Friday Focus - Nov. 30

"Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much." - Helen Keller

We had great discussions during grade level meetings this week.  It is really amazing to hear the progress you and your students are making with Math Expressions.  I also enjoyed some of the great collaboration to share new ideas and to help brainstorm to help with specific issues some of you are dealing with in your classrooms.

Events Next Week:
Monday: Mentors/Probationary Teachers Meeting at 3:05
Tuesday/Wednesday: I will be at CESA 6
Thursday: Documentation Log training after school (you can attend this one or the one on December 13).  I will keep it brief in case you need to leave for an XPD class.
Saturday: Elementary Dance team is competing at Watertown (I saw them last night at the BBall game and they were ADORABLE!)

"Nuts & Bolts" Notes:

• Here is the google doc of notes from grade level meetings. I got pulled out a few times to deal with issues, so there may be some "holes" in the notes.
• I contacted another school to see what they find most useful for thinkcentral.com. Here's what they said:

1.        Look at the manual online for planning at home so they don’t have to haul their manual home

2.       Displaying homework on the screen (with and/or without the answers hidden) so students can correct their own homework when they come in

3.       Print off and and all items they need from the resource index (this is awesome!)

4.       Display workbook page to talk through problems and have students write on them on their Smartboards when doing whole group instruction

Special ed teachers love that they can print off things from many grade levels to find what fits for each of their students!  Our middle school sped use this site to access stuff from grades 3, 4, 5 for their students who are that low. 

Blogs, Pins & Tweets...Oh My! 

@Joe_Mazza: If you are "grading homework," you are in a sense grading the home support/lack there of of all of your students #vachat

Monday Memo - Week of November 26

Since I missed a Friday Focus last week, it's going to be today!
I hope that you all enjoyed a wonderful 4 day holiday weekend with your families. Believe it or not, I actually relaxed and avoided school work for most of the time.  It was wonderful!

 But now, it's back to reality. 

I know that I've said this each year, but want to say it again. Many of us enjoy this time of year—shopping for gifts, decorating, baking cookies, etc. For some of our students, this is not a festive time of year due to the financial hardships their families face. It can even get to be a stressful time for these children that hear their parents talk about no money for Christmas or even the possibility of losing electricity. I don’t mean to depress you, but just ask that you keep this in mind and pay attention to these particular students in your class that may be going through hard times.

Events this Week:
Tuesday- Grade Level Meetings in the Data Room
 Rock River Reading Council Meeting and Presentation on Text Complexity with the Common Core in the evening (dinner starts at 5:15 pm)
Wednesday-Friday - I will be out of the building all 3 days for a FEMA training (remember those online emergency tests you took last Spring? This will be 3 full days of it...I should be an expert on emergencies by Friday.)
Thursday - Elementary dancers will be performing during half-time at the Varsity BBall game

"Nuts & Bolts" Notes:
*Mrs. Bartlett will be taking student made Christmas ornaments to the Juneau Public Library on Thursday, November 29th.  The Library tree lighting program is Sunday, December 2nd.

Blogs, Pins & Tweets...Oh my!

• Different ways to use a favorite formative assessment in the classroom: The Exit Slip

• Here's a blog post from @LauraKomos who often writes for the Daily Cafe site.  I'm sure many of you can relate to her post talking about the progress her class has made each year since she first started teaching with Daily5/Cafe. 

Read more HERE how this teacher taught students to "dig deeper" in their writing.

Flipped Staff meeting for November

This post is in place of my "Monday Musings" and our Staff Meeting due to this crazy time of year with everything going on. Please take 8 minutes of your time this week to watch the video and take the survey at the bottom of this post.  I do give a preview of our math PD time together on Wednesday, so preferably watch it Monday or Tuesday. You will see links below for the items I talk about.
 (There are no brownie points for counting the number of times I say "umm"!)


Here are the links for items I discuss in the video
List of 6 Traits books in the Instructional Media Center 
Grade Level Meeting Notes
Hudsonville District Math Parent Information Website
K/1 Parent Presentation
2/3 Parent Presentation
4/5 Parent Presentation

Friday Focus - Nov. 16

Image by Krissy Venosdale

It's been a long (or maybe too quick?) couple of weeks with WKCE testing, end of the quarter, math visits, etc.  I really appreciate your dedication to our students and our ongoing learning.  While visiting Appleton with the 3/4th grades, we had great conversation, learned a lot, but also got affirmation for the incredible work we are doing at Dodgeland.  I can't wait to hear the continued discussions next week during our PD time on Wednesday.

"Nuts & Bolts" Notes
*Notes from grade level meetings can be found HERE Thank you to Joyce and Jenny for taking notes while I was out giving make-up WKCE tests!
*Monday's staff meeting will be "flipped." If you haven't heard the term flipped classroom yet, this is when a teacher has students watch a video/lesson at home and then they do the actual work in the classroom. With this busy time of the year and an XPD session Monday at 3:30, I really just have some informational things and there's no reason to meet in that case (especially with PD on Wednesday). So I am going to "flip" our meeting and make a brief video clip with the notes of what I would share in our meeting.  I will post it this weekend in place of my Monday Musings post.  Please just plan to watch it some time next week. If you are sad that we're not meeting, feel free to meet with me after school ;)

Events this week:
Monday- no meeting (see note above)
Wednesday - Professional Development Day
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Blogs, Pins, and Tweets...Oh My!
*If you are "grading homework," you are in a sense grading the home support/lack there of of all of your students. (@Joe_Mazza)
*"Great teachers teach at the speed of learning. They teach the student, not the lesson."(@Blankenship_S)
*How to deal with an Energy Vampire by Jon Gordon

For students struggling with attention span: Cut a file folder into strips. The shorter the attention span, the smaller you will cut the strips. I cut this one into 3 parts. Students open 1 flap at a time and always begin at the top and work their way down. Students complete the work that they can see when a flap is open.

Monday Musings - Week of November 12

Another blog post borrowed from Venspired, because when I read this I thought for sure she was reading my mind!!

Know Them

Your class. The kids in your school. Do you see them?  Do you really know them?
The kid that has messy hair and dirty clothing… do you judge his parents or do you realize his mom’s a single parent struggling to keep their home?  The child at the end of the hall screaming… do you think, ‘wow, that kid needs discipline,’ or do you realize it’s a child in Sensory Overload that has autism?  The kid who won’t make eye contact with you… do you think of that child as not having any manners or do you realize that he doesn’t have anyone at home to make eye contact with him, or say kind words to him?  The kid struggling to get along with others in the classroom… do you think he’s selfish, or do you realize his brother has Cancer and is in the hospital?  Maybe they are more worried about their home than your homework.  Maybe they have a disability you cannot see.  Maybe they have a worry in their little life that most adults can’t even handle.  Maybe it’s really not about seeing them with your eyes at all. Maybe it’s about knowing them all, with your heart, and being their support.  On the good days, the bad days, and every day in between.

Friday Focus -

Great things I Noticed this Week (small list due to testing...my apologies):

• Focus on manners in the classroom after the Hal Urban Book Discussion. 
• When Mrs. Thompson helped out with testing on Tuesday she mentioned the please/thank-you's from students when she passed out snacks!
• Relating students' fishing expertise to writing...you're fishing for readers as you write.  Just like you put bait on a hook to lure fish in, you need to write an opening line to lure readers in.

Events Next Week:
Monday - 3/4th grade teachers visit Appleton (more details to be emailed)
Veterans Day Assembly at 9:30 in the HS Gym
Tuesday - Grade Level Meetings Day
Report Cards to be distributed
Wednesday - Effectiveness Project Q/A's on the differences for Educational Specialists in Jenny's room at 3:05
Thursday - 1/2nd grade teachers visit Appleton in AM, 5K/5th grade in the PM (more details to be emailed)
Friday - Staff Social Lunch (4th grade/Cleary)
1st Quarter Dodgeland Pride Assembly 2:00 pm

"Nuts & Bolts" Notes:
*Just a reminder that we will be talking about the article "Keeping the Mini back in Mini-Lessons" at the grade level meetings.
*THANK YOU!! THANK YOU!! For your flexibility in making guest teacher plans to go to Appleton next week. I know it's not the best timing, but our best chance to see Math Expressions in action before our PD day on the 21st.  I appreciate all your hard work in learning with this new math program (and everything else, of course!)
*The WKCE test is officially over, however, I'll still be involved with in completing make-up testing for absent students in grades 3-8/10.

Pins, Blogs, and Tweets...Oh My!
 *Just in case you missed this in last week's Daily 5 Tip of the Week Newsletter, go HERE for the personal CAFE menu for students to fill out.
*Video clip on stating the objective at the start of the lesson (I've actually seen similar practices in several classrooms):

Monday Musings - Week of November 5

Teachers: If you're not seeing the images in your auto-emailed newsletter,

 just go to johnsonmemo.blogspot.com

Last school year I learned a great deal from the book Mindset, by Carol Dweck and shared my learning with you in this post. I don't know if anyone else also read this book, but I am starting to notice a lot of classroom practices and teachers talking in ways to encourage students to have a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. 

In one classroom, students were discussing the following quote: "We all make mistakes. That's why a pencil has an eraser."  I've been lucky enough to get into several classrooms during the math talk time to hear students explain their thinking or to see students writing to "Puzzled Penguin" to tell him what math mistake he made.

In another classroom during science stations, students were told "Don't worry if you get it wrong, just try to think of what it might be and then check to see if you're right. Think about the new things you're learning."  At the end of this class period, students' exit slips included listing 3 new things they learned.  What was most amazing to me is throughout this class period, one student stood out to me as the model reason of why we need to encourage students to have a growth mindset.  During an iPad quiz, I watched this student answer questions as quickly as possible and when she got them wrong, moved on without even paying attention to what the correct answer was so she could learn from it.  When she moved on to a partner quiz with student-made notecards, she was proud to share that she had 15 right and only 5 wrong. When I asked her what she learned from the 5 wrong she said, "oh, I guess I should look at them."  At the end of the class period when students were given the exit slips on 3 new things they learned, everyone started writing, but this student said, "I didn't learn anything new."

The teacher did everything she could to encourage students to focus on what new things they were learning, however, this particular student has already become so used to focusing on getting the right answers, that she hasn't learned how to learn from the wrong answers.  She was my "aha moment" of why we need to continue our work on helping our students to become passionate about learning, develop a growth mindset, and learn from mistakes.

If you're looking for great posters/quotes on this topic, I found great ones from Krissy Venosdale.  Here are some of my favorites:

 

 

 

Friday Focus - November 2

Great things I noticed last week:

• A class starting the day out with a quote of the day to discuss and incorporate character in just a few minutes a day.
• Use of the website www.storylineonline.net to show a story on the smartboard. If you haven't checked this site out, the stories are read in a very expressive and engaging way for students!
• To teach the comprehension strategy of visualization, students drew pictures to show what they visualized in their head as the teacher read a picture book (without letting them see any pictures). The teacher read the story again, this time stopping to compare/contrast what the book's illustrations were compared to what students had visualized.
• Using google docs with students (and even ready to try it again when it didn't go perfectly as planned!)
• What a first grader was struggling with a math problem, a friend asked, "Can I give some advice?" and then showed how he would solve it!
• Heard from a student in the hallway: "I wish we had a whole day of math!"

"Nuts & Bolts" Notes

• Thank you for the email responses of days/times to avoid for scheduling our Math Expressions visit to Appleton. I will work around those and give you a schedule as soon as I hear back.
• I'm putting a copy of the article Putting the "Mini" Back in Minilessons in mailboxes for classroom/reading teachers.  Please read this between now and our grade level meeting day on November 13th for us to discuss your reflections, thoughts, ideas to share, or struggles with keeping mini-lessons mini. 

Events Next Week:

*WKCE Testing for 3-5th grades Monday -Wednesday until 11:00

*WKCE Testing for 4th grade on Thursday until 10:05 am 

*PLEASE BE SILENT IN THE HALLWAYS DURING MORNING WKCE TESTING!!  Also please be aware that 3-5th grades have goofy morning recess schedules due to their testing and may end up outside with different grade levels than normal. Thank you for your flexibility with this and specials schedule changes for WKCE testing.  

Tuesday - I will be at CESA 6 for the Effectiveness Project (Lisa Breselow will be "me" for WKCE testing)

Wednesday - Fundraiser Pick-Up 3:00-5:00

Thursday - "College Going Culture" Meeting at 3:05 in Mr. Bothun's classroom
Planning ahead for the following week: The Veterans Day Assembly will be at 9:30 on Monday, November 12. 

Blogs, Pins, and Tweets...Oh My!
*Having a hard time coming up with report card comments? This google doc has a great list of suggestions.
*Looking for a book to read? Here's a list of what Regie Routman is reading. I connected personally with her habit of reading several books at one time.

Teach new phrases and ban "I can't" and "I don't know"

Sorting fiction/non-fiction using all those extra Scholastic book orders!