So here we are, 5 weeks into school, and I wasn’t liking the grades I was seeing. Students had lots of missing work, and that’s not good news. Furthermore, they weren’t realizing that 8th grade means giving more effort than 7th grade – their work was off topic, didn’t follow directions, or was riddled with simple errors. This showed me that students weren’t taking their work as seriously as they need to. What to do…. what to do…
I decided to stage a “Rewind, Pause, Redo!” Day. It meant we would be off track of our schedule by one day (I bumped my Tuesday plans to Wednesday), but I felt it was necessary and definitely worth the sacrifice.
Before school, I made instructions for 4 different stations. I then made copies of the instructions and handed them to the correct student as they entered the room. These were my 4 stations:
1. Great job! You are all caught up on your work, and you received an A on our last writing assignment. Please read your library book and work on your Independent Reading Project.
2. You received a B or a C on your first writing assignment because either your evidence wasn’t specific enough, or your links were weak or vague. Please look at my comments and focus on revisions and editing. You should also refer to the model writing piece for ideas and sentence stems. Turn in your revised writing piece by the end of the hour.
3. You received a D on your first writing assignment because your piece was missing critical elements. I have created a scaffolding grid to help you focus on one piece at a time and to make sure you don’t miss anything. Let’s work on this together this hour.
4. You have missing work. You have until the end of the hour to complete and hand in your missing work.
At the beginning of my 3 classes, I listed how many students were receiving each letter grade in their Language Arts class. Then, at the end of class, I revised the numbers so they could see how their hard work paid off. I was honestly so impressed, I was almost moved to tears. The students were incredibly proud of themselves as well. I don’t believe that students earn ‘bad’ grades because they are naughty or lazy – they just haven’t yet received the support they needed. Taking a whole class to address their questions and concerns was an eye-opener for all of us! I can’t afford the time to do this every week, but I know that taking a “Rewind, Pause, Redo” Day early on in the year set the tone for our class for the rest of the year. Here are their MAJOR improvements:
Some of you are probably very excited about the transition from summer to fall. I will always miss summer. My favorite season is definitely spring – I love how the world ‘wakes back up.’ New smells, sights, colors – I just love spring awakening! But back to reality – it’s fall, and with that comes a lot of fun and exciting activities. I definitely need to start preparing for Halloween – eek! Thank goodness I bought Rocket’s costume last year on clearance.
At the beginning of every month, I set goals for myself. This is something I teach my students to do, so I need to model it. Here are my goals for October:
* Work out 4 times per week
* Stay on budget
* Get to work early every day
* Be in bed by 9 every night
* Collect all Phase 1 data for my dissertation
* Identify all of my students who need reading interventions
* Start planning / budgeting for Christmas
* Complete my Christmas gift for my 2 nieces and 3 nephews (a collection of my hand-drawn pictures of animals turned into a custom coloring book)
Some events I am looking forward to:
* Our first family portrait (Mom, me, my brother, sister, and spouses)
* Jessica and Erik’s wedding
* The Humane Society’s Halloween Party / Fundraiser
* Trick or Treating with my niece and nephew
* Carving pumpkins with my nephew
* Walking Dead!
So what are your goals / plans for October? Anything exciting?
Happy Friday! Whew, Week 4 is done! Summer feels like such a distant memory these days…
Every Friday, I do a High Five For Friday post to celebrate 5 highlights from my week. We’ve got to focus on the positive, people!
1. Goal Maps – This week in Language Arts, we focused on setting goals. We learned about doing a cost-benefit analysis of goals while reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens. For a culminating project, I had students create a metaphorical map to their goal. They had to have a start (8th grade) and finish (end goal), goal posts along the way to prove they were on the right track (ex: for a goal of going to college, goalposts might be staying in school, acquiring good grades, finishing high school, applying, being accepted, etc.) and potential road blocks along the way (ex: dropping out of school, getting in trouble with the police, failing a class, missing a deadline, etc.). They did a great job with these, as you can see!
2. Happy Happy! – My family had a party on Sunday to celebrate 3 July/August birthdays, and 2 wedding anniversaries. We had so much fabulous food, laughter, and just a wonderful relaxing time!
3. Vinylux – Well have you heard of it yet?!?! It’s great! It’s the new gel or shellac manicure without all the pain. I purchased it on Amazon for a very reasonable price. It dried completely within 8 minutes, and I have been ‘chip free’ since Sunday. I’m sold! This color is Lavishly Loved.
4. Haircuts – I got a haircut, and so did Rocket. I think we both look pretty great By the way – his haircut costs more than mine, argh!!
5. MAP Testing – My students finished MAP testing this week. They took the Reading test on Tuesday and the Language Arts test today. The MAP test is a standardized computer-based test to measure growth over the year. My students are totally wiped out, and I don’t blame them. I’m glad this week is over, but that was kind of overkill for everyone involved. I’m also glad it’s over, because the MAP test results are part of the data I am collecting for my dissertation.
I am SUPER excited about this new tool I developed for my classroom. The Writing Desk is a reference tool to be used during Writing Workshop, such as writing a draft, peer revising, and/or editing.
I took two manilla folders and overlapped them to create a 3-way standing ‘desk’ or divider. Then I created the printouts that are glued on the 3 inside surfaces. It’s designed to look like a cork board with lots of helpful ideas and ‘post its’ tacked up. The ideas include:
* Commonly Misspelled Words
* Introductory Elements – AAAWWUBBIS
* Transition Words
* How to correctly quote
* The Do’s and Don’ts of Peer Revision
* A publishing checklist (for final drafts)
* Compound Sentences – FANBOYS
* Appositives
* Other Ways to Say ‘Said’
* Our 6 Traits CCSS writing rubric that we use for all of our expository writing
* A TEL-Con sandwich graphic organizer. If you aren’t familiar with TEL-Con, it’s an organizational structure we use in our school for writing body paragraphs. You can learn more about TEL-Con through any of the following links:
I kid you not with this story: I have a high school ‘helper’ – a former student who volunteers in my classroom, and she is helping me make these writing desks. I explained the project to her, and the first thing she says is, “No fair! I wish you had thought of this when I was in 8th grade!”
I’ll be working hard for the next week or so to create a whole classroom set. If you’d like to purchase this for your classroom, click here!
We had an AWESOME time tonight at the Glo Run! It’s a 5K event that takes place at night, obviously so you can appreciate all of the glow-in-the-dark and fun lights and music. I went with my husband, Ryan, and our very good friend, Cait. We got to run for about half of the time – for the most part, people are walking and appreciating the sensory overload of the event, which makes it kind of hard to run. Ryan didn’t think he’d survive, but he did great! I love events like this Glo Run and the Color Run – they are very engaging, motivating, and rewarding for staying active! I would definitely do this one again.
I am starting a new blog tradition called “High Five For Friday.” Each Friday, no matter how stressful or hectic my week was, I am going to take a moment to be positive, optimistic, and grateful for the 5 highlights of my week. I am going to focus on what is good, and what went right!
So this week definitely felt like it was 9 days long, but I made it to Friday! Here are the highlights:
1. We found Rocket! Ugh, what a story. On Wednesday night, Ryan and I took Rocket out for his last evening walk. Suddenly, Rocket noticed a rabbit and instantly took off running. Ryan didn’t have a great grip on the leash, which slipped out of his hand. We both watched – stunned, numb – as our dog ran off into the dark night. We live by a busy street, so this is not good news, people. Well we split up and started darting in and out of backyards, calling out his name. My throat slowly started to squeeze and clench, and I could barely squeak out a high-pitched, “Roooooockeeeeeet!” – riddled with panic. After 5 minutes, Ryan hopped in his car and started driving up and down the street and alley. That’s when I had an idea; I ran home and grabbed a squeak toy. Oh boy, did I squeeze that thing. I squeezed the life out of it. Again, I darted in and out of backyards, morbidly checking the street out of the corner of my eye every now and then for a small body in the middle of the road. It was dark, I was alone, and terrified. FInally, I paused for a desperate moment under a street light, listening. I squeezed one more time, and THERE HE CAME barreling toward…. the toy. Not me, the toy. The stinker has no idea how he gave me a near-death-experience. I feel as if I aged 4 years that night. Oh I am SO glad to have him back! It was the worst 20 minutes (felt like an hour) ever! I am grateful for him every minute of every day.
2. Open House was a great success this year. I had so many parents with great questions about the curriculum, my expectations, etc. It was a nice turnout. It felt so rewarding to hear some parents saying that their older son/daughter (who I had in previous years) said that they were happy that their younger son/daughter got to have me this year because I am “the best!” It’s great teaching the whole family – there are some parents that I have gotten to know by teaching 4 of their children – wow! I love building a relationship with the families and communities. It’s part of what makes my district so special.
3. The 5 Keys – Currently, we are reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens. We are doing our best to use the iPads and ebackpack for taking notes, doing assignments, etc. This week, however, we’ve had more than a few technical glitches. Our district needs to expand our wifi network (which is getting inundated and really slow), and ebackpack keeps crashing on us. The students are being good sports about this, but I can tell they are getting really annoyed with the dysfunctional technology. I had an idea this morning on my drive into work to quick whip up a graphic organizer for our reading today of the 5 Keys to Goal Setting, Habit 2. You should have seen the look of relief on their faces when I told them today that we were going ‘old school’ and taking a technology break. I’ve never seen them so happy to have a graphic organizer. They loved filling in the notes, and they honestly did a fantastic job with their summaries.
4. Signature Stamp – Wahoo, it finally arrived! I’m going to have a blast filling out those blue and yellow slips for PBIS!
5. Seat Marker Success – I am SO impressed with my students. The seat markers are working out like gangbusters. Even in the middle of class, students will get up, grab a seat marker, then head to the bathroom. They never have to interrupt a lesson. You might imagine that this could get out of hand – that students would want to go at all the wrong times, or abuse the system. This is completely not the case! They are being incredibly mature and responsible. I think they are grateful and honored to be treated like young adults, and they are rising to the occasion. Of course, if I see students abusing the privilege, I will revoke it, but it’s so nice to have this mutual trust and understanding.
Let’s be real – when you give a 13-year-old an iPad, they are going to download and play games. Lots of them. During Homebase (Homeroom) time, I look over shoulders and I see a lot of Minecraft and other silly, pointless games. My response is, “you have 17 other hours of the day to waste your brain. I’m not going to allow that during school time!”
My colleagues and I got together and created this handout for our students – 35 Teacher Approved Apps. As it says on the first page of the handout, these are apps that can be used AFTER all other homework is completed and you’ve done your daily required 20 minutes of independent reading. We have vetted these apps and determined that they have (at least some) academic value for our 8th grade students. Feel free to download the hand out here: Teacher Approved Apps KD
At the gym today, I came across this poster in the women’s locker room. It made me feel really great about working out – I did not procrastinate, complain, or come up with excuses. I just did it!
It got me thinking that this would be a great poster for my classroom. As soon as I get a spare minute (maniacal laughter inserted here), I will make this into a colorful, inspirational poster. It would be a great discussion piece when I check in with my more reluctant students. Just thought I would share!
If you wind up making this into a classroom poster, I’d love to see it! You can do it!
This week is our first chance to go to the Library. I make a point of bringing my 8th graders to the Library every Monday. This year, however, I knew things would be a little different with the iPads. For starters, our Library is now offering ebooks on loan. For some ebooks, we have only a few licenses, meaning only a few students can ‘check out’ the ebook at a time, and for other ebooks we have unlimited licenses. The students can download the ebook from our Library app (Destiny), ‘rent’ it for a couple of weeks, and then on the due date, **poof** it disappears! This means you can check out a book without ever stepping a foot into the library! This is great for kids who are absent a lot, who go on vacation, or who devour books at a breakneck pace.
To better utilize the iPads for reading purposes, I created this handout to help my students discover new and exciting digital reading materials. There are also some fantastic tips for finding your next great reading book. You can download the entire 3-page PDF file here: How To Find a Great Book KD. Enjoy!
By the way – his haircut costs more than mine, argh!!
