Standards and Curriculum

Our school follows a curriculum from Focused Instruction for our reading instruction. The curriculum that is given either feels too constricting since it does not take into account the experiences and culture of my students or it doesn’t actually hit on all the standards. Due to this, when planning and instructing, we have to make sure that we adapt the curriculum we are given to meet our students’ needs or to even just meet certain standards that are not reached with the curriculum. The standard 5.10.4.4 (exemplified in the screenshot below) identifies using roots and affixes as a context clues strategy to determine the meaning of unknown words. Nothing within the curriculum has us explicitly teach this standard in a unit. The evidence below shows how we took standards that we were given and adapted curriculum to ensure that students were receiving the appropriate instruction.  

Since our curriculum did not provide any explicit ways to teach roots, our team decided to create our own ways to ensure students were learning the material. The curriculum stated to have students “use context clues” to find meaning of unknown words in “Esperanza Rising”. In order to scaffold this more, the first change we implemented to the curriculum was the creation of a “root wall”. The root wall (pictured below) allowed us to incorporate roots into everyday learning, rather than just a one-time experience. According to Barbara Moss in “Making Independent Reading Work”, it is important for students to learn words contextually rather than out of context like memorizing vocab words. Therefore, we do a mini game to introduce a new root for the week and put it above the root tree. Then, as students find the roots within their own independent reading books, they put it on the root tree along with a definition. The root tree has helped students take ownership over their own words and use strategies contextually. We also have students record this in their journals.

The second adaptation we made was the creation of a root word wall. While students were finding words contextually, we also wanted them to be familiar with an abundance of words within each root. Students created the word wall (pictured below) on their own by finding five words that contains the root and writing the definition on it the paper.This helped students understand how the definition of the root was embedded into the definition of the word. For example, students knew “mis” meant “not” and “mistake” meant “Not doing something correctly.” The word wall has helped students think of creative words and the process of creating definitions.

Last, we took all of these strategies and as we are reading “Esperanza Rising”, we have students use the strategies of roots to understand the meaning of unknown words. Rather than doing what the curriculum suggested and just teach students to find roots within words, we adapted the curriculum to implement scaffolds that would allow students to be successful based on where they were at coming into the school year.

Classroom Management

After spring break I thought a lot about classroom management. I wanted to make sure that after a week off of school, students were still held to the same expectations and were following routines that were set at the beginning of the year. Therefore, I’ve been trying to find a couple strategies that I can try in my classroom after the break to ensure that the classroom is still following Edtopia  listed multiple strategies that I was interested in trying out in the classroom.

I can sense that my students are beginning to get bored with repetition and are especially antsy near the end of the year. It doesn’t help that we are doing a lot of test preparation right now as well. One of the first things the article suggests, and what stood out to me the most, is “Follow the first step of hypnosis”. The idea being that it is much easier for students to focus on something they’re already doing rather than being told to do something different with multiple steps involved. Often times I have students freeze and give multi-step directions, hoping for the best. The idea with the hypnosis technique is that you can give students an easy in. For example, I have started doing a countdown and ask students to point their eyes towards me. I give no further directions until I see 100% compliance. Then I give further directions about what I need next. This strategy has been working a lot better because normally when I do a countdown from five, students are already looking at me so to say “point your eyes toward me” is an easy in that doesn’t waste much time. That way they are also ready to hear next steps from me and aren’t distracted by anything else.

The second thing I’ve noticed is that after lunch and recess, my students tend to be extremely energized. The quiet, calm feeling from the morning seems to go out the door after lunch and it takes extra energy on my part to instill that same sense of calm. Even just coming through the classroom door, students have a sense of energy that wasn’t there in the morning. I liked number 5 on Edtopia and wanted to try it out. The author had each child line up outside the door before entering and answer a content related question before being allowed through the door. I really liked this idea because it could be a good way to review content before MCA’s, it would be a calm way to enter the classroom and each of them can independently get started on the prompt on the board without getting distracted by each other. If they don’t follow these expectations exactly, they get sent to the back of the line which annoys them so this typically works out well. Based on this tip, I’ve noticed that students are excited to anticipate what the question might be as they come up the stairs, are less likely to get distracted by each other in the classroom and naturally calm themselves down. It has become less taxing on my part to calm them down.

While I have been focusing on incorporating these two strategies into my classroom, it takes time. According to Harry Wong’s research in effective classroom management, teachers should use a three-step approach for teaching classroom procedures. This includes explaining, rehearsing, and reinforcing (repetition) until students have it be a habit or routine (The First Days of School). So, before I started the line up and ask questions routine, I explained to students what it would look like, why we are doing it and expectations on following the routine. After explaining, we rehearsed what it would look like and repeated it every day until we got in a routine of doing it. What I liked about using this article to inform instruction is that it’s never too late to introduce new routines and have a classroom reset. While it is helpful for it to happen within the first  months of schools, it works just as effectively near the end months of school too.

Teaching as a Profession

Coming into Teach for America I had preconceptions about what teaching would look like. I thought it would be fairly straightforward, I would teach students academic content on math, reading, writing, science and social studies. I thought it would involve grading papers and giving feedback. However, the entire experience became significantly different than I had originally envisioned. I realized that as an educator, my voice can leave the four walls of my classroom to impact change in a different sphere. That teaching as a profession means also being an advocate for your students. The way I found myself doing this to the fullest potential is advocating through Educators 4 Excellence where I can use my writing to spread awareness. This article I wrote for MinnPost serves as an example of how I realized my voice and passions can serve as a pathway to greater advocacy as a teacher.

I realized as a teacher I wielded a lot of power in how we communicate expectations and carry out discipline practices to students. In the article I was able to call on personal stories that helped me take what I was learning in the classroom to a more public sphere. The opening story about Jeremiah taught me that the stories in the classroom are impactful in creating a bigger picture of the story of educational inequities in our schools. I was then able to call upon data in our district, the place where I invest myself the most, to see how these small stories play out in reality. I never thought something like data collection in the realm of policy would be something I would do as an educator.

The most impactful part of the article that changed the way I saw teaching was when I wrote about the alternatives to suspensions. At this point I realized that as an educator I could voice my opinions on solutions to larger problems. Rather than just restating and telling others of the problems that exist, the alternatives section allowed me to advocate on behalf of students by suggesting things that work in the classrooms. Going past that, I was able to advocate on behalf of a bill that included more inclusionary practices near the end of the article. That allowed me to give a call to action for educators.

Reflecting through the lens of a second year teacher and opportunities I have had for advocacy, teaching has become equal parts developing and preparing children to be leaders and successful in the world as well as advocating for them in the policy sphere. Through this, and what the article shows, I learned that as a teaching professional I have multiple masks I wear and each of them are uniquely necessary in the fight for educational equity. As I continue to reflect on what teaching means to me, I hope to engage parents and families more in the process of policy advocacy. They play such a large role in the lives of the students we are advocating for and more likely than not, the bills that are being passed have a direct impact on them. In “Everyday Engagement” Katy Ridnouer discusses the importance of meaningful parent engagement. She states how important it is to change our perspective of parent engagement from tallying the number of times we make contact to thinking of significant ways parents can participate in the schooling process, both outside and inside the school. I see policy advocacy as a unique way to engage parents and families, either through writing op-eds for newspapers or advocating at the capitol.

Feedback

We have been working on placing fractions and decimals on a number line as a strategy to help order fractions and decimals. Students use various strategies to do so, sometimes converting fractions into decimals or drawing pictures of the fractions to help them understand what they are looking for. The learning objective for this exit ticket was twofold. First, “I can compare and order fractions and decimal numbers” as well as “I can locate fractions and decimal numbers on a number line”.

The feedback provided to Irvin gave strategies to help him meet the learning objectives. When comparing and ordering fractions or placing them on a number line, Irvin does not yet seem to have a conceptual understanding of fractions. He correctly identified that ⅘ is the same as 8/10. I drew a picture to help show him how he might have come to that understanding. I was hoping that this strength would help him understand his misconception about where to place “A”.

The area for improvement for Irvin is identifying how much 4/4 is equal to. It’s clear that he does not have an understanding that the number line is split into 10ths and not ones. It seems like he placed the 4/4 at the 4/10 place because he might have seen the “4” and made a connection. I drew out an empty rectangle into fourths to have him fill it out and understand that if he filled out all four pieces he would be filling out the entire bar which would be equal to a whole. In my conversation with him and on the picture on the exit ticket we talked about how the number line could be thought of as a bar split into tenths as well. Both the picture split into fourths and the number line split into tenths helped him understand that the section where he put A was less than a whole while 4/4 was exactly one whole. I also wanted to use his strength of identifying that ⅘ is equivalent to 8/10 with the drawing to help him make the same connection to 4/4.

My next steps with Irvin include doing a small, differentiated math group in which we work on conceptualizing fractions and ordering just fractions before mixing fractions and decimals. I will start out with helping him understand visually what different fractions might look like with fraction circles or drawing it out before moving on to ordering them and then placing them on a number line. Once he has a solid understanding of the fractions then I’ll move on to comparing and ordering fractions and decimals in order to place them on a number line.

The feedback provided to Gisselle worked on supporting her understanding of where to place fractions and decimals that are greater than a whole on the number line. She correctly identifies that ⅘ is the same thing as 8/10 by using the strategy of multiplying both the top and bottom by the same number to get a number in the tenths. I drew a picture on the side to help her visualize her thinking too with pictures in the hope that it helps her with her area for growth.

Gisselle incorrectly identified 1.2 as just 2/10. She does not have a solid understanding that place values to the left of the decimal indicate something that is larger than one and place values to the right of the decimal indicate partitioning numbers into less than one. I wrote out what her 1.2 is in words to have her understand that we are talking about one whole and two tenths. Then I drew a picture of what it would look like so she could see that we colored in a full bar and only a small portion of another bar. In my conversation with her, we talked about how that decimal was greater than a whole and where it would go on the number line then. She automatically identified that it would have to be past 1 and then understand that two lines after that would be two additional tenths.

Next steps with Gisselle include similar strategies that I used with Irvin. I am going to do a small, differentiated math group with her in which we conceptualize mixed numbers and decimals greater than a whole in placing them on the number line. I will start out with mixed numbers and have Gisselle draw out pictures of what it would look like. Then after she has a solid understanding of mixed numbers, I’ll add in decimals that are greater than one and do the same thing with drawing pictures of what those look like. Through this she will have a visual understanding of the decimals and fractions and will be able to use that to help her place the numbers on a number line.

 


Something that I will use to support both learners are number talks and math routines as established in “Mathematics Routine Banks” established by San Diego City Schools. I will have a fraction on the board and have students represent the fraction in as many ways as possible. This will include a hundredths chart, other pictorial representations, word form, decimal symbols, and a number line. Each time we find a new way to represent a fraction, I’ll have students record that in their notebooks. This will support Gisselle and Irvin to see that fractions can be represented in a multitude of ways and each way they can be represented can be another strategy for placing them on number lines.

Visuals

Identifying and interpreting figurative language is a large standard for fifth grade students but is often one that results in the most confusion. It is especially hard when thinking about English language learners when they have to be able to go past interpreting phrases literally with a limited vocabulary. Therefore, visuals have been a crucial component of ensuring success in interpretation of figurative language. The lesson I focused on was on identifying and interpreting personification in given contexts. I also wanted to extend their thinking further by having them create their own posters describing and showing a personification phrase. I relied heavily on visuals for each phrase while creating the lesson.

I started by using the Visual Thinking Strategy which was created by Abigal Housen, a cognitive psychologist in the Harvard Graduate School of Education. According to her theory, students learn the most when they have opportunities to interpret visuals for themselves. So I put up the picture of the newspaper with a hand (the last visual on the “student handout” sheet). I simply asked, “what do you think this picture is representing? Why?” and had students do a turn and talk. I made sure there were no words on this flipchart accompanying the picture so students had the opportunity to understand that there were no right or wrong answers and to produce an authentic answer. Student responses included things along the line of “There is a newspaper that seems to be going somewhere or traveling”. After the class came to a consensus on this, I revealed the phrase next to it which said, “News travels quickly” and immediately got responses like “Wait, news can’t travel!” and produced a debate among other students about what this really meant. Using this visual opened the conversation about things being literal and figurative. This way students were creating the definition prior to reading the personification sentence. In a way, they already knew what the personification meant before reading the figurative language. They were working backwards relying solely on the visual.

After doing a few more Visual Thinking Strategies, students were able to create their own definition of personification. They realized that nonhuman objects were being given human like qualities. I then pointed to the visual of the lemonade poster/personification definition which hangs in my room. This visual aided students who were having a hard time grasping the concept by having a concrete definition there accompanied by another pictoral example. I then went back to the Visual Thinking Strategy and used the picture of the dancing flame (below). This time students were aware that we were looking for figurative language but responded similarly to the question “what do you notice?” All students were able to say a flame going back and forth. When I revealed the sentence “the flame of the candle danced in the dark” students were able to quickly make the connection that the flame was not actually dancing but it was flickering in the darkness.

The last visual I used was the personification handout (below). At first the words were covered up. Students were tasked with looking at the picture and guessing what the personification sentence might be and then checking it with the actual sentence. This forced students to try to create their own human quality for a non human object, going one step further than how I used the previous visuals. The visual aided them in coming up with a sentence but this was a lot more challenging for them than just interpreting sentence with visuals.

I used three pieces of evidence to gauge if visuals aided students. The first piece of evidence had students interpret the meaning of personification sentences. The evidence of student work below showed me that the student was effectively able to use the visuals and anchor chart I gave her to understand that the sentences were not literal and each object was given a human quality. The second piece of evidence had students create their own personification sentences given a prompt. The evidence showed that the student was able to take the visuals we discussed and create sentences based on what we learned. However, the evidence showed a misconception that wasn’t captured in the visuals we studied. In numbers four and five she wrote a simile rather than personification. Next time when considering which visuals I use, I’ll put a comparison visual up that contrasts a simile with personification. The third piece of evidence was a mini project on personification where students did research by coming up with a definition and picture to support their understanding. This showed me how they could create their own visuals to support their learning rather than just interpreting visuals.

Evidence:

Examples on flipchart:

Handout given to students:

Student created posters

Mid-Year Conferences

Conferences just happened last week and I as I was preparing for them, I thought a lot about the purpose of mid year conferences and how they can look different from our Fall conferences. A lot of the conference was dictated by the goal setting sheets we prepared for each individual student. However, how I chose to utilize it for mid year conferences differed a lot from Fall conferences. At this point in the year, I have built solid relationships. I put a significant amount of time ensuring families showed up to Fall conferences but this being the third round of conferences for fifth grade families, I already knew what attendance would look like and who I would have to reach out to individually to ensure they were present. Based on this, I had all but two families attend. I viewed the first set of conferences as a time to build relationships, the second round of conferences to set goals and used this round of conferences to talk about how we are doing towards reaching those goals using the data sheet (below).

As always, attendance was the first thing we discussed for a quick minute. We also included tardies this time which was different than Fall conferences which can be seen in the artifact below. If students were present for less than 95% of the year so far, we discussed the importance of class time for learning and if there was anything I could do to better support families and students in ensuring they are present in class everyday. This was a quick conversation but was an important piece that I wanted on the data sheet to emphasize that in addition to academics, this was a crucial piece of for succes year long.

The next part of the data sheet shows reading goals and current reading levels. I inputted the general metrics for what a passing score on the MCA from last year looks like, what letter passing is on the F&P reading test and what proficiency looks like on the district interim test. Having levels of mastery helped lead a conversation about where students should realistically be at this point in 5th grade if they were not there yet or if they were surpassing it. However, also having the goals we set for growth on the data sheet helped inform families and students where they are at in meeting goals rather than just looking at mastery. Surprisingly, the growth versus proficiency conversation dominated a large part of conversations. It was insightful for families to see how even if students were not mastering content yet, their growth levels painted a different picture.

The back side had math growth and proficiency. However, this time we focused on Fast Bridge reports (measure of growth) and district interim tests (measure of standards mastery). While not on the artifact attached, there were Fall fast bridge measures which gave families an indicator of how much growth was made to the winter levels. We also had a chance to discuss their projected score on the MCA based on MDE projections as well as the goals we set together. This is also on the data artifact. Just like reading, this provided a great opportunity to discuss why it was okay that students were not necessarily passing the MCA at a 550 but rather they were making growth towards passing based on their fourth grade scores. The language proficiency and social/emotional skills at the end provided a good reminder of where students were at their ESL levels and how they were progressing socially/emotionally. This part of the artifact helped families and students see how social/emotional growth intersects with academic growth.

Overall, the conference data sheet met my goals for the third round of conferences. It gave students and families an understanding of where they are and how much work needs to be done to meet goals. It made the data more concrete and visible to them which I found to be more impactful than just verbally stating goals. According to John Hattie (Visible Thinking), lesson goals and clear intentions promote higher student results and engagement. Therefore, while the overall generic data points were helpful for students to see where they are at, I want to make sure I also break it down more for each student to have clear learning goals for each subject. Based on that, coming out of the conferences I also set a specific learning goal for both math and reading with students.

Ross Greene and Lagging Skills

“The Explosive Child” has become an integral part of how I support students who need extra practice with skills to be able to do their best in the classroom. The quote that has really driven how I change my response to “behaviorally challenging” students is, “Behaviorally challenging kids are challenging because they’re lacking the skills to not be challenging” (pg. 9). Using this quote, I was able to adapt how I responded to the top three challenges I had with one of my students. I understood the skills he was lacking that caused him to react to situations in the way he did. This in turn helped me understand how to best support him. This relates to Vygotsky's idea on the zone of proximal development. These are skills that are too difficult for children to master on their own, but with guidance and encouragement from a person who has those skills they can quickly move to the independent stage.

When Carlos got upset by his classmates he would start yelling or just say, “Shut up!” really loudly. At first I would explain to Carlos that we need to switch our language and come to me when something was bothering him. This didn’t seem to work and it was hard for me to comprehend why he was responding with screams and inappropriate language each time he was trying to express something to his classmates. After going back to the quote, I understood the skill that he was lacking, as referenced by Ross Greene on page 9 was language processing and communication skills. He clearly had difficulty expressing concerns, needs, or thoughts in words. Rathern than saying, “It bothers me when you talk loudly because it gives me a headache” Carlos would result to “Shut up!”. I realized that asking Carlos to take a break or just change his language wouldn’t do anything to develop this skill. So instead, we have been actively working on phrases and words he can use when he is experiencing frustration to communicate his thoughts.

Second, whenever Carlos faced a challenge or got frustrated, he would respond only with his emotions. For example, if he was struggling answering a reading comprehension question, he would tighten up his fists and his face would get really red. Or, if someone teased him he would respond in the same way. My initial reaction would have been to have him take a break and relax his body but I realized that wasn’t getting at the root of the issue because he would always react in the same way. Thinking about Greene’s quote about lacking a skill, I realized that he had difficulty managing emotional response to frustration in order to think rationally. The skill he was lacking was using thought in finding solutions rather than pure emotion. Therefore, Greene’s idea of finding the lagging skill has helped me understand that I need to work on incorporating thought into decision making skills rather than focusing on the emotion.

Last, at times it seemed that Carlos “knew what buttons to push”. If I did a countdown from 5, he would be the only one continuously talking. Or, when everyone was seated, he would run around the room or get up and wander as he pleased. However, thinking about the concept of lagging skills, it became clear that Carlos would do things that seemed irritating at times when he was having trouble adapting or being flexible to the situation at hand. So rather than thinking about it as “why is he intentionally trying to irritate me” my mindset has shifted to “what skills can I teach him to improve on his flexibility and adaptability in new situations”.