Need to Know

We had a big language program introduced to us last school year. We are now in the second year of using the program. As it was handed to us to take to our rooms, we were told we would be trained on it soon. We grabbed our boxes, papers, books, and other things and headed back to our rooms. What do we do with all this stuff? That was the whisper as we hauled our back to our rooms. The training came right before school started and we were wide eyed and wondering if we would ever get the whole program down.

About half way though the year I came to the realization that the program didn't matter. The program matters, but what really mattered was the teacher. No matter what program we have or what we are told to teach, the teacher is the person that disseminates the information and helps the student to learn. As the teacher, I need to know what I am teaching. I discussed it with my team and we started to learn the program and what it wanted us to do.

What we found was that the program had some great information in it. I had no doubt that the research was done and the information was correct and the activities we were to do had been tried out before, but I want to see it for myself. But there is no way to find it out if I do not use it. If I just teach the lessons by reading the things I need to read and look for the answers that are printed in the book, I will never really know if it is working. I want to know what it is they want me to teach. I need to know the reasons they are having me teach these lessons and do the activities. What is it that they want from my students? What do I need to look for? What do I tell the student that asks why we need to learn this stuff? Learning the overall theme and looking how it was all put together and how I can work with it helped me in my lessons.

If I just go through the motions, I will never be the teacher I wanted to be the day I graduated from college. So out goes the fluff and in goes the real learning. These big programs. Our districts buy for us do have a lot of great information in them. I am finding that our program is pretty good. I enjoy teaching most of it. The are a few parts that seem to be added in as a second thought, but we work with it. The best thing is that as a teacher, I get to choose what to improve. I get to choose to differentiate with my students. I use the program. I like the program. I know what most of the program wants from me and what it wants from the students. I am still learning. So are the students. Thank goodness.

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How Much do We Flip?

My fifth grade team flipped our vocabulary lessons about six weeks ago and they went great. The students did their lessons each night or early before class. More homework was completed and the students loved watching the videos. Discussion about the vocabulary words were better because we were able to hear if the students knew the words and could use them properly in the sentences they were producing instead of just looking at whether they found the definitions. It is fantastic. It has changed our whole thought process of homework. Instead of having students practice or review problems, we will have them watch the lessons and do all the practice at school. Investigate the work. Learn.

So we are on to spelling. We will hand out words on Monday and have our students take the words home and watch the lesson at home. They will also sort the words as they watch the lesson. W tried one lessons with a small ground students last week and they cam to school knowing more about the words than normal. I do a short lessons bout the pattern that week and how words use patterns to help us understand what they mean and how to spell them. Every week I teach these lessons and they catch on to a couple words, but after watching the video, they knew so much more and remembered more about the words. Their tests seemed to be about the same, but their knowledge bout the words was greater. Since we differentiate spelling, we have about six groups, so the lessons will take a little longer to film. We will start with a few groups and move into filming all of them as we get better.

After spelling we will be working on Math. This is the subject that will have the biggest change. We are thinking that our key lessons will be the video. With that students I'll take notes, work out problems and write down questions. When hey get back to class we will have a couple problems for them to work out as a partnership and then we will discuss the problems and answer questions in our class discussions. We will work on what would normally be homework. In the middle of the class we will switch gears and do a review of past concepts and work through a few of those problems. That is the concept we have. This will totally change what we a doing now. We have students first review past concepts and then go into the key lesson we are working on. Once done with the key lesson we work on some problems and hand out homework.

Once we started the vocabulary we started to think about how much are we going to flip each night. In elementary school we teach a minimum of five subjects a day with a few subjects alternating very few weeks. This can become a big issue with flipping. What do we flip and which nights are we going to assign for lessons? How are we going to make that many videos each week and what can we do to make them more meaningful for the kids when we do them? Can the same lessons be used next year? Wow. This can get big. The one thing I worry about is the work at home. How much are we going to require each night for each student and are they going to have the time on the computer or DVD player to be able to get all the lessons done. I would hope they would have enough, but at my house, each child wants the computer to do work on and it can become a scheduling nightmare. I have more than one computer in my house and it still becomes a problem, but most people only have one. We might have to look at sending devices home. What would that look like and how would it be managed?

My team is going to the Flipped Conference 2012 this summer and we hope to have some of these answers worked about before the end of the conference. Being with people that have been doing this for a while will help. Gathering information and ideas will also help us in our own situation.one thing I know for sure, flipping has been great for me and my students. It will be fun to see what else we can do and what they can do because of it.

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When I'm Healthy, I'm Happy

My school district have started to host health classes each month the help keep our health costs down. I have gone to a couple and I like them. I am glad we are given the opportunity to learn more about keeping ourselves fit mentally and physically. I learned about something I have always known, but I seem to need to be reminded about. Exercise. Get up and move. Stop sitting so much and move around the classroom.
I decided years ago to get rid on my desk. I am now seeing the benefits of that decision. I stopped stacking so much on my little table, but I also stopped sitting so much. After that exercise reminder, I decided to get rid of my chair. I raised my dear and now I lean a little, but I try not to sit. I also bought a wood stool so it is uncomfortable to sit on for extended periods of time.
I also learned about stress-management. Thinking about anything will creat more of that thing. If I don't want to get sick, I should think about being healthy, not how to not get sick. I think the flipped classroom will help the relaxing as we do more activities and less lecturing. I am finding that most of the lessons are being learned from our videos. The one vocabulary word or th understanding of a single concept on that lesson is being found and I am concentrating on what counts instead of the whole lesson. That is less stressful for me. and more fun for the students.
Being a healthier and happier teacher makes for healthier and happier and more intelligent students.

Oh, Flip. Here We Go

The time has come to flip the classroom. We have decided to take our classrooms to another level. During our team meeting before we went to Christmas break, we talked about having more simulations in our classrooms. We loved giving students tasks and becoming someone from history to teach about the Native Americans or the Revolution. Having time to play games with words and showing how fun math has become an afterthought in our planning and not at the forefront. After discussing the things we would like to do in our classrooms, my team decided we need to flip our classroom. We did a little looking around and found information from innovators like Karl Fisch and Jon Bergman/Aaron Sams. After some research we started setting up our plan.
Flipping a classroom is not an easy thing to do. Just thinking about it gave one of our team a headache. So let me start with what our flipped classroom looks like. We found a great infographic to explain what we are looking at doing. Our idea of what we will be doing is having students learn short lessons on video at home and we reinforce and investigate the concept with activities at school. Simulations, activities, games, and discussions. Sounds good to me. It will create a little more work, but as we do it more, it will get easier.
So we decided to start small and take it a bite at a time. We will start with our vocabulary lessons that are part of our homework each week. Instead of teaching a lesson about the weeks vocabulary words each Monday, we will have the lesson done at home with a short video. Having students write out the words, meanings, and examples on Monday takes time. Writing takes time. So changing it up by having students write at home will give us time to do a reading activity with students on Monday. The stories will use the Vocab words in the reading so we will be introducing the vocabulary words in the reading. Students will watch and work on a 5 minute video on Monday and one on Tuesday night to complete the lesson. On Wednesday we will have an activity using the vocabulary words instead of finding out if they have the information correct on the paper. The questions they anew will let us know if they understand the word or not.
Starting out with a small flip will help us find the bugs and problems we need to work out. The teachers are pretty excited about the flip. The students were pretty excited about the flip. There were a few negative comments, but mostly for students that look for the negative. We did discuss each comment that came up to make sure we thought about the different issues. We hope to be adding more subjects in the next.

A Flip with a Twist

Just read an article in the New York Times about a forced flip of classrooms in Idaho. I am not sure the Idaho legislature gets the idea behind technology and what can be done with it. The idea of having teachers lecture less and have more time to help students in the classroom is right on. For everything? I am not sure that will happen. There is too much for students to learn in the classroom and we do not want students to burn out using the computer. Flipping a classroom and having students learn a little at home instead of doing their "homework" with their parents will have the students digging deeper at school in their subjects. Parents will be less frustrated and can listen to the lessons to see what we a talking about at school. But having students do all or most of their work on computers may look great on paper, but the tech companies are not teachers. A living breathing teacher needs to help students find and get more out of a lesson. I found out a long time ago that technology is great, but it will never be able to take the place of a good ol' teacher. Computers have to be programmed to have a teaching moment, but teachers are programmed to use teaching moments when they are needed and at any time. One computer idea does not fit all classrooms. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Running on Empty

I hadn't written for about two months when I wrote my first post a week ago. Sometimes life gets in the way. We get a lot of things going in life and things we want to do get pushed out of the way. It happens to everyone. We get a new project that takes longer or more involved than we planned. In the game of life we have these emotional times in our lives when we just get overloaded. Sometimes it's a family problem or just a feeling there is too much on our plates. We just need to buckle up and proceed with caution. A few things I have learned over the years in these situations have helped me keep me moving and in control.

1. Family needs to come before everything. No matter what happens and how involved we get into our work or whatever situation we are in, we need to remember that our family keeps us grounded. Spending more time talking and doing things with the family will help keep them close. The first response is to push others away, especially those we are with all the time. Bringing them closer helps not only us, but them. When we have a problem and we stay close to them they feel that family can help them when something crazy is going on in their lives.

2. Rely on those we work with. Having a great team around us will help in times when we need to pull back a little. They will feel it and will put in the extra time because we all have those times when we need to concentrate somewhere else. Having a great team also means that we have worked our plans in the beginning so it is easy to plan each week within the overall plan we put together. 

3. Remember to take a little time with ourselves. Take a few minutes here and there to rethink what is happening and clear up any thoughts. I usually take a few minutes in my classroom after school or a few minutes at night when the kids are in bed.  A few minutes with my guitar or some soothing music will do it also.

4. Be nice to those around us. This is the hardest thing to do when we are overloaded. The problem is that no one else thinks about us being overloaded. They have those same feeling and we can't expect them to pity us as we work things out. Life goes on. Kids still need to learn, we still need to teach, and we need to be nice.

5. Last but not least is talking to someone about what is happening. Letting our spouse or team or close confidant will help us keep in perspective. We don't always need a problem solver, we just need to talk. Writing a journal of feelings and thoughts helps also. 

I read about all the things we need to do to keep us going. There are so many things pressing on us these days that we feel overloaded once in a while. The key is to not let it run our lives. Let it pass through our lives And go on to something else. This too shall pass. It really will. 

Doctor, Doctor, Give Me The News

I am heading into more school soon, hopefully. I have decided to work on my Doctorate in Education. A teacher once told me that I could teach 30 elementary students or 30 college students that will teach 30 elementary students each. I have thought about that for 12 years. The reason I did not do it earlier was the fun I had each day working with my students and my team. I still have fun teaching. I love what I do, but I can see that I am getting to the point where I want that next step, that next challenge, the next opportunity.

When I started teaching I decided that every ten years I would reevaluate what I was doing and make sure I was where I wanted to be. 10 years after I started teaching I was at a crossroads. Should I keep teaching or look into becoming a principal. I decided to keep teaching. I still wanted that wonderful opportunity to teach and to learn. To help children love learning. I sat with my principal and looked at all she did and what she had to work with. Politics is in everything, but the politics in teaching is as far as I wanted to go at that point. I know wherever I go and whatever I do there will be things I will not enjoy, but at that time I wanted to work with students. I am glad I did. The next few ideas that came to our district and school helped me tremendously. Professional Learning Communities changed the way I taught, planned, and learned. It also changed the way my students learned and planned. The whole team structure has changed my classroom culture. Now comes the time when I am getting closer to the next ten years. I still love teaching and I will for a long time. But I am now seeing the next teaching opportunity in college. The idea of teaching college students that will teach elementary students gives me an opportunity to share what I have learned with others. To help them have a passion for teaching as I have.

I do have to say that this is a bit scary for my family and I. Starting four more years of schooling is going to be interesting. Two classes a week with homework on the off days. Summers will be short while I head to the University for summer classes. Time with my family will be short, but meaningful. Spending more quality time with them doing activities will be great. Money will always be a factor with school, but we will work it out. I am excited about the learning. I love to learn. The single greatest thing I have enjoyed has been my google reader and twitter accounts. Reading about other teachers and their ideas. Finding ideas from around the world to use in my classroom has helped me be a better teacher and my students better learners. Getting back into school to meet with other teachers and learn more about my craft is exciting.

It will be an exciting and crazy ride. My family and I are looking forward to it and dreading it. But in the end we know that it will help us down the road when my time has come to move into the next stage of my career.

This Ain't Your Momma's Homework

I had a parent ask about homework this week. They asked what is the purpose and then told me horror stories of when they were a child. I understand and even lived through a few of those homework horror years. When I started teaching I vowed I would not give homework unless I had to. I hated homework when I was a child. Do all the odd problems 1-75. It was terrible. Busy work. Tradition? Everyone was doing it? I am not sure the reason.

My team has put together a homework plan for the students to follow each night. We have decided that it should not be frivolous or busy work. After reading "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell, we decided to add a little practice each night to help students build their learning. the 10,000 hour rule Gladwell talks about in his book was very interesting. Read the book, get the information, understand our thinking.

So we ask that each student works on vocabulary words 10 minutes a night for two nights, spelling word sorts for 10 minutes for three nights, math practice for 15 minutes for four, possibly five, nights, and reading to fill up the rest of the hour.

• Vocabulary includes looking up word meanings and writing an example of how to use the work in a sentence. It also includes answering a question the teacher gives the students. We review these words weekly for five weeks and on the sixth week we review all five sets of words to see what they remember about the words.

• Spelling has always intrigued me. Giving a set of words on Monday to memorize and spell on Friday only to spell them incorrectly when using one of the words in a story. Where is the learning in that? So we use Words Thier Way spelling to work on patterns in words. Building spelling patterns can help students recognize the patterns they hear to help them spell better. We have students do word sorts each night. They sort words into patterns and write them. This helps them recognize and find spelling patterns. There are different sorts we have students do for different learning. We have a test on Thursday to see how they are doing on their weekly words. Every six weeks we test the students to see if they learned their patterns and what new patterns they need help with.

• Math homework goes for fifteen minutes each night. Most nights we have students take 4-10 problems home to practice what we worked on that day. They are a review of the lesson and helps parents and teachers to know if the student is understanding the concept taught in class. We do not want parents teaching a concept at home. We ask for support from parents if the student needs it, but parents shouldn't have to teach the lessons. In the case of the student that does not understand something, instead of fighting and arguing with parents and causing grief at home we ask parents to sign the page and write that they tried. This keeps peace at home and let's us know the student needs a review of the information. There is no penalty for having a signature on the page. If a student does not complete homework assignment they will complete it at school. The ultimate goal of homework is to help us understand whether a students understands the concept they are taught. Having the student do a few problems themselves without a partner or teacher can give us that information.

• Reading for 25-30 minutes each night gives students information, helps comprehension, and speeds their reading fluency. Students can read anything they wish at home. We just want them to read. One thing we ask students to do is to read to someone each night for 5-10 minutes. Reading out loud helps with fluency. Fluency is speed, smooth, and expressive reading. Reading a pictures book to a sibling or a magazine or newspaper article to a parent helps give purpose to reading.

Homework should not be a time of arguing or fighting for parents or students. My team wants students to have a sense of motivation to want to do their homework. We want them to understand that a little extra work in fifth grade will go a long way to help them build their skills they learn to help them go far in their lives. Adults have homework each night. We just do not think of it as homework. We work on our homes and families. Bills and hobbies. Learning and understanding the world around us. We do not want students to think they are doing homework, we want them to think they are learning and helping themselves grow. This ain't the homework I remember. Thank goodness.

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Failure in the Classroom

Should we teach our students to embrace failure? Not that we want them to fail, but with every failure comes the chance to learn and grow. They can learn what not to do and to try something else. We want them to succeed at failure so they can use it to their benefit. If students get frustrated and shut down at each wrong answer they become failures and not learners. We can teach students that wrong answers are not bad but chances to learn that can help them improve. As we teach them to learn they can use that skill to help them in all situations. Reading "8 to be Great", Richard St. John tells example after example of successful people that have made that their catalyst. Michael Jordan talks about all the shots he's missed and the games he's lost to tell why he has been successful. Students need to not be afraid of getting answers wrong. Teachers need to not punish wrong answers. We need to embrace and teach. This gets them to the place they need, persistence.

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Building Teamwork with the Home

It is two weeks into school. The questions are burning in parents minds about why we do the things we do and I am sure there at a few that are ready to sit down and find out exactly what we expect. It is Student Education Plan time. One thing my team has bought into is transparency. We want the parents and students to know and see everything what we are doing. No hiding, no surprises, no tricks, just transparency.

Getting to meet parents and see what we can do as a team helps the students do the best they can. We try to give the parents some background on our philosophies to help them understand why we do the things we do. We also invite them into our classrooms to help or to just watch.

Parents are a big part of our year. We want them to be more than someone we send not to every once in a while. Invite them to everything we do. We try to set up days for them to see projects their child has worked on. We have grade level activities each Friday that parents are invited to watch.

By doing these things we hope to instill in our students and parents that everyone is a part of education. Students need to own their education and the information they a receiving. This will help them as they prepare for their journey into the workforce. As they own their education they can find that they can research what they want to do or build something to sell to others. They can take their lives into their hands and make it what they want. They will own their lives and not expect others to hand them homework to do, they will create their own homework by wanting to learn. By inviting parents into our classrooms and meeting with them every few months, we hope to invite them to be part of our plan. By having home and school work together, our students will take the world and make it their own.

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