Back in the Saddle!

Well it certainly didn't take me long to fall off of the blogging wagon! I'm back... hopefully for good! I want to continue to use this blog as a place for updates and personal reflections. The past school year (2011-2012) can be considered a challenging success. Though it was challenging (very, very challenging at times), I feel that I improved my strategies and helped students become better readers and writers. I suppose that the evidence would be my own observations of the kids' abilities, knowledge, and work. There was much evidence of improvement and growth. For the most part, test scores also support this. I do, however, have tons and tons of room for improvement, and I'm already thinking of how to make things better next year. I want more growth- personally and for my kids!

Here are a few changes/improvements that I have in mind:

Interactive student notebooks: I've seen some awesome examples of these online. The idea is to give students a notebook that isn't just full of paper that they can tear out and write on. Instead, their notebook (a composition book)becomes a working reference source, a place for documenting successes, questions, and growth. This notebook will be structured. I will determine what is included, and I will help students maintain a Table of Contents that they can refer to. The notebooks will include personal mini/anchor charts, reflections, notes, mini-projects, assignments, and hopefully many interactive foldables related to our lessons. I hope to post much more about these as they're completed!

More Essential Literature! Fiction and Nonfiction! Not only is the Common Core initiative pushing us in this direction, but I believe that kids deserve to be exposed to this real and awesome literature! I plan to read at least one major piece of authentic literature per quarter. Each quarter may begin with a few chosen units from our basal (3-5 weeks) and then conclude with a 3-5 week unit based on a piece of nonfiction or fiction literature. I don't want to abandon the basal completely since I do think it lays out the essential curriculum in a decent and useful format, but I do want students to experience more authentic literature and the complexities/challenges that accompany it.

Classroom Layout and Organization! I have to admit that my classroom last year was very functional, but it wasn't very "cute" or "comfy". In fact, it wasn't really a reflection of my own style at all. I intend to keep all of the functional elements (group lanterns, anchor charts, etc.), but I want my classroom to be nicely and cutely decorated and organized. It will hopefully be student friendly, functional, and welcoming. I intend to do this by using a cute black & white template that I found to create many classroom signs, posters, and labels. I love to use bright colors, so I will also do that with my neon reading baskets, ceiling lanterns & pom poms, and much more! More to come on this!

Now, having considered these changes. There are many things I did this year that I want to continue. I had a great success with the following things:

Anchor Charts! I was introduced to this concept last summer at a Literacy workshop. I LOVE the idea of student/teacher created posters that are a work in progress. This year I had anchor charts for literary genres, reading strategies, prefixes and suffixes, homophones and homographs, summarizing, point of view, our "Top 10 List for Narrative Writing," and story elements. These charts were written on neon chart paper and added to throughout the year as we created our own examples and recorded our own notes on the posters. I saw students reference them countless times when reading and working. They provided awesome reminders, reviews, and were great references! I will definitely use these again and add a few more.

Using Academic Language and Think Alouds! This year I made it my goal to use as much academic language as possible in conversation with the kids. I think that it made a huge difference. In the past I had a habit of dumbing down some "teacherese" to make my speech "kid friendly." This year I did not do that. I did not fear words such as inferences, evaluate, and homograph. It was fun, and the kids felt like super geniuses each time that they could understand and use the words correctly themselves. I also made a point to "think aloud" WAY MORE during reading, problem solving, writing, and during any especially during activities which required critical thinking. I found that it made a huge difference for students to actually hear me think about how and why I should or should not do something. I could almost see lightbulbs turning on in their heads as I "thought/talked" my way through many difficult questions. I think that it also demonstrated a great deal of logic to them, which I hope rubbed off! :)

Teaching Weekly Prefixes and Suffixes! This was probably the biggest new commitment that I made this year. Using a book that I purchased last summer, I introduced students to 1-3 new prefixes or suffixes each week and eight words including those suffixes. Each week we spent time recording those new words and meanings, completing word sorts, playing "I Have, Who Has?" using the words, applying the word part knowledge in our writing and reading, and taking a quiz over them on Fridays. This proved to be invaluable! this knowledge did translate to other words with the same prefix/suffix as we read and as we began to notice that words with the prefixes/suffixes we studied are all around us! They pointed these words out to me daily in speech and in reading! It became easy for my students to see that new and "long" words don't have to be painful! They can be broken down and easily decoded. I loved Word Study this year!

Writers' Workshop featuring "Top 10 Tips for Narrative Writing"! This year in the weeks leading up to the TCAP Writing Assessment I conducted Writers' Workshops on Fridays. This workshop featured a mini-lesson focusing on one writing/narrative writing skill or strategy and a time for writing and focusing on implementing the new skill/strategy. Each mini-lesson title made it onto our Narrative Writing anchor chart. (Ex: Have an attention grabbing introduction! Hook your readers by...) This chart was referenced daily by all (including me!) and proved to be very helpful for my little writers! Providing them with one "tip" per week and allowing them to implement these tips one by one over the course of at least twelve weeks was awesome! The writing of my students improved A LOT during these workshops, and their improved writing showed up on the writing assessment and in many future assignments and projects across the curriculum. Success! ;)

Probably more importantly are some things that need to be focused on each and every day at school and at home. They are...

• Focus only on what you can control.
• Be present! (not just physically, but mentally!)
• Focus on relationships.

Hopefully I'll be blogging about my progress (and failures!) as the summer continues and the school year begins. :)