First Few Days of School

This week was our first three days of school, so I've been away from blogging for a few days.  The first week of school is one of my favorite times of the year - full of energy, excitement, and a new beginning.  I love introducing all areas of the classroom, watching kids explore the library, and getting to know all of my new students as learners and as individuals.  I love hearing about the sports they play, which subjects they love or hate, and what interests them.  In the first weeks of school, I work hard to build a strong sense of community, create a safe environment where students feel safe to take risks as learners, and create a buzz of excitement for learning, reading and writing.

Here are a few highlights from our classroom this week: 

Creating our class expectations: 

On the first day, students had time to identify their individual hopes and dreams for this new school year.  Then students gathered in groups to share their hopes and dreams as learners and identify what our whole class needs to do to help them achieve their hopes and dreams (rule/expectation).  After five minutes, all groups gathered together to share the expectations they identified as being the most important for our class.  

As a class, we discussed the patterns they noticed in the group expectations and students discovered that respect, work together, and listen were shared expectations among all groups.  The class decided to have three expectations: Listen when someone is speaking, Be respectful, and Work together.  Below is "Our Classroom Expectations" chart that students signed, agreeing to follow the three expectations they wrote as a class.

Building Community: 

During the first three days, we did various team building activities such as the "Silent Birthday Line- Up" where students have to get in line in order of the birthdays from January to December without talking at all.  Students really have to be creative and work as a whole team to succeed at this challenge in the three minutes they are given. We did this as one of our morning meeting activities this week and the students loved it! At the end of the challenge,  I asked students to reflect on what worked and what they would change if they did the challenge again.  

Another activity that students loved was Save Fred!  I read about this team building activity, that also teaches the Scientific Method, on The Fearless 5th Grade Teacher Blog.   We did this activity during Science this week and I will definitely be doing this activity again next year!  For this activity, each group has to work together to save Fred, the gummy worm, from drowning.  Fred doesn't know how to swim and his boat (a plastic cup) capsized and his life preserver (gummy lifesaver) is underneath the boat.  The group has to try to get the life preserver from under the boat and onto Fred without touching the boat, life preserver, or Fred with their hands. The can only use the four paperclips they are given.  The life preserver is a little small for Fred so all students have to work together to try to get it on him and have to try over and over again before succeeding.  I love this activity because it teaches students how to work together, take risks, learn from failure, and keep trying.  It also teaches the steps of the scientific method which we will be using all year in Science.  

Before giving students the materials, I showed them a Prezi to introduce the experiment and had groups write out their plan and hypothesis for the experiment on a chart I created for each table group. 

Once their plan was ready,  they received their materials and the fun began!  Here are some photos of them working together to save Fred: 

Welcome Back to School! 

Thoughts on the First Few Weeks

Our school starts next week and yesterday, I spent some time with new teachers reviewing curriculum and workshop teaching. Our district runs a three day new teacher orientation where new teachers receive information on everything from curriculum to benefits to union information. Their agenda is huge and it is all  important and since they probably weren't sufficiently overwhelmed (I'm joking...), here are a few more additions:

• Have some go-to phrases for academic management. "What did you notice?" is a powerful phrase to get students thinking about the process. You can learn a lot about their thinking when they talk about what they notice. "Say more about that" is another one that works well when you want to push students' thinking.

• Have some go-to phrases for classroom and behavior management. I have always liked providing information--if Katy is talking when she is supposed to be listening, often times saying "Katy, you're talking" is enough to make the talking stop. I loved a recent post by Ruth Ayres where the go-to line was "What are you hoping to get from this behavior?" This post is a powerful one to read and think about! 

• Know how you want your classroom to look. It may not look that way in the first few weeks but have a vision and steer in that direction. This is the bullet under which I would say put the energy into establishing routines and systems for everything--unpacking bags, lining up, sharpening pencils, using bookmarks, putting tops back on markers.  This is also the bullet where I would say that less is frequently more during this time of year and there is the law of diminishing returns. Learning is exhausting and your students (and you) have a lot to figure out. Pay attention to the glazed over faces if they show up in your room and allow for some quiet time.

• Know the difference between an open-ended question and a closed-ended question and work hard to use open-ended ones in your teaching. How do you think the character was feeling? will give you much more information than Do you think Jake is angry?

• Establish a mentor who you trust--someone with whom you can wonder, analyze, wonder again, re-analyze... And have those wonderings be more than just wondering where to get more chart paper. Establish a relationship where you can wonder about the work you are doing with students and process what's working, what's not working and why so that you can make some intentional changes.

• The amount of information and resources for teachers is infinite. Between district curriculum, the internet, twitter, pinterest, blogs, and more, there are millions of free ways to supplement your teaching. Know where you can go for information and ideas but don't try to do it all at once. Just as your students need time to integrate knowledge, routines, and information, so do you. Take time to eat and exercise and honor your personal relationships. Don't under-estimate the importance of personal happiness and joy in your teaching.

Haim Ginott's quote hung on my bulletin board in my first classroom.

“I’ve come to a frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized.”

So true, isn't it?

Enjoy your first weeks of teaching. Your work is so important.

Oh! And as always--if anyone out there have other bullets to add, please share them!

Classroom Discussions

I know that I have written other posts about the importance of conversation in the classroom but I keep coming back to it. Because I am a Special Education teacher, I am regularly in fourth, fifth and sixth grade classrooms and the level of conversation varies across the grades. However, these levels of conversation also vary within the grades. Some groups of students are inherently able to use thinking stems, notes, and active listening to push the level of dialogue around them. Other students struggle with conversation and a high percentage of the strugglers are on my caseload. I have been working on interventions for these students. While their IEPs do not necessarily have goals and objectives about listening, reflecting, and integrating the verbal messages around them, maybe the IEPs should, since these skills are foundational supports for interpreting and writing about text; these writing skills are embedded in goals and objectives. 

Here are some of the instructional strategies that we have been implementing in the classrooms:

• using tripods of thinking stems to prompt students with phrases that keep conversations going
• modeling with the regular education teacher unscripted, improvised discussions about books and the messages contained in them
• coaching pairs or groups of students with ghost whispers of what they could say in a discussion
• pairing some of our stronger conversationalists with some of the strugglers and challenging the stronger ones to concentrate on their listening skills
• providing students with colored blocks, with each member of the conversation having his/her own color. Whenever a student contributes, he/she places a block into the middle. We then use the “What did you notice” phrase to inspire students to think about who were the active participants and what that felt/looked like.

Opening Minds by Peter Johnston is a powerful book that emphasizes the importance of dialogue in classrooms. Disagreement can be inspiring if we use it to deepen our own beliefs.  “We want children to realize that although they are trying to reach a shared conclusion, challenges and disagreements are expected, even encouraged, because they are useful for uncovering assumptions and new possibilities, and for making reasoning public” (p. 106). Expressing opinions and listening to those around us are such critical skills for students to develop in this rapidly changing world. This is definitely an area around which I will continue to push my own professional development!

First Step: Provide Information!

I began my teaching career at a residential school for emotionally disturbed children. Even though I came to think of my students as emotionally deprived as opposed to disturbed, they were a tough group and I spent many afternoons wondering if I should return to my minimally stressful and relatively lucrative waitressing job. In my first few weeks, my principal brought my attention to the school wide behavior plan that he had crafted and we spent some time talking about the first step. The first step, he had written, was to "provide information about the behavior."

At the time, I did not realize the subtle shift of power that this first step meant for students. My reflexive response had been to tell these students to stop their disruptive behavior immediately or go to time out. However, I was a novice teacher and I had been given a clear direction from my supervisor that seemed easy enough to implement so I followed his direction. I discovered that this strategy empowered me because I knew exactly what my first phrase to address disruptive behavior would be. When students in the room began to act out, momentary panic set in for me so I was relieved to have a fairly reliable phrase to use--you are calling out, you have not filled out your point sheet, you haven't joined us in the morning circle. All I had to remember was to verbalize what the student was or wasn't doing. The next steps were trickier since they involved asking for the behavior to stop and providing a potential consequence that I had a chance of being able to implement.  However, by providing students with information about their behavior, they had a choice about whether to continue or stop. The element of control and the potential for a power struggle was minimized and I found that I didn't always need to suggest consequences.
 Yes, the difference was subtle but aren't many aspects of language?


I have never forgotten the importance of providing information as the first step of behavior management. It has helped me through many parenting moments-- your skirt is very short, you've watched a lot of television, you haven't practiced piano yet, your room is a mess. I've also continued to use it in my classrooms and schools--you're running in the hallway, you are calling out, you haven't started reading yet, you haven't filled out your homework planner. Throughout the school day, we, as teachers, ask for a lot of compliance from students and yet, many goals and mission statements speak to developing independent, respectful citizens. Providing information to students gives them practice at making decisions for themselves. They have an opportunity to reflect on their behavior and decide for themselves on changes to make. Language is powerful for so many reasons and I am constantly searching for ways to use words to empower students so that they develop self-awareness and personal management for successful citizenship.