Feeling Inspired and Inspiring Others!

Today was one of those feel good days.  You know those days...the days where you finally feel validated that what you are doing is actually making a difference.  Today, not once, but twice, I had people come up to tell me about students that have said they want to be science teachers so that they can be like me.  I also received lots of hugs and a sunflower!  Teaching is like fighting in the trenches when it's pouring outside and you can't see an end in sight.  But occasionally, the rain subsides and you see a rainbow.  That rainbow gives you hope for the future. I saw MY rainbow today!

Today's post is not going to be about a strategy to implement in your classroom. I've created a list of 10 things I do to inspire students, and, also, to help you get through those days where you feel like you are in torrential downpour.

1. High five, fist bump, or make up a crazy unique handshake with your students.
 
2. Compliment at least five students a day.  This does not have to be anything planned. "I like your shirt!"  "You look great today!" 
"What a neat idea!"  "That's really cool!" etc.

3.  Greet your students by name.

4.  SMILE, and not just a little bit.  I maybe take this to an extreme, but really it's a lot more fun to be in class with a teacher that seems like he/she is enjoying him/herself.

Photo from We are Teachers

5. Don't make everything about business. Teach, teach, teach, and then stop.  Work on teambuilding, collaboration, critical thinking, or just mix it up with a content related game or trivia.

6. Listen to your students....even the ones that tell you the never ending story.  You may be the only one that will listen to them.

7.  Find a system that does not criticize students individually.  Whether it be Whole Brain Teaching or another system, constantly reinforce good behavior rather than focusing on the negative behavior.


8.  Have some sort of incentive program.  Last year I used gem jars, this year I am using Whole Brain Teaching's Scoreboard.  I also give out stickers for students or teams that successfully complete a challenging activity.

9.  Find time to pray about your students.  I pray on my way to work each morning.  I ask God to give me guidance on what I should do each day in my classroom and to help me make a difference in the lives of my students.

10.  Take time for yourself.  Find something you enjoy doing and attempt to do it as often as you can.  If you are feeling overwhelmed in your classroom, take a second to breathe and think about a time when you felt you were making a difference.

BONUS:
11.  Don't give up hope.  With all of the things going on in the world, it is easy to feel down.  Know that you CAN inspire students, you CAN make a difference, and if you don't do it, who will?

I wanted to conclude this post with an inspirational video.  After seeing Rita Pierson's presentation, I hear her voice throughout my day. Good luck inspiring our future. 
I know you can do it!

What Worked and Didn't Work at Open House

Well, tonight was open house.  It went awesome!  The parents were friendly and my students were super nervous to move into middle school.  It was great to be able to encourage them and let them know they could come to me if they ever had a question.  Reflecting on tonight, there were definitely some things that went well and some things I will change for next year.

What went well? First, I had my students' seats marked with colored sticky notes depending on their period.  When students walked in, I could tell them to find where they sit so that I won't have to worry about that tomorrow. Also, I labeled each station so that parents knew where to go.  Another aspect that was received well was the graphic syllabus that I blogged about last time.  I had several parents thank me for making
it easy to read.  Lastly, my homeroom kiddos loved the little highlighter gift I placed at each of their desks.  I loved
giving out a gift so much, that I'm already
brainstorming ideas for next year!

What I do I need to change?  I, definitely, planned too much!  I printed out sheets for my parents to sign up for Remind, but many didn't look at the signs and those that did, didn't have their cell phones with them.  I also set out sample interactive notebooks, but they were in a different section so parents and students were not aware that they could look at them. 

I think that next year the focus needs to be on the basics.  If I need to send more information out, I can through email. The parents and students were already overwhelmed with entering middle school for the first time, and then to flood them with how my classroom works was just a little too much. 

Words for the future:  Less is More...unless less is chocolate, then the saying does NOT apply! :)

Draw the Eye in with a Graphic Syllabus

Each year my syllabus has morphed into something else.  I started teaching with a very basic syllabus that was missing much of the information that parents needed to know.  I then created a lengthy, multiple page syllabus that I doubt my students and parents read.  Well, it has now changed, again, and this time, I think it is for the better.  This graphic syllabus draws the eye into important information and still conveys effectively every thing I need my students and parents to know.

I saw this idea on Pinterest, and modified it to work for my class. You may look at it and think it has to be missing things, but it really isn't.  My class rules are very to the point and follow the Whole Brain Teaching model.  Remember, Rules 4 and 5 cover all of those little things that you would want to include in your syllabus about being prepared, being on time, etc. 

The one thing that is missing, in my opinion, is a list of topics to be covered throughout the year.  This year, I am at a new school and the curriculum will soon be changing.  Rather than putting in writing what is going to be covered throughout the year in advance, I plan to update my classroom website in order to keep parents informed about what we are learning.

I know many of you have already started back for the year, but I hope this gives you inspiration for next year's syllabus.  Have a relaxing Sunday. Tomorrow we hit the ground running, changing lives, and inspiring minds!

Data Collection Pt. 5 - Charting YOUR Progress

Collecting data on students is a very important aspect of establishing a system to improve student learning, but just as important is creating a system to assess yourself as a teacher! This concept was somewhat mind blowing to me because I just assumed based upon how I felt my class was going, I could determine their success.  I have come in contact with a better idea!

Charting Your Progress:
Chris Biffle states in his book Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging Kids,

"You cannot manage student behavior if you cannot manage your own behavior."

The two features to evaluate yourself on are:
1. Controlling emotions and tone of voice.
2. Consistently following through with the classroom management plan.

On top of personal reflection, you are going to chart student behavior progress!

This information will provide you with undeniable evidence about growth in your classroom!  First, what you need to do is give yourself a score each week between 1-10 on your ability to control your emotions, then give yourself a score between 1-10 on how consistently you followed through with your expectations and procedures. Add these two scores together, be honest, this is your baseline score.  Write this down somewhere and each week you can write your new score.  Don't expect yourself to immediately score perfect.  The school year is not a sprint, but a marathon.  Reflect upon what areas you need to work on and then hit the ground running on Monday being the awesome teacher that you are!

Now for the second portion of charting progress: student behavior.  I love this idea and am eager to implement it into my room.  I have uploaded the form I am going to use for this on TeachersPayTeachers.  You can get it for FREE on my page: Click Here!

Evaluate your students on a scale of 1-5.  Be brutally honest, no one is going to see this, but you!

5 points = Leader: This score is very difficult and likely you will have NO leaders at the beginning of the year.  They can 100% self-manage themselves.

4 points = Alpha: These students follow directions and stay on task.  They do everything you would want them to do.

3 points = Go-Alongs: These students go-along with what is asked, but sometime make mistakes. They may occasionally be off task or not turn in their work.

2 points = Fence Sitter: These students could go either way and may begin talking if others are talking or get off task.

1 point = Challenging Students: These students cause disruptions in class, do not do their work, get off task, and about any other number of things that make you want to pull your hair out!

Total your entire class and find the average.  This is your baseline for student behavior.  Each week evaluate your students.  I know this may take some time, but it will be worth it to see the progress!  I think a great goal would be to move every student up one level by the end of the year.  If that is the case, you'd hope to see a .1 change each month.  Remember: a marathon NOT a sprint.  Obviously, if students jumped a full level, then you as a teacher have succeeded in helping mold those students' behavior.  You can then give yourself a pat on the back! :)

Good luck!  Remember to document, document, document. For the rest of the school year, I won't be posting as much.  I will try to post at least once a week, so be on the lookout!

Data Collection Pt. 4 - Spreadsheets

Alright, we are now to the portion of my data collection series that I have been dreading, not because I don't think it is important information for you to use, but because it's very hard to explain without showing you.  Please know that you can contact me through email, Facebook, or a comment on here for clarification or if you would like me to send you my spreadsheet format to reference.

Okay, so let's get started!  Spreadsheets are the easiest method to keep all of your data in one place.  When you need to access information to show student growth to your administrator, you can pull up one document with several pages within that document. 

Here are some examples of student data I collected last year:

To clarify, the cells that are highlighted in blue mean that the students took the opportunity to request to retest (a form from Data Collection Pt. 3 - Student Analysis) in order to improve their original score.

For those who are not strong in working spreadsheet this may seem overwhelming, but I assure you with a little playing around you can do this too!  Here are some tips to help you organize your data in spreadsheet:

1. Keep the format similar for each page. Once you have typed in all of your student information in one page, you can copy and paste to new pages.
2. You can add new pages at the bottom.  They look like little tabs.3. In order to provide meaning to the data, you will likely need to use a formula.  To get formula options you can type the "=". 
4.  Once you have your "=" you can highlight the cells you want and use the +/- signs. You can also look in the upper right corner and you have further options such as sum, average, etc.
5.  In the center of the spreadsheet formatting tools there is a symbol that is "fx" If you click this symbol you can also create your formulas and it gives you more options. 

I hope those are some small tips that can help you get started on keeping your data organized in one place.  Remember, feel free to play around with spreadsheet.  If you are completely lost, you can contact me and I will try to work you through it.  Good luck, and make today amazing! :)

Data Collection Pt. 3 - Student Analysis

While it is important for us, as teachers, to analyze the data collected during an assignment, it is just as important that students are learning to analyze their results.  In order to do this, I created standard graphing sheets.  These sheets are separated into the units that I teach.  The standards for each unit are listed and a labeled graph is below.

When I hand back tests, I have my students look at their percentage of proficiency for each standard.  They then fill in the chart with a different color for each standard. By doing this, students are taking time to see their where they did well and where they did poorly.  They can visually see what their scores really mean.

Once the students fill out the graphs, I have my students write a five sentence reflection over what they learned about their knowledge about that unit.  I give them writing prompts such as:


1. My score was _________. I believe I scored that score because _____________.
2. One of my strengths was ______________ because _____________________.
3. One of my weaknesses was _____________ because __________________.
4. One thing I could do to improve would be _______________________________.

Once the students have completed their reflections of their work, I allow them to complete a Request to Retest form. This year I have changed the form in a way, that I feel will help students process and come to a conclusion about what they need to do to improve in science.  You can download this document for FREE at TPT. Click here to download!

I hope this helps!  Let me know if you implement any of the student analysis and how it works for you.  Make it an awesome day!

 

 

Data Collection Pt. 2 - Test Formatting

A major trend in education is standard-based grading, and why not?  Why not grade students on how well they have mastered a standard?  Wouldn't that give grades meaning?  In order to create a test format that would allow me to easily see the proficiency of my students in each standard, I created a template that I use for each test.

The template is very straightforward.  Each standard is in a separate box.  That box is separated into sections.  The first section states the standard. I believe it is important to allow students to see the standard and what they are expected to know.  The second section has the standard summarized to help students understand what they need to be able to do. This also helps me really think about what needs to be addressed in that standard. The last box is where I place the questions that I want my students to answer. 

It is important when you create questions for your test that you do not only have one question for the standard because if a student misses it, then they will receive 0% proficiency which is probably not accurate.  I try to make each standard worth at least 8 points.  Then if they miss one point, I can see that they still understand a majority of what the standard addresses.

When I am grading the tests, each standard receives a score.  I write the percentage off to the left.  I then average the points to give students an overall grade for the unit.  Tomorrow I will discuss how I help students dig deeper into their own understanding and help them to analyze their data. 

Have a great day!