The Bow Tie Teacher

Teachers will appreciate (Science Fair Edition)

Let's mix a funny story. 

Take a school wide Science Fair.

Add the fact that my student who was going to present for our class is absent. 

Sprinkle in some low 50's degree weather outside. 

The recipe for a funny event. 

9:34 am I have to QUICKLY prep new students to present on our science fair project because the student I wanted to present is absent. Sure, no sweat.

I have to still teach the rest of my class, but hey. I just didn't know I had 2 minutes to get my presentation ready. Ummm, boy it's hot in here.

9:37 I'm rushing to get these kids ready. I notice that they could use a little lotion on their hands and faces. It's cold and cold weather plays ashy games with little brown kids. So, being always ready I reach in the closet to give them some lotion, or what I thought was lotion. I give each kid a little dollop on their hands and I run back to my group.

9:37:43 I notice that the presenting kids are having a bear of a time rubbing this "lotion" in and it's starting to foam. One joker is rubbing it in on his face. I mean their going to town! 

9:38 The lady comes to my door asking for my students to come to the media center for the presentation. I run back to my closet to see what I gave them. BABY WASH! Why do I have a small bottle of baby wash in my closet! For the love of Pete! 

Thankfully, I play it off and give the kids a wet wipe to "spruce themselves up for their Blue Ribbon". 

9:41 I quietly laugh at myself, because this could only happen to me. 

At that point I should have grabbed my bag and taken a mental health day. It only got more and more crazy after this. Praise God!

About to get my Crossfit WOD and I'll catch you soon. 

Resolved the chart storage issue

I was able to get a good file system over the weekend. Thanks to this box and some spiffy folders I'm able to store a ton of charts and posters. This week I was able to reach in and grab some needed charts right on the spot. In the process I found a lot of charts I need to put up around the class. If anyone wants to come help me one day I'll stay at work late to finish. 

Don't play the game...play the man.

Everyday we play a game. Sometimes we're up. Sometimes we're down. No matter what we're in a game and we need to win. You have to know the defense and the offense, that's a given. But do you know the players better than they know themselves? 

 

A person once said "Don't play the game, play the man." In my case it's "play the children". I need to really, really dig down into the fine details of each of my students to raise them up to where they need to be. If I play the "class", I'm only going to reach 60% of them at best. Some way I'm going to do a better job of dealing with each student and each of their abilities so I can help raise up 100% of them. Like I've said this is an All Star class. They have a lot of talent and they're sharp. It's going to be tough, but so is getting beat down everyday. I just choose what hard job I'm going to do, cause I'M playing the children not the class. 

As a recap, my time frame analogy was spot on! For literacy, it worked like a charm. Now I need to improve my content. Thankfully, I do have the times down. Looking for a timer that I can set multiple times for, if anyone wants to suggest one. Next I'm going all in on my math times. Haven't had any feedback on it, but I'll get myself on a better schedule and time this week. By end of 1st 9 weeks I have the SuperLearner Central running like a well-oiled machine. 

I already have my lessons done and sent off for next week. I have my emergency sub plans done. I have my new BBoard ready. Just need the kiddos to work on their work to put up.  Not sure what I need to do to get the "authentic" student work quality up. I do models and I have them follow me, but they're just not that creative and imaginative. Wonder how to teach that. 

Crossfit South cobb will see my carcass tomorrow. Can't wait. Today's WOD was fun looking. I didn't get in there. No excuse will be given. I will be there tomorrow and I will have down that gallon of water to keep me hydrated. 

I figured it out!

Not to go on and on, but I really appreciate that God gives insight to those who are willing to ask for it. Allow me to explain. 

Today I was having a discussion about the Common Core "Literacy Block". This person let me know that what was seen during my segement of the block wasn't impressive. Ok. Continuing they explained what they were looking for. 

As I listened a light went off. We have been talking about doing the same thing, but we were going at it totally differently. 

I told them this story. When I was a child I was able to eat as much food as I wanted on my plate. The only requirement is that when my mom said dinner was over, I had to have a clean plate. I didn't matter what I ate first or last. All that mattered was being done when time was called.

I've always thought the Literacy block was like my childhood eating. I can do what I want to do, when I want to. I only have to ensure that I'm done when time is up. 

What they had described they were looking for was more this example. 

 I have to eat as much as I can from each compartment, but I only have so much time to do so. I can't jump all around the plate like I did when I was young. In this situation I have 15 minutes to eat my potato salad. I can finishe in less than 15, but I can't take more than that. Next I have 15 minutes to  eat my corn. Same thing, I can eat it in less time, but I can't go over and taking my time and eating it in 14 minutes would be ideal. This goes on until the Literacy block is over. If anything is left over it can be wrapped up and taken care of the next day.  

I say that was a divine revelation, because NO ONE has made that clear to me or to many of the other teachers. We've all been figuring it out. Since I wasn't clear WHAT I didn't know I wasn't able to ask for more help. I just knew that some segments were good. Others were horrid and I had to press through for 90 minutes. 

The name also adds to the confussion. I think of a block as a large "unit" of time that can be divided and sub-divided as I see if as long as all the parts of literacy get covered. Was I wrong or what? I really see how this is supposed to work and I can certianly hit the ground running faster tomorrow. 

In honor of this revelation I made a cafe tray anchor chart with the time slots for each part on it. Now if I could find a huge timer that allows me to set different alarms for different times I'd be GOLDEN! 

 

Getting it done central

Ground zero for high quality instruction. I also have a satellite desk aka the Whit-mobile for teaching on he go. 

What's your work area look like? 

Check out www.jwhit.com

This has to be my favorite. I just roll it to where I'm working. Doesnt' feel like I'm standing all day. I guess because I'm having fun at what I do. 

Just realized how messy my little desk looks. The crazy thing is I rarely sit at it. What's up with that? 

I Quit!

I year ago I read a book called "Quitter". The short premise of the book is that we as people are doing to much. We need to start quitting things that we're not going to be excellent at so we can focus in on those few things that make us stand out. *I never said I was a book reviewer. I just like books a lot

So this week I made a list of things I quit. 

I quit making sorry excuses for being lazy. 

Oh, yeah, not wanting to be original. I gave that up, too.

I quit giving myself permission to not be a really good teacher.

No reason to come to me with gossip. I quit that as well. 

Oh, you want me to bend over backwards to please you? Snap, I just quit that. 

I take my life far more seriously than I did a few years ago before I quit being a pitiful dad and husband. 

I quit beating myself up when I don't do something perfect. Hey, I'm moving aren't I? 

I quit NOT doing a budget. This flying by the seat of my pants is for the birds! Going back to doing a regular budget every month. 

I quit thinking that each of my students come fro backgrounds like mine or my own kids. They need a lot more TLC than I may require. 

Being that I have a house full of little girls, I quit focusing on the boys behavioral issues over the girls attention issues. 

Yeah, that yelling thing. I gave that up, too. 

I'm a contract employee with sarcasm, but I'm planning on dropping my 2 week off soon. 

I've almost finished reading and re reading Og Mandino's 10 scrolls from the Greatest Salesman in the World. Each day for a month I've read the small chapter 3 times. I'm on 8 and I have 2 more chapters to recite. It's been really helpful. Might start over again just because it's been such a habit. 

I also need to come up with a seriously fun activity for Friday. I want to tie in all the concepts we did this week and make it LIVE! Let me process that for a minute. 

Been at Crossfit South Cobb a lot more. The first part of the school year was beating me up, but I got in the habit and I was in there 4 times this week. I feel so much better and I think it's showing in my mental game. I have a lot more to do on my physical game, but my mind and heart are in the right place. 

 

What a great week!

This week has been great. I really, truly have been blessed with a fantastic group of kiddos. They don't do a lot of things right, but wow are they open to correction and redirection. 

Now, if I could get the guy I shave with everyday to really understand this literacy block I'd be golden! There's just a lot of moving parts to this new Common Core and just when I think I have an idea of how one part works I find I was looking at it wrong. I will say that my teammies are on it so I'm learning the fine art of begging for help. In all seriousness I'm gaining better understanding and it's starting to make sense. I need to dig through more teacher blogs to find ideas and resources. 

Next post I'm going to talk about the things I quit doing and some things I started. This is one. I'm going to have a Super Learner of the Week. My kids are so fabulous that it's only right to celebrate them. So this Friday I'm going to roll out a new award with my classroom jobs. This is going to be my 1st SL of the Week. I have some VERY helpful kids and if I could I'd give this out to 4 or 5 of them. This little guy is the best because he's been overly helpful with new kids coming to the class. I know he understands the class procedures and he shows them to others like an all star. He's mindful of his work and always puts in the time to make sure he's doing everything right. He doesn't do everything right, but he's making an effort and will correct himself when directed. He's really the epitome of a Super Learner to me.  And besides he's a snazzy dresser for 7!  Nevermind, he was moved from my room today with no explaination. SMH

 

 

Some new class decorations

I scored some new superhero toys from a consignment sale. As I find them I'll add more to my city scape. Even got a black suit Spidy to swing from a building. 

Got to have our friendly neighborhood spiderman guarding the city. 

Ready for a restful weekend, NOT! I have so much to do I'll be coming to work Monday to rest. Dear Lord!

A pretty fun lesson

I told you before that I'm working on keeping my lessons sticky. I want to see how I can tie one lesson to the next and keep bringing up old lessons and fore shadowing future lessons. So we'll be using our graphs from this week to talk about base ten and the such. We'll pull out graphs again when we start skip counting by 2's and 5's. I introduced the idea when we made pictographs this week by using 1 picture to represent 2 votes on a project. Ok, here we go. 

Been teaching graphs to the BEST 2nd grade class in the world this week. Been a lot of fun. We also did tally marks. We had a great idea to survey the school. So each group picked a topic and went to survey. Some counted the different color bulletin boards. Another counted the Teachers and Students we saw in the hall during our 10 minute tour. We had a lot of different surveys. 

So this group is counting the number of 1st grade boys and girls that came from the the Cafe. They're legit for sure. 

Here are their results. Pretty good job. Soon we'll have to use our new found survey skills if we want to partake in school wide academic fair. So hopefully by then my entire class will be truly legit surveyors. Might have them do these throughout the year as centers or something. 

It's tempting to do some surveying about the up coming Presidential race since in SS we're talking about the roles of President/Govenor and Mayor. 

If someone could help me come up with ways to help my students improve the quality of their work, I'd appreciate the hints. Right now they're busy trying to hurry and not to turn in a quality product. Takes a lot of effort and modeling to get even a descent product from them sometimes. I know they can do better. After much probing and proding I get some nice work. Begging for ideas. 

The new classroom theme is...

Super Learners! 

 

Look up in the sky it's a kid! No it's a child. No it's a SUPER LEARNER! We excitedly want to and seek to learn new information to help strengthen our future choices. 

 

This came out WAY cooler than I thought it would. The kids that have seen my room have all flipped out about this side of the room. 

Last minute homework poster that turned out perfect. We'll use this to keep track of our homework. Or course no one will want to be the Joker and not turn in his/her work. 

Not Superhero related, but I like this birthday chart. I'm going to clip each childs name and date under the respective month of their birth. Got my class list late Friday so I didn't have time to do this. But I'll do it this week for sure. 

Wanted some more Brown superheroes. I wasn't as pleased with the final product. My character was too tall and I had to cut her feet off. Certainly will revisit this one, SOON. 

Now, I'm very pleased with the end result of this bboard. I can't wait to put some of my star and developing work up on it. The kids are going to flip out for sure. 

This lamp in my book center is SO busy. It's over the top for sure. Everyone who's seen it agrees, it's so bright it doesn't matter that there isn't a light bulb in it. *I put a bulb in it already. 

I'm very pleased with how this came out. Supes flying with a book in his hand is BOSS. No one saw that coming. 

This was the least creative board I've ever done. Kind of make my room set up like a mullett. Conservative in the front and a party in the back. Honestly I put all my mental energy into the classroom that I forgot about this board. I do have some things planned as soon as the students get some quality work turned in. 

I'm really proud of my minimalist posters. Kind of wish I could have done more. Not 100% sure I won't roll out some more later on this school year. Since I'm going to change my word wall location (think UP, REALLY high up) I will have some room to show case more student work later. 

Not the best pic of these fantastic curtains. They certainly tie the theme in and keep the room looking creative. Very well done and they block just enough light. 

My Hulk poster is good. It's not as overwhelming as I planned. Trust me if this theme helps draw my students in I've already planned to go 3D for everything next year. 

This didn't "look" like I intended. I had this image in my head and this isn't it. I'm going to have to hone my Cricut skills cause I could do better. Anyway, this is a game to help keep my class abiding by the procedure of looking forward when in line. When we line up I'll call "passwordP and give them a task. Give me a word with  4 letters that thats with an A or A 3 letter word that begins with T. I'll pull a name at random and if that student has an answer they'll get a point/treat/kudos of some kind. 

Composition books sliced in half, covered with newspaper comics and given a child's name. Going to use these as name tags when the students come to class Monday. Under common core they're supposed to write a lot so guess what they'll be doing with their composition books? 

I really, really like this one. It was a last minute project and the wind was at my back. Another shout out to my 2 girls. I had to use up the space and it certainly was a good use. Kind of wish I had put this on the other storage closet closer to the front of the class. 

My only staple. The only thing I've kept my entire teaching career. 4 simple rules. This year I'm focusing on procedures. I'm drilling and practicing procedures so that later I can shift gears and really pour the coals on the fire. I can't wait! 

 

I'm so geared up for this school year. I feel like I have a plan and I feel the plan can work. I know my mental game is on point and I'm ready to push this class of children well past where they think they can go. 3...2....1... here we go!