New Year, New Digs, & New Commitments

Hey all, it's been a while!  This school year I have a whole slew of new things going on in my career.  I have a new classroom. I have started my masters in Creativity and Innovation through Drexel University online. I presented over the summer at InnEdCO and am newly emboldened.  So I've decided to set a new goal as well.  I plan to post to this blog at least twice a month this school year.  So, dear readers, please hold me to this promise!  I'm excited to model "real-world" writing for my students as I invite them to be a part of this goal setting.  If anyone can keep me on my goal timeline, it will be them!  Stay tuned for my classroom reveal post later this week... here's a little preview of where it started...

All I can say is woof!

Creating Passionate Readers

Believe it or not, guided reading programs, Accelerated Reader, and reading interventions don't create voracious readers.  As much as publishing companies try to pack their programs with high interest stories, they are still forced down many children's throats.  Kids earning points for reading takes away the genuine sense of accomplishment in finishing a book.  Most kids I have worked with that struggle in reading don't read on their own because they essentially view it as "work." It is for this reason that I highly agree with Cynthia Rylant and her beliefs about reading:



With the best of intentions, I think teachers sometimes feel that they have to discuss everything to death.  They are trying to help kids infer and retell, which are fantastic higher order thinking skills.  However, doing this with EVERY book just makes kids hate reading.  Sometimes we have to shut up and just let kids enjoy reading.  It's ok to read to kids just for fun.  It's fine to not ask questions and just teach them that it's awesome to get totally wrapped up in a story.

The following are some ideas that follow Cynthia Rylant's philosophy of inspiring readers.

1. Host a Read In: Students bring in blankets, pillows, flashlights, and of course, books.  They use a little time to build forts and then get to read in these forts for an hour or two.  Is this wasting class time?  I don't think so because you are sending two messages.  One is that reading is fun.  The other is that it is so important that you should sometimes do nothing but reading for a couple of hours.  Plus, don't we do this as adults?
2. Read Aloud to Your Class Without Asking Them Questions:  I know administrators everywhere are cringing, but I'm not saying to do this every time.  Set aside a couple of days a week where whatever you are reading you are just going to read.  Let the kids stretch out, listen, and enjoy.
3. Find Each Child That One Perfect Series:  When you pair kids with books that are just right for them, their reading takes off.  I have seen second graders who hated reading pick up an American Girl book and suddenly take off reading the whole series.  I have seen fourth grade boys grab a book by Rick Riordan and then read everything he has ever written.  Usually you want to make sure it's something the child is capable of reading.  But, if the child has the right support don't limit them to only books that are at their independent reading level (especially if they are gifted children).
4. Give Your Students Books as a Present:  On holidays I will sometimes wrap up books and give them to my students as gifts.  They almost always drop everything that they are doing and read.  Scholastic often has great promotions that make this possible.  For Halloween a couple of years ago I was able to get each of my kids their own copy of The Teacher From The Black Lagoon.  Sure, it was a simple story, but it was special because it was a gift.
5. Close the Book You Just Finished and Keep Your Mouth Shut: This one is by far the hardest for me.  There is nothing better than the look on a my students' faces when I close a book at the end.  They almost all have something to say or ask.  I have just sat there smiling at them for over five minutes before and let them run away with their thinking and feelings about the end of a book.  Some of the best conversations have come out of me shutting up!

What ideas have you used in your classroom to inspire your students to LOVE reading?

Comment to share!

Let It Go: A lesson in student driven classrooms.

Just try not to sing whilst reading that title.

In life, I am definitely not a super organized person.  My husband can attest to this by pointing to the pile of clothes on top of my hamper.  In my classroom, however, I have systems for my systems.  My shelving system has labels and sub-labels.  Which was why when my district began to push for student driven classrooms, I pretty much balked at the idea.  "How does that even work?" "How will I get anything done?" "What if they choose things that don't work, or are not what I'm looking to accomplish?"

I decided to take it slow.  Boldly, I deleted a word or two in rubrics I had created.  Then I gave students two topics to choose from in an opinion writing assignment.  Little by little I started to let go.  Something pretty cool started to happen... my kids began to care more.  My kids were aware of what was expected of them.  My kids were more engaged.  This fueled my fire.  Eventually my students were creating their own rubrics.  They were coming up with their own research projects and writing informative essays.  The more power I gave my students the more innovative, creative, and authentic their learning became.  This led to some amazing things.

My kids redesigned the classroom based on this new way of learning, considering their learning needs.  They started to notice things that needed to change in their world and used class time to change them.   Opinion writing changed from a guided curriculum to the creation of a presentation to the principal on why she should purchase garbage bins for our playground.  This led to number sense of costs, research on health problems, and lessons on public speaking.   Students were curious about coding and computers so they took things apart.  They learned about coding systems and how to get into the field of computer science.  Most importantly, this was all going on at once.  Different kids were working on different things throughout the day.  Normally, this would make my anal brain go nuts.  But the kids really directed themselves!

Fundamentally my perspective on teaching had changed.  I used to think about what we needed to cover and how to incorporate students into it.  Now, I harness their interests, passions, and curiosities and then see what curriculum can fold into them.  Is it harder? ABSOLUTELY!  But I cannot tell you enough how much it is worth it.  I literally don't have behavior problems anymore.  Differentiation is inherent in the lessons because kids drive their own learning.  Learning is authentic.

I will admit that I am still learning.  But, I must say, I am truly enjoying being a partner of learning.  It's time we let kids show what they can do in their own way.  It's time to test the limits and break through.  No right, no wrong, no rules for me I'm free! Let it go!  I'm glad I did.

If you got that joke you should definitely follow my blog...

Comment below with other ways you have let it go in your classroom!

Creating Classroom Mission Statements

I'm going to make a really bold statement: You should not create classroom rules.  I know some of you will stop reading right there, and that's ok.  But I truly believe that really well managed classrooms don't have rules.  What they do have are procedures and mission statements.  Rules can be broken, but procedures are just how things are done.  With a mission statement students can actually reflect on whether or not their actions are in line with the class mission.  I have used mission statements in my class for the past four years.  I love creating them with students as a first week activity because it unites us around a common purpose.  It also gets kids thinking that school's purpose is more than just learning.  Are you on board?  Then keep reading for step by step instructions on what I feel is the best way to create a mission statement with your students.

Step One: Define what a mission statement is

I use this definition, "A mission statement is a sentence or short paragraph written by a group of people, a company, or a business that explains their purpose, values, identity, and goals."

We then discuss what purpose, values, identity, and goals mean as a class.

Step Two: Play a guessing game with some existing mission statements

I will put up mission statements from a few well known companies and have students try to guess which companies they are from.  Kids always find this part fun.  We talk about how they knew what company it was because of the key words that give us a clue about their goals, purpose, or identity.  Essentially, these become the "mentor texts" for writing a mission of their own.  Obviously you can include any business that you want but the following have worked really well for me.

• Frontier Airlines: "We are in business to be the best-loved airline.  And we will earn it one action at a time, no matter how big or how small, to create a different and better experience."
• Dunkin Donuts: "_______ will strive to be the dominant retailer of high quality donuts, bakery products and beverages in each metropolitan market in which we choose to compete."
• IKEA: "_________'s mission is to offer a wide range of home furnishing items of good design and function, excellent quality and durability, at prices so low that the majority of people can afford to buy them."
• Hershey's: "Bringing sweet moments of ____ happiness to the world every day."
• Enterprise: "To be the best transportation service provider in the world, to exceed our customers' expectations for service, quality and value, to provide our employees with a great place to work and to serve our communities as committed corporate citizen."
• Pizza Hut: "We take pride in making a perfect pizza and providing courteous and helpful service on time, all the time.  Every customer says, 'I'll be back!'"

Step Three: Have your class brainstorm their identity, values, purpose, and goals

Next, I put a giant graphic organizer on the board and invite students to use sticky notes to brainstorm answers.  The questions focus students on how the definition of mission statements are related to our classroom.  I use, "Who are we?", "Why are we here?", "What do we think is important?", "What are our goals?" Here's what it looks like after they've brainstormed:

Step Four: Organize your sticky notes into main ideas

This is a great differentiation opportunity.  Sometimes I just model organizing the sticky notes into main ideas, and sometimes I have students do that for me.  Essentially we group stickies with the same idea together and try to put labels on those groups.  When we are done with that you should have the key words for your mission statements!  I like to star the key words that we saw the most or that we feel are the most important.  That way students have lots of ideas but a few "must haves" to guide them.

This:

 

Turns into this:

Step Five: Actually write a mission statement

Here's the fun part!  Using the filled in graphic organizer, students select key words and create sentences that include them.  Often, I will model some examples first.  With all that prep work, students are ready to write!  I usually let students choose to work in groups or individually to create their class mission statements.

Step Six: Vote for a favorite

Students read their individually written mission statements to the class and then I have students vote for their two favorites using a gallery walk style.  This almost always results in the one I would have chosen anyway.  However, if you don't love the one that your kids chose, you could always pick the top three and work together to combine them into the best mission statement you can come up with.

Thanks for reading!  Feel free to comment with any ways that you have successfully completed mission statements in your classroom.

Why I Am Starting A Blog

If you're a teacher who hasn't heard of InnEdCo (Innovation Education Colorado) or ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) then you should google it right now.  These two organizations/conferences are AMAZING.  Two years ago I started attending InnEdCo and while at most conferences I'm happy if I walk away with one or two ideas to put into practice I walked away from InnEdCo with six pages of ideas!  There were countless ways to integrate more technology into my classroom and school, but there were also lots of ideas about innovating a classroom in general.  Over the past year I have made some major changes to my classroom and to the way that I teach as a result.  At this year's conference a fellow attendee suggested I document some of these ideas and changes to share with other people.  So here it goes, my first ever blog, all about my teaching, my classroom, my school, and my thoughts about education.  I hope you like it!