Summer classroom "bucket list"

Summer, my summer at least, has finally arrived. Our year-round school calendar didn't finish up until June 28th - and I felt like we were just limping toward the finish line by the last few weeks. Our end of grade testing was the second to last week of school and I'll be honet - we did not do much of substance after those two days were over. We made 'Memory Bags' as our end of the year reflection project; finished A Wrinkle in Time and watched the movie version, then compared the two; played many games of "Splat" - a multiplication facts review game that involves me calling out facts and two kids using fly swatters to compete to be the first one to find the correct product; had field day; and made "Top 10 Things You Need to Know" lists for my class next year. The last eight days of school were at times maddening as the kids definitely checked out (but hey, I would too if I had just finished my end of grade testing) but we had a lot of fun, relaxed and just enjoyed being together as our year wound to a close. 

It was also bittersweet for me, because I was simultaneously packing up my classroom and preparing to move everything. I'm moving to a different school next year, one that is much closer to my house, and also switching grades, to third grade. I have loved my school these past two years - I've been blessed with two great groups of kids (this year more challenging than last, but still an awesome group) and parents, a supportive administration, and especially this year, an incredible grade-level team that I am thankful to also call my friends. This year was the first year in my professional life (9 years) where I felt I truly had friends at work. I've had a friend or two here and there in the places I've work, but I am so thankful for the five other 4th grade teachers that made every day so much more fun.  Part of that is because my professional career path has been a little disjointed up until the past few years when I started teaching and I definitely had (and still have) lots of friends from the two years I was in graduate school but it made life so much better to come to work with friends every day.  

I'm confident in my choice to transfer - two other of my team members are moving on because of changes in their lives so our team wouldn't be the same next year regardless if I stayed or not - and because I know I will be happier in the long run if I'm not driving so far to get to work each day. I'm also excited about the school where I'm moving and the freedom I'll have as a teacher to do things the way I want to. But, it was still a sad day. 

In addition to switching schools, I'm also switching calendars from a year-round to traditional. That means I get a long summer this year! Six weeks, to be precise. We're going to go to the beach and to California to see family (our little 5 months old twin nephews!) but for most of it, I'll be at home.  I've made a running list on Pinterest and in my phone of projects I want to do while I have extra time. I'll be moving my things into my new classroom on Monday and I  know I'll be spending extra time there for awhile getting things unpacked, organized, and set up the way I want them. For this week though, I'm getting a few things done around our house that had been languishing and enjoying sleeping in and pretty much doing whatever I want. 

In the next few days, I want to elaborate on the school where I'm going to be teaching next year, reflect a little more on this past year, and share some projects I'm going to be doing to prepare for my next class. 

Grammar and Language

Up until this year, when North Carolina (along with almost all the other 50 states) switched to the Common Core State Standards, we didn't do much with grammar and language.  It wasn't stated that it had to be taught so from what I observed, most teachers might have worked it in during writing some but overall, it was mostly ignored.

There are several schools of thought on teaching grammar and language - usually divided into the explicit instruction/drill camp and the teach it in context method.  That's simplifying it some for sure but overall, that was my experience.

I, for one, see much benefit in teaching proper grammar and mechanics explicitly. I also believe in teaching it in context. I suppose this is similar to how literacy instruction has swung from phonics to whole language and then back again to the middle, the land of balanced literacy. I see math in a similar manner - I teach most of our math curriculum conceptually because I believe it is better instruction but there are some things we just have to memorize, like the multiplication tables.

I have some to view grammar and language instruction in the same way - I need a balance of teaching it in the context of writing and I also need some explicit instruction and drills. Some students will naturally pick up on proper grammar and mechanics through their reading - good, voracious readers also tend to be better writers. However, there are also students who just do not ever seem to learn it without explicit instruction and to me, it showed quite a bit when looking at issues involving punctuation, run-on sentences, and spelling and it wasn't naturally getting better with age and writing maturity. I think that one only has to look at how many adults confuse common homophones like they're, there, and their and lose/loose (a personal pet peeve) to see that some things we just have to learn at some point.

So, this quarter I have really buckled down and created a plan for specific grammar and language instruction. Yes, I should've been doing this all year but it's the first year of a brand new curriculum so to say things have been difficult is an understatement. We're not just figuring out new material but also how to teach it - doing both at once is not easy.

Nevertheless, I decided there was no time like the present and created a quarter-long plan with two weeks for each topic I was able to group objectives into. It ended up looking like this:

Weeks 1 & 2: Homophones (focused on the major ones like they're, there, and their)
Weeks 3 & 4: Punctuation & capitalization (specifically apostrophes, commas, and quotation marks but I'm going to review the basics as well since we still don't capitalize all proper nouns)
Weeks 5 & 6: Complete sentences (this is a big issues with my students. two weeks may seem like overkill but we are going to learn what a complete sentence is)
Weeks 7 & 8: formal versus informal English (not as big of an issue as last year but worth revisiting), relative pronouns and adverbs, progressive verb tense, and prepositional phrases.

During week 9 we have our end of quarter bench mark testing and it's only 3 days long. We covered parts of speech during the first quarter and I'm also mixing in idioms, adages and other figurative language as part of their morning work along with practice correcting sentences for grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc.

Each two weeks I'm planning short 5-10 minute lessons on the topics and they have practice to complete on days they're not on Spelling City (which is every other day - 5 days of Spelling City per two weeks and 5 days of grammar practice). Practice gets turned in and checked but not graded. 

Every other week they'll have a short quiz on the topics from the prior two weeks that will be graded. They just took their homophones quiz today and a quick glance showed most look pretty good. I can easily pull the ones that are still confusing some words and keep practicing.

I actually enjoy teaching grammar and I see it as vitally important in becoming a good writer so I'm enjoying it so far and my students seem to be taking to it well.  I tell my students that even if you have the best ideas in the world, if your reader is constantly distracted by grammar issues or can't figure out what you're trying to say because of spelling, it doesn't really matter very much. I'm not saying everything has to be perfect but everyone should master the basics. 

We'll see how it goes - I'm interested to see if our efforts will pay off in improved writing.

Book Clubs - Novel Studies

I'm a devoted follower of the Daily 5 and thus the choice of reading material for students that comes with it. I think this is very important - I would classify almost all of my 23 students as avid readers and I have no doubt this is in large part because they have been given almost complete choice of what they want to read for at least the past three years (which was when our school started adopting this philosophy).  It makes perfect sense to me. Although I am an avid reader myself and will usually read anything I can get my hands on, if I don't like it or it's boring to me, I put it down and so I try to give my students that kind of choice as much as I can. I do give guidelines and we talk a lot about "good-fit books" and challenging ourselves as readers but for the most part, I stay out of what they are reading unless I see it is just not working.

That being said, I also see the value in being able to discuss a common text with a group and occasionally being asked to read something you may not have picked up on your own - there are a number of books I read in school that I probably never would have read otherwise but ended up loving. The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald and Things Falls Apart by Achebe are two that come to mind.

This is where my book clubs come in. I've divided my students into groups based on approximate reading levels and what I believe they can handle, knowing that with guidance and support they can read something more difficult than when they are reading independently.  The groups do not have even numbers but I do often do boy groups and girls groups. Fourth graders, for the most part, are still at the height of "opposite sex cooties" stage so I find they are often more comfortable and will talk more if they are with other girls or just other boys. I don't do this all the time (they just did projects on the Wright Brothers before Christmas that were in mixed groups and did very well).  Each group (including me, so I'll be reading five books - I've read most of them before though) will read a book, with a certain number of pages to be read each week. I meet with one group each day and they will be expected to have read the pages for that week and complete the vocabulary, active reading and literary analysis questions in their "book about a book." 

What's a "book about a book"? The basic idea I stole from a teacher I worked with when I was student teaching, although it has morphed and grown quite a bit beyond what he did.  For about 20 upper elementary novels, I or one of my fellow teachers, has come up with a novel study guide. We divided each book into sections of pages and for each section we came up with vocabulary, what I call an "active reading" page which the kids complete as they are reading, and then 5-6 literary analysis questions. It's done on half pages because the regular pages are folded like a book so it's not as much as it seems. I can print out one, alternate the way the pages are facing and then photo copy it front to back. Then, fold it in half and staple it down the middle like a book binding. It cuts WAY down on the amount of paper we use for these projects and gives me something for the students to turn in at the end.

I'm going to start posting these in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. They were quite a bit of work to put together at the outset but this year, now that most of the ones I want to use are already done it seems so much easier. I did do one for Sarah, Plain and Tall this past week but it's a short book so it didn't take me long.

Last year my books clubs were just books I thought each group would like. This year, under the Common Core, we're about to start a unit on historical fiction so I have chosen books in that genre for each group. Luckily, I used a lot of historical fiction last year but I've also had to rethink it a bit as well.  Here are the books I've chosen for each group:

Advanced girls: Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan
Advanced boys: Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis
On-Level boys: By the Great Horn Spoon by Sid Fleischman (I think - I'm trying to track down copies inexpensively)
On-Level Girls: Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan
Intervention Group: Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr

I've used the first two books before so I know they work and last year, everyone liked them. Sarah, Plain and Tall is new but I've read it before and I knew it would be a good choice. That group will likely do two books since Sarah is pretty short. I'm having difficulty deciding on a book for my on-level boys - it's a group that I know if they're not intrigued by the story, it'll be pulling teeth for them to read it.  Sadako is an old classic that I read in 4th grade and I think that lower level group will do well with it.

Book clubs are always a lot of work for me to keep up with each group but after doing it one year I think I have a better handle on things and now that I've read almost all of the books, it'll be easier. I love third quarter because it's when the students really start to develop as middle grade readers so I'm looking forward to getting these rolling!

Recommitment

Well, so - I got 4 entries in and then nothing for almost 2 quarters. Definitely a big fat failure as far as blogging goes but alas - I can always resolve to do better.

I happen to love New Year's and New Years Resolutions. I used to be anti-resolutions, having climbed onto the "anytime is a good time to start fresh" line of thinking. However, I have since realized that I really love the idea of a fresh new year each January 1st. I've also refined my goal-setting and keeping track of progress so at the end of 2012, I actually got to see that I met lots of the goals I set at the end of 2011. Last year I didn't end up doing three of them, but I'm ok with that. I've realized through much trial and error that if I don't do something, it's because I'm really not that into it. And if I'm not into it, it's not gonna happen unless it's something that's required, like emptying the dishwasher or vacuuming (both formerly hated chores but ones that now I tolerate fairly well).

2012 was a big fitness year for me - I committed myself to at least 3 days a week of exercise in some format and with the exception of ONE week (the week prior to Christmas when I was writing report cards, grading tests, grading reading assessments, getting ready for Christmas and we left on that Friday for the holidays) I made that goal. I know because I started using an app on my phone call GymPact. You commit to a number of gym days or RunKeeper activities per week and when you log into the app, it tracks it for you (using the GPS). If you don't make it, you pay actual money (I do $5 a day so if I miss 1 day during a week, I pay $5). If you do, you EARN money from other users who didn't make their pact. I bought a fabulous new yoga mat with my earnings this year!

Aside from that, I bettered my financial position and finally sold the house that was a thorn in my side for 4 years. I did not start a book club or read all the Newbery award winners. I'll probably keep working on the second goal as I WOULD like to read the Newbery winners but that'll probably be more of a "life goal" rather than one to complete in one year. 

Here are my thoughts on 2013, in no particular order and not all related to teaching:

1. Be able to do at least 3 real strict pull-ups and string together 10 double unders (google it if you don't know what this is - I had never heard of them before I started Crossfit five months ago). I am almost to 1 currently. I haven't been able to do a pull-up since I was about 8.

2. Blog at least once a week about classroom projects, ideas, or education related musings.  I would really like to make this blog work. I'd LOVE to start generating some traffic and the only way to do that is to write! I enjoy writing so much and I rarely do it for myself anymore (reader's response journal comments don't count).

3. Build up my Teachers Pay Teachers Store to at least 30 items. I had my first sale in October and it inspired me to add some more items and some of them have sold a few times. Nothing major (I think I've made like $10 due to all the fees since I don't have a premium membership right now) but it's a small start. I'm considering paying the $60/year premium fee to be able to ditch the transaction fees. I feel that if I do this (commit money to the project) then I'll be more motivated to tweak all of my materials and get them ready to be uploaded and put up in my store. My eventual goal is to make it a little side business but realistically this will take several years I expect.

And that's what I've got right now.

We are tracked out from school currently so I have 18 more days on break before we head back for the 3rd quarter on January 22nd. I work at my school keeping an eye on the phones a few days during the track-outs so I was there this morning and generated my favorite thing - a to-do list - about what I need to get accomplished prior to kids returning. It includes my mid-year PDP review, grading the math pre-tests I gave before we left for the holidays, planning at least 2 weeks out into the quarter (mostly done already thanks to the 1/2 day planning day we had in December and the work I did today) and other odds and ends.  I'm also attending a district training on our science kits next Thursday but I get to trade a workday for it, which is nice.

2 1/2 more weeks but my brain is already shifting back towards school mode - I love third quarter for many reasons so I'm looking forward to getting my 23 4th graders back and diving into everything we have to learn the rest of the year.

Ideas, ideas, ideas

Last year at this time I was anticipating my first class ever. Everything was new and I was just trying to keep my head above water and get the year started. This year, I know so much more - I know basically how things will run and I also know what I want to change from last year.

This is both good and bad. Good because reflection and improvements are a good thing - teachers should constantly engage in these practices in order to improve our instruction, our management, our organization, everything. This is probably good practice for MOST people, I would dare to say.

This is bad however because it means my mind is freed up from just surviving to all these ideas I want to implement. I am going to try out using Class Dojo, a web-based application, as my classroom behavior management system. I'll post a review of it after a week or two of use when I see how it is going. We are going to the Common Core Standards for reading and math (like many states this year), which means we essentially have an entirely new curriculum to learn because we also have new NC Essential Standards in both science and social studies. I want to implement a writer's notebook. I want to figure out how to use KidBlog more effectively. I went to training on both Edmodo and Voice Thread at the end of last year and want to use both.  The other teachers in my grade are investigating using a classroom economy system, something I've always been interested in but I'm really unsure if I can handle do it THIS year. That is definitely something that might get pushed to next year. But I'd love to do it - I'm torn.

This list goes on and on and I keep mentally adding to it. I'm trying to balance out between doing what I consider the most important things that will enhance learning and instruction and doing too much where nothing is done well. This is difficult. Last night my head would not stop spinning. Luckily I had put meat in the crock pot to cook for fajitas for dinner so it was easy and as soon as I finished eating I was on my computer working on stuff. I had to be reminded what time it was to go to bed. The cat woke me up (as she is wont to do) at 3:30 AM and I didn't fall back asleep until 4:45 or so because my brain was still churning. If it had gotten to 5 am I was just going to get up and start working but luckily I did fall back asleep for about another hour and a half.

Too many ideas and not enough time. I'll figure out soon which ones are viable for this school year or at least the beginning of this school year and go from there.

Day 1

It's here - a new school year. I had a fabulous 2 1/2 weeks off and I was excited to show up at school this morning. Case in point: I normally get up at 6 am on weekdays and so our cat has gotten in the habit of eating at that hour. Subsequently, she meows for breakfast right around 6 am no matter what day of the week it is. Today, I didn't have to be at school until 8:30 so I was going to "sleep in" until 7 am. She meowed at 6:02, I stumbled into the guest bath to feed her and then planned on going back to sleep for another hour. Didn't happen. Usually I'm the queen of the snooze button but I laid awake until 6:30 thinking about everything I knew I was going to need to do and then finally just said forget it and got up.

You never really know what you're walking into on the first day of a new school year. Last year, I had no idea where my classroom even was when I walked in that first day. This year, I knew where it was and I had moved almost all of my stuff to my new "cottage" but I left it with extra furniture, plus a colleague's things whose new "cottage" wasn't ready yet. I had expected these things to be remedied before I got there today - furniture moved, stuff moved.

Yeah, that hadn't happened. The carpet cleaning that has been supposedly happening for the last 5 months hadn't happened yet either.  But they had cleaned the floors, which meant all the stuff I had so neatly stacked was just everywhere. Ah, such is the life of a teacher - things never happen the way they're supposed to, especially in a public school.

So, after a morning cutting out letters for my new Boggle bulletin board (idea from here - she has a free printable download, which is fabulous) and helping a colleague re-do one of her bulletin boards we got to work moving furniture. There were at least 8-10 pieces of extra furniture in my room including several file cabinets, a large metal wardrobe, book shelves, and chairs that are too small for my students. It was hot - thank goodness we swiped the hand truck temporarily from the custodian's storage space (he didn't mind).

So, add a new title to my ever-growing list of ones as a teacher: furniture mover. Except for the big metal wardrobe because it was too heavy and large for me and my fellow teacher to move, it's all in the cottage next door which is currently being used as storage. I was then able to set up my desks, put up two bulletin boards (my CAFE board for the Daily 5 and the beginnings of the Boggle board), and generally just got stuff to where I think it wants to live. Compared to when I walked in at 8:30 this morning, it's 1000 times better. I have a long way to go but I know what needs to be done.

Have I mentioned I am rocking some good old-fashioned wood paneling in my new digs? It's very 1970s. I went to Home Depot after school to look for the shelving brackets that I need for one of my built-in bookshelves and they didn't carry it - too old! I'm considering a lava lamp to spice things up and just keep the whole retro feeling going.

So, day 1 was not what I had wanted but that's generally the way it goes. Tomorrow will be better, especially if I can get that last piece of furniture moved out and the reading table I need moved in.  Oh, and get the computer tables I need. Thankfully, I am getting FIVE computers that are newish (from the media center because they're getting the ones from the computer lab, which is getting all new ones), which I am so thankful for. I had four last year, which was a stretch with 28 kids. I also need to get the mobile Smartboard from the media center and figure out how that's going to work. My previous classroom had a permanent one installed.

One last great thing that happened today: I, as of now, only have 23 students! It may not seem that different from my 28 lovelies last year but it's an entire group of desks. Five fewer of everything to grade. I don't need extra pockets on my huge pocket chart where the kids turn in work. I think I'm going to think people are missing for the first few weeks because I'm so used to 28.

Traditional vs. Year-Round Schools

I grew up in the same county where I now teach. That wasn't too long ago but year-round schools didn't exist until I was maybe in middle school? I think that's the first time I heard about one. So, naturally, I went to a school that used a traditional "start in late August, end in early June" calendar.

When I first started working after college, I actually worked in admissions for two independent schools both on traditional calendars. (side note: I've never actually encountered an independent school on any other calendar but I'm sure one must exist somewhere). I worked year-round but summers were still more relaxed, we worked fewer hours per day and got to rotate having Friday afternoons off. When I started teaching, I was a teacher assistant while I applied to graduate school and worked on a traditional calendar. Ditto for student teaching.

However, when I was applying for full-time classroom teaching jobs last summer year-round schools kept popping on my radar because at the time I was substituting full-time to make ends meet until I found a regular job and so during the summer, I was trekking out to all the year-round schools. The county I work in is a large one, the largest school system in the state. There are about 50 year-round schools, mostly elementary and middle with one modified-calendar high-school (don't ask - you should see the list of possible calendars on the county web site). Initially, the year-round calendar was introduced here to ease over-crowding during rapid growth. My county was adding thousands of new students each year (and did so right up until about 2007 or so when the recession started) and they kept up with that growth by using multi-track year-round schools. In these schools at any one time 1/4 of the students are "tracked-out" or not in school so the schools can hold about 20% more students than a traditional calendar.

To make a long explanation shorter, I ended up taking a job last summer at a year-round school, although my school is all on one track. I won't even begin to try and explain the reasons behind that because they're not that interesting.  I am returning to that school and to 4th grade this year and I'll start my pre-school workdays next Thursday with school beginning on July 30th. 

There are lots of people for and against year-round and traditional calendar schools. A friend and fellow teacher tweeted about this article about the arguments for and against year-round schools. Although where I work, they were introduced to ease overcrowding there have been some studies that show students benefit because they're never out of school for longer than a month. Other studies, cited in the article, don't show those same gains and still more studies found the gains in some students (particularly those with high-needs and disabilities) but not all.

Given how different children are from one another and schools are from one another, I think it's going to be difficult to compare schools even if they seems statistically similar. There are so many factors at play that isolating the one variable of school calendar is not easy and I suspect studies will continue to find mixed results.

So, here's my take as a teacher in a year-round school. As a first year teacher last year, it was ideal in many ways. I had breaks every nine weeks or so that let me recharge my own batteries (both mentally and physically) and let me catch up or even get ahead on what I needed to do. I was able to do a lot more in my first year than I think I would have on a traditional calendar because I had time to do things like write book club reading guides when I was tracked-out. From a student standpoint, I think they benefit as well. Just when we're all tired and cranky, there's a break. Everyone comes back refreshed and ready to learn but it hasn't been so long that all routines and knowledge have been forgotten. All of my parents seem to really like it as well - a schedule with breaks other than summertime allows for family vacations that might be difficult in the summer. For example, I had a family who was originally from the Middle East. They spent our winter break in the Middle East visiting their family, which is a lovely time of year there. July, on the other hand, is brutal.  I should mention that our families all choose to be on a year-round calendar - even if you're assigned to a year-round school there is always a traditional calendar (and at least one magnet school) option. So, my parents liked it and many of them have had multiple children go through the school.

On the other hand, I also see some benefits to a traditional calendar from a personal standpoint. Frankly, there are a lot of great opportunities for teachers in terms of continuing education and travel that are only available during the summer. Many that I would like to participate in are longer than just a week (such as National Endowment for the Humanities summer study programs or Fulbright Teacher Scholarship). I also see now, after a year, that this summer track-out is the only one in which I've fully been able to disengage from school mentally. As a new teacher especially, I need that mental break. Teaching in intense and extremely complex. I love that about it - it was part of what drew me to the profession - but it also means my brain needs time to refuel. When this summer started, I realized my brain was sort of expecting that and didn't totally get it. I've done my best to avoid work during the past two weeks in order to give myself the break I know I need. Also, and this is an aside, the year-round schools are pretty far from where I live (and I love where I live so I'm not willing to move) and my commute is over an hour each day. So, would I consider transferring to a school closer to home with that most likely meaning a traditional calendar? Very possibly.

So, what most people ask is: are our test scores better? are they on traditional? I don't know. I imagine it's probably comparable. I think the most thing in any system is to assess what's best for children and families from all standpoints, not just test scores. People are always going to be divided in their opinions over what's best for their children and their family as a whole so it seems to me that having some options is not a bad thing.  I know as a teacher it's nice to have some options as well. I know many teachers who swear they couldn't imagine being on a different calendar than they are now - who absolutely LOVE one or the other. For me, the jury is still out - I've committed to another year on year-round and we'll see where things take me after this.