Maternity Leave

For any of you teachers out there that also wear the hat of mom, maternity leave is a two word phrase that can be scary, freeing, and overwhelming all in one.  I'm due with our first child on February 8th...which is just 23 days away!  From the middle of the summer when I notified my principal of the news, the process began.  He was concerned with finding the right sub to take over my classroom because of the math content I teach.  As you know, some elementary teachers are scared of math, but that's a whole different post. 

The preparation for the sub taking over my room has really made me reflect on all that goes on in my classroom - a lot!  Communicating with my sub about my standards-based math grading system including how I grade homework, score quizzes, and allow retakes was just one part of it!  My students also write to me about what they're reading once a week, and I respond.  They also use Google Docs and Blogger in the writing process!  (Check out their writing at: http://mrsgstudent.blogspot.com and leave some feedback!)  These are some of the major things.  Then there's the, "This student may do this...."  "This student is always reliable...."  "Our morning routine looks like this..."

I have basic plans worked out until my due date, and my sub seems very capable of picking up and continuing wherever I leave off.  I did have some thoughts in this preparation like, "Can she handle it all?  Should I cut some things out?  Will she grade the quizzes correctly?  Should she just bring them to me so I can do it?"  The answers to these questions have ended up being, "Yes, she can handle it.  I will not cut things out because my students still need to be learning while I'm not there.  She can grade the quizzes and just ask me if she has questions.  No, I will not grade quizzes while I'm on leave." 

My district wonderfully paid the sub to come in earlier this month and shadow me for a day so she can see how things run and where things are.  I feel very confident that my class will be in good hands while I'm gone. 

• Will I miss it?  Yes, but I can still see and interact with what my students are doing through their work on the blog. 
  

• Will I be where I need to be?  Yes!   That's a given.
  

• Will learning continue while I'm gone?  YES! 
  

Book Bistro

Last year I wanted to find a different way of doing the classic "book report."  I do the First 20 Days of Reading from the book Guiding Readers and Writers in my classroom.  This system of Reader's Workshop relies on reader's response letters and book recommendations.  Some students really struggle with finding good books, so I thought a fun venue to share books would be a cafe-like atmosphere.  Last year, we called it Book Cafe, but since some teachers have been implementing the Daily 5 and The Cafe Menu, I didn't want the two cafes to be confused.  Thus, this year we changed the name to Book Bistro. 

Our elementary operates on trimesters, so we have 3 rounds of Book Bistro.  Each student presents one time per trimester.  With my class of 22 students, we hold 4 Book Bistros per trimester so there are 5-6 students presenting at each.  This usually takes up an hour of our morning, but it's definitely worth it.  It helps the students presenting work on oral communication, and the listeners get to hear about some great books!  The students have a list of ideas to choose from, but as you can see, they may also come up with their own idea and get my approval.  We've had some great presentations this year including a newscast shot on multiple locations!

Because it is a cafe or bistro atmosphere, the students presenting bring in treats and beverages for the listeners to enjoy as they present.  I've even had students bring specific food because it relates to their book!  

At the beginning of the year, I held my own Book Bistro for the students.  I brought the treats and modeled three different ways to present with three books that I enjoy.  We also discussed proper "cafe etiquette" including not scarfing down your food, sipping your beverage, sitting quietly, and not getting up to throw things away when someone is presenting.

Students really seem to enjoy this venue for sharing books.  It's fun to hear them tell me ," This book is GREAT!  I think I'm going to share it at the next Book Bistro."  Talk about motivated readers!

Wordle-now more than just a cool looking thing to my students

I used Wordle in my classroom earlier in the year for collaboration and seeing trends in ideas for classroom behaviors and what ideal group work looks like.  Students were "wowed" with the tool and some went home to make their own Wordles on fun topics of their own interest.  Up until recently, they'd just seen Wordle as a "fun" thing to do.

Two weeks ago, the students composed descriptive essays.  The major goal of this assignment was to work on "spicy writing" that encompassed the senses.  After prewriting, drafting, peer revisions, and composing their second draft, I modeled to students how Wordle could be used to help with their word choice.  I took a sample essay and pasted it into Wordle.  We had a class discussion on the larger words in the Wordle.  Students knew from previous use of Wordle that these words appeared more often in the essay.  I then showed them the online dictionary/thesauraus Visuwords.  Ooos and Ahs resonated around the room as webs appeared on the screen with suggestions for different words to use. 

To make a long story short, some students really grasped the use of these tools and analyzed their own essays in Wordle.  They then used Visuwords to find better words to use.  Part of the essay rubric was that students showed evidence of changes in word choice.  Many students made a couple changes on their Wordle to show that evidence.   Here is a top notch example of the way one of my students did this:

This student circled common words and found a variety of more descriptive words to replace them with using Visuwords. 

It may seem simple, but I really saw Wordle come to life in an applicable way for many of my students.  They do still think it's a "fun" and "cool" tool, but they also see how it can be used to improved their writing. 

Frustrated Part 2

I had about a 30 minute discussion with each of my math classes today.  I began by expressing my frustration at the time loss (of me creating/printnig the retakes) and paper loss occuring when student dont' show up. We also had a quick math lesson (since we talked about rounding fractions yesterday) about approximately what 9/20 (I misquoted this in my previous post, but it has been corrected) of the class showing up means.  They concluded (yes!  They remember what we did in class yesterday.) that is was about 1/2.  I also discussed how it is sad for me to see that they aren't taking advantage of this opportunity.  I gave them about 5 minutes to talk in their groups about what should/could be done about this.

Students in my first class came up with this list:

• Keep them after school/at recess to compensate for Mrs. G's time
• Have them do clerical work for Mrs. G.
• They can't take a retake next time (some said this could occur after multiple offenses)
• Write retake time on a sticky note and put it on desk or on accordion folder
• Mrs. G chooses/assigns retake times
• Write an appology letter for not showing up
• Reward those who come
• Start a student-led retake punishment committee

We went through the list and briefly discussed how some of the options still took up my time.  I was surprised by that class's lack of preventative behaviors.  They were focused on the punishment.  We discussed for a few minutes the "reward" they wanted for showing up.  They came to the conclusion that the opportunity to retake is a reward in itself.

The second class came up with this list:

• If you don't show up, you can't take a retake the next time (or forever)
• Detention for 30 min. or working with the janitor for 1 hour
• Come in the next day
• Post a schedule in my room and the other 6th grade teacher's room
• Reschedule if you can't make it
• Remind yourself with a sticky note (and a discussion occured as to the various places you could put the sticky note, including their forehead)
• Write it down in your planner
• No show = no recess for 1 week
• Post a reminder in your locker
• Take points off
• Give them lots of homework
• Help the teacher (to make up for her time)
• Put the no show students' names on the morning announcements for embarassment
• Write an "I'm sorry" letter
• Write "I'm sorry" repeatedly

In this class, after since I had the time to process the conversation from the first class, we actually went back through the list and put a red mark next to ideas that still consumed my time.  We also put green stars next to ideas that were proactive behaviors.  I've noted that with the red/green text on their list. This class, when making the list, wanted to go a little overboard with "how bad of a punishment can I think of."

Overall, I don't think the students or I really came to a conclusion as to any punishment for not showing up.  In both classes, they came to realize that any punishment would result in even more of my time being wasted.  Also, we discussed how taking points off (2nd class's idea) doesn't go along with my s-b grading at all. 

In both classes, we discussed how it all comes down to effort and responsibility.  I told them that my brother, a high school math teacher (Matt Townsley), questioned if 6th graders were really responsible/capable enough to handle the retakes system.  Both classes said they were.  They said if people are showing up, it shows that anyone can be capable of showing up. 

I ended the conversation with saying that I hope the next time they sign up for a retake, they keep this conversation in mind.  Even though the 2nd class said posting a schedule would take up my time, I still might consider doing it to see if it helps at all.  But, if they write it down in their planners and don't look at those, will they look at a schedule?

Frustrated...

I talked a couple weeks ago about how I was very excited about my students' motivation for retakes.  For some reason, that motivation has plummeted.  I had 20 students sign up for retakes for the most recent quiz and 9/20 did not show up for their retakes.  They choose the time to take it.  I don't post the schedule anywhere, but I always tell students when their retake is if they ask.  I'm not sure what to do next.  Last year I "punished" students who did not show up for a retake and didn't allow them to retake for the next quiz.  The punishment doesn't really fit with what I'm trying to do.  I guess I could copy the retake schedule and post it somewhere, but I don't have time to hunt each student down and remind them of when their retake is.  Any suggestions for helping this?  I plan to talk to the students about it tomorrow, but I want to get my initial frustration out here.

I'll report back with what the students say.

It's spreading...

I'm not talking about the flu or the first colds of the season, though they are spreading.  I'm talking about my math grading practices!  My principal did his first observation of the year on Wednesday (since this is my second year in the district).  At the pre-observation conference, I shared my lesson with him along with the homework (with answers given for the students to check their work at the bottom) and my quiz that would assess this part of the chapter broken up into learning targets.  I'd shared what I was doing with him when I first implemented it last year, but I don't know if he really understood what I was doing.  He was blown away.  He really liked how the quiz was separated into the objectives.  I shared with him that I gave the objectives/learning targets to the students at the beginning of each chapter along with when the quizzes would happen.  He said, "All our math teachers should be doing this."

Also, the teacher across the hall, who teaches 5th grade math, came over to ask me how I did retakes because she would like to try it out!  She taught 6th grade last year, so she saw how I did things last year.  She decided she's going to give her students an opportunity to retake a test they just finished! 

Like I said, it's spreading!  I'm excited!

"I can improve my grade by retaking a part of the quiz?"

I've had some exciting student-self motivation going on in my math class lately.

Here's a little background on how I assess math:
I break up each math quiz I give into "learning targets" or objectives which the students are informed of at the beginning of the chapter.  I score each "learning target" on a  1-4 scale (This is an example of what 1-4 means from something my students should have already understood at the beginning of the year). This is part of my standards-based grading approach I adopted for my math classroom last year (The link is a hand-out is one I gave to my students at the beginning of the year to explain it, so hopefully you can get an idea of what I'm doing.) .  I hope to blog more about that in a future post.

I started a practice after the second math quiz I gave out this year that has shown to be very beneficial!  Approximately two days after each quiz, I give the quizzes back to the students with the problems marked that they missed along with scores for each learning target.  I have been pairing or grouping students in 2's or 3's with students who have strengths/weaknesses that complement each other.  For example, a student may have gotten a 2 on learning target 1, a 4 on learning target 2, a 3 on learning target 3, and a 3.5 on learning target 4.  I try (and usually am pretty successful) to pair/group this student with another, or two others who have a 3 or 4 on learning target 1, a 2 or 3 on learning target 2, and so on.  The students then discuss the problems they missed and work them out with a pen on their paper or another sheet.  Students are usually able to figure out their errors without my direction, and it requires much more involvement than me fielding questions from the whole class and going through selected problems on the board, or just handing back the quiz with written explanations/answers.

I also allow students to retake any learning targets they'd like (outside of class time) as long as they've turned in all of their "insurance" (homework) on time for the chapter up to that point.  The reason I'm so excited about the peer post quiz interaction is that it has skyrocketed  the amount of students who have the desire to sign up for retakes (thus proving they have actually learned the material)!  I did not do this peer interaction on the first quiz of the year, and I was a little frustrated at the number of students who signed up for a retake.  Now, after conferring with their peers, students almost automatically sign up to retake any learning target that they scored a 3 or lower on. 

This does take more work and time on my part.  I have to have a retake version of each quiz written up, customize them for the learning targets each student wants to retake (because they don't have to retake the whole quiz), copy them off, be present for students outside of class to retake them, check them, as well as change grades in the grade book (only if they scored better-I don't penalize students if they do worse, which they RARELY do.).  It really doesn't take as much time as it might sound by that long list, but it truly benefits the students, gives them a chance to prove their learning (because isn't the goal that they learn it and we don't just allow students to do poorly on a quiz/test and move on?), and helps me in the future because the learning of math concepts is often sequential and requires a basis of past concepts to move on to the next thing.