Beginning of the Year Character Building

Now that I am on summer break I am doing a lot of planning for my upcoming year.  One thing that I work very hard on is community building.  I start from the moment my new little faces enter the classroom.  I begin this by the way I guide discussions and the way that I let some of the conversations bloom.  By modeling acceptance and excitement for every student, I see that they pick this attitude up very quickly.

As a group there are so many community activities that I do.  One of my favorites has been giving them a piece of paper with 6 blank boxes.  I have them write 5 little known true facts about themselves and then 1 fact that is not true.  I advise them not to pick anything too obvious, such as "I have been to the moon."  Then we cut out pieces apart and then bring them to a circle meeting place.

One by one they read and place their cards in front of them in the circle.  The class has to guess which fact is the false one.  This past year they took leadership as a group right away last year and I heard so many wonderful comments to each other.  An example was a boy who said he was not good at drawing.  There were many other students who said right away that they thought he was great at drawing.  Another great part was that they could openly discuss the fact that we are not all great athletes, or have a cabin, etc.  I learned this activity during a Responsive Classroom course I took many years ago.  I love the activity and am very excited to continue it in my years to come.

My Biggest Change Last Year

Last year my biggest change was to not be so wrapped up with end of the unit assessments.  I only gave one test the entire year in math.  The one that I did give was early in the year.    After that test I realized that I already knew what that assessment told me.  So I decided that a test took up too much math time and it wasn't really that necessary for mastery of concepts.

In place of these tests I paid very close attention to daily work and how they were doing during work time.  I did a whole group instruction in math each day and then did a small group for extra support during work time.  The group was open to anyone that needed help.  They could come and go as they wished.  I did see my test scores and I did just as well as I did the previous year on the state test.

I am happy about this change and am incorporating this into my AR and plans for the upcoming school year.

My Sensed Need Updates

I have thought about all of my sensed needs.  I have been looking at things that would support all of these ideas.  I think that I am going to informally implement some ideas that I've read about for motivating kids to read through self selected books.  I also am going to set up a differentiation math center with games and other resources that will support students at the place that they are at.  I usually am able to find a math support person somewhere to help me during math teaching and work time.  In the past I have found a parent, high school students, or even an AmeriCorps teacher.  I am going to look into the high school student this year again.  This will help me give extra support to the students that need it.

The sensed need that I am going to pursue for my AR is an extension of the one I did the first time.  I would like to look into how I can follow each student's progress in math along the way.  I will not rely on an end of the unit test.  I am thinking that I may not even use the tests for this process.  I am very excited to see where this leads me.

A New Sensed Need

I am starting to think of some new needs in my classroom.  I have three that I am interested in.  One is trying to find a new way to assess in contrast with my end of unit assessments that my curriculum includes.  I am finding that this type of assessment is too little too late.  I really want to make a big change on this next year.  My AR did this, but I want to look at it expanded instead of one subject, short term.

I am also really interested in supporting individual math concepts for each student as we move along.  I know that they are all at different levels of understanding, and I want to find a way to track progress and to support or allow practice of each skill.

The last one is that I feel that there is not enough self selected reading in my classroom.  I feel that I'd like to connect reading lessons to reading that kids are really interested in.  I have to figure out how to map that out to be a successful teaching program.

I am very excited to look into all of these ideas!