and it seemed he had quite a shift in attitude. The information he shared seemed much more flexible, and he even said it was important to make it work for our school and our kids. The mood in the room was much different than the first year he visited us.

Last week, I had the wonderful opportunity to visit The Duke School in Durham, NC with twelve other teachers and administrators from my school. The Duke School has been a project work school for a very long time. They began with Katz and Chard's model and have tweaked that for their older students. Their model of project work follows three phases and really allows the students choice and voice in following where their interests are during the inquiry process. The first phase is where students access their background knowledge about their inquiry topic. The students not only tell their stories, but they write them and put them on display. From there, they generate questions they want answered. During phase two, the students engage in fieldwork, where they investigate. This is different than a field trip because there is no passive learning going on. Students have clipboards with them in order to take notes on their learning, they have questions to ask/interview experts, etc. They will read to find answers, and during this time, they generate more questions and/or revise the questions they had originally. Based on student interest, each one decides what topic he/she is most interested in and will then become the expert in that area. These groups work together to create a product for their culminating event, which they present to the parents.

I really loved how engaged the students were. I loved the process they used. I loved how the students were able to have choice and voice during the project. After have professional development in both these styles of project learning, I think The Duke School is definitely the style I connect better with and that is more in keeping with our school's philosophy. What I will say though, is after seeing some of The Duke School's culminating piece, my school already does an awesome job at this. I feel like the choice and voice has to extend to how students want to present their learning. I love that my students can choose to create an iMovie, use Google Slides, Powerpoint, Prezi, create a poster, a website, write a book, etc. for any given project. It is a very rare thing at my school that when students present their learning, you have a room full of posters.

We are moving towards becoming and project work/project-based learning school, and after attending The Duke School workshop this past week, I believe we are well on our way. We have great teachers at our school that are willing to step outside their comfort zone and really do everything they can to engage our students in 21st Century Learning. I'm excited to see how we move forward as a school. If you ever have the opportunity to visit The Duke School, I cannot recommend it enough! It was a fabulous experience. The faculty and students were incredibly welcoming and so willing to share their wealth of experience and knowledge with us. If you're interested in checking out some of their project work, just follow the link by clicking on the name of the school: The Duke School.

Parent-Teacher Conferences

This year there are a few changes with how some things take place during our school year, like parent-teacher conferences. In the past, we've had our first round of conferences just after the end of our first interim, only six weeks into the school year.

Our principal was new to our school last year, and she asked the faculty for feedback on certain things at our school. One bit of feedback we gave was that we really felt like our first conferences were too early in the year.  As you know, at the beginning of the year, it takes some time for the students to learn the routines, and we have to spend a bit of time with beginning of the year assessments as well as review. Our faculty felt that we weren't able to have meaningful conferences with parents so early in the year.

Our principal listened.  This year we're having our first round of conferences next week. We just completed our tenth week of school, so we have a good understanding of our students as learners - their strengths, areas of weakness, and goals for them. I also had my students complete a self-assessment where they judged how they were doing on things like following directions, completing assignments, turning in homework, etc.  On this form, they also listed one strength and one goal for themselves in reading, writing, and math.

This is the first year that we are completely departmentalized, and we will meet as a fourth/fifth grade team with all fourth and fifth grade parents...that's 58 conferences in two days. As a team, we've tried to be as prepared as possible by having parents complete pre-conference surveys with any concerns they may have. We've also created a shared Google Doc that has talking points from each of us for each student. Finally, we have the self-assessment from the student.

Although parent-teacher conferences are tiring, I believe they are of great value. This is an excellent opportunity to continue developing a relationship with parents and to really work as a team in order to make the best plan for their child to experience as much growth as possible and to develop as a learner.

What do you do to prepare for parent-teacher conferences?

Writing Workshop: Show Don't Tell

My students have been busy during our writing workshop over the past few weeks. They have been working on writing fiction, specifically spooky stories. The jumping off point was a picture that I used for a quickwrite prompt at the beginning of the month from Meg Hicks.

This became the setting of their stories. Students worked on writing their original draft of the story in their writing notebooks. During this time, we had mini lessons related to overused words and vivid verbs (read this post). Once drafts were completed, students typed that draft using Google Drive. Then revisions began. Their first task was to find all their verbs and replace with vivid verbs, revising the sentences.

As students worked through this, I was conferencing with them about "show don't tell" and making sure they included a fully developed problem in their story.  I had a chance to read everyone's draft last weekend, and had an "uh-oh" moment. I realized that many of my students had just listed actions in their stories - there was no real problem, no elaboration. So I reached out to what has become my teaching support group on Voxer. They provided much needed support - not only with ideas to help my students, but also stating that they in fact have this issue with many of their students. Doesn't it always make you feel better to know you're not alone?!

I crafted my lessons for the following week to address this technique of elaboration in writing. We began by looking at a handout that showed "tell" sentences vs. "show" sentences. I had my students notice and note what the differences were between these. A few things they said were that the show sentences really helped them, as readers, imagine what was going on. They noted specifically the use of adjectives, vivid verbs, as well as description of body language and emotion.

Then we tried our hand at taking a boring "telling" sentence and changing it to a "showing" sentence by adding descriptives to the subject and object and changing the verb from an overused to a vivid verb based on different emotions. Our boring sentence was: The boy ran up the stairs. I walked around in front of them acting out the emotion I wanted them to use. As I acted, they guessed the emotion (example: sad, excited, scared). I asked them how they knew if I hadn't told them, which got them to name what I did with my face and my body. Then they crafted a sentence expressing what they had seen.

The last thing we did was to look at two paragraphs. I gave them the least descriptive to start - "tell" paragraph.

Jessie tied his shoelaces.  He couldn’t seem to tie them.  He was feeling kind of sick.  The big game today would decide who would be champions – state champions.  Playing goalie wasn’t ever easy.  He knew if he wasn’t at his best today, the team would probably lose. He grabbed his jacket.  He walked out the door.  “Bye, Mom,” he said.  “I’ll see you later at the game.”  He walked to the bus stop.

We read it together and I asked them to tell me what they thought about it. Could they imagine the scene? How did the main character feel in this paragraph? What did the author do to let you know as a reader?

Then I gave them the "show" version.

Jessie fumbled with his shoelaces.  He couldn’t seem to tie them with his shaking hands.  A sickening feeling in his stomach was creeping up into his throat.  The big game today would decide who would be champions – state champions.  Playing goalie wasn’t ever easy.  He knew if he wasn’t at his best today, the team would probably lose.  As he grabbed his jacket, he shook his head to clear his mind.  His legs felt like spaghetti noodles as he trudged down the steps while holding on to the banister.  “Bye, Mom,” he called out weakly.  “I’ll see you later at the game.”  He swallowed hard and walked to the bus stop.

The light went on! They had the "aha" moment. They were excited by the changes the author made and immediately named techniques the author used, citing examples from the paragraph that showed these changes.

They now have a clear understanding of what it means to write descriptively as an author so that their reader can really visualize their story.  Now we are working to implement these techniques in our drafts. It is a long process, but it is so exciting to see them really trying and growing as authors!

How do you help your students learn about revision strategies?