Extra Support in the Classroom

I have a class that originally had 16 our of 38 students on IEPs. We did manage to get another section added and reduce the number down to 26, but 14 of the remaining students are on IEPs. I've been lucky enough to have a paraprofessional assigned to the room AND a special education teachers comes in twice a week. Has anyone out there tried something out of the box and unique in order to maximize support staff in the classroom? I feel like we have to balance the para's comfort level, perceived expectations (some are there to work with a specific group of students and make sure to take excellent notes day after day), and students' perceptions. Do any of you ask paras to do things like walk the room for proximity, track on/off task behavior, work with a small group on organization or content (maybe take them to a smaller setting to allow different pacing), or anything else? Especially when I have the special educator in the room, I try to break students off into small groups to work with her. I'm a little worried that this slows down the pace of the rest of the class and that students feel intentionally isolated (in a negative way). Thoughts, opinions? How can we maximize support staff?

Homework: Worth it?

I think some of you out there did a book study on a book about whether or not homework is something that we should be giving students regularly. (Can't remember the name of the book?) I have not read the book, but am very interested in the topic. Homework (especially for non-honors students or AP track students) is something that I struggle with for multiple reasons (kids whose households aren't conducive to homework, do they really learn more with homework etc...). I would love to start a dicussion on the topic of homework. Is it worth it? Do you give a lot? Have you read the book??

Reteaching Grammar

I teach EL, but I co-teach with a language arts teacher for a few periods of the day. Today we were going over pronouns--subjective, objective, possessive. As we all know, students need to have a basis of grammar in order to understand the types of pronouns we were teaching. So when we asked, "what is a pronoun?" we found that we had to re-teach noun. With subjective and objective, we had to reteach verb. There were only a few students who felt confident enough to say what a verb is. I know the days of the old grammar packet or grammar unit in isolation are over. However, it seems that when you don't spend a focused time on grammar, then students don't learn it in a context of grammar. It seems to be haphazardly taught and included in the curriculum. In my opinion, if I asked 7th graders, "What is a verb?" they should all shoot their hands up and be able to tell me that is is a state of action or being. At least the state of action should come to their minds--or even just "doing something." I understand that much of teaching grammar in isolation was redundant. However, we may need to rethink our idea of scrapping grammar and then just teaching bits and pieces--because grammar is interconnected and concepts build on each other. So it doesn't just spiral--it is an intricate part of good communication, reading and writing. It is an ongoing skill that should be practiced--even in isolation at first for mastery, then touched on in contexts of reading and writing projects. Then we don't have to have these mouth-dropping realizations that the 7th graders don't know what verbs are!

Teaching vs. Acting

Have you ever wanted to be an actor or actress? How many people do you think have dreamed this dream? Would you ever think it was possible to be an actor or actress?

Teaching is a profession that is filled with so many other professional duties, that sometimes I wonder if in a way, our role as a teacher can also force us to be like an actor or actress. Have you ever had this thought?

After reading Pippi Longstocking and Matilda, many of my students have asked me if I am an actress. Now, I can definitely say that I am NOT an actress. Nor would I ever want to be due to my fear of microphones, and audiences, however, I thought it was an interesting question to ponder. Do you ever feel that as a teacher, you play the role of a teacher for your student audience?

Cooties

Cooties have been around for years, possibly even centuries. However, if you really stop to ponder the term cooties, what does it actually mean? Well, when I was in the first grade and second grade, I determined I would not get cooties. In my determination to escape from cooties, I found myself making sure that nobody ever touched me.

Well, it seems that the cooties epidemic is running rampant throughout the elementary schools... even centuries since I have been in the first and second grade.

So the other day cooties came up during class time. I about cracked up when I heard one student say, "Oh yes," in a very serious tone and demeanor, "I have seen cooties before." This was followed by a long sigh. "They give you little bumps, all over your arms." I don't know if it was the tone of voice, or the subject matter, but it took all of me to keep myself from laughing. FUNNY!

Now, I have to ask you... could you tell me some facts about cooties?

How nice is too nice?

I feel like classroom management is always a difficult topic to talk about because I think teachers often feel like they can't say they are not fantastic at it without being judged. I run a classroom where students learn and are interactive, but they have been chattier and more off task this week. This leads me to a discussion on classroom management.

I feel that perhaps I didn't do enough initially to set the tone in the classroom because I was trying to develop a good relationship with my students. I know that both expectations and relationships can be developed, but at times it feels like all that comes secondary to planning good curriculum. A student threw something small at another student yesterday and due to this I have decided that routines and work time needs to be valued more heavily in my classroom - starting today. The problem is, I still want kids to enjoy coming to my classroom, but I need them to take classroom rules more seriously. I guess my goal is to try to be more concious about my nonverbals in class so that I am encouraging the class to do what I want without having to lecture. I am also going to try to focus on engagement time so that my students always have something to think about.

Ideas/suggestions are always wonderful, but I think that just stating that this will be my current focus helps change my mindset.

Response for Eric's post re: pretest on Egypt

Eric's post on pre-assessment on Egypt:
I would go over the pre-assessment with the students--then they immediately start to build the schema. You could also tabulate which questions they got wrong--and focus on those questions. You may already do this--but thought I would let you know other ideas. You could also let students know the ones many of them got wrong. You could go through how you figured out answers with them.
Good luck!
Ann

Teachable Moments

Don't you just love when a concept you are attempting to teach your students, comes to life during the school day and you can capture those teachable moments? That happened for me today. Over the past few sessions of social skills, we have been working on the concept of a "social filter." It's okay to have weird or rude thoughts, but it hurts others when we turn that "thought bubble" into a "talking bubble." Today, as I was doing inclusion with a student, she was waiting in line to discuss her book she finished reading with her classroom teacher. A student was in front of her sharing his book with the teacher. My student blurted out, "Come on! What's the hold up? There are people waiting!" I simply leaned over and whispered, "Remember our 'thought' and our 'talk' bubbles? Well, that should have stayed in your 'thought bubble." She looked up at me as it clicked in her brain. She leaned over to the student and said, "Oops! Sorry!" She patiently waited in line until it was her turn. What's your fun teachable moments??

Question!!! How to use formative assessment results

Hello Everyone!

I'm curious, for those of you out there that use any form of formative assessment, how do you use the results? I have a new set of clickers (student response system) and I've come up with some cool formative assessments and "pre-tests." However, once I have the data and know who is struggling, I'm kind of lost as to what I can do to help. I know I need to differentiate instruction but I'm struggling as to how!

For instance, we are doing a vocab pre-test for Egpyt. The kids are looking at pictures and trying to identify what is shown. If they struggle, it's likely they have no schema for Egpyt and will need extra support, especially on vocab.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Active Engagement

During the school day I have 2 blocks, where I have students two periods in a row. The first period I teach reading and then second I teach language arts. I always seem to struggle with students being engaged in the second hour that I have them. I am not sure if it is because they are less excited about writing, or if it is because we do both reader's workshop and writer's workshop and the formats are very similar, so essentially it is like doing the same routine for both class periods. My goal is to get the students to remain actively engaged in the language arts part of the block. Currently they sit in the same seats for both classes, so I am thinking about having them in different seats for language arts as a way to meet other classmates and mix it up from reading class. We also do a lot of turn and talks and think, pair, shares in both classes, and again by language arts I think the students get tired of it. Anybody have any other ideas to spice up routines and increase engagement?