What is my biggest take from the book?
I think we are very lucky to be in the school we are. There must be some awful schools when it comes to homework, assessments, and all of the above after reading all of the common sense approaches to teaching. We are also very lucky to have support staff to help us along the way.
My excitement lies with the formative assessments (as much as I hate them right now!) because I see that as a great way to help our students succeed in the new common core curriculum. We need to be constantly looking for ways to improve ourselves as teachers and our students. This will be a great tool to help us get through to a higher level of common core. I am nervous about how this is all going to pan out in the end, don't get me wrong, but I see this as a way to help us through the tough roads.
Time is my biggest fear. When do we have time to get all this done though? Between all of our day to day tasks, and helping that last couple students get up to the rest of the class, I see us losing a lot of valuable time "waiting" for some of the students to "get" it. We currently teach to that middle group of kids and we lose the high fliers at times and the low students, but I see us losing more of that middle group too without the right time management, guidance, and extra help to get everyone moving along. We all do our best ever day, even when we don't want to, we put our best face on and help the kids with what they are currently battling with.
Grading is also my biggest enemy, and why? BECAUSE there always seems to be a growing pile of papers, even when I spend all day grading I never seem to find the bottom of that pile.... there has to be an easier way!! Especially now with the feed back I try to put on papers, not just a grade or number wrong, I always try to put a little something more. Then I hand it back, life is great, another pile off my desk and BOOM they fix their mistakes (because common core says we should let them!) and that pile is back on my desk.... didn't I already grade that paper two times?? I am so happy when they take the initiative though and get that opportunity to improve. It makes me feel like I succeed too. Until I grade the paper and then see its another reteach moment.... Lets stay in at recess and do it again to improve our learning, but is it fair Sally has a hard time learning so now she loses all of her recess? If I don't take the time during recess then when? Should Sally stay after school?
Those are the constant battles of teaching. Those who can do... those who can't teach?!?!? Who ever thought teaching was an easy job? As I finish this blog tonight I realize I better cut it short, we have Mother's Day Projects to do right away in the morning, and papers I need to get graded. Its only 8:00 I have time right??
All in all I am happy to read these books and look at everyone's view on teaching. There are many ideas that will always spark an interest and help someone out. Its the easiest professional development we can do too.
It makes me think we should write a book. What would that title be?? 7:00 AM Ramblings? Could Leah proofread for us? Maybe Ashley could work on citing our sources? How about some good quotes from Brian or Kevin? Those would be great informational based ideas for teachers! Brenda B could add a little history for us, and Brenda O could write the spanish edition for us!! Kari and Andee you could set it to music and we could make a fortune!! Chels will be in charge of our art design (lord knows if you make a 6 foot giraffe with 1st graders you can do anything!) We can't forget about our marketing campaign, that would have to be Mike, Jason, and Jared... we need someone who wears a suit when they are out selling our books. I will just sit back with Stewart and we will give you guys all the advice you need and add our comments when you need it. I am sure I forgot someone here who is going to help us in the process of our book, but we know if I am awake, its mostly just listening to myself talk through class so I don't fall asleep! :)
We are lucky to have had these opportunities. We need to get more people to take advantage of this though honestly. Its hard to get moving in one direction when only some of us are seeing where we need to start moving. I am also getting really confused reading one book with you guys and then talking about last years books with others, I might not be blonde, but sometimes I wonder!!
Thursday, May 8, 2014
Friday, March 14, 2014
Well I have completed the formative assessment and I have also went ahead and retaught the skill I had assessed. We were working on context clues, and this is a very hard skill for some kids. I am currently looking at some new ideas with context clues so that by the end of the year we might be able to better understand this skill. I have noticed with such a black and white group of kids, this can be a hard skill. The words aren't always right there, they also have to infer a little while finding what the word means. Because of this problem, I have found a new unit for inference, that will hopefully help when we are looking for context clues to help us understand new words. Kids have been trained to give only the RIGHT answer, when in reality there are many RIGHT answers. My goal is to help these kids understand there is more then one way to solve a problem.
I had about 2 out of the group of 12 who understood truly understood the context clues sheet we did. My guess though is if I reassess those 2 with higher level words (they already knew the words they were suppose to be unsure of), they wouldn't know how to use context clues to understand the new words. So, as of now we are all working on the skill. I will assess those two next time with harder words to see if they can do this skill.
I kind of wish I had picked an easier skill to assess, but maybe this will make those easier skills even easier to understand later when I am doing this more often.
I had about 2 out of the group of 12 who understood truly understood the context clues sheet we did. My guess though is if I reassess those 2 with higher level words (they already knew the words they were suppose to be unsure of), they wouldn't know how to use context clues to understand the new words. So, as of now we are all working on the skill. I will assess those two next time with harder words to see if they can do this skill.
I kind of wish I had picked an easier skill to assess, but maybe this will make those easier skills even easier to understand later when I am doing this more often.
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Homework Fixes lead to more questions
Grading is the most time consuming part of our job. Without grading, we wouldn't "formally know" where each child was in the academic adventure, how "proficient" they are, or if they are even aware of the fact there is a teacher in the room.
Grading is a time honored tradition in our profession that has not changed much over the years. We all went to school and were taught the basics of teaching and grading, but what did that really prepare us for in the real classroom? They mentioned that not everyone does what they are suppose to do and how to help the kids through this. That, they told, us was going to be the toughest part of grading. The other tough part (that wasn't mentioned) is teachers all grade differently, even in each grade level. There are a few of us that are honestly looking at the process and how to fix/improve this time honored tradition.
We aren't following the same tradition the Bison Football team is currently using with their system. We are falling short of the National Championship. I see us starting to turn this over though and its going to be a long road to that National Championship, but I see that we are going in the right direction. The best question we can ask to get moving in the right direction is HOW are we going to get everyone in the same ship? country? maybe even planet? when it comes to improving the grading process.
I keep looking at each assignment and looking at how to fix it. I am still baffled at how to change this in my grade book. How do I not grade on the average? How do I keep everything fair, balanced and easy for each parent to understand? I am a person who needs to see it, ask the questions and then learn. I keep asking questions that I need someone who has done this new standards based grading to answer. I want to start this ASAP I am a jump in and lets get busy doing this. I know we need to make this ours, but why not get out there and see what others are doing and learn from them? I'm at a stand still right now with where we need to go. I want to start using this informally, but I don't know how or where to start. I think that would make the rest of this easier to "finish".
I know this is a little "off topic" from our book, but this is where I am with my current classroom. I am not sure of the next steps. I was hoping this book would help me with that but it has only caused more questions. I really want to jump in and start standards based grading because I see that its going to be the best solution to our education system in Rugby. We can really start to see where each student is, and how to help them. I wish we were 2 years into this especially with the common core standards now jumping into play. It all fits together in the end but trying to do both at the same time is an absolute nightmare in my eyes. We are now trying to figure out which are the best standards to teach (yet they are expected to know them all), how we are going to teach them so everyone reaches proficiency, and how are we supposed to grade them all "fairly".
Grading is a time honored tradition in our profession that has not changed much over the years. We all went to school and were taught the basics of teaching and grading, but what did that really prepare us for in the real classroom? They mentioned that not everyone does what they are suppose to do and how to help the kids through this. That, they told, us was going to be the toughest part of grading. The other tough part (that wasn't mentioned) is teachers all grade differently, even in each grade level. There are a few of us that are honestly looking at the process and how to fix/improve this time honored tradition.
We aren't following the same tradition the Bison Football team is currently using with their system. We are falling short of the National Championship. I see us starting to turn this over though and its going to be a long road to that National Championship, but I see that we are going in the right direction. The best question we can ask to get moving in the right direction is HOW are we going to get everyone in the same ship? country? maybe even planet? when it comes to improving the grading process.
I keep looking at each assignment and looking at how to fix it. I am still baffled at how to change this in my grade book. How do I not grade on the average? How do I keep everything fair, balanced and easy for each parent to understand? I am a person who needs to see it, ask the questions and then learn. I keep asking questions that I need someone who has done this new standards based grading to answer. I want to start this ASAP I am a jump in and lets get busy doing this. I know we need to make this ours, but why not get out there and see what others are doing and learn from them? I'm at a stand still right now with where we need to go. I want to start using this informally, but I don't know how or where to start. I think that would make the rest of this easier to "finish".
I know this is a little "off topic" from our book, but this is where I am with my current classroom. I am not sure of the next steps. I was hoping this book would help me with that but it has only caused more questions. I really want to jump in and start standards based grading because I see that its going to be the best solution to our education system in Rugby. We can really start to see where each student is, and how to help them. I wish we were 2 years into this especially with the common core standards now jumping into play. It all fits together in the end but trying to do both at the same time is an absolute nightmare in my eyes. We are now trying to figure out which are the best standards to teach (yet they are expected to know them all), how we are going to teach them so everyone reaches proficiency, and how are we supposed to grade them all "fairly".
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