Reading, Writing, Reaching Targets, Wrestling with Strategies

 Now that I'm a classroom teacher for this year, I use a program for my planning and marking on a website called Chalk.com. I like PlanBoard and MarkBoard, part of the Chalk suite, because I can see at a glance what I've done for the week (which helps me when I compose my Highlights of the Week newsletter for my students and their families) and I can examine what assessments I've gathered for a subject and the class average.

I've been a bit worried about my class' guided reading results. My students love to read, both during silent independent reading time and during read aloud time in class. Despite this affection for the activity, many of the answers I notice that they submit for guided reading tasks are insufficient. When I first noticed this, I revised my instruction sheet, so that it would be clearer on where marks were earned for each question.  I ran lessons on the difference between a summary and a main idea. I also have been coordinating my guided reading tasks to the media texts they are writing and hearing, so that, for instance, when we were writing letters, we read letters and analyzed letters, and hopefully the immersion would help. We officially finished writing comics a while back, but reading comics is still happening, with our read aloud of Class Act (compounded with my observation that they needed more time on reading and analyzing comics on their own - anyone who says that comics are "easy reading" or "easy to write" need to revise their opinions!). 

I declared that my goal was to try and have every student obtain a 10/15 or higher on their more recent guided reading tasks. 66% would be a reasonable goal, I thought. 

I tried to figure out what I could do differently with my teaching approach to help them improve. I ran a series of three teacher-directed mini-lessons to model how to attack the questions. I invited our special education teacher in to watch part of one of these lessons, so that she could supplement my instruction with strategies that she found useful with the students she services. She offered graphic organizers, sentence starters and mnemonic devices. In addition to this, I was able to borrow the special education teacher to sit with one of my three guided reading groups to provide coaching.

This weekend, I got caught up on a lot of my marking, and that included the most recent guided reading assignment. If I just look at my class average, then there has been some improvement, from 45.8% on the first comics-themed guided reading to 53.7% on the second to the most recent results of 64.2%. This is technically a jump of two letter grades; I should be elated. However, I don't think this means that everyone is earning a 10/15 score; I suspect that those with higher marks are boosting the average. If I have time, I might like to create a graph with the three scores for each individual student and look at it that way. Then, I can target the specific students who have not yet made it to a 66% and work just with them.

 I was discussing my dilemma with my husband and wondering aloud if my target was too ambitious or unrealistic. He asked me if I thought the issue was around reading comprehension or expressing ideas. This is a very good question. Do some of the students just not understand the reading samples? Or do they understand but are unable to put into words (written or oral) their thoughts? This is now also making me reconsider my next steps. After our unit on writing reviews (product, book, and movie) ends, we were going to move to a horror theme, based on what the students requested. I found a fantastic list from an article called "Fifteen Frightful Favorites: A Fifth Grader's Horror Booklist" from School Library Journal that I had students select possible upcoming read-alouds. Based on the even distribution of votes, I was going to do literature circles instead, with 3-4 students per book. I think it may be better to provide horror short stories for small groups and keep a novel for whole group consumption. We can also adapt these short stories into scripts (more reading and writing) and create mini-movies (oral and media). My mind is spinning - and this is just for the Reading strand of Language Arts, which is a subject I myself have affinity and comfort! You can imagine the mental gymnastics occurring as I figure out physical education, or math!

Bananas for Baton

 In last week's blog post, I mentioned that one of the resources I acquired from elsewhere was a class set of batons. Big thanks to the director of the Camaros Baton Club for making this possible. It was going to be a very expensive personal venture otherwise, and I couldn't guarantee how good of an investment it would be to commit to such as large purchase. If this week is any indication, buying them in the future might be worthwhile.

I've introduced the sport to my students and I did not predict how wildly popular it was going to be. My students have fallen in love with baton twirling. Want proof?

Restrictions: I have prohibited them from taking their batons home or outside, but this has not stopped them from asking to stay in at recess and after school to practice. I have had to insist that students store their batons on the back ledge near the chalkboard, because I've caught students pulling their batons out of their desks during math or language class to use.

Curiosity, Preoccupation and Substitution: Every week, I conduct two-minute chats (down from my original five-minute plan) with individual students. This week, at least two of the students wanted to talk about how to do 4-finger twirls. Since the batons are no longer permitted at their seats, students have found alternatives - twirling their pencils. During recess, a student went and found a long stick and has started using it in the yard to rehearse his moves.

Demonstrations: The students have only had two gym classes focused on baton twirling skills so far, but they were super-keen to show their twirling prowess to as many of the adults in the building as possible. Small groups (with adequate physical distance) have gone in search of an audience and have shown off to the principal, the school secretary / office administrator, the kindergarten teacher, and our special education teacher. 

There are no gender boundaries with my students and baton. Both boys and girls equally adore twirling. Some have already established their "favourite moves".  Even the students who are not usually fond of physical education time have found baton twirling success in some format. As they explore what's possible with their batons, they've requested instruction - "Can you teach us how to toss?" / "Can we do passes?" The students also spend a lot of time admiring each other and complimenting each other on how fluidly or quickly they can complete moves. 

I wish I could share more photos but 1) it's really hard to take pictures when I'm busy coaching 18 eager athletes, and 2) I need to respect the privacy of my students. Here are three images, with faces obscured.

I was a baton coach a long time ago (in the 1990s) and a baton twirler myself even longer ago (in the 1980s). It was a huge chunk of my life in the past and it's really taken me down memory lane to pull out my old baton case with my own pair of batons and revive those dusty attempts at flashes, thumb flips, and spinners. Even though I am a NCCP (National Coaching Certification Program) Level 1 coach for baton, I am quite rusty at running classes. It's coming back to me slowly. Ironically, the baton and dance club I used to work for, the Scarborough Entertainers, used to offer classes on Monday nights at Banting & Best Public School, which is my current school's close neighbour! It is my hope that when this unusual year comes to an end, I can run an after-school baton club for a larger group of students. 

Supplies

I am trying hard not to focus on the fact that this was supposed to be March Break. I really needed the rest, but the week of recuperation has been postponed to April 12-16, 2021.  I crafted my long range plans so that new units would begin after this week, so that I would have time to plan them more efficiently, but that idea has flown out the window.

Planning involves more than just deciding the topic for your lesson. I have to consider my approach, design my assessments / assignments, and collect my materials that the students will need to help them understand the concepts.

 We are lucky that in my school, we have a central supply room. It is well-stocked with different colours of construction paper, student notebooks, masking tape, glue, staples, markers, sticky notes and other items you might find in a stationery store. No one on staff hoards, we take what we need, and a committee usually keeps the room tidy and tracks when supplies get low. This is quite a blessing, because in other schools, individual teachers are responsible for ordering their supplies of pencils and erasers and it's just too bad if they forgot to request an item or obtain enough. 

Having said this, sometimes  I need rather unusual supplies that aren't typically ordered for school consumption. This is where my colleagues and friends have saved my bacon multiple times. (This also shows that teachers collect really odd things, "just in case".)

Thank you Ms. Wadia - during the six weeks of online learning in January - February 2021, you loaned my students whiteboards so they could do their work without wasting paper. You also lent me fraction manipulatives, spinners, and other math tools to help me teach while I was at home.

Thank you Mr. Tong - you provided me with enough balloons for my students to conduct their static electricity experiments.

Thank you Ms. Hong - you lent me your own personal stash of LED lights, copper tape, alligator clips, wires, and round cell batteries so these same students could build paper circuits.

Thank you Ms. Wilson - you aren't even a teacher at my school, and you've allowed me to rent 18 batons so that my students can have a unique physical education experience that still respects physical distancing and the restrictions around sharing equipment. You've saved me hundreds of dollars with this arrangement.

Thank you Ms. Yogalingam - (our class' student-teacher) you brought in your potato clock (bought with your own money) so that the students could get the same thrill of seeing vegetables produce electricity.

Thank you Ms. Teotico - (not a teacher, but a parent) you helped our school obtain toothbrushes and we had enough to use for our teeth as well as for art class!

I have my own share of unusual items that I needed as supplies to use for teaching. I brought in a dozen can-can skirts, for example.

Is there a correlation between a tendency to hoard and involvement in the teaching profession? You never know when you'll need something as supplies!

Yes to Miss Yogalingam

 This weekend, I worked on the Summative Evaluation for my student teacher. She has given her consent for me to mention her here by last name, as well as to publish a few photos. 

I have a confession to make: I was really nervous about accepting a teacher candidate this year. I worried about introducing another body into the classroom and another potential exposure to COVID. (We are very, very cautious in our school and no one enters unless they have to come in. Why take the risk?) I worried that, since I had a completely new teaching assignment this year, I wouldn't have anything to offer. (How do you teach someone how to do something when you are only just learning parts of it yourself?) I worried that there was too much uncertainty and it was unwise to introduce another element of possible chaos. (Heck, I wasn't even sure that I would still be teaching Grade 5-6 by the time she started her placement on February 16!) 

I am so glad and grateful that I said yes to having Miss Yogalingam! I like her even more than my last teacher-candidate from 2020 (don't tell!). Miss Yogalingam has been exactly what the doctor (PhD in Education, maybe) ordered. 

There are so many positive things I can say about Miss Yogalingam. I'm going to try and keep it to my Top 4, even though my documentation is 14 pages and growing and my evaluation is already 2000 words long.

She Takes Her Time

Miss Yogalingam does not rush through her lessons or explanations. It would be quite tempting to do so, especially when she only has four weeks of time with the students (and this week, March 8-12, is her final week with them). For instance, for the Grade 5 science unit, When I've complimented her on how thorough and methodical she's been in her teaching of the math and science units she's adopted, she just reminds me that if the student does not have the foundation established firmly, it is difficult for them to proceed successfully. For instance, expectation 3.2 is "identify properties of solids, liquids and gases and state examples of each". Some of the students were confusing properties with examples. Miss Yogalingam has been reinforcing the differences between properties and examples of solids, liquids and gases in every lesson since she realized that they were mixed up.

She Chunks Her Concepts

Even our substitute principal (who was an absolute treasure and came to watch one of Miss Yogalingam's lessons) commented on how well Miss Yogalingam breaks down complex ideas into manageable bite-sized bits. Whether it is dance, where she reduced all the steps into small sections to attempt, or the creation of a graph on an infographic in math with every necessary component earning attention, Miss Yogalingam was able to reduce tasks into parts that were comprehendible and possible to undertake. I really admire that about her, because my own teaching style is much less directed/guided and much more exploratory. Students need many different types of methods and they received a healthy variety when they had both of us in the room. When Miss Yogalingam is no longer in the room, I'll remember to divide tasks into small portions more often like she did.

She Looks Back on Her Lessons

Miss Yogalingam is a very reflective practitioner. She has a notebook that she writes in a lot. Sometimes it's something I said, or something she noticed from a student. Often it's thoughts related to the lessons she just taught. I used to joke about the amount of reflections we used to have to write in the Faculty of Education, but to be honest, reflecting on my teaching is what makes me a better teacher. It's is such an honour and pleasure to have someone to reflect on the class experiences with together. Miss Yogalingam and I share observations, consider perspectives, and brainstorm alternatives or next steps. Sometimes artifacts help us with our reflections, as we look at a photo that was taken, a video that was recorded, or a whiteboard that was written or drawn on. Miss Yogalingam does things with those reflections too. She makes changes, watches some students more closely, or does something different to do better. 

She Adapts Her Approaches

Always willing to try things, Miss Yogalingam recognized her strengths and did not constrain or contain herself to them. I'm teaching puberty for health right now and I know that she was relieved not to tackle that challenging topic, but she was willing to act as a scribe when we brainstormed our "ground rules" for creating a safe and inclusive classroom when discussing human development respectfully and sensitively. She agreed to read a picture book aloud after some preparation using the document camera, even though she claimed that she was intimidated by my read aloud skills (but as a former/shelved teacher-librarian who has been in the job longer than she's been alive, I have a bit of an head start on honing those talents!). After the picture book experiment on I Read Canadian Day, she altered the way she delivered a lesson and used the document camera, not because it was more comfortable for her (it wasn't) but because it was beneficial for the students and more accessible. She switched up the homework assignment she had originally planned so both grades would have the same task.

I learned so much from having Miss Yogalingam in our classroom. We are definitely going to miss her when she leaves this Friday (March 12). Thank you so much to OISE for placing her with us!

PS I'm not the only one who has accepted a student teacher into his/her/their class environment. My friend Sarah Wheatley (happy belated birthday, Sarah!) who is teaching virtually has also had a wonderful experience with her teacher candidate.

My amazing student teacher had our students looking at school Twitter accounts to see who they follow, and deciding what values that shows. What a great discussion we had. Which voices were missing? What could we learn?

— Sarah says Wear A Mask🐱📖 (@ksarahwheatley) March 5, 2021

Getting Older

 Today, Monday March 1, 2021, is my 49th birthday. 

I wrote about my birthday on my blog when I turned 47. My 48th birthday was significant in that it was the last time that my family actually ate inside a restaurant (Montana's). COVID has changed the way we celebrate events like birthdays. Drive-by visits with posters in the window (like my friend Wendy arranged for her son) or video testimonials and Zoom calls (like my friend Larissa's husband arranged for her 40th) are becoming more common. COVID alters everything.

Unless some women I know, I actually don't mind getting older. Most of my current objections to getting older indirectly relate to COVID.

• I'm not in as great shape physically as I used to be (but this is more due to the absence of thrice-a-week visits to the gym)
• My hair and skin aren't as supple, soft and smooth (but one good haircut would do wonders since my last haircut was November 10, 2020)
• My memory fails more often than I'd like (but I've been told that people with relatives that have dementia often worry about their own memory loss and moments of forgetfulness are more often due to stress)

There are many things that are beneficial about being this age. I definitely like being an adult more than I enjoyed my childhood because of some of these advantages. Some of these benefits have nothing to do with my age and more to do with decisions I made when I was a younger person. 

ETA - I also realized, in the early hours of my birth day, that my decisions may have an influence on matters, but it is also a feature of my PRIVILEGE. I had economic advantages that helped me out, as well as white, cis-het privilege that I also benefitted from. As you can see, even though I'm 49, I'm still learning - to recognize personal bias and how my closeness to dominant culture gave me a "leg up". 

• I am mostly confident in myself and comfortable with who I am (because when I was younger, I was too preoccupied and concerned with what other people thought of me)
• My career and family are stable (thank goodness) and firmly established
• I know what I want out of life and can take steps to achieve my goals, although I am also simultaneously generally satisfied with what I have and where I'm at - I feel like I have some sense of control (although that gets shaky due to ... you guessed it, COVID)

This year coincides with my 24th year of teaching. Next year will be two significant milestones - my 25th year teaching and my 50th birthday. My student teacher was surprised to realize that I've been teaching for longer than she's been alive. (I'm not like my dear friend Ruth who is #16 on her board's seniority list but I am one of the most "experienced" teachers at my school.) I'm not in any rush to retire. Despite this chaotic year, I still like teaching and learning. There's still so much to try and do that fits into the "pleasurable" (instead of "painful") category. I worry that many talented teachers will leave the profession after this year (or transfer to a different school, or find a different line of work) because of the toil that 2020-2021 has taken on their mental and emotional health. Maybe it's less about age and more about experiences, or the challenges life throws our way.