A big break -- with snow!

Wow, we had a week-long break, two snow days and STILL it's been a month since I posted last?  Sorry!

Here are a few things I've been up to:

• Teachers pay Teachers -- I've been updating and posting new items.  I really like the fact that what I make helps others.  Plus, I add a bit more because it's not just for me.  I feel like now these are things I can really share with other teachers, whether they're in my building or around the country.  TpT encourages me to really have high standards for my work and also to add instructions so the items are standalone.  The kids all seem to like what I use -- but they never really seem to care, it's all the teachers' neuroses, right??
• Sewing class!  I'm teaching a sewing class to teachers at my school.  Real beginner stuff, like threading the machine, sewing a straight stitch, following a pattern.  I realized that I love sewing, I love teaching, why not put them together?  So we have a three-session class for basically materials cost with just four students so far.  I'd like to start teaching at the Rec department in town as well!  I created a website that has information for students and fellow sewing/crafting enthusiasts.  I'd love to expand this to an online community!
• Twitter -- okay, so it's been a long time coming, and honestly, it's hard for me to even admit that a) I'm not on Twitter and b) that I'm not comfortable using Twitter.  It's like my age group isn't old enough to say "oh you kids and your new-fangled technology" but at the same time I'm not young enough to want to add hashtags to everything I say.  There are those older than me or my age who use hashtags on a regular basis, and there are those younger than me or my age who don't know how to turn on a computer (practically), so there are exceptions, but I feel like I'm in a bit of a Twitter no-man's-land.  It's such a big jump, not like Facebook which is doable (on some levels) for every age.  Twitter....  Argh!
• Revamping my curriculum using Wiggin's & McTighe's Understanding by Design framework.  I've also been using Stephanie Harvey, Gretchen Owocki, and lots and lots of books on questioning, reading comprehension, workshop, and you name it I'm reading it.
• No Notice and Note!  We haven't met for our book group in a month, so I haven't been rereading and posting.  We were supposed to meet this week but we got snowed out.  Rats.  I'll post this weekend because I still love and treasure the book!!
• Birthday party for my son who is turning 5 was held at the city hall gym.  It was a blast!!  We invited the entire preschool class, but only the four or five kids he usually plays with, plus a few family friends and neighbors came.  Perfect numbers!!  We had scooters, balloons, face painting, tunnels.  You name it.  Oh, and cake and presents of course!  He's going to be in kindergarten this fall and our baby is going to turn 1 in two months.  How time flies.

Having written this list, I'm realizing just how busy I've been.  So thanks for letting me process my last month!  My ultimate goal is to be a great educator, but an even better wife and mother and all-around citizen.  Life-work balance is extremely difficult for me.  I'm an "all or nothing" sort of person, in just about every arena in my life and personality.  I want to figure out, even if it's hard, how to be present as my own children are little and also further my career and understanding of student development.  If anyone has any ideas, let me know!!!  Oh, and don't forget, I'm super social (read: external processor) so I use a LOT of time talking to people, both to connect and to process things.  How do you balance your work and home?  What gives?

Are you randomly acting kind?

I was flipping through my Bloglovin blogs to put them here on my *own* new blog!  And I looked at one of my favorites, The Corner on Character, and she has a great post on MLK and RAK!

Look at my little About Me blurb.  See how I talk about Social and Emotional?  Yet, my blog is all about RTI and reading?  Whattttt?

So I got inspired to write about our Secret Wolves.

Right before Christmas, I signed up to participate in Secret Santa at my school.  I had the BEST Secret Santa.  She remembered me almost daily, sometimes with just something little like a note to take care of myself.  But the BEST thing she gave me was randomly during math class (I teach third grade), one of the ladies from the kitchen came in with a cup of coffee!  French Vanilla, cream, no sugar.  And I already had a cup (or two) of coffee by then, but it was just so perfect, I was blown away. Some presents are silly, like little Santa-shaped stuff that everyone seems to have (or can easily pick up at Wal-Mart).  Some presents are delicious but generic (who DOESN'T like chocolate) because you don't always know the person you chose, so you guess to be safe.  But a cup of coffee, just the way I like it. It blew me away.  (She also gave me other awesome and thoughtful treats like a picture frame, fancy soap, and some decorations!  She's super like that!!)

I said to myself, that's it, we're doing it in class.  I don't believe in celebrating holidays in school.  Sharing about them and celebrating them are two different things in my opinion.  I love when kids share about themselves, including any holidays they participate in.  So I didn't want to do Secret Santas, I wanted kids to be nice.  I've done this in the past, but not so "formally".  We are the Golden Wolves (kids chose the name and the color!), so we became Secret Wolves (they chose the name).  Each week on Monday they pick a name out of a bag, I write it down, and on Fridays they try to guess who picked them.  And what do they do all week?

They are nice.

Yep, that's it!  They were way too obvious the first week, so they got sneakier.  They started telling friends to tell friends nice things.  They started being nice to several people at once to throw them all off the scent.  Prrrretty sneaky, huh?

Then the reveal.  Fridays we gather together and I go down the list of names, giving each kid the chance to guess who picked them.  I ask (and here's one of my favorite parts of all of this), "Student, who was nice to you this week?" and he or she guesses a name.  I say, "Wow, Guessed name, I bet that feels good to be noticed for being nice.  Did you pick him/her?" and if they did, they come to me and get a sticker to give to their Secret Wolf.  If it wasn't them, I say, "They were nice to you, but they won't give you a sticker!  Who will give them a sticker?" and the person who chose them comes to me to get the sticker.  I love the smiles on everyone's faces.  They smile if they got picked, they smile if they "tricked" their Secret Wolf.  They smile when they are reminded of how nice they were during the week.

Try it!  If you don't have class mascots, you could do "Secret Friends".  Goes great with Random Acts of Kindness that I've done in the past.  No prizes, just smiles.

Nice.

Notice and Note Planning

For the first time, I've been creating things for use with Notice and Note for others to download on Teachers pay Teachers.  It's pretty surreal.  I know the negative opinions out there, and I figure I'm doing work for myself that others may appreciate, and I'm making it just that much nicer because it's "for sale" -- and I'm doing it on my own time at home anyway, not at school or on school equipment.

The reason?  Because of love for a book.  Notice and Note.

I can't say enough how much I love this book.  For starters, I love the philosophy behind it.  The authors believe that students should be kind, thinking citizens.  They don't just think they should know reading strategies, even though this is a book all about reading strategies.  The purpose behind education is to create a society that is functional and democratic.  I agree!  Until I read this book, I didn't realize how important it was for me to agree with the underlying philosophy of the authors of pedagogical manuals.  I used to think about the philosophy when I was doing my masters, then I got in the classroom and was worried about day-in day-out teaching, whatever "works".  Now in the middle of a major shift in instructional practices, I feel like I'm swimming and need a life preserver to grab, and as I'm looking around for something to grab, I read this and felt like I could finally take a deep breath, fill my lungs, and feel safe.

I read the beginning, answered their questions for myself, agreed with their basic philosophy, then read on to the practical how-to's.  I was hooked!!  I realized that the signposts, spots that readers naturally notice when they are reading, are the perfect place to show young, inexperienced, and struggling readers.  Giving them generalizable questions to ask themselves will help them as they read other books on their own, and will show them the cues they never really grasped no matter how often they heard it in class about making a prediction or an inference.

The magic of this book is that when they taught the signposts, they saw the students naturally begin to use reading strategies as they read.  That doesn't mean I don't want to teach strategies, but I wanted a more natural feeling.  I read the book over winter break and when we got back in January, I knew I had to break out the signposts during my read aloud.  It was just so.... natural!  All of a sudden, the character did something so weird we all looked at each other surprised and I pulled up my presentation I had already created on the whiteboard, passed out reading logs, and had the kids fill out the unexpected plot sequence, why it was so strange, and what that made us think was about to happen. They got it!!  I also have plans for teaching this in small groups, especially as follow-up and for struggling readers.  So far, though, it has been whole group to introduce the basic function of the signposts.

Another thing I love about the book is their belief in the role of talk.  Teacher talk has a very important place, but in order for us as humans to learn, we have to ask the questions.  So no matter how good our questions are to our students, if we want them learning, we need to start giving them the power to ask their own questions.  Today I created a PDF to plan close reading lessons that lead to students creating their own text-dependent questions.  They read the passage over while the teacher reads it out loud and simply mark places they are confused by.  Then they read again by themselves, this time noting why they were confused or what their questions are.  In the whole group, students share their questions out loud and students decide which ones are the most important question and try to answer them in groups of 2 or 3, again reading through the text to find answers.  After this, they come back in the whole group to share their thinking, after having read the text three separate times and discussed and asked questions.  Wow!  So if you'd like a copy of my planning sheet with student response log, please visit my TpT shop.  (It's free!)

Preview of the Planning and Student Response Sheets

Please join my discussion and comment on my posts.  I'm LOVING this book and I'd LOVE to hear from you!!!  And if you haven't read the book yet, DO SO!!!!

Notice and Note question 4

Intellectual Communities was an extremely short, yet meaningful.

I loved how this chapter compared our schools to profitable corporations and talked about how measuring success on a test may seem like measuring monetary profit, yet it falls short.  We measure success by this test (usually just one!) that then accordingly assigns worth to the student and the teacher and ultimately the school.  One test?  One method?  On one day or week?  How can this be reliable?

We need to create intellectual communities in our schools, places in which students are motivated to talk and think.  That's where they formulate their opinions and deepen their thinking.  I agree!!!

Next chapter: talk.  My favorite!!!

FORMS FORMS FORMS

I can't begin to describe how much I love Google Forms.  (If it didn't ONLY go into an ugly spreadsheet, I'd say they were "sublime".  As it is, I go for "heavenly".)

What do I use them for?

At home:

• addresses
• shopping
• christmas list for family
• fun activities for people to take part in -- like a multi-family sledding trip (in Japanese, no less!)

At school (don't get me started!):

• rubrics
• lesson plans
• small group lessons
• *new* a behavior feedback form that kids fill out themselves and it emails to family and administration
• group work among teachers on my team

What was holding me back was the output.  It's so UGLY and CLUNKY.  You get this gorgeous form to fill out, you work hard to ask nice questions, then you have people submit and... all you get is a huge spreadsheet with everything turned into a row of information.  I get it, sometimes that's important and even functional.  But not always!  I explored this topic recently and came upon a great fix: the script called Autocrat.  There may be plenty of others out there, but this one was created for educators and has an amazingly informative tutorial.  I had no problem using it, so I highly recommend checking it out.  I was able to create a lesson plan template that I merged with a spreadsheet I populated by a form.  Sounds complicated?  Well, it worked and looked gorgeous!  My new love of spreadsheets(don't get me started) plus my former love of Google forms?  As they say in Japan, Love-love!  (But in a Japanese accent it's rabu-rabu, of course!)

Do you use Google Forms?  What functionality are you surprised is missing, and did you find a workaround?

Notice and Note Question 3

I haven't really thought about rigor.  Is that bad to admit?  I have felt like rigor meant making it tougher for students, but I keep getting hung up on the idea that even "easy" books feel tough for some students.  It has been hard for me to switch to the idea in Common Core that we have to go deeper and deeper.  This chapter helped me to see that we don't have to automatically go to harder texts just for the sake of calling it rigor.  We can take on-level texts, or independent level for students who are struggling, and go deeper into the understanding the kids have-- and that is rigor!  Rigor means that students are engaged, and that can't happen if the text is too difficult (or boring) so we can still choose books kids will be successful at reading.  The checklist on rigor and talk (p. 33) was really enlightening, but then it was in my favorite chapter on Talk, so there you go!!

Rigor should bring with it an inherent interaction between student and text and other students. It should be enjoyable and challenging in order for the book to make an impact on a child's life.  I keep going back to the reason for reading: is it for a grade, for a future "college and career readiness" skill?  Or is it because we are shaping human lives to be introspective, empathetic, and considerate?  After all, I believe that the books I read change me and have made me the person I am, as much as people I have met and interacted with have.  I come to books ready to be impacted regardless of the difficulty of the book.

Notice and Note - teaching it!!!

Okay, I know I can't say enough great things about this fantastic book.  (PLEASE buy it and read it if you haven't already!)  We met for our book club and came up with a beautiful "rendering" of the first six chapters by taking a word, a phrase, and a sentence from each chapter and posting it up.  The conversations were rich and fun -- this book really gets at the heart of teaching, in my opinion: first and foremost our love of learning is contagious to those around us.  I heard stories from veteran and newbie teachers alike about how the chapters resonated with them, that it reminded them of good things they had done in the past and are doing now, and also that just by reading the first six chapters, they were trying new things in their rooms!  Yes!!!

So guess what else I did....  I started a store on TeachersPayTeachers.com!!!  I have put up my powerpoint (in pdf) and 11x17 posters in case someone else wants to use my work.  I swear, I read a few chapters, fell in love, read some more and next thing I knew I was just about done!  And then I hopped on my Mac and started making posters!!! I'm all about posters on the computer.  I think too many posters in the classroom gets muddled and the kids don't pay attention, and also I think the ones I make on the fly are usually messy because the kids are coming up with ideas and I try to write them down, it just looks better to make them ahead of time.

We have been reading Seekers Book 1 in my third grade read aloud.  We got to a section that was like, "What????" and I couldn't NOT use the Contrasts and Contradictions signpost.  I pulled up the .pdf I created and showed my students what happens when a character acts out of the ordinary and what question we should ask ourselves.  The next day, I used a modified graphic organizer I copied from the text (when I make my own I'll upload them to TpT!) and now in read aloud they sit with their clipboards ready to take notes on the unexpected things in the book.  This, by the way, is now one of my very favorite read alouds.  It's pretty difficult, but it's SO exciting.  There are so many things on so many levels in this book, every kid is able to get something out of it, and for using Notice and Note I'm finding it superb!

Next project: book marks and graphic organizers.  I'm COMPLETELY obsessed!!!  Enjoy the book!  What chapter spoke to you most strongly?

Notice and Note question 2

This question dealt with the changing role of fiction in the Common Core: that is, that we are to teach much more nonfiction than than we previously have in our classes.  This is something I've been wrestling with myself, since there are so many things we may want to teach through either fiction or nonfiction, that some students gravitate toward nonfiction naturally and it would be equally unnatural to force them to read fiction as it is to force some students to read only nonfiction. In our school we have divided the trimesters into teaching literary fiction standards (trimester 1), literary nonfiction standards (trimester 2), and informational nonfiction standards (trimester 3). Considering the sheer amount of standards, strategies, and skills out there, I feel absolutely rushed to finish in just one trimester my fiction teaching. Granted, I can definitely teach many of the fiction standards with literary nonfiction, but I don't have the library of high quality, varied, and multilevel literary nonfiction that I do of fiction. And as a tangent, I want to say that there are many many many low quality fiction stories out there that I wouldn't consider teaching to my kids, so I'm not just wanting fiction for the sake of fiction.

I just don't want to throw the bathwater and baby out together in the quest for getting kids to understand nonfiction, which I feel is happening when we don't have the amount of high quality nonfiction, when nonfiction doesn't do the same job that fiction does. "With fiction," according to this chapter in Notice and Note, "we continue to think about what it means to be human (17)." We learn more through nonfiction but be more through fiction (17). And to top it all off, there is research showing that fiction transforms us to be more empathetic by learning about ourselves, others, and how we relate (18).

This chapter resonated with me and my deep love of reading, both fiction and nonfiction, and made me realize the roles each has in my life. I read fiction for specific purposes and nonfiction for other purposes, although both are for entertainment, most of the time. I no longer am forced to read fiction simply because a teacher told me I have to, and most nonfiction relates to my own interests, even when it's hard to understand. But still I read both regularly. I feel a different hunger in my mind as I'm contemplating what to do next: watch tv so I can also knit? Watch a movie so I can have a shared experience with my family? Read a book so I can be still and quiet alone? Read a book to calm down before bed? Read a magazine because I'm sitting waiting at the doctor's office? Listen to documentaries or news in the car? I guess I lump in reading with keeping me occupied just like I would tv or radio, and my needs change depending on situation and mood. I feel like bringing this conversation to my students and acknowledging the different feelings we have at different times, and maybe giving them a different idea of what to do when they want alone time or they're bored.  I feel like I need to keep fiction close to my side as I teach the remaining informational standards to my students this year, to keep me authentic!

Notice & Note Question 1

Question 1: Is reading still reading?

This question was really interesting to me -- for the opposite reason than I thought!  I came into this text with a love for reading in any format, without prejudice (I assumed).  I read on my iPhone, my iPad, and my Nook.  And of course I have books upon books upon books around my house, my bed, and still in boxes from our move.  So when the first question started out talking about using a Nook and that some teachers tell kids that's not "really reading" I thought -- nope, that's not me.

And then the other shoe dropped: the quote "Now, more than ever, reading seems to be a social act."  Um, no?  I have attended book groups, I always loved reading discussions, and I bore people to tears talking about books I've read.  But I'm not online in my reading.  Nor do I think that an e-book should ever have a YouTube link to click and distract me!!  

So where does that leave me?  Still stuck in (gasp) the 20th century?  I still think my third graders should learn cursive, I miss the feel of paper books (although I looooove the fact that I can lay in bed on my side and read my Nook, turning the page with just one finger, no pages falling back and losing my place......) especially because of the complexity of note-taking on a Nook or iPad (complex being my code word for different).  I enjoy reading people's blogs, especially education and sewing blogs (my passions), but I rarely comment because it's not in real-time.  I signed up for GoodReads but it didn't really go anywhere for me, and I'm realizing now that was because it wasn't in the format I was expecting.

I need to change my thinking of reading response.  Reading will always be reading.  I agree with the authors that paper and e-books "share the common purpose of recording and transmitting language.  Written language is the essence of both."  What I need to change is the way I interact as I read: recording my thinking, sharing with others, and hearing others' ideas.  What are the best ways to do this?

RtI... Still relevant?

If you do a Google search, you'll find 115,000,000 entries for "Response to Intervention" - that should indicate its relevance, right?  Well, if you dig deeper, you don't see as much *new* stuff out there.  I feel like the buzz words today are "Common Core State Standards" and "close reading".  All that time and energy we put into RtI, what happens now?

Well, I must be totally behind the times because I just picked up Gretchen Owocki's "The RTI Daily Planning Book, K-6" (Heinemann, 2010) and I love it.  I've been thinking about all the new initiatives we are taking on, the testing we are still waiting to experience so that we know if what we've starting doing is even appropriate (here in Vermont we don't get to take the test until NEXT spring).  I feel like I'm treading water, starting to go in over my head for a  while, then I get a new burst of power and start treading again.  It's not a great feeling!

Enter RTI: A way for me to evaluate the current levels of my students, progress monitor for maximum growth, and evaluate students with needs beyond the regular curriculum.  Meanwhile, as I'm changing my curriculum to meet CCSS, I can be comfortable knowing that I'm still meeting all students' needs.

In her introduction to the text, Owocki explains the six main categories of student needs, organized into profiles.  Maybe everyone else has heard of this but I was amazed and it all made sense!!  There aren't just "word callers," but "automatic," "struggling," and "slow;" there are "word stumblers," "slow comprehenders," and "disabled readers."  Now I can have a framework for my approach to individual students as I meet with them in my intervention groups.  I know that some students get interventions that don't meet their needs, then they don't progress and are continually frustrated.  But if my measures show a need but I don't know exactly or can't precisely name what that need is, we will all be frustrated -- more treading water!  Just the idea that we can categorize students, while simplistic in a sense, is so helpful for me as I start the new year with new plans and new resolutions!  Part 1 consists of Assessment Practices and Tools and Part 2 is Instructional Practices and Tools.  I can't wait to dive in!

Happy New Year!!