Students drive the teaching/learning program

I am spending a lot of time observing my students these days and responding to students' needs and interests as I forward the teaching/learning program.

What have I noticed?

This year most of my students seem to enjoy play a lot. They LOVE recess and engage well with each other via their large array of games including four square, soccer, football, playground equipment play, and more.

They also display a varied response to assignments. I'm watching this closely with the goal of matching the learning experiences as much as possible to their engagement.

And, they are demonstrating a variety of skills and abilities too which is making me think hard about where people sit during listening times, the way I organize assignments, pacing, and the information included in assignments.

I have to coach myself to not speed ahead, but instead take this observation seriously in order to invite every child into the learning in meaningful ways. Onward.

Children bring the inspiration

Monday mornings are daunting as you look ahead to a week where you will to serve all children well. Yet, in only a few minutes, after the start of the day, the children's energy and zest inspires a good start to the week ahead. Plans are made, most materials prepared, and now it's time to greet the children with a smile and a good schedule for the day/week ahead. Onward.

The Week's Plans: September 9, 2019

I like to visualize the days for the week ahead on Sunday--the more I have the plans set, the better I can attend to the children's interests and needs. So what will Monday bring?

Workshop Focus
On Friday, I taught students how to use our online learning menu to guide their learning. On Monday morning, I'll review that lesson and then I'll encourage students to complete the first three tasks. If everyone completes the first three tasks, I promised that we'd use the suggestion of one child to pop a balloon to get a surprise such as extra recess, a class game, or indoor free time. When I was a child, we used to walk to Kresgees and pop a balloon to possibly get a free banana split. The child in my class liked the balloon surprise idea, an idea a former teacher used.

Divisibility Rules
During Math class we'll revisit the divisibility rules throughout the week. Knowing and understanding the divisibility rules truly helps students navigate multiple math concepts and activities.

Teamwork
We'll continue our focus on team by making better table groups, completing unfinished graffiti team projects, adding to our teamwork chart, and engaging in the notecard challenge.

Read Aloud: Hatchet
I'll resist the temptation to deviate from our read aloud and read often throughout the week so we can get through the story in good time.

I'm looking forward to a good week ahead. Onward.

Focus on Goals: Lead Yourself

My one-word mini poster to lead my professional goals this year. 

Yesterday I wrote a post about the need for educators to lead themselves, and today I'm focusing in on one element of leading yourself which is goal setting. I have found that the clarity you match with your goals is the accelerant you bring to your goals to make that what you work for a reality.

So as I think ahead about the school days to come, I'm thinking about those goals.

Full Circle Teaching in Math and Science
Analysis of student learning experiences performance, assessments, surveys, and observations points me in the direction of deepening the units we bring to fifth grade with what I define as full circle teaching. My analysis demonstrates that while we introduce most topics and bring those topics someway with deep, engaging, and meaningful experiences, we can still reach to solidify the learning so that children are able to embed that learning into their mindsets and skills while also applying that learning across discipline and to multiple real-world situations.

You can tell by the way that I write this, I still have work to do to deepen my own understanding of full-circle teaching which will be a quest of mine this year. I want to read about deeper, more meaningful, and rich teaching that results in students' strong understanding and ability to use that information in multiple ways.

Specifically, with regard to science, this means adding on to the learning experiences in ways that propels students to demonstrate their knowledge of the knowledge, skills, and concepts taught in meaningful, personal ways. For example, last year we taught the students a lot about the local watershed, water cycles, the carbon cycle, and climate change. Students then came up with team projects to better the ways we deal with climate change and protect the local watershed. Their projects were very good, however, I think we can work to build even deeper understanding of all the standards embedded into this learning experience by asking students to show what they know in deeper and more detailed ways along the learning path. This means taking a more deliberate approach to the learning standards, and making sure that the approach embeds new research about what it means to learn well. I will begin this effort with a new unit of study related to composting and biomimicry which embeds brain-friendly, culturally responsive teaching approaches as outlined in these posts:

• brain-friendly biomimicry study
• composting unit of study

In addition, we have found that to teach science well with a STEAM approach (science, tech, engineering, art, and math), we have to build the TEAM in STEAM. Building that team also demands a full circle approach including a step-by-step team building process. We began the year with a graffiti team effort. Observation during day one of this activity demonstrated limited ability to work as a team for many. We stepped back and discussed that as a group. Children came up with the chart below:

Most students were able to work with more success after the discussion with day two of the project. Some mentioned that their teams were not the best and desired a change and others were not able to work as a team. Tomorrow, we'll re-work our table group teams to make sure everyone has a team they can work well with. We'll also get ready for our upcoming note-card challenge with a focus on everyone in the team contributing. 

With regard to math, full circle teaching will include a writing-process-like approach to math where students embark on investigations with partners and small groups. They'll tackle meaningful tasks and check-in with teachers to see how they're doing, then return to the task to better solve the problems embedded in the task. This will help students to move from dependence to independence as they bring the learning full circle. 

Apt Communication and Collaboration

In many ways, our team enjoys wonderful communication and collaboration, however, in some places those areas are compromised. One goal I have is to better the areas of less successful collaboration and communication. I'll work with my grade-level colleagues to do that. 

Initially, I'll seek to answer the question, what are the goals of the many people I work with. I believe that not understanding colleagues' goals is one obstacle to good collaboration and communication. For example, early in the year a colleague promoted an activity that demonstrated to me that I was all wrong about the individual's goals. I want to listen carefully to this individual in the days ahead to truly understand what her goals are. In another situation, I am very confused about a leader's goals--what are the goals and what's most important is something that I'll strive to understand in the days ahead. Understanding colleagues' priorities and goals is a first step to good collaboration and communication, and that's an initial step as I strive for that goal.

Serving Students and Families Well

This is my prime goal of teaching and learning well this year. My initial step toward this goal is to slow things down in order to focus on establishing richer, deeper, more meaningful, and more successful relationships with students and families. 

These are my primary goals of the teaching/learning year, goals that I'll strive for in the days ahead. 

Prepare for the Student Service Meeting

About 35 years ago, educators began to focus on inclusion more. I was apart of a number of teacher teams that worked to create positive structures to support inclusion. What motivated my work in this area was the fact that when we include all children in teaching/learning efforts in optimal ways we build positive community at school now and in the community now and later. Inclusion built capacity for children, schools, and the community.

One part of our original inclusion advocacy was the addition of student service meetings--meetings that brought educators from many areas of school life together to plan for optimal teaching and learning of all children with a specific focus on children who needed more specialized attention and services. These meetings have been in place at my school for about 30 years. Overtime the meetings have changed a bit, but the essential focus of teaching each child with care and attention well has not changed.

Next week begins the new year for student service meetings. The challenge of the meetings is that there are many professionals involved with relatively little time. Hence to be effective, the meetings have to be well organized. Personally, my challenge at the meetings is to listen more than talk. As you may notice from my blog, I love to think by writing and I also love to think by talking aloud, playing with ideas, and quickly adding to conversations. Yet with a big group of professionals with diverse roles that doesn't always work. So this year, I'll really work to listen to the many viewpoints, questions, and needs that professionals express as we work to best support the children in our charge. As I listen, I'll be thinking about how we might revise and tweak the teaching/learning program to better serve every child. I'll jot down notes as I listen and reflect on those notes during time after the meeting.

Our systemwide student service meetings hold great potential for building more collaborative, positive, and successful learning communities. I look forward to the start of another year of this powerful process.