Informational Writing Can Be Fun!

I've been coaching in a 5th grade classroom during their Informational Reports unit. It's not my thing! But, I have to admit, I'm enjoying myself and am thrilled to see how much the students are enjoying it too. We combined the research reports unit with a social studies unit on Native American tribes. Students chose a tribe, researched, and are now drafting. This week, we've been turning our research notes into sentences, adding details with partner sentences, and drafting leads and conclusions. Here's an example of an introduction to one of the student's subheadings on food for the Comanche tribe
.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Change is Hard

I've failed miserably at keeping up with this blog!  I apologize.  This might not have been the best year to launch a professional blog.  But, hopefully, I can make up for lost time.  

The first trimester of the school year just ended in my district.  What a trimester it has been!  I've been as busy as I ever have coaching teachers.  This year, we changed from letter grades on report cards to standards based progress reports.  It has been challenging to say the least.  One of the domains on my instructional coach evaluation is about understanding and applying knowledge of the change process.   I can honestly say that in previous years, I would mark myself down in that category.  Not anymore!  I have lived the change process these last few months and feel I have a much deeper understanding.

Here's what I've learned about coaching teachers through major change:

• Teachers hate change. They don't hate me.  
• Celebrating small steps is critical to keep the process moving.
• Teachers don't/can't listen until it's important to them.  I can't take it personal when I have to repeat myself a gazillion times or make another copy of the document I sent at least three times.  

Back to School Gifts for Your Teachers

As an instructional coach, I cannot be successful without developing excellent relationships with my teachers. One way I show my appreciation for teachers is with little gifts and handwritten notes throughout the year, but especially the first days of school. 

This year, I gifted a copy of the book "I Wish You More" - the perfect book gift for anyone you wish well. 

Other books that are great back to school gifts for teachers are:

Courage

Tiny Snail (I scored autographed copies of these from an author visit a few years ago).  A great story about perseverance and the importance of friends.

Mrs. Spitzer's Garden

I've also gifted other items such as:

Coffee/tea pods for our Kuerig with tags that said "Welcome Back to the Grind"

Scratch off lottery tickets with a note that said, "Hope you have a winning year!"

Starburst candy with this tag...

Bags of M&Ms tagged "Wishing you a Magnificent & Marvelous New School Year."

Packs of Extra gum with a note that said, "The difference between an ordinary teacher and an extraordinary one is that little bit extra.  I hope you have an extra special year!"

One year, back to school coincided with the Summer Olympics and I made it a theme.  I gave bags of gold foil wrapped chocolates with this note...

If you have other ideas to share, please share in the comments below.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Kindergarten Switch-a-Roo

We just finished the great Kindergarten Switch-a-Roo. What is a switch-a-roo, you ask? It's a process we use to balance our kindergarten classes by having our k students rotate through teachers and with various students during the first two weeks of school. Typically, schools blindly build kindergarten classes based on little to no information. Unfortunately, more often than not, this leads to heavily unbalanced classes. One teacher may end up with all the students already reading while another teacher may end up with a class full of students who've never even picked up a book. Not to mention student behaviors that can dominate teacher time.

As an alternative, my school started switching things up a few years ago and has seen great success. During the first eight days, students rotate through the four kindergarten teachers so that each teacher has a chance to learn about and make connections with each child.  Students within the classes are also mixed up several times so we can see which of their little personalities clash and which ones play well together.  During the switch, we are also assessing students in letter and number identification, concepts of print, counting, and much more to identify students as high, medium, and low academically as well as noting social/emotional needs.  On the last day of the switch, we have what we affectionately call "Draft Day" where the math coach and I facilitate a meeting with the kindergarten team to draft the final class placements with balanced classes as the goal. It can be stressful, but we always end up with balance in the end.  The day after the placement meeting, we have a trial run to double check we've made the best decisions and make any last minute switches.  At the end of the trial run day, we send home a letter with parents to inform them of the final class placement.  We also host a breakfast the following day where students and parents can "meet" the teacher the students will have all year.

Each teacher has a color during the switch to help students know which room to go to each day.  Also, students wear name tags that identify their homeroom teacher and the class for the day. 

Students wait outside the green room to switch for the day.  

Charts to track the placement process and ensure balance during "Draft Day."

Norms for the placement meeting.

If you have questions or would like to know more about the Kindergarten Switch-a-Roo, please comment below.

"Am I Ready Now?"

If you're looking for the perfect back to school read for primary students and their parents, I've got the book for you! A kindergarten teacher and friend at my school, Jessica Schneider, published a book titled, "Am I Ready Now!" The book tells the story of a little boy, Louie, and his mom preparing for the first day of kindergarten. It's a sweet book that captures the emotion of our youngest students and their anxious parents this time of year.



I read "Am I Ready Now?" to my own son, my baby, who is starting kindergarten tomorrow. I cried! When I read this page, I couldn't hold in the tears anymore.


It so perfectly captures how I feel about my baby who is now a big boy. It's a great back to school read or gift for a child starting school. It's also a great read for parents like me about to send their babies off to school. You can purchase a copy on Jessica's website:

http://schneiderjessica.weebly.com

Happy Reading!

Exploring Learning Differences

Today was awesome!!! I taught a course for teachers in my district that I've never taught before. The class was based on a MOOC I participated in with the same name, Learning Differences, out of North Carolina University. I wasn't sure how it would go, but it was great!!! Teachers who attended commented that they learned a lot of great information and left with practical strategies that they can implement tomorrow. That always makes a staff developer's day!!! It made all the hours I put into preparation worth it.

So, what did they learn? All about learning differences. More specifically, we explored our own learning preferences and discussed how knowing ourselves allows us to be more patient with our students. I asked my teachers to think of a student who keeps them awake at night (we all have those students) and jot down the reasons that student is such a concern. Then, my teachers visited one of my FAVORITE new websites www.understood.org and completed the simulations (under the "through your child's eye" tab). The simulations helped my teachers gain a better understanding of what it's like to struggle with skills like attention, organization, or reading. Wow! What a great tool to build empathy for students who struggle!
                                                     
We spent the rest of the day focusing on working memory, motivation, and executive function skills. We watched videos of students who struggle in these areas and gained some perspective on what it feels like to struggle in school. We also watched a teacher discuss specific strategies she used to improve these areas with students and shared ideas that the participants use in the classrooms. To top off our work, my teachers worked together to create great lists of strategies to improve students' skills in the three areas. It was fantastic work!

Strategies for Increasing Motivation
Strategies for Improving Executive Function
Strategies for Improving Working Memory

Takeaways from today:
- The more you know yourself, the more patience you have in others.
- We must meet our students exactly where they are with exactly the brains they have right now.
- I'm fortunate to be in a district/school where teachers value their own learning and seek to better understand their students. Lucky me!!!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Google Academy

This morning, I presented a session on using Google to keep conferring notes during my district's Google Academy. I saw lots of familiar faces and also met some teachers new to the district and some new, new teachers. It was a high energy day filled with teachers who really wanted to be there to learn. I love these kinds of days! As a staff developer there is not much worse than facing a room full of people who really don't want to be there. So, today was refreshing even if the wifi was spotty. It never fails that when you have a whole presentation, or even a whole day, focused on technology that the technology doesn't cooperate. Another great aspect of today's PD is that I only presented one of the four sessions which means I was able to attend three sessions of my choice. Who doesn't love choice?!

My takeaways from today:
- Mic Note is a Google chrome app that works like a notepad, but also allows audio recording. Seems like a great conferring tool to me!!!

- Sketchpad 3.5 is another Google chrome app that I found that just might work as a writing space for our youngest students (K-1). It allows drawing and text, had a simple interface that is kid friendly, and exports to students' Google drive accounts with one click. Love it!!!

- Creating adaptive assessments in Google forms is not as difficult as I would've imagined. It requires only two extra steps: 1) adding pages and 2) checking the "go to page based on answer" box. Adaptive assessments would actually allow students to learn from an assessment. I see lots of adaptive assessments being created in my future!

Here's a screenshot of my sketchpad creation.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Using Technology to Cultivate 21st Century Skills

Today, I taught a summer development course for teachers in my district on using technology to cultivate the 21st century skills of creativity, collaboration, communication, and search.

We read chapter 4 from Understanding the Digital Generation: Teaching and Learning in the New Digital Landscape to help us understand the way our students' minds work.  We watched the video, "Did You Know in 2028?" to help us understand what the world will be like when this year's kindergartners graduate from high school.  Then, we discussed all things Google: drive, docs, forms, classroom, and search.

I shared a couple of my favorite tech for primary students:
Padlet
Vocaroo (easiest voice recording ever!)
Smart Record (using Smart Notebook to capture your computer/Smart Board with audio)
Remind (one way communication via text from teachers to parents) www.remind.com

It was a great day of learning and I'm excited for this great group of teachers to share with others.


Here's what they had to say about how they'll use what they learned...

Here's our Padlet discussing the National Educational Technology Standards...

I don't have time to confer with all my students!

How many times have I heard that as a coach?  Let's just say if I had a dollar for every time I heard a teacher say they don't have time to confer with all their students, I could take a lovely little vacation.  So, anytime I learn a tip on managing time, I like to share.

This week, Shana Frazin from TC, shared a little formula for thinking about conferences during writing.

It makes so much sense and is freeing for teachers!  You're still meeting with students two times a week just not always in individual conferences.  This allows you to maximize instruction and allows students plenty of time for writing.  Thanks for sharing, Shana!

More TC in the STL!

What a great week! The icing on the Teacher's College Institute cake was Jennifer Serravallo spending the day with us today.  All 100+ of us in attendance received a copy of Serravallo's new book simply titled The Reading Strategies Book.  It is fantastic and I highly recommend it for any elementary educator.  After all, if you teach elementary, you teach reading.   The book is available on Amazon and is well worth the money!

order on amazon!

Today, we learned about teaching reading workshop with The Reading Strategies Book as our go to resource.  We watched videos of Jennifer Serravallo conferring with individual and small groups of students for what the students' strengths and discussed what we might teach next.  Then, we used the book to identify strategies we could teach to match the goals we set.  The work we did today was invaluable and will be meaningful and exciting development for grade level teams this year!

The work is a perfect follow up for the work that my coaching partner and I did this year with the teams of teachers in our building.  We asked teachers to start thinking about individual reading goals for students through one of the lenses Serravallo refers to in her book: engagement, print work/decoding, fluency, comprehension (inc. plot/setting, characters, vocabulary/figurative language, or themes/ideas), and conversation.  Today, Serravallo added emergent reading as a possibility for our youngest students and "writing about reading."  I can't wait to share this work with my teams and have already convinced our administrators to purchase copies of the book for our teachers.  We'll be putting this new learning and great resource to good use as we extend our learning on setting goals and planning instruction to match!

My takeaways from today:

• Students won't grow as readers if they don't have time to read.  Teach towards independence and give the gift of time.  
• Be especially aware of independent reading time for those receiving interventions.  Intervention should be in addition to, not in place of classroom reading instruction.
• Rescuing students in a conference does not lead to independence. Instead, start by prompting with the lowest scaffold and work your way up as needed.  
• Nothing else matters if students are not engaged in reading!  Serravallo offers many great strategies for increasing engagement in the book.
• The person doing the work is the person doing the learning. 
• Match your instruction to the goal of the student. 

Thanks, Jennifer, for a great day!  We hope to see you again soon.