Challenges and Resolutions

I love both of them.  I love a fresh start.  I love setting goals.  Sometimes I think to myself I've failed at the many challenges and resolutions I make each year, but then I remember that I never give up so I never really fail!
In 2015 I only posted 36 blog posts, each year from 2012-2014 I had posted 50 blog posts, so I felt a little bad about that.  So, this #MTBoS blogging initiative is a great match for my resolution to blog more!

This year I want my blog to focus on the math and teaching/learning.  My 100% focus is student growth/success.  In the past my blog was mostly "ooh I'm flipping my classroom", "oooh I'm trying math workshop!", "ooooh I'm a whole brain teacher"  The really cool thing is that I've married all three of these teaching techniques and it is really working for me!  When I say working for me, it means I "feel" like it is making me a more effective teacher, but now I want to really document if it actually is!

So here we go!  The first step was to dust off your blog and kind of say your are participating.  This is my blog post that does that!

#MTBoS Blogging Challenge Day 1

It seems that I'm 15 posts short of 50 this year!  Might as well try to get there with the Yule Blog challenge I read about today!

I'l start with an easy one, I cook Thanksgiving at my house and this is my favorite recipe.  I am also making it and bringing it to Christmas Eve dinner at our aunts house.

Roasted Sweet Potato, Red Onion and Brussels Sprouts

Super duper easy and super duper yummy!

1 bag or box of sweet potatoes/yams peeled

1 large red onion

1 container fresh Brussels Sprouts

olive oil

rosemary

sea salt

Peel and wash the potatoes, and Brussels sprouts.  Cut everything into quarters and place in a pan sprayed with Pam or other spray.

Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt and rosemary.

Cover with foil and bake at 350 for about 45 minutes or until potatoes are soft. 

Quotes I'm Banking On

It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.

Aristotle Onassis

With the kinds of progress we're seeing in Africa, we have people who have a very high expectation, and often people think that, you know, things would happen overnight. But I want people to understand that sometimes it even gets worse before it gets better.

John Dramani Mahama

Never give up. Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine.

Jack Ma

See where this is going?  
I am feeling like such a failure right now.  I hate it!  However, I do feel the un-comfortableness of growth which is the only thing keeping me sane. 

2015 EdcampNJ Reflection

Today I attended my 4th EdcampNJ and it was again one of the best PD's I've attended all year.  I love the Edcamp format and today I did something I never thought I would do.  Before we got our breakfast and sat down to listen to the live #Satchat, I went up to the board and put up a session on Whole Brain Teaching!  See, I wanted to learn more about it, so I decided to lead an open talk on it hoping that I could learn from others who are using it.  I didn't know what to expect, but over 40 people showed up to talk about it and it was sooo cool! Yes, there were others that use it and I did learn from them!  I did feel a little pressure to be the "presenter" and I did give a lot of the initial information but just really running down the "first steps" from the website.
One of the things I wanted to learn more about was using gestures and from this session I learned that the gestures don't have to actually be the content.  I watched a first grade teacher show how she uses gestures when giving the objective.  It made me realize I can be doing more gestures that don't actually have to match the math content since all I could come up with right now is crossing my arms in an x to mean multiplication!

I urge everyone to do this.  At the end the day I was talking to a few teachers who were kind of saying that it was the same old stuff over again, meaning nothing new.  I admit a lot of the resources that I learned about today I already knew, but I think if more people jumped in and led sessions that maybe they don't know a lot about but want to, things might get more interesting.  My friend and I have decided that next year we might do just that, suggest a session for every time slot!

The next session I went to was Middle School Show and Tell (@sanwoz/ @njamle).  This was cool, I learned about a lot of tech stuff- one of the best things about edcamps, learning new websites and apps!  I like shoutkey a lot!  You take a url that you need your students to go to and it gives you a simple word for them to enter. For example, we typed in www.shoutkey.com/jeep and it took us to a www.padlet.com (another cool brainstorming website) that we collaborated on.  So in this case, jeep was the special word that took us to the shared site.

After that we went to Turning Tricks in the Classroom (@schleiderjustin) and it was all about time saving tricks like using google forms and such. The best trick I learned here was using ctrl shift T to open the last 10 tabs you have open.  I also learned I think it was this session about the onetab extension so that you can keep tabs as a list instead of keeping them open.  Here is where the only glitch occurred.  I was taking notes and relying on the google doc created for each session when suddenly I no longer had access to them.  It turns out people were moving them around so they locked everyone out.  I can get into most of them now, except for the whole brain teaching one and this one.

The last session I went to was on Alternative Assessments (@mmkillion @julieelliott08 ).  These presenters I think did the same thing I did, they use alternative assessments, but wanted to learn more from others.  I had high expectations for this one, but didn't take away too much.  The best one was having the students make an instructional video which I have done in the past.  It was a good reminder to use that again though!

You may have noticed I've been referring to "we" and "our" a lot, that is the other thing that makes Edcamp so much fun for me, it is a time I get to catch up with one of my favorite people.  Vesta (@vestageorge) and I went to college together.  As the "older moms" returning to school we instantly bonded and formed the type of friendship where if we don't speak for a while with our busy lives we can still pick right up like we've talked yesterday.  I love her and getting to spend time with her.   I am hoping that one day we can teach together in the same school.  We would be unstoppable!

1st Week Reflection

Almost done with my first week of totally WBT!  Some very interesting observations.  My most difficult class has become my BEST class! Not only is their behavior on point, but they are engaged active learners.  It is truly teaching heaven!  Like I said in my previous post, I have always incorporated the "Class!/Yes"  attention getter in my classes.  I learned about leveling up somewhere in the last week so I decided to level up that great class.  They ATE it up!  I love this because it was starting to go to their head a tiny bit getting all of these compliments and they were kind of (but not even really) slipping.  So I had knocked them back to Class a few times and the message was loud and clear.  They love being the best! 

Here is another procedure I'm having a lot of success with, it is the scoreboard game. Again, something I've always kind of done, but I took it up a notch this week and it is working beautifully.   Basically when they do things right/good they get a point, when they need reminders or are off task I take a point.  If they have more tally marks than me at the end of class they win, if I have more I win and if we are even its a tie.  My school does a "Battle of the Homerooms" contest each month so I play into that.  100 points if they win, -100 if they lose and zero for a tie.  They have the opportunity to win 500 points on a full week or -500 which could be quite embarrassing!  I also have a small board where I record their points so they know their standings. I'm hoping a little competition will grow, but so far they haven't really went in that direction, however the "great" class is super excited about their winning streak!

The biggest thing I've noticed this week since I fully committed to WBT is that everything seems easier.  Before I would fall off the scoreboard game or not use silly voices/variety in my class/yes.  That is no longer an issue. And I NEVER used the Rules/Hands and Eyes/ Teach-Okay procedures but they have become second nature in only a few days!  The Teach-Okay is the one I need the most work on figuring out gestures, but I'm confident that will come and become more deliberate with this process.   I think it is also worth mentioning that I have read "Teach Like a Pirate" by Dave Burgess and this is making me feel more "pirate-like"

Next Wednesday I give my first tests since starting and I'm excited to see the results :)

Dipping My Toes into Whole Brain Teaching

I'm not sure where to start with this, but I want to start documenting my use of Whole Brain Teaching structures in my classroom.  I learned about this teaching style back in 2009 and have implemented two of the techniques my entire teaching career, first  the Class!/Yes!  For me, this is my favorite and most effective way to get the class attention.  I say "Class!" and the students stop what they are doing and say "Yes!"  They are supposed to say it exactly the way I say it and I'm supposed to mix it up and say it fun ways, but I'm guilty of not doing that.  This week I have been better about it though.

The other thing I've always used to some extent is the scoreboard game.  You basically make a t-chart with either a Smiley and Frowny face on each side or Teacher/Students and you give a tally mark on the student/smiley side when they do what you want or a tally mark on the teacher/frowny side when they are doing the wrong thing.  You make sure you keep the score difference no more than 3 so that they don't give up and lose interest.  The students are trying to win by getting more tally marks on their side or the smiley side.  At our school we have a Battle of the Homeroom competition each month, so I tie this in.  If the class wins they get 100 points, if they lose its -100 points and if we tie its 0 points.  I will make another post on this and show the board I use to keep track of this.

And that was where I stopped with whole brain teaching.  

This year has been a weird year for me so far.  I am a huge planner and have always spent the summer planning out my year and have all of these great new ideas I want to implement.  This year I did not.  I think in some ways I started the year a little burned out.  I'm not sure why this is, and I really tried to fight it and figure it out.  Anyway, what kind of led me to start implementing more of WBT, was that even though I have a pretty good grip on classroom management,  I wanted to run a tighter ship. Now I'm not one to be the mean military style teacher,  I want kids to have fun while they are learning, so I figured why not give this a try.  

I  started  out with the 5 rules.  I've always had my doubts about using the 5th rule "Keep your dear teacher happy" but I decided to keep it in and I told them it was like a bonus for them since they always make me happy. We'll see how that plays out.

So last week I taught them the 5 rules, hands and eyes and teach/ok.  Here are some thoughts on each:

The 5 rules are working well, students have the hardest time with raising their hand before they talk so when that happens instead of reprimanding the student I hold up two fingers and say "Rule 2!" and they all have to say the rule with the hand gestures.  They are seeing that this gets old really quick and it is beginning to sink in!  The rules really are effective and I have referred back to each of them in every class. 

The next thing they learned was hands and eyes, when I need to give them directions I say "Hands and eyes! and they repeat it back and fold their hands on the desk.  I love this!  It makes it so easy for me to make sure everyone is listening and I have their attention.

Finally I taught the teach/ok routine.  This is used for direct instruction chunked into short bits.  I teach something then clap twice and say "Teach!"  They clap twice and say "Ok!" then turn to their neighbor and pretty much repeat what I said.  Its loud, crazy and fun.  However, in order for this piece to work you need to have hand gestures. This is where I'm a little concerned, I'm not sure how to make up the hand gestures for the math I teach.  I figure for now I'm using this more for the routines and procedures, but I would like to see how it impacts learning in my class.  

Oh and it was fun to watch the reactions of my students to all of this.  For the most part, they loved it, it is definitely NOT boring.  I do have one or two students in each class who give the eye roll and look so annoyed by the whole thing.  I'm not worried about them, I think they will come around.

2015-2016 Here We Go!!

Students came back to school on Wednesday and all I can say right now is I am excited for my second year in 5/6!

Here are some things that took place this week:

 I am not a terribly crafty person, so when I had this idea to fix my HORRIBLE hallway bulletin board I got very excited.  I don't even have a before picture of it because I hated it so much.  It goes from the ceiling to the floor and in a dark corner.  It is also directly across from the lockers and after about a day the bottom half of the board is ripped and falling off from kids kicking into it.  I absolutely love the way this came out.  The wainscot panel was exactly the right size, I didn't have to cut it at all.  Plus it brightens up the corner so much!

If you browse Pinterest you many recognize the signs.  I decorated the board with wanted signs  for positions such as Team leaders willing to build a learning community, Dreamers who dare to be successful, etc.  I also turned this into an activity for my 6th graders.  I printed out the signs again and hung them around my room, as a class we talked about want ads and how they are written and I told them they were going to write the descriptions for these wanted signs.  I had then break into groups and write adjectives that would describe the perfect candidate for the job.  Then using the adjectives create a sentence to go into the description.  Since I am a math teacher not ELA, this is all so new to me and its taking a little longer than I thought to get all 7 signs done, but we are making great progress and I hope to be completely done by next Wednesday which is Back To School night for the parents.  I will eventually have the students write their names on the chart paper under the descriptions for the jobs they are committed to (hopefully all of them!)

For 5th grade I had planned to read book Math Curse by John Scieszka and Lane Smith and then work on some of the corresponding activities that I found on various websites.  Well, I read the story, we did a crossword puzzle, and then our new math coach sent me a link to these great getting to know you Bio-Glyphs  I remembered that both of my own kids did these in 6th grade math and how much fun it was on Back to School night as a parent looking for my kids picture.  So I jumped on it and am so glad I did!  Here is a sample, I can't wait to hang them up around our room!  I asked the students to put an O on the back if they would't mind if I hang theirs in the hallway too.