Monday Memo - Week of January 30

Great Things I Noticed Last Week:
*5th graders reviewing making connections (text-world, text-self, text-text) using Into the Book.
*In a math lesson, students worked in groups to solve a problem on their whiteboards.  Each group got to share with the class how they solved it and found there were several different ways to solve one problem.  What was very effective here is that ALL students were engaged and participating.
*In another math lesson, 2nd graders were using actions to show what parallel and intersecting lines were.  Not only did they cross their arms for intersecting, but they also shouted "HieYaw" like a Ninja (I have NO idea how to spell HieYaw but will never forget that action!)
*Several different classes transitioning with a "brain break." While it's important to increase students' stamina for paying attention to a lesson and focusing during independent work, if they're sitting too long, you're asking for trouble. Great teachers are observant and know when to switch gears and get them moving. If you need ideas for Brain Breaks you can go HERE, HERE or HERE.

Events this week:
*Just an FYI that I will be in my office quite a bit to proctor part of the ACCESS test this week.
Monday - District Calendar Committee Meeting
Tuesday - Tech Tuesday - Google Docs.
Wednesday - Digital Learning Day
                   - MS/HS has a varied schedule today, causing our lunches to be a    few minutes shorter.  
                  K-2 lunch will end at 11:48; 3-5 lunch will end at 12:27
Friday - 2nd Quarter Dodgeland Pride Assembly at 2:00 in the gym
            National WEAR RED DAY for the American Heart Association

Data Day meetings start next week!

"Nuts & Bolts" Notes:
*Please make sure to submit any tech issues to the Tech Help Desk, even if you email or call.  This helps Brad and Mark keep track of issues easier and allows them to run reports to see what kinds of tech issues continue to come up and see where they are spending their time.
*When should you introduce new CAFE strategies?  If you don't already receive the Daily 5 Tip of the Week, make sure you go HERE to read their response to this question last week.  If you're not already receiving this in your email you can also subscribe to it at that link (on the top right side of the page).
If you listen to podcasts, you can download their tip of the week on iTunes now instead of having to read it (great for the car ride to work!)

Tech Tips:
*Not a tech tip, but a few great websites:
Helping Struggling Readers
http://www.wordle.net/ (this is how I created those "word clouds" for our last meeting)
38 Interesting ways to use Wordle in the classroom

Friday Focus - January 27

At our Professional Learning Meeting this week I asked you to open up to the front of your Reflection Journals and take 5 minutes to reflect on the goals (2 professional and 1 personal) that you wrote at the beginning of the school year.  For this week's Friday Focus, I'm going to put myself "out there" and share my personal reflections on the goals I wrote in my journal for this year (Wondering why I'm sharing this with you? See #1 below...feel free to skip reading this if you're not really interested in my goals).

Professional Goal #1: To model reflection of my professional growth and encourage staff to reflect as well.

One of the most important things any educator can do is reflect on their practice.  Great teachers know that you can't just teach the same lessons every year, because your students change.  Great teachers often don't follow their lesson plans as written throughout the week, because they are constantly reflecting on how their students responded to the instruction and adapting their plans to their students' needs.  Unfortunately, our daily schedules leave us with very little time to reflect...many of us are happy if we can get in 1 personal bathroom break and get our lunch down in just 5 minutes.  Despite the challenge of time (that is a challenge for almost anything we want to accomplish), reflection is the key to progress.  

"Reflection is the beginning of reform." ~Mark Twain

 

Reflecting on my goal of reflecting...I have been using my Friday Focus as a means to share my reflections with you each week and also shared the link to my personal/professional blog where I also share my reflections.  While blogging sounds quite scary (and I must admit I was hesitant to even share that link with you all), it has become one of my best tools for reflection.  If you know me, I cannot write much by hand and prefer to type. In addition, I have quite a high following of other educators on my professional blog that I have gained a great deal of feedback on to help challenge my thinking and gain new ideas.

I had planned on giving staff time to write in reflection journals at the end of each of our professional learning meetings, however, I know that this is something I have forgotten a few times (I will also tell you that closure was one of my weakest areas in the classroom).  I loved the idea that someone added in response to this blog of adding a reflection question for you all in my Friday Focus posts and am trying to remember to do that to encourage your reflection as well.

Professional Goal #2: To act more like an instructional coach than a "supervisor"

Before I made the crazy "leap" into administration I worked for one year as an Instructional Coach and absolutely loved it.  I loved the time I spent observing teachers, helping them to reflect, planning with them, co-teaching a lesson, etc.  During my years here as principal, I have focused on improving my practice of getting into classrooms as much as possible to provide teachers with feedback.  Over the past year, I have come to realize how important it is not only to just give you my feedback, but to have conversations with you as an Instructional Coach does.

An Instructional Coach's role is to improve instruction and I don't see my role any differently (I just also happen to have many other duties to fulfill as well).  I reflected in a previous post about my classroom visits here and am continuing to find that it is very difficult to find time to talk with teachers after visits and I have to resort to emailing quite often.  I am happy to see from my data that I have increased my rate of feedback from 48% to 77% (meaning that for all of my classroom visits since the start of the year I have either given verbal or email feedback 77% of the time):

Feedback rates at the start of October

Feedback rates up until now

Another challenge I have found in my goal of acting more like a coach than a supervisor is that it is hard for some to separate the “evaluator” hat that I do ultimately “wear” as a principal.  In a recent chat on twitter on the roles/similarities of coaches and principals, someone asked “How can a principal act as a coach?”

My tweeted response was:

Personal Goal: To make time for myself (reading for pleasure and to exercise 3 times a week)
Well, I already shared with you my reflections on exercise in our staff meeting (I really need to start joining those after school Zumba and pickleball sessions)!  I made reading for pleasure a goal, because I often just read professional books and forget that I really enjoy reading for pleasure.  I definitely have been doing better with this, however, when I recently told a group of 5th graders that I read 26 books in 2011 they told me “that’s nothing, we read WAY more than that!”

Now, since I just got quite personal with you all, I'm going to resort to one of my coping mechanisms of humor (in the form of an image):

My reflection prompt for you:
If you didn't get the chance to reflect on all of your goals this week, do it NOW!!!

Monday Memo - Week of January 23

Great Things I Noticed Last Week:
*4th graders learned about Martin Luther King, Jr. in relation to bullying at school.  They then had small group discussions in response to a given scenario of a problem a student was having.  What a great connection to this month's Character Trait of problem solving!

*2nd graders watched a video clip from Into the Book on the strategy for questioning.  This was a great intro to them before starting their animal research reports.
* I had a few conversations with different teachers on professional books they were reading and wanted to share their reflections with me. I'm always amazed by the adult learning taking place in our building (and I always enjoy adding books to my "to-read mountain")!

Events This Week:
Monday - Report & Planning Day
Tuesday - 2nd Quarter Grades Due
Wednesday - Elementary Professional Learning Meeting - We will be looking at what practices are effective for helping close the gap of our struggling readers.
Friday - Report Cards go home
 Next Tuesday- Tech Tuesday (rescheduled from this Tuesday)

"Nuts & Bolts" Notes:
*How often do you give your students a "brain break?" Please go to my blog to take a poll on the top right side. 
*Starting Tuesday I will be outside with 3-5th graders for the noon recess and then inside with them at lunch (just in case you're looking for me in the lunch room)


Tech Tip
*Have you used Into the Book?  These engaging video clips are free for Wisconsin Teachers HERE

 *This weekend the Washington Post published "Teachers take to Twitter to improve craft and commiserate"

Friday Focus - January 20

I've been enjoying learning from other schools that have also implemented Daily 5/Cafe.  Recently, I've been networking with Matt Renwick, Principal of Howe Elementary in Wisconsin Rapids.  In addition to teaching with Daily 5/Cafe, they have been going through an entire series of professional development for 2 years, using the Regie Routman in Residence series, which is focused entirely on literacy practices. 

I was intrigued by his most recent blog post, Word Work vs. Spelling Packets and got his permission to share it for my Friday Focus this week. If you want to go to his blog, just go here. 

Word Work vs. Spelling Packets

(I was asked by another building administrator my opinion regarding using word work in classrooms rather than tedious spelling packets. Not having an extensive reading background, other than I taught reading at the elementary level for seven years, I try to tread lightly when giving my opinion in this area.)

Tedious spelling packets are just that, tedious. In Chapter 4 of Teaching Essentials (Focus on Meaning First), Regie Routman stresses making curriculum and standards relevant and authentic. I cannot think of anything more irrelevant or inauthentic than a packet of worksheets. Word work such as word sorts are the opposite. They are visible everywhere, in the Jumble puzzle in the daily paper to board games such as Scrabble. Today, they are fun apps to play on mobile devices such as Moxie and Words with Friends, all using the framework of sorting letters to make words. People pay money and spend hours doing word work (including me). Would anyone buy an app or a board game that asked them to complete worksheets?

The thinking required to complete worksheets is pretty low level. Read the question, find the correct word on the list, write the word in the appropriate space, repeat. Word work, on the other hand, encourages students to compare/contrast, categorize and make new connections with word patterns, all on the upper level of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Word work may not be limited to the 10-20 words given to the student in a spelling packet, none of which are chosen by the student. As well, word work promotes independent learners, another focus of Regie’s, because they depend on the student to create the words, not the worksheet. Students working on spelling packets are compliant but probably aren’t as engaged.

I could go on, but it would be me just venting because I used spelling packets almost exclusively for seven years as a teacher. I think I knew better at some level, but I never took the time to reflect on my own practices and ask, “Why I am doing this?”.

The caveat is, if the district expects teachers to use spelling packets because it is part of the board-approved language arts program, then spelling packets should be used in classrooms. They are not terrible, and probably do help students at least remember and maybe apply the word pattern of focus. That said, could they be taken home for parents to do with their child? Done together on the document camera? A workaround like this could allow the teacher to use better practices such as The Daily Five during the literacy block.

Speaking of which, there a number of good resources out there to help teachers develop more effective practices when teaching students spelling and vocabulary. Besides The Sisters’ resource The Daily Five, I recommend having a copy of Teaching Kids to Spell by Gentry and Gillet on your shelf. Although it is almost twenty years old, it contains some creative ideas for differentiated spelling activities to use with students. Janet Allen talks about work banks for older students in her book Yellow Brick Roads. Debbie Diller’s resource Literacy Work Stations has an appendix thicker than some novels filled with reproducibles for word work stations. What is a favorite word work resource of yours? Please share.

I encourage you to reflect on your current spelling practices and how students not only score on their weekly spelling test, but also how they apply their spelling skills into their writing.  This would be a great topic of discussion in grade levels and an opportunity to share what's working, what's not working and what I can do to help support you.

Mid-week update

Quite a few questions have come my way the past week, which lets me know I haven't clearly communicated to everyone, so here's an update to hopefully clear it all up:

Q. What meeting is When?
*Wednesday, January 18 is a K-12 staff meeting for Mr. Wallesverd and Mr. Modaff to communicate tech budgeting plans for next year.  K-3 staff will get to leave and 4/5th grade staff will stay for some additional information. The MS/HS staff meeting will continue after those updates.

*Our Elementary Professional Learning Meeting is moved to NEXT week on Wednesday, January 25.

*The Tech Tuesday is also now having to be moved to Tuesday,
January 31st to talk google docs (MS/HS staff will also be invited).


Q. What am I doing wrong with the google calendar for the computer lab? I signed up, but two of us ended up in there at the same time!
Here's the common problem I'm finding. When you first create an event, it usually defaults to your own personal calendar which is only visible to you. You have to make sure to change it to the "El Lab 102" calendar or no one will see that you are scheduled for the lab.  It looks like this:

WRONG WAY

RIGHT WAY

Q. What's the schedule for Report & Planning day?
My schedule for you...report and plan! :) (Actually, MY schedule includes a couple of free online webinars I found to learn from). If you remember from the start of the year, instead of having 4 days of leaving at 3:00 (which is crazy to keep track of), you can all leave by 1:30 on Monday if you would like.

Q. How do we get started with IXL? Do you want information sent home?
I'm still trying to figure it out myself so I can send you detailed information. Teachers designated for each grade level should have received an email with information to login and start adding students to your roster...as you type names, they should automatically pop up. One teacher started this, but did find a few students not showing up (and then forgot to save which meant she lost them!) I'm hoping to get you info by Thursday afternoon.

Q. I lost your email (or a meeting date), can you send it again? 
That's the wonderful thing about my memo blog...you receive my entire post in your email (and probably forget that it's from my blog), but if you just go to http://johnsonmemo.blogspot.com you will see all my previous memos and the google calendar of staff/student events on the right side. If you remember there was a post about something a few weeks or months ago that you want to find, but don't want to scroll down through several pages, on the bottom right side you'll find a blog archive that looks like this:

This shows you the most recent posts. If you want to find something back from 2011, just click that little triangle next to it and it will show you previous months:

My goal is to make things super easy for you to find!

Q. Are you going to cancel school tomorrow?

I just had to throw that one in for fun...are the kids asking you this as much as they're asking me!? ;) 

Monday Memo - Week of January 16th

Great Things I Noticed Last Week:
*A recently retired teacher (from another district) was a guest teacher in our building for the first time this week and shared with me how wonderful it was. She said our students are amazing and that the whole building just feels like a great place to be!
*Students using mini "retell ropes" during their read-to-self choice after a whole class mini-lesson on how to use this tool to retell a story (versus telling everything they remember about it, or not enough information).
*5th Grade band students were working hard to improve their songs to "beat" the SMARTMusic program they use.  As they play, the music notes on the SMARTBoard turn green if played correctly and red if not and then gives a percentage at the end.  They could also hear their recorded song and then each time they wanted to play again to beat the previous percentage.  What a great use of technology!

Events This Week:
Monday - Jump Rope for Heart Kick-Off Assembly
Wednesday - DART Meetings in Horicon (2nd Grade AM/ 3rd grade PM)
                   3:05 K-12 Staff Meeting in Media Center for Tech Updates (it shouldn't be a full half hour, although 4/5th grade teachers will need to stay a bit longer than K-3 staff)
                   - I will be gone at a Title 1 Workshop this day (along with Sue, Patty, Joyce, and Jenny)
Friday - SIT Day (we will have a couple of rotating guest teachers to relieve classroom teachers for SIT meetings throughout the day.)
            Staff Social Lunch

"Nuts & Bolts" Notes:
*If you still have your combined meeting list from the start of the year, I had scheduled our next elementary staff learning meeting for this Wednesday, but after DART had been scheduled for the same day I rescheduled this meeting for NEXT Wednesday on the google calendar (and just forgot to tell you all!).  As you see from the events above, we do have a tech update meeting this Wednesday and will still have our meeting next Wednesday. I apologize for any confusion.
*As you meet in your grade level PLC's I encourage you to start out your meetings sharing a celebration of something that went well or share an idea with your team.  We have so much to learn from each other! 

Tech Tips:

I've had a few people ask me, "what does web 2.0 mean?"  I'm not sure of the exact definition, but to me, it's any online tool that allows you to communicate with others, contribute, etc.  This weekend on my professional blog, I posted my list of Web 2.0 tools that I use on a regular basis.  If you're interested, you can check it out HERE.

Friday Focus - January 6

 "Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him." ~Richard McKenna

Over Christmas break I discovered a book that is a MUST read...The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller.  I think it should go hand-in-hand with The Daily Five. Miller's passion for reading and motivating students to read was inspiring and practical throughout the entire book.  Miller is a 6th grade Language Arts teacher, but I think there is still a lot to be gained for even our kindergarten teachers to read.  If you're interested in checking it out, there are 5 copies in the professional section of the media center (I also have a copy I'd be happy to loan out).

Miller shares her initial enthusiasm followed by the ultimate failure of her early reading units where she used strategies such as using whole-class novels, comprehension worksheets, and key vocabulary terms. She takes you through her journey to now having her students read 40+ books a year...books by their choice and never finding a student she couldn't "reach" with reading (even struggling readers).

I'd love to give you my summary or key points, but I'm afraid I wouldn't give the book the justice it deserves, so instead, I'd like to just share  a self-reflection activity that she shares with teachers.  In the chapter on "Walking the Walk," Miller writes about how important it is for teachers to lead the way with motivation for reading by sharing with your students things about you as a reader.  Here are some questions she gives for teachers to reflect on to "find your inner reader" so you can better share your reading experiences with your students:

• What were your reading experiences as a child?
• Were these positive or negative experiences for you?
• Do you see yourself as a reader now?
• How do you share your reading experiences--both current experiences and those from the past--with your students?
• With which group of readers in your classroom do you most identify?
• Who have been your role models for reading?
• List the last five books you have read.
• How long did it take for you to read these books?
• Which books were read for a job or for a school-related purpose?
• Which books were read for pleasure?

Since reading her book, I have begun reading much more than I did in the past.  I also gained the idea of encouraging 4/5th graders to bring their books to the lunch line to "steal reading minutes" and enjoy that my lunch conversations with students are on the books they are reading...they've actually added to my "to read" pile (or maybe I should call it a mountain).  I only wish I could go back in time to teach my former students to inspire them the way Miller does.

If you read her book, I'd love to hear about it.  Also, you can find her blog here and know that she's working on a 2nd book (I have already chatted with her on twitter in response to her book and to ask that question!)

 "No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance." ~Atwood H. Townsend

Monday Memo - Week of January 9

Great Things I Noticed Last Week:
*During a class meeting activity, sportsmanship came up as a natural lesson...tied in great with their review of recess procedures/game rules that day.
*During 1st grade social studies they not only read about earthquakes and tsunamis, but also watched a few parts of video clips to make the topic come to life and build their background knowledge as they continued to learn about them.
*During Daily 5, some students that chose Work on Writing were writing thank you letters for their Christmas gifts.  Years ago I might have seen this as non-academic, but after learning with all of our on our Daily 5 journey and from Regie Routman that students need to have choice and write for practical reasons, I now see that this is a perfect choice for students to write!
*We started encouraging 4/5th graders to bring their books with them to the lunch line so they can "steal reading minutes" in their day (I learned this from The Book Whisperer).  Many students were very excited about this--we had 37 one day reading in line by choice. One student told his teacher, "I love the new rule that we can bring a book to lunch. It keeps us calm and relaxed and we can read a good fit book, just like Daily 5!" (By the way, if you're curious about The Book Whisperer, I 'll be writing about in this week's Friday Focus)

Events This Week:
Monday-Visit from Kathy Schmitt, Literacy Specialist from CESA 6 (you may see her with me doing some classroom observations to see our LLI students in both regular classrooms and LLI intervention)
   -Probationary Teachers meeting after school
Tuesday - Tech Committee Meeting after school. Even if you're not on the committee, we would love your input of website features. Please add to the google doc.
Friday - 5K Field Trip

Tech Tips
In case you missed last Friday's email, here is the screencast to get on google calendar to sign up for the computer lab:

Friday Focus - January 6

This week's Friday Focus is going to be a "guest post" from another Daily 5 teacher, Laura Komos who is now going to be a regular addition to the Sisters' Tip of the Week.  I've shared Laura's blog a few times now and enjoy learning from her reflections on teaching with Daily 5/Cafe in her classroom.  

I've shared a countless number of times how much I have learned by connecting with other educators on twitter.  With the announcement of Twitter being opened up after student contact hours, I wanted to share with you Laura's recent post on the benefits of Twitter from a Teacher (if you want to ask a Dodgeland teacher, just let me know and I'll share some go-to people to ask what they think).

With permission from Laura, here is her post which can also be found on the Sisters' site:

Twitter Tidbits: Twitter Has Changed My Life!

by Laura Komos

Twitter has changed my life. Yes. You read that correctly! I'll admit, when I first joined Twitter, I had absolutely no clue what I was doing or how it all worked. My first tweet on January 18, 2010 was, "I'm on Twitter. Now what?" followed by the exact same tweet months later. Once I got past the initial fear of having no idea how it all worked, I started jumping in and figuring it all out. It's almost two years later now, and I can say with absolute certainty that Twitter has changed my life. In fact, Twitter has changed my life in ways I never dreamed possible!

Twitter has become an invaluable addition to my professional development. It is the world's largest (and arguably best) PLN (Personal Learning Network)! I can learn 24 hours a day, 7 days a week if I choose to. I've connected with like-minded educators from across the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. I have a support system, as well as a network of friends who push my thinking daily!

Not only have I become a writer because of Twitter, but my Tweeps encouraged me to start a class blog and individual blogs for my students. Through these connections, I also co-hosted a blog book chat around Patrick Allen's book Conferring with author/teacher Cathy Mere and first grade teacher Jill Fisch. Last month, Stenhouse Publishers and author Kassia Omohundro Wedekind approached me to be one of four blog stops focused on Kassia's new book, Math Exchanges.

On a weekly basis, my Canadian friend Melody and I co-moderate (host and facilitate) a chat about the Daily Five/Cafe. I also participate in a weekly first grade teacher chat so that I can connect and share ideas with my global grade-level teammates. I've also added so many books to my To-Be-Read pile, thanks to my tweeps and especially Donalyn Miller's monthly TitleTalk chat!

Last week, I met many of my Twitter friends at the NCTE convention held in Chicago. Never before did I find myself surrounded by so many passionate, brilliant educators! Because I am able to customize my list of who I follow, I have created my own network of book-loving, techy, child-centered teachers. 

Ultimately it was also Twitter that brought Joan, Gail and me together! Because their thinking has so greatly impacted my teaching life, I think my connection to them has been one of my very favorite Twitter benefits. Sitting down for coffee and chatting about writing for them was (and still is) very surreal. I thank them.. and Twitter.

In the weeks to come, I'll be sharing some tips and tricks for getting started on Twitter! If you're like me and enjoy just jumping in, be sure to look me up (@Komos72!) See you soon! 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 If there's interest, I can share more about twitter at our February Tech Tuesday.  If you want to try it on your own, here's a checklist to get started once you make your account.  And of course, I'd be glad to help with any questions you may have. 

Happy Weekend! :)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! Monday Memo - Week of January 3rd

Welcome back! I hope that you all enjoyed time with family/friends and are rejuvenated for 2012!   

Routine and Behavior Review: For the first 2 weeks back to school we will need to review behavior expectations. It may seem like our vacation went very quickly, but it went just quickly enough for our students to forget every classroom/school routine we taught them before break! :)

When reviewing student expectations, please take some time to review expectations for the classrooms, hallways, bathrooms, etc.  It would also be wise to review your I-Charts for your literacy blocks.  Before break I was noticing that the hallways were getting very noisy and disruptive during the morning recess transition times.  Please practice these expectations with your classes as a review. It’s always interesting to find what they seem to have forgotten over break. 


Upcoming Events (The google calendar to the right should be updated as well)

*January 18th: DART meeting for 2nd Grade (7:45-10:45) and 3rd Grade (12:15-3:15) at Horicon.
*January 9-20: SRI testing window for 3-5th grades
*January 20th:After attending Jim Wright's RTI conference we are going to be making some "tweaks" to our SIT (Student Intervention Team) process.  One change includes scheduling one day per month for SIT meetings and having guest teacher coverage to relieve teachers.  Our first SIT day will be January 20th.  I am working on scheduling the students that I know we need to follow up on from previous meetings, so please let me know ASAP if you have any other students that you have concerns with and would like to meet with the Student Intervention Team for assistance.
 *January 24-February 3: SMI Testing window for 2-5th grades
*Data Days-due to a conference the same week, I am moving the Data Day meetings for 1st/3rd grades to Thursday, February 16th.  So the Data Days schedule is: 5K/2nd on Feb 8th, 5th/4th on Feb 10th and 3rd/1st on Feb 16th.

"Nuts & Bolts" Notes
*Benchmark Assessments-Sometime between now and your grade level's Data Day meeting you need to assess your students that started below grade level with the benchmark assessment.  Looking at the list of students, this means a range of #'s per teacher to assess from 2 up to 12 (the higher numbers are in the upper grades that Jenny and I helped assess).  This should be a doable number of students to assess without guest teacher coverage during your Daily 5 block.  Please let me know if you need any assistance or are concerned about completing these by then.

*Wisconsin DPI is joining the Nation in participation of Digital Learning Day on Wednesday, February 1st. You can find out all about it HERE The basic point of Digital Learning Day is to try something new involving digital learning in your classroom...not just a new flashy tech tool, but something to enhance learning.  If you need any help trying something for this day--please let me know and I'd be glad to help!

Tech Tips
*You've all heard me talk about twitter for quite a while now. If you want to check it out without starting an account, here's a helpful screencast to show you how you can check it out: