So...I have five days until I have to go back to my classroom. At this point, I'm starting to freak out a bit. I spent a lot of time on the couch during the past week and a half; I hate being sick during vacation. I accomplished a big, fat nothing as far as lesson plans go.
So here it is, five days before I have to step foot into my classroom. Right away I have to give my third nine weeks' pre-assessment which is part of our new teacher evaluations. I have a new curriculum I'm teaching from; a combination of last year being a buying year, so I have new materials (yay!) and we're moving into teaching Common Core Standards (also, a yay!). I'm just concerned because I haven't ironed out the details of what I'm going to teach, and now I'm at the moment where I have to.
Sorry if I'm rambling, it's 10:30 at night and I probably shouldn't be posting...que sera, sera. Is that even spelled correctly? Luckily for me it's only my teacher friends who read this anyways--thanks guys. The purpose is for me to sort my thoughts and rationalize things....maybe I shouldn't do this publicly...? Oh well.
So here's the big issue. I need a book. Simple, right? NO. I need a fantasy book, at the sixth grade level, that I have a classroom set of. I'll save you the trouble; I have The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Castle in the Attic. I know you're probably shouting at me right now that I must teach The Lion...but I don't want to. I teach in a very conservative town, and I have very religious students, and they won't agree. I'm not comfortable teaching religion; and I know that teaching in a public school, I legally can't. I'm so worried about teaching that book with all of the religious themes and tones, that I've made myself sick and have refused to (re)read past where Lucy goes to have tea with Mr. Tumnus.
So...teach Castle, right? Again, not that easy. It's a lower reading level; 5th grade to be exact. Lion is 6th. I would so much rather teach Castle, but I think I hated that when it was read to me in 5th grade. I've been told that I really MUST dislike it because usually books that are read to you are ones you love. Furthermore, I can't figure that out right now because the book isn't available on my nook, and Barnes and Noble closes in 20 minutes and I'm too far away.
-----
Okay, so now that I've had a gushing session, it's time to make a plan.
1. I think I probably will teach Castle. I have enough copies of it, and I think my students will really enjoy it. Furthermore, it seems as if many of them have read the Narnia tales, so I'd like to expose them to something else/another writer. Even better, I've found some great resources for Castle.
2. My centers...oh how I love them! They are fabulous. I'll need to sit down and plan those soon.
3. We're still reading The Great Fire by Jim Murphy right now. We'll be finishing that up and testing on it towards the end of January. I'm hoping to put together a Facebook-ish type project where the students have to interact with one another, check-in, update their statues, and give their demographic/biographic information. It will be done on paper, but I think it will be a great way for them to culminate their learning on such a historic event which happened realitively close to us.
4. While we're reading The Castle in the Attic, I'm going to throw in some fantasy writing. Last year, I did a really fun writing project with my kids that was very well received. We read The Secret Knowledge of Grown-Ups Volumes and The Secret Knowledge of Grown-Ups: The Second File by David Wisniewski. Great books if you can get your hands on them--they were very hard to find. The synopsis of each book is that we have boring reasons for doing things; for instance, we eat our vegetables because we think they make us healhty. The truth is that we have to eat vegetables to "keep them down"; otherwise they will rise up and defeat us because they're really huge, angry monsters. Like I said, fabulous books and the kids LOVE to read them! Anyways, my students made up their own fantasy stories about things they know as middle schoolers. There were some pretty far-fetched ideas, but that was exactly what I wanted.
Ms. Clup's Classroom: An Adventure in Middle School English, is a blog about a Michigan teacher's journey to improve her teaching!
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Centers = Success!
My centers are LOVED! Who knew?!
So...I started my centers on Thursday. After one of my teacher buddies (he "lives" in the classroom next door) spent a great amount of time telling me that I needed to drill expectations, I did that, for what seemed like the entire day on Thursday. B-O-R-I-N-G. I explained to the kids every expectation until I was blue in the face. I use CHAMPS in my classroom and we kept referring back to the CHAMPS board and then looking at my "How Centers Work" paper on the overhead. The eighth point on that paper was that I had high expectations of them and I knew they could handle this because they'd proved it to me. Then I used the oldest trick in the book, you know, that wonderful guilt trip, and said "don't let me down." Ugh...I sound like a my mom (love you Mom!). Finally, I was lucky enough to have help that day. Our literacy coach spent the entire day in my classroom--major thanks and love to Kathy for that! She really helped by popping around to the centers when I wasn't able to.
2nd hour was a little too loud, but they worked really well. (This is one of my Title I classes-so I have some students who have been identified as students who need intervention in ELA; we have a certified teacher who works with students in that class.)
3rd hour was a little less loud, but they also worked really well. (This is my co-taught class along with Title I, so we were blessed with four adults in that class--amen!)
4th hour was a gift from God. This is a very small class; I have 20 kids, and they are amazing. They were so quiet that we ended up filming them with the iPad to prove to people that this really happened. Due to privacy concerns, I've chosen not to share the video (sorry!). On Friday, my principals dropped in for a "walk-through evaluation." I was really happy they got to see how well my kids were working in centers and how engaged they were. I think it will be a very positive reaction; however, I'm slightly concerned because one of them asked my students who were working at the Metacognitive Center what they were doing. Metacognitive is a new term for them, so I don't know what the kids answered! They were working on visualizing a passage and constructing a picture from the image. I guess I'll find out soon! :)
(5th hour was lunch--that was really good too because we had Thanksgiving dinner.)
6th hour was also very good; but they're always a little bit more rambunctious than my 4th hour. We were able to have our Interventionist in with us again which made things run smoothly (but I don't think we needed to have her to run smoothly).
7th hour struggled. In this class, we have 4 boys and the rest are girls. Sometimes we have a lot of drama. :) This day wasn't any different. Amazingly it was the group that was working with me!
That was Thursday; Friday was better for all classes. For our warm-up on Friday, we talked about what their behavior was the day before and how well their group worked together. Students were very honest, but they were tactful about it-they didn't name names, but simply said "some of us got off task and we need to do a better job of helping keep each other focused."
All in all it was a very positive experience. The kids LOVED it and want to work in centers everyday.
Here are the outcomes:
1. Everyone loves it.
2. I am exhausted by the end of the day, but that's okay because I know that I'm reaching them!
3. I need to either extend the time they're in the center (I had it at 20 minutes and that didn't work--we weren't finishing, or we were spending too long on the warm-up/directions on day 1) OR lessen the work load at each center.
4. Make more copies of the directions.
5. Designate someone to be the director of each group that day/assign daily roles; however, I'm not really sure how to go about doing this.
6. The materials I need to stay at the center (like reading passages/directions) need to be color-coded. I lost some of the materials during clean-up and had to track them down.
7. Come up with a way to make it count as a graded assignment (without having to grade a billion things) so that it keeps them on task when the novelty wears off.
8. Keep going with it and develop more lessons based on centers!
I feel that I have grown so much as a teacher in the past week! Yahoo!
So...I started my centers on Thursday. After one of my teacher buddies (he "lives" in the classroom next door) spent a great amount of time telling me that I needed to drill expectations, I did that, for what seemed like the entire day on Thursday. B-O-R-I-N-G. I explained to the kids every expectation until I was blue in the face. I use CHAMPS in my classroom and we kept referring back to the CHAMPS board and then looking at my "How Centers Work" paper on the overhead. The eighth point on that paper was that I had high expectations of them and I knew they could handle this because they'd proved it to me. Then I used the oldest trick in the book, you know, that wonderful guilt trip, and said "don't let me down." Ugh...I sound like a my mom (love you Mom!). Finally, I was lucky enough to have help that day. Our literacy coach spent the entire day in my classroom--major thanks and love to Kathy for that! She really helped by popping around to the centers when I wasn't able to.
2nd hour was a little too loud, but they worked really well. (This is one of my Title I classes-so I have some students who have been identified as students who need intervention in ELA; we have a certified teacher who works with students in that class.)
3rd hour was a little less loud, but they also worked really well. (This is my co-taught class along with Title I, so we were blessed with four adults in that class--amen!)
4th hour was a gift from God. This is a very small class; I have 20 kids, and they are amazing. They were so quiet that we ended up filming them with the iPad to prove to people that this really happened. Due to privacy concerns, I've chosen not to share the video (sorry!). On Friday, my principals dropped in for a "walk-through evaluation." I was really happy they got to see how well my kids were working in centers and how engaged they were. I think it will be a very positive reaction; however, I'm slightly concerned because one of them asked my students who were working at the Metacognitive Center what they were doing. Metacognitive is a new term for them, so I don't know what the kids answered! They were working on visualizing a passage and constructing a picture from the image. I guess I'll find out soon! :)
(5th hour was lunch--that was really good too because we had Thanksgiving dinner.)
6th hour was also very good; but they're always a little bit more rambunctious than my 4th hour. We were able to have our Interventionist in with us again which made things run smoothly (but I don't think we needed to have her to run smoothly).
7th hour struggled. In this class, we have 4 boys and the rest are girls. Sometimes we have a lot of drama. :) This day wasn't any different. Amazingly it was the group that was working with me!
That was Thursday; Friday was better for all classes. For our warm-up on Friday, we talked about what their behavior was the day before and how well their group worked together. Students were very honest, but they were tactful about it-they didn't name names, but simply said "some of us got off task and we need to do a better job of helping keep each other focused."
All in all it was a very positive experience. The kids LOVED it and want to work in centers everyday.
Here are the outcomes:
1. Everyone loves it.
2. I am exhausted by the end of the day, but that's okay because I know that I'm reaching them!
3. I need to either extend the time they're in the center (I had it at 20 minutes and that didn't work--we weren't finishing, or we were spending too long on the warm-up/directions on day 1) OR lessen the work load at each center.
4. Make more copies of the directions.
5. Designate someone to be the director of each group that day/assign daily roles; however, I'm not really sure how to go about doing this.
6. The materials I need to stay at the center (like reading passages/directions) need to be color-coded. I lost some of the materials during clean-up and had to track them down.
7. Come up with a way to make it count as a graded assignment (without having to grade a billion things) so that it keeps them on task when the novelty wears off.
8. Keep going with it and develop more lessons based on centers!
I feel that I have grown so much as a teacher in the past week! Yahoo!
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Learning Centers in the Middle School Classroom--Eek?!
As a Michigan teacher, I have a much more stringent evaluation this year than I did last year. Part of that is to have a rubric goal, and two data goals. My rubric goal was to challenge myself and include more differentiation in my classroom. To achieve that, I'm going to start using centers/small groups in my 6th grade English classroom. So...I've told the parents now that I'm going to start that this week. Now that that week is upon us..
I'M FREAKING OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have my students broken down into four groups; but none are the same size. My stronger groups are larger, numbering around 7-8 students and my struggling groups are about 4-5 students a piece.
My class periods are about 55 minutes each. I'm thinking two cycles, 20 minutes, each class period, and working in centers two days/week. Probably on Wednesday and Thursday while they're still relatively focused.
As of right now, my four stations will be:
1. Reading with me-here we'll work on comprehension and going deeper into reading; but this will not include the book we're working on as a class. I need to keep everyone together for that...at least that's what I'm thinking right now (we'll work on our class novel on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays). I have leveled passages that we'll be working on.
2. Metacognitive-my plan is for the students to work on developing metacogntivie strategies to help build their reading. They'll focus on one trait/week. The first week will be visualizing something we've read in class and drawing a picture of it. They'll then share this with their group and discuss what aspects of the reading hit home with them as far as developing a picture. Other metacognitive traits will include predicting, making connections, evaluating, inferring, monitoring, prior knowledge, purpose setting, questioning, responding emotionally, and retelling/summarizing (Kaplan's Metacognitive Awareness).
3. Vocabulary & Phonics-Vocabulary is the biggest indicator of success. As of right now, I plan on using mind sketches to achieve vocabulary acquistion. Furthermore, I have some students who are struggling with phonics...so that's a major concern for me. I need to bring up this area, and then introduce vocabulary to those students.
4. Writing-My students will be working on writing cohesive paragraphs using a Power Writing rubric. The majority (thank God!) of my kiddos know what Power Writing is and understand it. In my district, we had 3 feeder schools, and so if one student doesn't understand Power Writing, another student in their group will be able to explain it (it's not difficult if you're unfamiliar with it). The first week we're focusing on organization, which will be with the Power Writing rubric.
If you've actually made it this far, thank you for taking the time to read through my blog! I'm going to start blogging more in order to help me think through these things. Please, please, please leave me some feedback!
Always,
Monica
I'M FREAKING OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have my students broken down into four groups; but none are the same size. My stronger groups are larger, numbering around 7-8 students and my struggling groups are about 4-5 students a piece.
My class periods are about 55 minutes each. I'm thinking two cycles, 20 minutes, each class period, and working in centers two days/week. Probably on Wednesday and Thursday while they're still relatively focused.
As of right now, my four stations will be:
1. Reading with me-here we'll work on comprehension and going deeper into reading; but this will not include the book we're working on as a class. I need to keep everyone together for that...at least that's what I'm thinking right now (we'll work on our class novel on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays). I have leveled passages that we'll be working on.
2. Metacognitive-my plan is for the students to work on developing metacogntivie strategies to help build their reading. They'll focus on one trait/week. The first week will be visualizing something we've read in class and drawing a picture of it. They'll then share this with their group and discuss what aspects of the reading hit home with them as far as developing a picture. Other metacognitive traits will include predicting, making connections, evaluating, inferring, monitoring, prior knowledge, purpose setting, questioning, responding emotionally, and retelling/summarizing (Kaplan's Metacognitive Awareness).
3. Vocabulary & Phonics-Vocabulary is the biggest indicator of success. As of right now, I plan on using mind sketches to achieve vocabulary acquistion. Furthermore, I have some students who are struggling with phonics...so that's a major concern for me. I need to bring up this area, and then introduce vocabulary to those students.
4. Writing-My students will be working on writing cohesive paragraphs using a Power Writing rubric. The majority (thank God!) of my kiddos know what Power Writing is and understand it. In my district, we had 3 feeder schools, and so if one student doesn't understand Power Writing, another student in their group will be able to explain it (it's not difficult if you're unfamiliar with it). The first week we're focusing on organization, which will be with the Power Writing rubric.
If you've actually made it this far, thank you for taking the time to read through my blog! I'm going to start blogging more in order to help me think through these things. Please, please, please leave me some feedback!
Always,
Monica
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
The 39 Clues Webinar!
I'm watching a webinar on The 39 Clues and using the 6+1 Traits of Writing to "decode" the writing with Mrs. Jeffries and Mr. Staggs. This is VERY cool, and hopefully we can bring this into the classroom soon! We just got to help Gordon Korman choose the best word to use in his upcoming book for The 39 Clues!
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Welcome to my blog!
Hello everyone!
I'm blogging for the first time on my own blog and this is very exciting! I decided to setup a blog so that parents, students, and others can know what's going on in our classroom. My goal is to update the blog from time to time with what's been happening, what we're working on, any big projects that are coming up, etc.
Some of you may know that I'm working towards a Masters degree in Educational Technology. I would LOVE to be able to bring blogging into my classroom, but I felt that first I had to become knowledgeable about it...so that's why I'm here, I'm teaching myself about the ins and outs of this fascinating new way to communicate! I am very excited!
Anyways, I hope many of you are enjoying your spring break; I am! When we return to school, we'll be working on a research project. The State of Michigan requires that we work on a problem-solution research project, so that's the plan for part of April. We'll also be working on reading informational text and narrative fiction at the same time. We've got a lot to do in the next nine weeks, but I know we'll get through it very well.
Enjoy your spring break and stay safe!
Go Bucks!
Ms. C :)
I'm blogging for the first time on my own blog and this is very exciting! I decided to setup a blog so that parents, students, and others can know what's going on in our classroom. My goal is to update the blog from time to time with what's been happening, what we're working on, any big projects that are coming up, etc.
Some of you may know that I'm working towards a Masters degree in Educational Technology. I would LOVE to be able to bring blogging into my classroom, but I felt that first I had to become knowledgeable about it...so that's why I'm here, I'm teaching myself about the ins and outs of this fascinating new way to communicate! I am very excited!
Anyways, I hope many of you are enjoying your spring break; I am! When we return to school, we'll be working on a research project. The State of Michigan requires that we work on a problem-solution research project, so that's the plan for part of April. We'll also be working on reading informational text and narrative fiction at the same time. We've got a lot to do in the next nine weeks, but I know we'll get through it very well.
Enjoy your spring break and stay safe!
Go Bucks!
Ms. C :)
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