Hello friends! Here I am in the full swing of summer and I have to say that it feels great!
The reality of work has not completely sabotaged my days, though.
I have already begun planning for next year with my team and we have a great pacing set up for all major subject areas and I am happy with how writing is aligning with our science research and all of those little kinds of things!
Next we are going to dig into reading a writing and what resources we are going to use to supplement and enhance with. We use Making Meaning and Being a Writer for the the time being, I have heard we are piloting new programs. With Making Meaning you generally spend a week on a book or two, but we have found that we need extra practice with comprehension strategies and skills than what is provided, so we are going to look at each book and decide what strategies students can be working on.
We have some great resources from TpT and other places to help students take notes and make graphic organizers. We are obviously also very big on academic discourse, so I will be deciding what possible sentence stems students can be using and which structures will be best for discussions.
I also have a BBIIIIGG pile of books to read over the summer and I have barely cracked one of them! First is the Guided Reading text. ELA is my focus this year, if you couldn't tell from my excitement about planning reading time above. Guided Reading time is a very elusive concept and is often misunderstood, and even more difficult to grasp when you are inexperienced with readers' learning needs. This book will be so helpful, as well as the professional development that my district is providing us with in a few weeks.
Next is CHAMPS. My school began implementing CHAMPS to students in the common areas of the school: hallways, lunchroom, etc. and it was up to teachers to try using it in their own rooms. I did introduce it to my students as well as voice levels and we used it for a short time. Reading the text will help me a lot more next year!
The Trauma Informed School and The Zones of Regulation are the other steps we are taking in a school wide perspective on behavior management. I definitely think that the profile of our average student fits these needs. I will be using the zones in meetings to drive our discussions on understanding not only our own emotions, but the emotions of others. It has a lot of benefits, one being that you have something in the room, such as a clip chart, to allow students to express how they feel through out the day. You are better equipped to meet with those students that might be sad or angry before things get "out of control".
The last book is 30 Morning Meetings, and I will probably read this closer to when school starts to begin deciding how to teach meeting procedures and become familiar with the activities. I'm really excited for this little book.
Oh, you thought I was finished?
I am also planning on reading children's literature! Because how else can we recommend or teach a book if we haven't read it! So I am going to read Third Grade Angels, The BFG, Because of Winn-Dixie, and The Magic Touch. I am interested in The MAgic Touch because I think it might be a good short read to compare and contrast with The Chocolate Touch, an all-time favorite.
IF I manage to get through all of this, I also have a stack of higher reading level novels that I am just curious about. I'd like to be prepared to have a better grasp on YAF in the case that I do have advanced readers! And just because they look interesting. These are ones that I found in my collections. I'm not sure where they came from.
This will be no small feat. I have PD three days in June and a few days in July. I also have school things to prep, a college class to take, trips I want to take, and things to do around the house.
I have already started digging into Making Meaning (+Vocabulary) and Being a Writer a little bit on my own. I will be more prepared to discuss it with my team. You would think that after teaching it for a year I would know it by now, but that isn't the case! We are sticking much closer to the plans this year and I am trying to better understand how Making Meaning and the Vocabulary component work together as well as what piece of evidence and assessment my students can produce for a grade AS WELL AS what other resources I could implement when learning a strategy or skill, as I mentioned above. For example, my students can be creating Frayer Models of the new vocabulary words. This isn't included in the Vocabulary Manual, but it's a good graphic organizer that is proven to help. I would like to be taking notes and doing graphic organizers on skills and strategies such as character traits and theme.
We will also be teaching the writing component in its entirety, not picking from the writing a grammar pieces as we choose, AKA the lessons that fit the pacing. We want to provide more writing rigor, more attention to the importance of it. I hope it works well for the kids. But I don't look at it as wasted time. I think if I understand this program I will be able to better absorb a new one. And I don't want anyone to think that we had absolutely no idea what we were doing last year, we are only trying to be much more thorough and accountable! We followed the pacing, the teachers guides, but I definitely did not see the full scope of the program and its harmony. It's called being a new teacher! haha
To make reading a little bit more fun I will sit on my patio and eat or drink something summery, catch some sun on my legs.
SO, with out any more delay... Lets get reading!
-XO
Ashley
