Preparing for the New Year

While Summer '15 was certainly filled with laughter and joy, this is the final week. This is a short clip of what we did in week 2 (the Smartboard is now working and in daily use...).

Lately I've been preparing my mind, clearing my thoughts and thinking of things that worked and didn't work this year, and how I'll change them. This time, I want to create a classroom culture where more emphasis is placed on listening to whoever is talking, and somehow incorporate that into tokens. I also want to take Concept Constructions up a notch and incorporate it into tokens as well.

Because the tokens were so strong last year, I need to find ways that I can improve the system and make it more fun for the kids. This includes switching prizes from time to time, and added reinforcement to other positive behaviors that we need more of to run a successful math classroom.

A Helping Hand

It seems as though I have a created a classroom culture drastically different from the one present in my room last year. Lesson learned: regardless of whether or not people are directly in your room to observe you, word gets around about what takes place in your classroom. In mine, students are really motivated to work, work together and achieve. I am aware that my instruction and practices have definitely improved from last year.

My co workers from last year have been asking for my opinion and help lately, and it's something that I feel happy about. I looked up to them last year and even now, I still do. They are excellent in their craft and genuinely care about the students. They gave me a lot of advice and help last year, and they were always there to talk to. Really, it makes me so happy that this year that I am able to help them! I feel like the structure that exists in my classroom is really just a combination of some of their teaching traits along with the ones I've developed. Some of their effective teaching traits that I jotted down last year:

- Being very positive
- Being firm
- Being fair
- Holding students accountable

My mentor, the science teacher from last year taught me a lot about making my expectations very clear to students and being quite firm and fair with them. From the ELA teacher, I learned that some classes may require different temperaments. The atmosphere of her class was far different from mine even with the same group of students. I wondered about what I could do to develop this type of atmosphere in every class as well as motivate students. I noticed a system that hold students accountable for exhibiting taught procedures and positive behavior, along with a teacher giving direct positive feedback can really help create this type of atmosphere. Not done with this post! Time to plan..

A Class Discussion...

While I tend to be a perfectionist, I'll admit that no one has perfect days. Perhaps even veteran teachers do not have perfect days. Yesterday was the first day that I had to speak to class 605 about expectations. Let's face it: students are completely different when they walk into your classroom after lunch. Before lunch, you have angels. After lunch, you have kids that want to go back to finishing their football/basketball game or game of tag. At the end of class, we had a discussion about what we did wrong and what needed to improve. As a result, they earned no tokens yesterday and they understood that this course of action was fair.

You have to be firm with students, but you also have to be fair. As a rookie teacher, sometimes it's very difficult to pinpoint the source or cause of off-task behavior. My first question is always "was it MY fault? Was there something that I could have done better to prevent what happened?" Sometimes it is our fault. Perhaps lessons could be structured a different way. Perhaps we talk too much. Sometimes it is not. Sometimes the students are just rowdy after lunch. Sometimes they prefer to talk over getting their work completed. Sometimes they are bored. Sometimes they don't understand what to do, so talking to the person behind them is a sound plan. Unlike yesterday, 605 was spot on today. They were all prepared, worked well together and solved all of their questions while explaining their thinking.

They were able to earn the tokens they lost yesterday along with today's token. They were very excited that they made up for yesterday. I took advantage of this and made sure that we discussed as a class the difference between yesterday and today, so that they are more aware of the contrast in their effort. They were able to easily pinpoint these differences and I was very proud of them. I want kids to understand that we all work together and contribute to our classroom environment. If someone isn't doing the correct thing, it affects all of us. I have huge faith in this class and I know they will all succeed. Congrats 605!

The First Day of School

Last year, I was at a big disadvantage by coming in during the middle of the year as a blank slate with no time to set rules and expectations. Half of August has been dedicated to helpful and necessary PD's that I participated in for the first time along with our new staff. We have also done an immense amount of planning. There is simply no substitute for the large amount of planning that we have all been doing. After August, it was clear to me that given the circumstances, I did the best I could.


September 4, 2014 will be my own first "first day" of school as a teacher! I have never gotten a chance to start the year fresh with students until now. Trying to build a community (or do anything rather) from the ground up is extremely difficult work. I have shifted some of my focus to getting the new students on board with VSC values. I have also aligned the procedures of my classroom along with the VSC values. This is a fancy way of saying I want to get the students to recognize the specific ways VSC values apply to my class. If they can understand why responsibility, effort and collaboration are important to achieve our goals and build a positive classroom culture/community, then we have taken an important step in building a productive work environment.

Welcome to 6th Grade Math! by MR.E

I want to act out plenty of scenarios along with the students so we can see why certain behaviors do not help us achieve our goals or build our community. We will go over the questions on  Building Our Community after acting out some scenarios that correspond to each question. Students can share what they will be doing to help build our lovely environment. Day one homework consists of a student survey with questions that I will use to create groups. Day 2 is a review of day 1, getting to know all about the students and having them learn about each other, plus laptop procedures. Hoping that this will suffice.