World Wide Web

Over the past couple of weeks I have been trying to expand the kinds of activities that I am doing with my students in class.  I'm a little too hectic during the day to plan some of these ideas, but my mind is working overtime everywhere else...in the shower, on the train, at 3:30 in the morning.  One of the things I really wanted to do with my students this year was start a blog.  I found kidblog.org which so far has been great!  There are a couple of reasons that this blog was exactly what I was looking for.  First, it is very user friendly while also allowing students to change backgrounds and fonts.  Second, the only people who can see the blog are the students in the classes I've created.  This eliminates any concerns about security and privacy.  Third, not only can students read and comment on my blog posts, but they can also create their own personal blogs.  AND, last but not least, I can monitor all activity on the blog and nothing gets published without my approval.  So far none of my students have posted or commented inappropriately, but I think it may be partially because they know I have to approve everything.
This week I posted the first assignment onto the blog.  For homework, students had to answer a question by posting a comment onto my blog post.  I know that most students have access to the internet at home, but I wasn't sure how accessible this assignment would be considering it was the first time I had required them to go online.  Because of this I gave two nights for students to post and allowed students to sign up during park or after school to use a laptop from the technology cart.  Posts were to be submitted by 6pm and by 7:30 33 out of 49 students had commented on the blog.  Not the turnout I was hoping for, but ok considering it was the first blog assignment and, frankly, not that bad compared to how much homework I get back on a regular day.
Having a student and class blog is one of the things I'm most excited about working on this year.  I hope that I have mastered the process for next year's 6th graders so that we can fully utilize it. 

Written and Algebraic Expressions

Pinterest may be a time suck, but it has really inspired me to try different approaches in my classroom, especially with regard to interactive notebooks and hands-on activities.  (Sidenote: Interactive notebooks seem like regular notebooks only the notes are glued in, possibly in the form of foldables, rather than written.  Am I the only one who thinks this?) This week my 6th graders were working on translating written expressions into algebraic expressions.  I remember doing this lesson last year and it was a huge struggle that required A LOT of review as we got closer to the state assessment.  I wanted to avoid catch-up review and attempt to make this concept more concrete in my students' minds.  I've seen different lessons presented as scavenger hunts and decided that this concept might work well in that format.  
I created two sets of notecards, one blue, one orange.  On each notecard I wrote a "clue."  The clues were either written or algebraic expressions.  In the bottom right hand corner of each clue I placed a letter.  If the scavenger hunt was completed successfully, the letters would spell out "welcome back."  This created an incentive for kids who wanted to find the secret message, as well as a way for me to quickly check whether they had matched the correct "clue" with the work on their sheet.  My thought behind the blue and orange clues (each path was identical) was that I didn't want all of the students bunched up around the same 11 clues.  Two colors allowed a class of 25 to spread out amongst 22 clues. 

The students really seemed to love it, but there were a couple of glitches.  In the class with students who are more comfortable with Math, one student figured the answer out quickly, blurted out the secret message, and then everyone just tried to find the notecards with the letter that came next.  This completely took away from trying to dissect the expression.  My other class, who overall struggles more with Math, started off strong.  They were VERY into it and didn't try to find a way around the activity.  A couple of students, however, were not on task and quickly turned a movement activity into play time.  

I will definitely re-use this activity but some changes might be: Do the scavenger hunt in two waves--one group working independently while another group moves around the room.  I might also make varying versions of the scavenger hunt and color code them by difficulty. 
I also need to keep in mind that students will not get better at hands-on or movement activities unless they are given opportunities to practice.  

Vacation Homework

Assigning vacation homework is always a struggle for me.  I want the students to continue practicing the skill, but no one is there to guide them so how much help is the assignment really?  I also want to respect the fact that a vacation is a vacation and, while they should be practicing the skills they've been learning in school, they should also be spending time with family.  on top of all of that, i already have tons of grading to do and definitely do not need 50 15 page worksheet packets thrown into my lap next Monday.  This year for Thanksgiving I decided to try something different.  I found some great websites for Math practice and I decided to make a calendar for students to practice (in a fun way) each day of break.  
I also found that some students needed more practice with the basics so I leveled the assignments.  Students were free to do both calendars, but they were required to do either Level A or Level B based on their needs.  

It will be interesting to see if students actually complete this work, but many seemed very excited that they were being asked to play games instead of complete worksheets, so that's a good sign! 

Keeping Track

We had parent-teacher conferences a few weeks ago and, although my gradebook and classroom observations allow me to know my students pretty well, it's hard to keep track of specific incidents, accomplishments, or needs they have over a period of a few months.  My co-teacher and I started with a notebook that had each student's name in it with a few designated pages, but we were having trouble flipping through it to find the student we were looking for.  We decided to create a binder with a tab for each student.  Within each student's section is a sheet of paper to record the date, notes from a conference or assignments, as well as a space for next steps.  It is also a place where I can: record when I brought students up to play math games for extra help or keep track of observations that are not related to math or science (punctuation issues, not using evidence to support text, whether or not the student is putting notes into their own words, etc).  I can already tell that these binders will help me A TON when I do report cards next month. 

Life After Sandy

Today all New York City teachers were asked to report to work to prepare for the return of students on Monday.  Part of my school's task for today was to call families to schedule parent teacher conferences, as well as check in to see how they weathered the storm.  As I began making phone calls I suddenly felt nervous.  I had no idea what our families may have gone through over the past few days and I was anxious to get in touch with them.  All of the families that I spoke to were fine, but a few were without heat and power.  They were all very glad to hear from teachers at the school, and it was obvious that some really appreciated having someone to talk to about what the past few days had been like.  Our day ended at 3 and we still hadn't gotten in touch with all of the families.  I can't help but wonder how everyone is doing, and really hope that the students are able to get to school safely on Monday.

Miss Miss

Reflecting in writing has not been second nature to me since college.  The summer before my junior year I became obsessed with writing in my journal so that I could eventually come back to it one day and read my life story.  That worked well when I had an office job for two months and found myself with an unbelievable amount of "down time."  I read 13 books in those two months and filled an entire journal.  I think it is safe to say that the summer of 2000 was an all time high for me in terms of reading and journal writing. When I began teaching I learned that the luxury of working on my own stuff was a thing of the past.  Not only did I not have time to describe a fight I had gotten into with a friend during work hours, but now I hardly had time to see my friends outside of work, let alone get into an argument with them.

I have been teaching for ten years, but it hasn't specifically gotten easier.  Certain things have of course, such as management and efficiency, but each year is different.  The past couple of years have been especially challenging for me.  I changed positions.  My teaching schedule is fuller than most.  Since my school is small, teachers are given tasks like breakfast duty and lunch detention duty, leaving less and less time for planning, phone calls, etc. during the day.  Some days I come home feeling exhausted and defeated and not sure what I could be doing differently.  I end up venting to my poor boyfriend or to co-workers after school or to friends who are also teachers, but I'm at a point where I think it will be more beneficial to reflect in written form because talking about it (venting) mostly just makes me more exhausted.  My reflections will be accessible for others who may be feeling the same way, allow me to determine what worked and what didn't, and will push me to follow-through with different ideas and procedures...at least that's the plan!