Friday Focus -December 22 (on a Thursday!)

The Big Rocks
At this very busy time of year, both personally and professionally, I thought a reflection on the never-ending dimension of time would be very relevant.  My message is not one that delves into the Christmas theme, but rather one that has ample application to the holiday season.  It happens not only at this time of year, but throughout the year--there just doesn't seem to be enough time to accomplish all that we desire to.  Time always has lapsed and continues to lapse for each of us from minute to minute, class period to class period, sunrise to sunset, throughout our lifetime.

Do you ever feel stretched for time, like me?  (Did you just laugh at that question?!)  Do you leave loose ends at the end of the day? Wonder how you're going to get it all done? I have come to the realization that time constraints will always be present and that I will never get it all done (although I still find myself trying to get it all done).  I know that we all strive to be the best people that we can be.  In order to be our best, it is necessary that we take care of ourselves.  So what can we do to manage all of our life activities, both professionally and personally? I have come to find comfort in rereading the story of The Big Rocks by Steven Covey several times throughout the year.

You can read the story of The Big Rocks HERE   and you can see a video clip of Stephen Covey presenting in a seminar on Time Management (an older video) here:



The story of The Big Rocks is a great visual and a reminder for the priorities we make and our actions that reflect them.


Enjoy the time with your families over the holiday vacation and when you find some time to reflect on this short story, ask yourself this question: What are the ‘big rocks’ in my life? Then put those in your jar first.
Happy Holidays! :)

Monday Memo - Week of December 19

Great Things I Noticed Last Week:
*I've seen a couple of classes use the following strategy to get Daily 5 rounds started: Once you've gone through all of the students and recorded their choices (don't let them get up and move once they've told you) quietly tell them all to close their eyes and picture in their heads what Daily 5 choice they've made and what they will be doing.  This gets them focused and ready to go.  Since they're already quiet from closing their eyes to think, they transition almost silently to their Daily 5 round!
*One grade level meeting this week included discussion on their recent math test results. Instead of just using it to plan for WIN, they took the time to talk about student/class results and what instructional strategies each teacher used to learn from each other.  That's a PLC at it's finest!
*During a reading group in READ 180 I overheard a student say, "I'll use my resources!" on his own!

Events This Week:
Monday - I'm putting a variety of Christmas cookies in the lounge for you as my Holiday treat--enjoy!
Tuesday - Tech Tuesday in the Media Center. Bethany and Jean will be sharing Pinterest with us.
Wednesday- Professional Learning Media after school on 1:1 Conferring and teaching the CAFE strategy "Tune Into Interesting Words."

"Nuts & Bolts" Notes
*"I used to...Now I..."  I know that this week will be short and busy, but please take a few minutes to reflect on literacy in your classroom and complete this short survey at http://bit.ly/literacysurvey  I'm not asking for anything formally written, just whatever comes to mind when you think of how literacy has changed in your classroom---for your students and for yourself.  This could include your planning, instruction, assessment, or just general classroom environment.  Please complete this before you leave on Thursday. Thank you!

*Planning ahead for the New Year: Upon our return from Christmas break please keep in mind that you  will need to spend at least 2 weeks reteaching/retraining your students.  Please be ready to go over all your classroom routines and procedures and retrain your students.

• Re-build/work on stamina in Daily 5
• Hallway behavior – We have all become very relaxed with enforcing Short, Straight, Silent.
• Transitions within the classroom – Be sure to have a transition routine from activity/subject to subject.

Friday Focus - December 16th

"Inattentional Blindness"

(*I originally wrote this for my professional reflections blog, but decided to cross post it here for you)

When it comes to reading I usually choose professional education books over fiction to continue my learning as a principal and instructional leader. I have strayed from ed literature after hearing a podcast with Life Coach, Mel Robbins on the Manic Mommies podcast (in case you're wondering, that is just a podcast I listen to for fun).  Her sense of humor and powerful message led me to order her book Stop Saying You're Fine before I even finished listening to the podcast. Even though her book is not an professional education book, I have been making many connections to my position in education throughout reading it.

The biggest connection I've made to education is while reading her chapter on how admitting what you want focuses your attention. "Inattentional blindness" is a phenomenon that describes how we often miss what is right in front of us unless we are completely focused on it.

Here's the best example to point this out. Just watch this youtube clip for 1 minute to take the awareness test. You need to keep track of how many times the team in white passes the ball.


Did you see it? The only reason I did is because I read about the results of this in Robbins' book. In a study involving a similar clip, 46% of people missed it.

What's the point of this? Robbins states, "you miss an enormous number of opportunities to change your life on a daily basis because you are not focused on what you want. You are focused on your problems and maintaining the illusion that you are fine. Until you face the truth about your life and start focusing on opportunities to take action, you will continue to miss the gorilla moonwalking in the background."

WOW!

So often in education, our discussions can go down the trail of unending outside factors (home life, socio-economic status, the schedule/yearly calendar, previous year's teacher, etc.) When we spend our time listing outside factors affecting a student, we are wasting precious time to look at what we can change to better meet a student's needs. Here are just a few examples.

• The young elementary student that is tardy everyday, because his/her single parent works late the night before and sleeps past the alarm. Keep the child in at recess (not a favorite choice), add an individual incentive for that student if he/she does make it on time, make arrangements to keep the student after school, change the schedule so the student isn't missing the instruction that they need the most (I understand that's difficult to do) or start giving them a wake up call each morning (I've actually done that and after about a week of this, they get really sick of it and start coming on time...or change their number).
• The student that is 2 years below reading level and is already getting a "double-dose" of reading (full 90 minutes of literacy in the classroom and 30 minute reading intervention daily), but you know is never reading at home. Then add a "triple dose" of reading and set the child up with 15 minutes of the day reading to a volunteer. No volunteers? Contact a teacher of an older grade and have a student volunteer come down to listen to the student read. If you are the older grade, then have your student go to a younger grade. Or have your student record themselves reading into the free program audacity on your computer.
• The student that just transferred to your school and you wonder what in the world the previous district had for curriculum, because this child is so far behind, yet came with a glowing report card in their cumulative file. Get started on interventions right away.

I challenge you to think about what opportunities you're missing out on in your classroom, because you're focused on the problems or obstacles. What are you not doing, but making excuses for why you're not doing it? What is it that you want for your students? What are you going to do to make it happen?

Photo cc license shared by CrazyFast

Monday Memo - Week of December 12

Great Things I Noticed Last Week:
*A Time for Kids article was used in a 4th grade mini-lesson while teaching how to write a persuasive paper.
* 1st graders were practicing beautiful expression when practicing a poem during shared reading.
*A guest teacher (that also works in other districts) complimented our classrooms on our strong reading structure and asked for Daily 5 information to share with another district.
*I received a call from another school district asking for a teacher to come and observe Daily 5/Cafe in action in our classrooms this week---I love showing you off! :)

Events This Week:
Monday - Meeting for probationary teachers at 3:05 in the Media Center

Tuesday - I will be gone all day at an RtI Conference (along with Mrs. Cleary, Mrs. Patey and Mrs. Huelsman)

Friday - Staff Social Lunch (2nd grade/Madsen/Kuhn)

"Nuts & Bolts" Notes
*This is the middle of the quarter already. Please make sure to send home progress reports.  As always, if you have any student with a "surprise" on their progress report, you should be proactive and call home.
*January is the month that we begin meeting on any students that would be considered for possible retention; however, if you have concerns with a student we should meet as a Student Intervention Team (SIT) first. If you have concerns with a student in this category that we haven't had a SIT for yet, please contact me.
*In a blog I follow, I found this great classroom activity for this time of year, just click on The Gift of Kind Words 

Tech Tips: 
*How is Conferring Going? You'll notice that title is hyperlinked to take you to another teacher's blog post on conferring.
*If you're looking for other blogs to add to your google reader, here is a list of blogs that were nominated for the 2011 Edublog awards.
*If you plan on coming to Tech Tuesday to learn about Pinterest next week, please email Bethany or Jean so they can send you an invite. If you're wondering what in the world Pinterest is, here's a teacher's blog post I found that explains it: http://prekinders.com/2011/07/pinterest-for-teachers/
or here's another post from Pearson School System here.

Friday Focus - December 9

This week I attended the SLATE (School Leaders Advancing Technology in Education) conference where I was put on brain-overload from the many challenging thoughts and great ideas shared to continue advancing integration of technology in education.

I was excited to hear our keynote speaker, Scott Mcleod, because I have followed his blog and twitterfeed for a couple of years now.  Scott created the following powerful video clip:



Just as I expected, Scott spent 2 hours sharing far too much information for me to share in this post, but I do want to share the "learning nuggets" that I took home with me:

*Web 2.0 -the internet is no longer just reading information, but interacting with it, connecting with others and easily sharing information (i.e. podcasts, facebook, twitter, blogs, youtube, wikipedia, linkdin, four square, pinterest, webkinz, wordle, the list goes on...)

*Consumers vs. Creators - With all the web 2.0 tools today, we are no longer consumers of the internet, we are creators. One well known example of this is the amount of sales from amazon.com that are attributed to the product reviews that people submit.  If you are submitting a review, you are helping to create amazon.  He also said that if you are reading reviews, but never leaving a review, then you're a "moocher" and you need to help contribute.  (With this thought, I'm making it my personal goal to try to add comments to the blog posts that I read throughout the week)

*With all these web 2.0 tools...
-We all have a voice
-We can easily find each other
-We can easily work together

*We are now preparing our students for jobs that don't currently exist.

*Our students need to be problem-solvers and critical thinkers (not "regurgitators")

*If we are going to prepare our students for the new jobs (that we don't even know about now) that require creative work, then we need to plan learning that is in the top 3 of Bloom's Taxonomy (visual above of this)--Analyzing, Evaluating and Creating.

My reflection prompt for you:
What are you doing in your classroom to encourage critical thinking, problem solving and creating?  How much of student time is spent consuming information versus creating it?

Monday Memo - Week of December 5

Great Things I Noticed Last Week:
*While sitting in a 5K mini-lesson on setting a student excitedly said, "I just made a connection to another book we read!"
*In another 5K classroom students were practicing their Jolly Phonics with the SMARTBoard program and were able to read the following words: coast, grain, punch, and chimpanzee using their sounds.  I bet the 1st grade teachers love to hear this!
*After 5th grade student presentations, the class was asked to give 3 positive comments and 3 things to improve on. I was amazed to hear the feedback given to students by students and surprised how much Daily 5/Cafe language carried over into the feedback for science presentations.
*5th grade started keeping track of "Writing Non-Negotiables" as writing skills are taught in mini-lessons.  You can see the list from one class in the picture on the right.  Mrs. Bingen says that this list has really cut down on the time spent conferring  with students for writing revising/editing--she does NOT help revise if they have a mistake that is on the non-negotiable list. Wouldn't it be great if we had a list of expectations like this at each grade level?

Events This Week:
*Monday - Mentors meeting at 3:05 in Media Center
*Tuesday - I will be gone all day at the SLATE conference (School Leaders Advancing Technology in Education) in Wisconsin Dells.
*Thursday - No Office Day--I'll be spending my day in 3-5th grade classrooms
   K/2/4 Music Concert (including 5th grade band) at 6:30 PM
*Friday - Just a reminder to show your school spirit and wear your school shirt (please help remind your students too)

"Nuts & Bolts" Notes:
*Just a reminder that next week is already mid-quarter (I had to triple check the calendar to be sure!) so make sure you're ready to send home a progress report for each of your students.
* We've added another Tech Tuesday to the calendar for December 20th. I know that's a busy week, but there's quite a few teachers excited about using Pinterest or wanting to learn how before break so Jean and Bethany will be teaching us how that day.

Tech Tip:
*I've seen some great websites being used on the SMARTBoards and in the computer lab that I'm sure students would continue to use at home if they have internet access.  You can show them how to access the site from the student resources on the district webpage (if it's there) or include the web address in your newsletter, which can be quite lengthy and difficult to type at times.  If you want to learn how to make a shortened web address to share with students/parents for home and for easy access in the computer lab you just need to go to http://bitly.com and sign up for an account. Here's a screencast I made to show you how to use this tool. Let me know if you need any help getting started on this.

Friday Focus - December 2

I see the school year as a marathon, not a sprint. There are long stretches at the beginning and end, then those long days where winter’s cold temperatures and lack of sunlight drain us. When viewed within the scope of an entire school year, 15 days isn’t really that many. However, 15  is the exact number of days that we have with our students before Winter Break.

• For some of our students who will say “it’s almost break” and lack motivation, it is time to push them & keep them excited and eager to learn.
• For our students who come from challenging circumstances at home and are feeling anxiety about not being at school for over two weeks (and acting out because of it), it is time to show them how much you care & make the most of these next 15 days.
• For our students that just keep smiling & working hard each day, it is time to pull them aside and tell them how much you appreciate them (Positive Postcard?)

In these 15 days, we have a lot of work to do & lots of wonderful learning experiences to provide our students.  We’ll continue to persevere as the professionals that we are! No matter what your title is, what grade you work with, or what you do at Dodgeland, please look at these next 15 days as times to deliver the highest quality service to our students, parents & community.
Be proud of what we’ve accomplished with our students so far this year, but please keep your ‘eye on the ball’ and keep the focus on learning in your classrooms until Winter Break. In addition, I’d encourage you to:

• Take a second and tell a colleague that you’ve noticed how hard they are working and that you appreciate them working so hard.
• Make time to reflect on some of the positives that we’ve had this year that may have been overlooked as we have overcome the challenges of not having enough time.
• Set a tone for your students that regardless of how much time is left before a long break that all of us will work hard and make the most of our school days.
• Celebrate being a member of our Dodgeland Family