Communication

We all know there are vast mediums to communicate with students, parents, and colleagues. It seems today that most people prefer to use email, phone, text, and face-to-fact conversation. However, with such limited time in the day how do we best communicate with parents and our colleagues? On average, my inbox fills up with 10-15 an hour - with 8-10 of those messages requiring a response. When do we have time to respond to those? Personally, I am an early bird so I've dedicated my 7-8 AM time (our start time at Sweeney is 8 AM) to answering emails, and then I try stay away from email during the day, as that's taking away from student support time. However when I see an average of 50-70 emails a day, and our hectic schedules, I don’t feel I always have the time to return communication in an efficient way. Do others have a systematic approach to communication? If so, are there particular ways you prefer to receive communication, and then organize it? At any given time I have support staff, general education teachers, and related service providers coming to me as a student's case manager consistently. I have moved to a paraprofessional tracking sheet this year where our paraprofessionals track some data, but there is room for narratives - which serves as some of this essential communication. Other than that, I am looking for any suggestions that others may have!

EL students being stuck in L3

Hello Everyone--Sorry I haven't been posting. It has been a really busy beginning of the year. I was at a conference last spring where the keynote speaker was discussing the "stuck in Level 3 syndrome." By this, she meant that there are EL students who seem to progress so slowly that they get stuck in level 3 and either there is a learned helplessness (and this is teacher's problem) or they aren't movitated to keep going (this is the student's problem) or both. So how can we balance student legitimate need for servicing from creating a dependency? I'd be happy for any feedback--I'll leave it open-ended and not share my opinions until I hear from others.

A fun new reward system in Phy Ed class at Sweeney

Just wanted to share something new that my teaching partner has started in phy ed class at Sweeney and I definitely think other subjects should try something like this out or maybe some other teachers have similar systems like this...
We started a reward system called, " I know what to do, and I will do it!" My teaching partner came up with wonderful idea.  We get to see our students 4 out of 10 cycle days, so it adds up to be about 100 minutes a week. It's really hard to waste time by chatty students or disruptive behavior in phy ed since we don't have that much time and need to get through our curriculum.

So... We had every student in the school grades 1-5 sign a huge poster saying I know what to do and I will do it. By having them signing the poster, they made a promise to us that they know the rules and expectations in phy ed class and will follow the rules and we hung it up in the gym. When we see a student doing the right thing and following the rules by listening or participating in the skill or game, we will give them a ticket. On the ticket, it has a face with binoculars saying, " You got caught!" For doing what is right, nice job! When a student receives a ticket, they quietly walk over and grab a pencil we have sitting out in the gymnasium and put it in their grade level bucket. Every two weeks, we draw 5 names out of the grade level bucket and will announce their names over the loud speaker so their teachers, the principal and classmates know that they are following the rules. One lucky name drawn out of the bucket will also get to come down and pick something out of the prize bucket. We have jump ropes, Frisbees, hula hoops, etc that they can choose from. We also added lunch with your phy ed teacher for a day and are asking some local business's in Shakopee, like cherry berry to donate some gift certificates. So far it is working great and we carry these tickets around and the kids are ready to listen, learn and follow the rules.
I know a lot of schools have a system school wide for positive behavior, but I just thought I would share this because it's fun to have something in your class. This works great with elementary students :)

Here is the poster. I tried to turn it so you can see how it hanging but I can't figure out how to do that on the blog, so you just have to turn your head :)

Review: A New Approach

Matt Braa sent me this link to a blog post that talks about a different way of reviewing. It is called "The Mistake Game." Students work in groups on a problem to find the correct solution. Then the group has to re-work the problem and make one mistake on purpose. The fake solution is presented to the class, and the other groups have to find the mistake. I thought this was a really clever way to approach review. It incorporates higher level thinking. It is easy to watch someone give the correct solution to a problem; it requires more attentive thinking to know how to do the problem correctly AND recognize the error. I think this would work especially well for my honors classes who "get it" right away. I am excited to try it out for our first review day!

http://kellyoshea.wordpress.com/2011/04/03/the-mistake-game/

Nerdy Tech Ideas!!!

Okay, I know some of you that know me will laugh when you see the title of my post here but I just came up with this amazing idea that I can't wait to try! It's nothing new to the tech world but new to us here in Shakopee, I think.

So my 7th grade students all have science (with a class set of iPads) and have set up gmail accounts through the schools google account (@shakopeeschools.org). First, I want their emails in TIES so we can send mass emails to them just like we do with parents. It would be nice if they could use those accounts to sign in to Schoolview as well.

I embed a google calendar on my website with due dates and test dates. Using those gmail accounts, we can have students add due dates and such to their google calendar by going to their teacher's website and simply clicking on any events that they need to know.

The biggest test is... will 7th graders actually use those gmail accounts?

All that being said, if you have any ideas that you'd love to share in this thread, go for it!

Mr. Chatty

I am trying to find new and creative ways to deal with an extremely chatty kid.  He is super nice and is a great contributor to the classroom discussion but he is overbearing and no one else seems to havea  chance to talk.  Any thoughts to try to contain his energy and allow other students to feel they can contribute to the discussion as well?

Seventh Hour

Last week, I have to admit I totally spaced on the blog (sorry!) . My mind was already in over drive trying to figure out what to do with my seventh hour. They are a rowdy group. I am dealing with a lot of side conversation and random shot outs. I can't even get them to write silently for two minutes. I have tried having them lay down on the floor with pillows and low lighting to calm them down, but that only works for a while. I want to try brain breaks, but I am worried that will get them more anxious. Last week, we did try a dancing brain break, but then they were high energy the rest of the hour. Does anyone have any ideas for what they do to help students stay focused even when it is seventh hour?

PLCs and Special Education

Providing special services for students K-5, I am working hard with my special education colleagues here at Eagle Creek to identify our "best fit" within the PLC model. I was fortunate to join our building's PLC team at the Summit this summer and feel that I have a strong grasp on the procedural and learning focused outcomes for the model. However, key barriers/topics to address for us as special education teachers include:

-Time restraints of attending two PLCs, attending both a general education and special education community (IEP and Eval. meetings make our morning availability tight). Should we participate in only one? How do we prevent a dichotimous relationship between Sped. and Gen. Ed.?

-Creating SMART goals for students we impact across grade-levels and abilities.

-Devoting our time as a "special education resource" to the achievement of students without IEPs (this barrier was raised as our services/funding comes through special education) and how do we be a part of a team/commit time towards general education student goals when we are also responsible for student IEP goals/needs/objectives.

-Creating formative assessments/common data sets across our disparate caseloads of students.

Thoughts to chew on as we move towards this way of doing to affect all student learning :). The goal, really, is that all of the students are all of our students, as we move towards inclusion. Thank you for any reflection you may have!

Where does homework fit in?

As I'm easing back into the groove of teaching I find myself taking a critical look at grading. More specifically with homework. It seems that more and more emphasis is being put on test scores as opposed to homework. Now that we are using standards based grading I find myself in a bit of a grey area when it comes to using homework as merely formative assessment which is ungraded, versus actual assessment of the given standard. Penny for all your thoughts?