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!

My Action Research Afterthougths

I am now winding down my school year.  As I mentioned in my last post about my AR, I had an awesome idea and experience, but my implementation had some challenges.  I loved this process so much that I would like to continue to make this work.  Since I am at the end of my school year, I am going to start developing this for next year.  I may even stretch this into my next AR project.

The changes that I need to make are to be more deliberate in my planning to include the right steps in my learning targets.  When I formed the targets this time, I just went off of the standards.  Sometimes that was enough, but I found for other math subjects, like long division, there are more steps that I needed to monitor along the way to a high level of understanding.  So I am going to write additional targets that students will need to get to the standard.

I also want to find a way to involve parents in my process.  The idea is that I will know where every student is at with math comprehension, every single day.  Often parents want to know where they can help, so if I create a second checklist, students could take this home and parents would also have a way to know if their student needs support.  I am not sure how I will do this.  My only idea right now is to have them self assess on two checklists.  I feel like I need one in my possession so I have it to refer to and pull students as needed.

The last change I would like to make is to have a plan on what to do when I see that students have rated themselves as not understanding a topic.  I did okay with it this time around, but I would like a more formal procedure.  I am thinking about setting a time aside at the end of the day that will be a math support time.  I currently have a snack break that I intend to change.  I would like to have a menu of options for each topic I teach.  I have been making a lot of games to use for this purpose.

Overall I am still very excited about this research plan.  I am feeling great about starting it, making some mistakes, and then having the chance to make changes and make this a very valuable tool in my classroom.

Vision Statement

This is a vision/mission statement that I wrote after my first year of my master's program.  I am proud of what I have learned and looking forward to making these changes in my years to come as a teacher.

Belief Statement:

I believe that students learn best in an environment that is safe.  I believe that they need to understand how to navigate through their environment and how to get along with others.  I believe that as a teacher I can facilitate this warm, compassionate, and understanding environment which will in turn create a place for hard work and self motivation.  I also believe that students need to be immersed in the same technology that they use in the real world.  Educators are preparing them for work and life and we need to incorporate the tech tools that they have access to.  These technology skills go along with the 21^st Century learning that need to be taught in all schools.  Society is different, jobs are different, and we need to equip our students with tools that they’ll need to get jobs.  I also believe that we need to teach children that they are all great at something.  They are not carbon copies of each other and we need create opportunities for all learners to learn and excel. 

Action Research - A summary of my plan

I started my Action Research implementation at a time in my school year where I was getting prepared for my state testing.  Unfortunately these two things didn't go very well together.  My implementation is in the subject of math, and in my classroom I was reviewing many concepts instead of teaching new material.  The great news is that my testing is now over and I can get some more solid results.

The plan that I developed is to set learning targets for my math curriculum.  I wrote up the objectives that I needed the students to learn and formatted them in "I can" statements.  I put these in a chart for each student.  Each math concept has its own chart.  For example, I have a chart for multiplication, geometry, fractions, decimals, etc.  After I teach and give my students work time, I ask them to rate themselves on a scale of understanding that I gave them.  The scale is...

0 - I don't understand
1 - I am starting to understand
2 - I can do it with an example in front of me
3 - I can do it on my own
4 - I know it so well I could teach someone else

So I have them self assess their level of understanding and record it in the chart.  I collect the charts so I have them to work with.  I look at the self scoring and I reteach and support all of the ratings of 0 - 2.  I am finding that the kids are very honest with this process.  Then I give a problem of the day (like an exit slip) within the concept that I am teaching.  I also ask them to rate themselves 0 - 4 on this single problem.  I collect these and correct them.  Again I work with the 0 - 2 students.  I also make sure that the 3 - 4 scores are accurate by checking the work.  Then once I work with the 0 - 2's, I have them re-rate their level of understanding.

I think that the system works very well in terms of me knowing where they are at.  The downfall as of right now is that I haven't had a unit that I have taught from beginning to end.  I am looking forward to beginning another unit on Monday.  I am moving into a measurement unit.  This will be the first start to finish unit since my implementation.

The kids seem to be very interested in the rating process and are very thoughtfully rating themselves.  It's great for me to be able to support them every day, instead of being surprised by end of the unit testing.  My hope is to be able to work the bugs out of this system and create this as a permanent teaching/learning tool in my classroom.