Building Program Strength and Delivery

Today as I attend Edcamp, I'll be thinking about the ways in which I can build program strength in the days to come. I will place my attention on the following efforts:

Creating the Classroom STEAM Lab
All the program updates and changes in the last many years have created yet another need to update the classroom. I recently wrote a grant to access the kinds of furniture and materials that will make a better collaborative learning space. That furniture and storage equipment would help a lot. There's also a need to re-sort and organize the materials in ways that are easily accessible to students and teachers. That will require more storage units--units I'll invest in as having good organization will make the program more student friendly. I also need containers to collect cardboard tubes, plastic bottles, lids, and good glasses jars to support our study to. Students LOVE science study and that is a good motivator for this effort.

Get Rid of Outdated Books and Materials
Program change also means that many materials in the room are now outdated, and its time to get rid of that.

Problem/Project Based Learning
I want to move towards more meaningful and beneficial project/problem based learning (PBL), learning that I can evaluate and learning that leads to the development of confidence, concept, skill, and knowledge. We have a number of project/problem based efforts in the program, but I think I can work to strengthen and deepen many of those PBL efforts.

Program Enrichment
This week we hosted a terrific Young Audiences Benjamin Franklin presentation--it was terrific and served as a reference for future learning in all areas of the curriculum.  We also attended In the Heights, a natural history tour with a Mayan culture focus, a Museum of Science exploration, and a space adventure at the McAuliffe Challenger Center. The Discovery Museum matter expert visited our school to present a hands-on states of matter presentation and our PTO has presented many cultural enrichment programs. Later in the year we will explore a local nature preserve, raise spade foot toads, and host visiting experts and mentors to lead our global change makers project. I want to work with colleagues to continue to develop the program so that it is memorable, inspiring, and enriching.

To do this work in the next few years requires that I continue to push my efforts in rather than out--I'm looking at the details as to how to improve what I can do as part of a dynamic grade level team to teach children well. At edcamp today I'll do a lot of listening as I hear colleagues from near and far discuss their extraordinary teaching/learning efforts as well their wonderful questions and interests in developing teaching/learning to well support children, their families, our communities and country.

Friday Musings: March 16, 2018

Students completed their portfolio work, corrected math assessments, and began math homework assignments. We also used the terrific Mystery Science program as we learned about the science behind rainbows and made "rainbow makers" otherwise known as spectroscopes with old shiny discs, paper tubes, and stickers. The Mystery Science program is a perfect kindergarten-fifth grade program as there's great learning for all.

Next week we'll fully invest in family-student-educator conferences, fraction study, lots of reading, and more Mystery Science with buddies. I'll also attend and present at the ATMIM conference.

Tomorrow it's off to the wonderful Edcamp Boston that always proves to inspire.

After a bit of a hiatus due to my brother's death and weather events, it's good to be back to the day-to-day teaching and learning. As much as I explore other avenues of the education world, it's the work I do with children that I enjoy the most. Onward.

Today's Focus: March 16, 2018

Today students will focus on the finishing touches of their portfolios and correcting errors on a recent computation test. Most of the errors were small in nature and as children make corrections they'll realize where they made mistakes and how to avoid those errors in future computation and problem solving work.

We'll end the day with a science lesson with our kindergarten buddies. It will be a good day.

Program Strengths

There are attributes of our current programming that helps us to teach well. The following elements spell success:

Common Planning Periods
Our grade-level team has common planning periods which allows us to regularly collaborate.

Proximity
Our classrooms are close so we are always exchanging ideas, questions, supports, and materials.

Student Service Meetings
We meet twice a week to discuss students needs with the greater grade level team members.

Professional Learning Community
We meet once a week with the broader team to focus on learning/teaching efforts and development.

Professional Learning 
We have the time we need to attend professional learning events. We have a goal setting and educator evaluation process in place. I believe this process can be streamlined and targeted more for greater effect.

Resources
We have many of the resources we need to teach well, and we have some say as to acquiring other materials we deem valuable. I think we can improve teacher voice by embedding more distributive leadership.

Experienced, Professional, and Qualified Staff
The standards to teach are high in Massachusetts and this results in a high-quality staff. I think we can work to make sure we have better student-time-on-task teacher ratios though to improve what staff can do with and for students.

Adequate Facilities
Our facilities are adequate, although I think it would be a good idea to move towards more modern teaching/learning environments.

How do you evaluate your teaching/learning program?

Providing students with an opportunity to assess their SEL skills and abilities introduces the language of emotional intelligence and gives students and the class goals to reach for. 

For many, standardized scores are the single most important indicator of an education program's success. While I do think there is some merit in this scores, it's important to recognize that they only tell a small fraction of a child's educational experience and success. So in addition to scores what else helps you to evaluate a program's success and needs?

Knowledge Begets Knowledge
The scores, in part, help us to determine the foundation knowledge students have gained to date. We can quickly look at score reports and know who has a strong foundation of knowledge in the determined standards, and who is still working to gain that knowledge. Concerted effort that includes knowing the standards, teaching the standards in meaning way ways, evaluating our success as we move along, and providing needed supports help us to get good scores with regard to tests and growth.

Less standardized measures such as project work, discussions, observation, and reflections also help us to understand children's knowledge attainment and need.

Happiness
Scores alone don't tell the whole story of student success and potential. Happiness is another critical factor. Do students want to come to school? Are they happy and engaged when they are there? We can observe this by the smiles on children's faces and the way they talk about and engage in school. We can also survey students about their happiness levels at school, and work to uplift areas where students are not as happy. Parents often help us to evaluate happiness as they are typically quick to let us know if a child is unhappy, and then we work together to make change.

Application, Adaptation, and Creativity
How do we know that students are using their knowledge in ways that matter? How can we assess their application of that knowledge into their everyday life and future dreams? This can be done through project/problem based learning and performances. Providing opportunities for students to adapt and create related to the information they've learned gives students terrific practice in the kinds of thinking and efforts that will matter most in their future, a future in a rapidly changing world.

Learning Experiences
Positive learning experiences bring students together and help them learn in memorable ways. It's important to embed a fair number of these experiences into the year to broaden students' scope and provide them with shared learning events that they can talk about and replicate later on. When schools work to provide a good variety of wonderful learning experiences, these experiences serve to inspire students.

Social-Emotional Learning/Emotional Intelligence/Community Building
We know that knowledge, experiences, happiness, and application are important, but probably most important is students ability to related to one another, collaborate, and get along. To identify the main criteria for healthy social-emotional learning and living is a first step, and then to embed multiple opportunities for students to deepen and strengthen these skills gives students essential skills and knowledge for success.

Reflection
Providing time for students to think on their own and together with classmates, family members, and educators gives students a chance to strengthen and direct their learning.

Professional Learning, Assessment, Collaboration, and Goal Setting
When educators continually learn and collaborate, the program grows in positive ways. This leads to good assessments, goal setting, and further growth.

As we move into Portfolio Day 2018, I will be thinking about the overall success of our fifth grade program. As I assess that now, I have the following responses and questions:

Knowledge
Students have been introduced to numerous standards in a variety of ways. A choppy year due to illness and weather has lessened our time on task by about 10 days which is significant in a 180-day school year. Further the numbers of students have complicated our efforts to reach out in significant ways to every student--we're doing our best, but it's more ideal to have lower student-teacher ratios in elementary classrooms in order to serve every child well. Plus there have been some staffing challenges with respect to time-of-hires, turnover, and other factors which has compromised some of our efforts. We have good resources, experienced educators, adequate facilities, and a positive overall program, so our greatest challenge at this time is a positive student-teacher ratio and access to optimal staffing schedules, patterns, and appointments.

Happiness
In general almost every child comes to school every day and almost every child is happy--when bouts of unhappiness appear, we're on it sooner than later making positive change.

Application, Adaptation, and Creativity
We have a large number of project/problem and performance learning events that give students an opportunity to apply, adapt, and create related to their learning. Further, most of our learning activities involve choice, and this choice invites students to apply, adapt, and create.

Learning Experiences
Via field experiences, expert visitors, cultural enrichment events, student share, service learning, PTO sponsored events, community activities, and enrichment opportunities, there are countless wonderful learning experiences available to students, experiences which enrich their learning and inspire their future dreams and activity.

Social Emotional Learning/Emotional Intelligence/Community Building
We have put a lot of emphasis on these areas of learning including class meetings, reflection, discussion, conflict resolution, celebration, and specific attention to these topics during teaching/learning events.

Reflection
Our showcase portfolio and family-student-teacher conference efforts provide lots of opportunity for reflection to lead learning and teaching efforts.

Professional Learning, Assessment, Collaboration, and Goal Setting
Our team regularly learns, assesses what we do, collaborate, set goals, and adjust those goals as needed. Typically during the summer, we take a thoughtful look at the entire year's program and develop that program in ways that matter.

All in all as I evaluate the program, I would say that we're doing a good job. There's always room for improvement and it seems that that improvement will come from re-looking at staffing in terms of roles, time, and numbers, reviewing optimal student-teacher ratios to make sure we have the kind of ratio that provides every student with needed support, and tweaking the details related to the efforts above to continually improve what we can do.