The Bow Tie Teacher

Always be ready for change

The New Year is going to bring a lot of change for me and my 4th grade students. I'll wait to get confirmation of the confirmation, but it looks like a good thing no matter what. Got to remain flexible. 

Who do you write your lessons for?

Just finished my lesson plans for the 2nd week in Jan. (Yeah, I'm a head like that) No good reason to not have them done and in the can ready to execute with excellence. While I was writing them I kept thinking about certain kids. They are in my middle group. I said earlier that's the group ready for success. I kept asking myself "will they get excited about this lesson?", "will they see the value in it?", "will they care that it's Saturday and I'm working?".

Throwing out the last question I think the others are good. We write out plans and teach out lessons for a certain audience. I have to make sure everyone enjoys the lesson, but I may have written it for a few. I was also planning my centers for this week coming up. Now that's where I had everyone in mind. I have been using the bottle cap flash game with my struggling kids. I have some excellent games for my solid students and my higher kids are going to catch a comet at their center. 

Now I also write my lessons for me. I tend to forget what I was thinking when I wrote the plans so I spent a lot of time leaving myself bread crumbs. Go to get myself back home if I get lost or start playing a game with kids and lose time. The better prepared I am the better my lessons go. I guess that's not really insightful insights. 

Getting ready for my last full week before Christmas break. To say I'm excited is to understate the obvious. 2012 is going to be a wild ride and rest is needed before the adventure starts. 

This aint new, but it's on point

@EntreLeadership: “I am convinced that life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent how I react to it.” ~ Chuck Swindol // Power of attitude!

This isn't NEW insight, but I wish they'd make it in an air spray so I can spread it around room 303. IJS
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Shutting the door...

For the weekend.

The weekend arrived before the bell rang and it became clear that my class still has a lot of work to do. Had to shut the door and just thank God for the weekend.

See ya rascals Monday!

Let the Old School drilling begin

Spent a lot of free time making a game my kids should like. I picked this up from a teacher's blog. My tutorial class yesterday had fun reviewing these facts. Hope my really struggling group can make good use of it. Maybe they'll come up with new uses.

So far I have these:
Multiplication game
Skip counting game
Reverse multiplication game

My two struggling children today LOVED this game. They played multiplication first. Then they switched to skip counting. I was hoping they'd make up a new game, but after 15 mins one was stacking the caps into a tower. Game over. Their support teacher came by and enjoyed watching them plow through the skills even the ones that they're not supposed to know.  They did so well. Sometimes every ship just needs a little wind. Very proud of them. 

An open letter to ClassDojo

Dear Class Dojo, 

I've been using your classroom management system for about a three weeks. I have to say it works to good. I've lost all excuses for why my class is off task and not focused. Your fantastic use of the Smart Board has single handedly pushed my class to self examine their behavior and focus in on what matters. Class dojo has taken some of my hard cases and helped them see that proper behavior will be rewarded while poor behavior will not. 

Thank you very much!

 

 

The Center of Engagement

For the next three days me and the kiddies are going to the Center of Educational Engagement. I'm turning my room into 5 major centers with a small group station. I'm going to expose them to every form of reteaching of math facts that I can and next Friday I'll give them a parting assemssement to make sure that what I've gone over is sticking. 

Been able to identify what they're missing. I have a good, solid plan to reteach as well as still teach. So that issues been dealt with. Let's see how it goes. 

The Entertainment Train has been derailed

Attention all passengers! This is your Conductor. I want to let you know that this train has jumped the tracks. Be not afraid. You're in no immediate danger. However, you will need to exit the train in an orderly fashion. You will be directed to the nearest manual rail car for you to operate to get to your new destination. I repeat the Entertainment Train has jumped the tracks!

These kids are going to learn something this year! I don't care if they write nasty notes about how ugly my shoes are. They are going to learn. They are going to be engaged in their learning. They're going to be able to show it in some meaningful way and most importantly they're going to get out of my room and go to 5th grade as a blessing. I refuse to hang my head when I see the 5th grade teachers because I know I sent them some do nothings. 

We have 12 days before Christmas, I feel a song coming on but I'll spare you. We have 12 days and we have a ton of good, solid reasons to not have quality instruction. My students deserve better than me making excuses. They need me to press in and help them as much as I can and even more.

Not sure if I'll do Wordless Wednesday tomorrow, but I think we'll do No Repeat Wednesday or Listen the 1st time I give directions Wednesday. 

Entertaining Vs. Engaging

This week I'm working on getting my students excited about learning. Sounds pretty easy, but it's not. Most of the time I get caught up in entertaining the kids aka Teacher focused learning. What needs, has to happen is that I get the kids to find discover their own learning, engaging. To often the students watch me like a TV or a sports event. What needs to happen is they are the actors or athlete's participating in the show or event. The teacher is the director or even the coach, but the kids are doing the work. 

I'm not 100% sure HOW as much as I am sure I HAVE to get these babies excited about their learning. Even if it flies counter to what they see/hear/know all around them. Got a hefty task, but nothing else really matters. I see it, that the World we live in is a hard and often horrible place. I need to help them see it as well and know that the more well prepared they are the better it will be for them in the long run. I'd love to Skype with a class same age, background that's really making different choices to show my class that they can do it, but they have to be willing to fight the gravitational pull in order to soar as high as we all know they can. 

Last week was a bear getting ready for the math assessment. Let's just say that the bear wasn't a cute cuddily teddy. We got beat up by a big huge grizzly. So today I have my homeroom all day and we're going to slice, dice, and review what happened. I have some great student focused activities for them to do to hopefully discover their own mistakes on the test. Besides drilling and killing we need to also to plow our way through geometric shapes since last week we talked about flat shapes. 

My trick is learning to keep maintaining the class while we're moving forward into new content. I see it like an engineer on a self contained vessel. Somehow they keep the current systems on line while adding new and doing new things. All that while keeping x amount of people provided for.  I have a set amount of kids who have to get to a destination. While we travel we drop off bad habits, pick up new ones, learn tons of information, prove that we've learned it, sometimes double back and pick up some more all while still moving ahead. What I need to do is meet some people in the cruise industry or navy who can explain how they keep that juggling act going. 

I'm collecting stuff for some good remediation centers. The basics will NEVER get old. I also am doing some extension activities to keep what we learned a live. This is going to be a strong push until the end of the month. Hope the kids can hold on. 

Got a great CrossFit WOD planned today. I feel much better. Once my eating gets back on track I should be back fully. 

Wordless Wednesday the recap

I started out today planning to do a Wordless Wednesday. I was going to not speak to the whole class, not until 2:15pm. There are always some housekeeping things that go on at the end of the day that I need to give some directions for. Back to Wordless Wednesday. The kiddos would have to a) follow board directions or directions on a particular assignment b) consult a classmate who did follow the board direction c) I did write some directions on the board and even scored work using my smart board. 

I have three different math classes and a homeroom. The homeroom is only 15 minutes so that goes as smooth as silk. Some of the babies aren't awake enough to cause any fuss. Now the math groups. My morning one has been whipped into shape and they took the Wordless Mr. Whitaker as a nice change of pace. They were quiet and quickly powered through their work. They're not (on paper) the strongest math group, but I'm sure I'll see a great deal of them move up and do well because it's a small group.

The group right after lunch can be a hand full. More rowdiness and certainly more talking. One reason they're coming from lunch. Makes me wonder if the cafe served a strict Paleo or Zone lunch menu what would change with this group. This group had already heard about Wordless Mr. Whitaker and wanted to get me talk to them. More time was spent trying to be funny than moving along in the assignment. Sadly, more kids lost points on Classdojo than I would like to have seen. This group is going to do well over all. I know that if I can really spark their brains, make them excited about the next lesson the silliness will be left at the door. It's not really a matter of what they ate at lunch as much as it's about me really lighting a fire in their minds about the wonders of math. I have a few ideas for them. 

My last group, is considered a middle group. I seriously think this group is just tired by 120pm. They've been in school all day and this is their last class just like it's mine. They don't really have the drive to push into hard concepts and would be just fine chilling all day. The boys LOVE to goof off and a football field sized room isn't big enough to keep them away from each other. If it's not talking about another's parent, throwing something gross or just being rude by talking, it's something else I haven't been privy to. There are some really, great kids in this pack. They want to learn and do their best to stand out (in a positive way) from the pack. I often apologize to them when the day really hits the fan cause I can see it in their eyes that they want this material.

Needless to say this group needed me to give it some direction at 215pm. Wordless worked well, but not stellar with them. I couldn't stand over each of the offenders in order to get them all to quiet down and refocus at the same time. Wordless Wednesday didn't work so well for them. Next time I just do Less Words Wednesday for that group. I'll only say 100 words or something. LOL!

For all my groups they have to do a Ticket out the Door. I usually ask a question recap of the daily lesson and have them write a response on a note card as the Ticket. Today I asked them a bonus question "What did you think of Wordless Wednesday"

Here are some responses:

• I didn't like it. The kids were bad. 
• I liked it, because I had to listen. I talked to my neighbor and got a few answers. 
• This was hard! I didn't like it at all. I had to be quiet to understand what was happening. 
• Don't do this again!!! I didn't like it. 
• We should always be quiet cause I learned a lot more about angles today. 
• Measurement is ok, but you not talking to us was hard. Why did you do this to us? 

I have some other daily ideas. I think what I'll do in the future is quash it for the last class and just teach that one as normal. I believe we're going to change schedules in 2012 so my last class might be my first class and all this could totally change.

My biggest take away is that I have to really kick my lessons up a lot to make the gray matter start sizzling. But here are somethings I also picked up.

• The roughest kids want to know what's going on. If they feel left out they'll quickly try to figure it out or just show out. 
• Having classroom managers seems cool, but if it takes to long to train them it's a moot point. 
• Maybe doing a Wordless day in the AM would throw off the afternoon group because they heard that Mr. Whitaker isn't speaking to us again. Only to find out that it wasn't true when they come to class. 
• For some reason I think I make more noise than the kids do. When I'm not talking, repeating, strongly repeating myself. The kids don't have to make noise over me. This isn't always the case. Maybe, just maybe I'm the problem. 
• Spotify is killing me! At one point they played "My Favorite Things" by Miles Davis. I almost said, "This is my jam".  Almost ruined my scheme. 
• One of my co-workers said I shouldn't talk to anyone, children or adults on WW. I think I'll just ignore her all day tomorrow just for kicks. 

I got my butt kicked at Crossfit South Cobb after a good day at school. No words on how horribly I did.