How Do You Spell Assessment?

We are using a "Words Their Way" type of spelling program. It is more of a "Words Their Way" lite. My question is how do we grade? Do we grade the pretest because it tells us what they know? Do we grade them on the Friday test after they have gone over the words and practiced them all week? Does the Friday test show students know the words and can use them in their writing, or does is show they can study words for a week and spell them on Friday and nothing changes in their writing?

"Words Their Way" is a great program that concentrates on patterns in the words. We are told to grade the last few tests, yet each test concentrates on a whole different set of patterns. Students may get an easy pattern on the last few weeks and hard ones throughout the weeks. This is not a true picture of how they are doing with spelling. So do we even grade the weekly tests? Our team is always trying to show what the students truly know on the reports we send to parents. I am not sure if we are there yet with spelling.

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The Major Award

Our school received a major award this week. We have become a Distinguished Title I School. This is a culmination of what our school has been working on for the last few years. The staff did not know about this award and we were not looking to get it, but there it is, right at our doorstep. All the innovation we have been doing, all the research, all the practices we have put into place have given us the opportunity to be recognized for our hard work. All teachers are hard workers and deserve to be recognized. The students performed to our expectations.

We teach and teach, we research and change our teaching styles, we practice and replace ideas, we read about others ideas and write down our own, and we worry about the things we did not do. We are being recognized for the hard work we have done over the last few years of changing our culture and attitudes about students and learning. We are thankful for the award. We have not desired it. We did not even know it was there for schools to earn. We were just doing our jobs to help students learn and be prepared for the world when they enter into it as an adult. We want them to be ready for whatever comes their way. We are not sure what we will see in ten years when those fifth graders are in college or entering the workforce. What we do know is that it is changing and we need them to be prepared for whatever comes their way.

We accept the award on behalf of all the teachers, professional development teachers, conference speakers, district support, and others that have had a hand in making our school a wonderful place to teach and to be taught. Our job now is to keep our standards and expectations high and to keep our students learning. We can do it.

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The Trouble With Homework

No other word drives a parent more crazy than Math homework. They know it is needed, but it gives parents the opportunity to teach their children how much they hate math and how they cannot do it. I hope that with a better homework plan that will change. I don't think we will ever change parents attitude for doing math, but we will end the frustration of parent and child sitting trying to complete a math page that neither understands. There needs to be a purpose and a need for homework. If there is not, there needs to be no homework for that night. There also needs to be a way out, if needed.

I was a teacher that did not like to hand out homework. I wanted the students to a go home and read each night and spend time doing a child's work (play). I never really knew what homework oils do for the student because when I was a student I was given busy work each night. Fifty math problems a night, with the answers in the back of the book. I don't think I ever learned anything doing homework. It was just something I did before I went out to play. I have changed my thought process. Our team has come up with a plan to make it more purposeful and meaningful for the students and the parents.

So what is the purpose for homework? To review what has been learned. Students need to review what has been learned so they can cement it into their minds. The learning does not end with the lesson. There needs to be practice. The homework should be a short practice page of what was learned that day. Short.
Another purpose is for the students to show their parents what they learned. We tell them to go. Home and teach their parents what they learned and if they say they are not good at math, teach them to be good at math. Show them how to do the problems. The student becomes the teacher and learns more by teaching.
Students need a way out if they cannot do the work. There needs to be a "parent signature" clause for our homework. If the student does not understand the work and the parent does not understand how to help or what they are doing, the parent can sign the pare and write a little note saying "we tried". This will let us know the student did not understand the work and we'll go over the problems and algorithms again. It also prevents frustration for the parents and students at home. We do not want frustration with any homework. We want them to understand it and feel they can do the problems.
One last reason for homework is we want students to learn how to work. We want them to understand that they can work on something and give it their best work, even if they do not succeed at it. We want them to learn tolerance for work. They will have work that will take them time to complete and will be done in small pieces. This is important for students to learn as they grow.

The problem with homework is that when it is used as a tool to give students something to do after school or because the book said to, we teach students to hate homework. That just produces people that hate homework.

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You Got Some Splaining To Do

Our Fifth Grade Team was asked to talk at a Title One meeting in Northern Utah. At first we looked at our schedules to see if that would be possible. Then we looked at what we were teaching to see what we would have to turn over to a substitute to teach. Some concepts are best to teach ourselves and, even though we have great subs, have the sub teach something else. We finally worked it out and we will be heading up on Friday. We will be talking about what we did to help our students do so well on the year end tests. There are so many things that we did and so many ideas we tried to get going last year that it would be hard to narrow them down

Our district Superintendent of Elementary Education visited with our school a couple of years ago and told us to "think out of the box". We were in the middle of the legislative time when our state lawmakers were deciding whether to take away days from the teachers to learn and prepare for the school year. He wanted us to do what we could to help our students with less money and less days to prepare our lessons in. So our school went to it and came up with a few things to change, morph, or get rid of. This was the start of what we did to help our students.

We looked at a few things to change in each subject in our grade level. We refined our lesson plans in Social Studies and put the lessons and activities on a wiki. Spelling became more of a focus and we added word sorts and Kagen Activities to help practice their words. Science was retooled and we took the lessons, added experiments and activities, and limited the lecturing where possible. Guests were invited to help teach the curriculum. Zion National Park Ranges aight about land forms and erosion while Discovery Gateway sent a presenter to show off experiments with matter. We wanted the students to have fun with what they were learning, but we made sure the learning was happening.

When we tested, we added two little things that made a big difference to the testing outcome. We tested in our own rooms to make the students feel comfortable and we made them explain their answers. We take all our year end test on computers. Testing in our rooms helped the students feel like they were taking another test in our rooms instead of taking the test in the computer lab where we visit once a week. We had parent volunteers sign up and get trained on the ethics of testing and on how to be in the testing environment and observe, but not help the students. Parents were not allowed to be the same rooms as their students.

Having the students explain their answers helped them focus to get the right answers. It made the students that hurry through the test slow down and have to think about why they answer the questions. We had them fold a paper into 32 squares and show their work in math or explain their answer in language and science. When the test finished, they turned in their scratch paper to the Escher to look over and then destroy. Students are allowed to u scratch paper on all tests, the paper just needs to be destroyed after the test.

These are not the end of what we will do the help our students succeed, but they are the start of our journey to helping these kids succeed.

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It's all about the Teamwork

We just saw the end of year scores from last year. They look great. We are now in reflection mode. What did we do that was with and how did it affect our scores so we can do it again. We will also look at what we think did not work last year and change those so we can make it better. We have some work to do.

Changing our language program will be an interesting part of this reflection. Our greatest jump on the testing was in language, so what we were doing worked well for us and the students. The program is similar toss what we did last year, so we should do as well or better an we did.

The Kagen strategies we used this last year were a big part of our success. When we moved students around in our flexible groupings, we used the Kagen strategy of pairing students with another student with a different level to help both of them improve in their lessons. Having three classes, we split the students into six groups and put two groups in each classroom. With group six being the highest, we paired group six with group three, five with two, and four with one. This gave each class a group of students that first off did not know why they were in that class(highest, lowest) and that made for less chance of teasing or segregation of students. This also helped with the lower students having a partner to help them, if needed. The higher student gets the opportunity to help, learn from the other student, and gets to teach a little. This helps the higher student cement what they have learned by explaining the concept to another student. Both students get to work with another student that is not two levels higher than themselves, but close to the same level as they are. This helps the confidence of both students when they feel successful and one student is not always doing all the work.

Another piece that we felt helped our classes was the partnering up of the students to help each other. In math, we have the students paired up by mixed ability. While doing our opening review problems, the students have "one book, one pencil". One of the students works on the problem while talking through the process they are using. The partner listens and uses the "tip, tip, tell" method of helping. If partner A does not know how to work the problem, partner B gives a tip to help. They can give two tips before they tell partner A how to do the problem. They cannot do it fro partner A but they tell them the process to get it done. Then they switch and partner B becomes partner A and so on until all the problems are completed. This process has been a wonderful way for students to explain what they are doing and help them help each other understand the algorithms and processes of math.

When looking back at what we did the best throughout the whole year to get the best scores from our students, I would have to say that it s all about the teamwork. Our fifth-grade team worked together on every problem, we worked with each child, and we let them know we were united in our teacher, lessons, disciple, expectations, and a friends. While showing the students this, we let them know we expected the same form them. All for one, and one for all.

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Anyone have a Groove I can borrow?

We have been working on the language for a few weeks and we like it. We have had some hard times adjusting to the amoUnt of planning we need to do. With a new program the planning always increases until it becomes more of the plan. Right now we are getting the plans down with all the different parts of the program. They are similar plans to what we have used in the past so it has not been difficult, but it has been time consuming. We have not found our groove yet, and we definitely need a groove.

We have planned our spelling just like we did last year with the words and word sorts. We feel that was a big success. In fact, our scores for last years End of level tests were great. The students were amazing and worked their best and showed us what they knew. We are getting this group ready to do the same. But I digress. So spelling is not too hard. Vocabulary is a little different. We have née lessons and ways to work with vocabulary. We work on Word Squares each week. I love this part of vocabulary. The kids love the Word Squares. The one thing I miss is the cloze stories we used with the previous vocabulary program. The stories were great and they used context clues to put the words into the stories.there are some great hinge about thetas. Program, but I miss that piece from the last program.

Reading is good. We use a basal that has a lot of lessons in it and with the allotted time we have for it, it is hard to fit it together. But the stories are good and the lessons work with the writing to create great opportunities for students to learn. We are working on writing a story and we are talking abut problem and solution in writing while we are discussing problem and solution in the reading we are working on. Writing and reading go hand in hand and fit in with the lessons that are taught in the Readabout program we use on the computers. Readabout discusses problem and solution also and the whole lesson fits together.

We just need to get into a groove so we can feel better about what we are doing. It took a us a few years to figure out the math program we are using, but we are using it well now and the student scores are on the rise. It may take this year, but we will get it. There are many parts to this program that we will fit in throughout the year to see how they fit in and how they will work. We are just out of the comfort zone and it has taken a little longer than we had hoped to get comfortable.

The newest part we will be working on is the computer testing part. This will help us because the Unit tests are very long and involved. We will have to do them in parts during the assessment week. It will be interesting to see what the tests tell us compared to what we teach. That is always the most interesting part of a new program is the testing to see what it tells us. Life goes on and so will the teaching.

Who Has Need of a New Program?

We have a new program for Language Arts. It is an all encompassing program with Spelling, Reading, Writing, Vocabulary, and Grammar. There is always much to learn with a new program. It seems as though we have had a new program each year since I have been teaching. There are a few things about this program that I am liking and that are closer to what I am personally looking for.

I like the fact that it is using the same basic principles and lessons we have used in the programs we have used over the past few years. We have found success with some of these programs and to see them in the McMillan-Hill Treasures Program we will be using will make it easier and more familiar to the teachers and students. We will be using the same spelling ideas and the same grammar ideas. We will be using the writing traits program that we have trained the students on. They will still hear the same vocabulary with the programs we are using as we have given them with the other programs. The biggest difference is that this is a program with more scope and sequence, more schedule, and more spiraling.

The technology part of it is the most exciting to me. It has some parts that are still developing, but the beginnings are exciting to me. There is an online student book for students to use, to mark, to make notes, to have read to them. They will learn to identify Main Ideas in a story and mark them, in the online book. They can access the book and information from home so they can reread the information and complete assignments at home. Assessments can be done online for easier assessing for the teacher. We use our Utips program for testing in Math and Science. We have practice tests for Language, Math, and Science. We take our end of year tests on the computer, so it is wonderful that we can take most of our tests online.

My team has been working on getting computers in the hands of our students for years. Our ideas were hard to grasp and harder to finance, but we worked and gathered ideas for what we are doing now. We still have many ideas we want to put into practice. We are getting there, one computer program at a time. This program helps us get another step closer to our goal.

That's Entertainment!

My team finished our last major project in our classes. What a project. I have made movies with my class before. I love teaching the movie making process to students. All the ideas, writing, storyboarding, planning, preparing, performing, and best of all, viewing the final product. This is a new way of doing our films. We have done individual films in our rooms and have put together some pretty big productions. With us doing PLC's and seeing how powerful it is we decided to incorporate the while fifth grade into one big film. This gave each student an opportunity to have as big a part as they wanted and to be able to do more with the filming.

We started out picking the subject of our movies. Our Social Studies Curriculum is about the United States and so we went with U.S. History. We had decided weeks ago that we would each do six movies in our rooms. that would give us 18 short films to put together into one big film and we would have a Journey Through History. And so we did. We split the topics into different perspectives of the different groups involved in the topic. When we picked the Revolution, we split it into three topics; British, Hessians, and Americans. All three groups we set during the night before the crossing of the Delaware by George Washington.

We picked the topics and assigned them to our four-person groups in our classes. We wanted to keep the movies down to about 2 minutes and everyone in the group needed to be in the movie. The could use others from the class, but the main characters needed to be from the group. Each group researched about their topic and wrote a short script of the major points to help the audience know what was happening and what people felt a that time. Once they had a story and dialogue, they tackled the storyboard. they were allowed 6-12 boards to tell their story. The hardest part of storyboarding is fitting what needs to happen in the story into something that looks similar to what they want and still being able to film it on the elementary school grounds. It is kinda hard to film a ship scene in a big storm.

After the students filmed their shorts we had them edit their own films. They used their scripts and storyboards to keep themselves on track. We gave them a short overview on how to use iMovie 08 and turned them loose. They worked pretty well with their group and put together a basic edited version of the shorts. The teachers came in next and did a final edit of each film. Thus is where we get to refine the cuts, make sure the sound is loud enough, and they followed the script. Anything that should not be in the film is cut and a final product is produced. When each of the films have been finished, they are exported and combined into one bug film in Final Cut. This is we add in sound effects and colorized the film so it has a consistent look. It was then burned and shown at our Film Festival Night. Parents are invited and popcorn is popped.

Overall the students get real writing and organizing experience as well as getting a final product that they can keep forever. Making movies is a great experience for the students. As a teacher, it makes for a great final test in writing, organization, research, and presentation.

Don't Get So Testy!

We have been testing this week. This year we decided to test in our own rooms using the netbooks in our classrooms. We have a one-to-one netbook in our classrooms, so we decided to not worry about scheduling a spot int he computer lab. Each computer was set up with the computer-based testing module and each student practiced using it during a practice session in our classrooms. We used Google chat to get the testing codes from our testing guru. The students loved being in our classroom where is wasn't as stuffy, cosed in, and they were more comfortable in here.

One of the strategies we used this year to help our students achieve a better score was to require the students to write down their reasoning behind choosing each answer. each students had two pieces of white paper folded into nine boxes. That gave the students 36 boxes to write one sentence about why their answer was correct. We collected their papers afterwards, checked to see if they explained each answer, then shredded them. They looked pretty good. We are pretty excited about how well all the students will do. We are really excited to see how the below grade level students will do, but we are also excited to see how this affects the on and above grade level students. Will it increase their scores because they made sure they read the problems more closely? We think it will.

Using the computers has been great. The best thing is that we get the raw scores back within a few days so we can see what we as teachers need to change and add for next year. The paper/pencil tests took until August to get the results and we had a few days to plan the year. This way we can use what we have now to start thinking what we can change for the next year. This gives us the summer to think, learn, and plan better lessons, not just a couple days.