October Book Blog- Pathways to the Common Core Ch. 1-4

"Pathways to the Common Core" Reflection

Square

"The Common Core Standards are a big deal. Adopted by forty-five states so far, the standards represent the most sweeping reform of the K-12 curriculum that has ever occurred in this country. It is safe to say that across the entire history of American education, no single document will have played a more influential role over what is taught in our schools. The standards are already affecting what is published, mandated, and tested in schools--and also what is marginalized and neglected. Any educator who wants to play a role in shaping what happens in schools, therefore, needs a deep understanding of these standards. That understanding is necessary for anyone wanting to be a co-constructor of the future of instruction and curriculum and, indeed, of public education across America." (Calkins, 1)

When reading this book, this is one of the very first quotes that stuck out to me, mainly because the Common Core Standards are such a big deal. I remember when I was interviewing to become a teacher and every single principal must have asked me "So what do you know about the Common Core?" I remember being bewildered not having a clue what they were even talking about. I quickly learned and became very familiar with the standards. This quote resonated with me particularly because of what it says how the standards are affecting what is marginalized and neglected in schools. The new standards call for teachers to not just teach students the "what" and the "how", but it also requires them to dig into the "why" as well. For many years, that was often the big piece of the puzzle that many students were missing and were just in school just to be in school but not really understanding why they were learning what they were learning. Because of this was the main reason that this quote squared with my thinking about the implementation and use of the Common Core State Standards.

Triangle

"When NCLB expectations became the law of the land, there was zero emphasis on writing. Writing was not even mentioned in those mandates. What a reversal! Now, in these new standards, the emphasis on writing standards is parallel to and equal to the emphasis on reading, and furthermore, one can't help but think that reading will be assessed through writing, making writing even more critical." (Calkins, 10)

When I read this quote I initially got excited! Anybody who knows me, knows how passionate I am about writing and why I think it is so important especially with young children. The fact that in the past there was zero emphasis on writing really concerns me on how my generation and the generation before me was taught when the subject of writing was considered. It excites me to know that with these new standards, an emphasis is placed that reading and writing somewhat go hand-in-hand. As Flint says, "Children learn to read and write by reading and writing." Being that I am a Kindergarten teacher and that I plan writing for my team, I am grateful to have been able to engage with the text and understand how to better make use of the standards in the classroom and help my students to understand them as well.

Circle

"Undoubtedly students will need explicit instruction in high-level comprehension. They'll need a repertoire of strategies that undergird these reading skills. They'll need skills broken down into manageable steps, and then they'll need to practice these steps and get expert feedback along the way. They'll need lots of repeated practice, on a variety of texts. As they do this practice, teachers will need assessments that will allow them to carefully calibrate their teaching, to move kids up levels of skill and text difficulty. They'll also need structures that will make reading work visible--structures such as reading partners and clubs, which give students opportunities to have the rich literary conversations about fiction and nonfiction that the standards call for. Teachers will also need to focus on methods of giving feedback while kids are practicing these skills, with gradual release and decreasing scaffolds, to lead students to internalize these skills." (Calkins, 30)

This particular quote still circles around in my head because it describes the methodological process of how to explicitly teach high-level comprehension. Although I agree with the build upon process the author has set in place, that still doesn't lower my anxiety about properly executing this in the classroom. For some reason this year I feel as if I am constantly being observed and instead of focusing on if whether or not what I am doing is truly benefiting students and meeting their needs, I am more focused on "Am I doing this right?" I am working to shift my mindset about this but I can't help but to feel if I am one step off that my students might not fully learn and master all that they need to know before they leave my care and head toward First Grade. Because of this, I am thoroughly excited about continuing to read and learn about how to use the Common Core Standards in an effort to inform my practice and work for the betterment of my students.

April Theory in Practice Connections

April has seen to just come and go! With Spring Break taking up a week of our time together, I was nervous that my students would fall behind in this month, however, they surprised me so much with how far they have come! It's just very rewarding as an educator to see students who came in not even speaking have full on conversations about their learning and being very excited to share what they know to others. I am just honored to have had a helping hand in helping my little people blossom. I think that this month I was trying to make learning as fun and hands-on as possible also while trying to be culturally responsive to my students various backgrounds. I also have been trying to focus more on letting students take control of their own learning. The challenges I have been experiencing is their age level and them not necessarily knowing how to take ownership of their learning and looking to me for directions and answers all at once. I've been attempting to introduce strategies to show them just how powerful they can be even for little people.

I big subject that I really wanted my students to do more of this month was science. As I was going over the standards and everything we've covered so far. I noticed that they have had very little opportunities to really build their scientific thinking and act as scientists so I wanted to make sure that they got the opportunity to do just that.

                                                                

Recording the life cycle of a butterfly                                                        Experimenting with electricity

It was so great really engaging with a topic that they don't get explicitly taught as much and really being interested in the content.

In doing the Digital Storytelling Project, exploring my students' communities was also a big challenge for me as well mainly because my students do not come from the safest of neighborhoods. However, as I reflected when piecing the project together, I really that there are so many strengths that my students possess just by being a resident of their neighborhood and there is also value and knowledge that they bring with them to the classroom as a result of it. I wanted to expand upon this and let my students be able to see themselves and their communities within the realms of our classroom.

                                

I think that our classroom community has grown so much as a result of these projects! I am extremely excited to see how much further we will go together as we continue to learn and grow. By the same token, it saddens me to know that I only have one more month to make a lasting impact on these phenomenal students' lives. I am doing my best to make the most out of my time left with them and can't wait to witness their growth in the end.

March Theory in Practice Connections

March was definitely a month of growth for both myself and my students! I think collectively we learned so much about ourselves and what we could do individually and as a class! I can definitely say that this month was really centered on strategies around building students conceptual knowledge of mathematics as well as get them really thinking about their thinking. I can't believe how far we've come together and yet how close we are to the end. However, considering our late start I think that we've been making remarkable strides.

The biggest challenges that we were seeing in the classroom this month were getting friends to get along with one another and really learn how to show empathy towards each other. I remember discussing in our psychology class about how understanding the feelings and emotions of others can be a difficult trait to grasp for four-year-olds because most of them are still in that preoccupational stage. I really learned to leverage Bailey's text as a guide for a lot of strategies to help my students learn to be caring towards how they make others feel.

I think one of the coolest and most memorable lessons that we had during the month of March was watching my students learn to decompose numbers which I thought would be really difficult for them to grasp at first but they rocked it. I taught them all of the different ways to decompose numbers and then I let them explore with these different methods in their math stations.

They could find it in books!  

Build it!

Make it in the ten-frame!

Draw it on the number line!

And use the geoboards to make it!

Watching my kids actively engage in these math centers made me so very proud to watch! The only thing that didn't go as well as I would have liked for it to was the transition to the different centers the first time we engaged in the activity mainly because they were so eager to try all the centers because they were so excited! However, I can tell that students actually learned from these engagements because the assessments to follow up were remarkable.

      

My little people definitely surprised me with all of the great things that they were able to accomplish in mathematics and the biggest thing that I learned was when work is fun, engaging, relative, and hands-on to students, that is truly when they learn the best and are more likely to retain knowledge. Now my kids can spot the number four out a mile away no matter what form it comes in!

Can't wait to see where April brings us! :-)

Morning Meeting (1-100)

First off, let me start by saying how much I have enjoyed reading this book so far! I was so excited to actually have a copy of this book and to be able to use it because Morning Meeting is an essential part of Pre-K. It not only gives children the opportunity to see value and importance in all of their classmates, but it also really helps students to develop their socioemotional skills.

The author does a great job so far with providing little anecdotal stories throughout the chapters because it really helps you to visualize how this could actually play out in a classroom. I also like the fact that the purpose of each topic is discussed so that the teacher can understand why it is so essential. Including possible questions that may arise for teachers reading the book and providing the answers to each question was extremely helpful especially for somebody like me. However, the true treasure of the book (and yes this is me peeking way ahead) is the appendix provided at the back of the book that gives you boundless resources.

Now I am going to provide some key quotes that really stuck out to me in the book:

Research indicates that educators who establish firm boundaries, foster warm personal relationships in the classroom, and enable students to have an impact on their environment strengthen students' attachment to their school, their positive behaviors. (Elias et al. 1997, 44)

This was one of the first quotes that I definitely wanted to take note of mainly because when I started in my classroom I had to get acquainted with my students and I knew the best way for me to do that was to immediately attempt to form relationships with them. I knew that that a way to do this was through Morning Meeting. It was just really comforting to know that research has been done to prove that by establishing the positive relationships with students it benefits them in more ways than one.

Meetings are rich with opportunities for students to assume responsibility and actively participate. (Kriete, 1999, p. 23)

This quote stood out to me because it was accompanied by a photo of two students up writing on the Morning Message. Reading this quote and looking at the picture just made me think about how the meeting is really less about me and more about students. They should be able to run the entire meeting while the teacher is just there as a facilitator. However, I know that for my kids they would need a lot of modeling and opportunities to practice before they could virtually run the morning meeting with less guidance from me. But, it is a great thought to have in mind for the beginning of the year because you have more time to really teach students how to take ownership of Morning Meeting.

Most teachers find it helpful to have a sign-up system which ensures that each child is a sharer at least once a week. Children sign up to share the day before Meeting or that same morning. Another way is to assign each child a regular day for sharing. (Kriete, 1999, p. 61)

I was sooooo happy to read this!! I have been having a huge issue in my class with children not being able to understand that not everyone will get a chance to share all at once and that we all have to take turns to share. Also, it helped me to consider the children who never get a chance to share at all. I think a sharing sign-up sheet is totally doable for my students. However, I think that the first couple of implementations of this would definitely consist of me assigning children to share for that day. I also do think it could work with students signing up for a day once they understand the method of how signing up works and the guidelines that go with it. I think this idea could be really beneficial for some of my more chatty students and it would also give them a reason behind why they have to take turns sharing.

Younger children tend to blurt out what they need to say when they need to say it. With the help of their teacher, however, they are very able to recognize that some news is serious and demands a different kind of response than other, lighter news.

This quote was very relevant to my classroom setting because my students always tend to blurt out things when students are in mid-sentence of presenting. I have found this to be something very difficult for me to get around during Circle Time. Lately I've been trying to give some students something else related to the topic to discuss while I am talking to the rest of the students about the topic. It seems to have been working in terms of blurting out but I'm not sure if it's really effective in terms of them paying attention. However, I am glad the book touched on this a little. I just wish they would've suggested more resources about how to teach young children to begin to take turns in conversations.

All in all, I have really enjoyed reading the first couple of pages of Morning Meeting and like I stated earlier, I am extremely excited to have the book! The information that I have been discovering from it has been priceless and I cannot wait to see what other considerations are present when thinking about how to facilitate  one of the most important parts of the day.

 

 

February Theory in Practice Connections

February has definitely been such an eye opener for me! I've learned so much about myself and my kids in this short but sweet month (the snow days didn't help much with shortening the month even more lol) All in all, I must say this was a big month for WRITING! I want my students to engage more with pleasure writing so I allowed for them for them to have ample opportunities to write whenever they want and for whatever reason. I really wanted my students to have journals so that I could make free writing easily accessible for them, however, of course my school doesn't have the funds to provide for such a resource (yes this is sarcasm) But despite that, I had to get creative so I made notebooks for my kids using construction paper and by placing writing tablet paper on the inside. I also put my students' names and pictures on the front of them to add its own personalized flare. Students have started off by recording things they learned about in the stories we had been reading:

These writing engagements have been really remarkable to watch and are perfect ways to assess students to see for one, if they were actually interested in the story (because they want to write about it) and for two, whether or not they understood the objective that was at hand.

The Strategies that Work text has been working wonders for me so far and I'm so excited to try out and fail, succeed, and experiment with many more strategies. The ones that were really fun was my first attempts with the List/Group/Label strategy and also the Turn & Talks. At first my kids were really confused as to how to turn and talk to their neighbors but now they seem to really like it and it gives them an opportunity to get those talkative jitters out. 

This month we really talked a lot about Famous African Americans which I thought may have been a difficult concept for my students to grasp but they were so interested and engaged. They didn't know that they, too, could grow up to invent something or be famous for an awesome reason. My goal in the future is to not only talk to them about Famous African Americans during February, but make it an ongoing discussion throughout the year. 

I noticed that a lot of my lows this month were  in mathematical instruction. I'm really excited about diving deep in the Van de Walle text and finding more innovative ways to really effective instruct my students and create an excitement about math for them. 

I also really benefited from reading Conscious Discipline this month and addressing my idea of Positive Intent and what Choices mean in my classroom. In reading these chapters, I found out about a lot of great new ideas that I plan to really try to implement in my classroom to make it a better place for both my students and myself. I'm nervous about entering March mainly because I feel like it's grind time and it's so many things I still haven't covered yet that they need to know before they go to Kindergarten. I feel so much pressure on myself especially for some of my students who are still falling behind a little bit. However, I plan to make the best of this month and learn all I can about my students and ask them about the personal goals that they have for themselves and what they want to learn and try my best to meet those needs so if I am not able to do as much as I wanted to, above all else, I was able to do something that matters to my kids! :-)

January Theory in Practice Connections

Wow! January has been an eventful month to say the least! From being shut down on the first day back due to the icy cold temperatures to explaining to my students where snow comes from, January was definitely a great month to build upon my little ones' exploratory skills!

I think I have grown so much as an educator and am really beginning to feel my way throughout navigating my classroom and helping my students really become comfortable with the classroom setting. I can say that I'm really looking forward to diving into the Morning Meeting book because I feel like my students are starting to get bored with the same routine every day. We greet each other, we go over the months, the days, and we even do some counting and they are just over it! Right now I've just been trying to think of different ways to make it more interesting to them because some of them still haven't mastered these important skills yet and I just want them to be well prepared for Kindergarten. Luckily, I've been very good lately with thinking on my toes so once I notice that the morale is low, I've been trying to spice things up more and make the months seem more interesting than they really are lol

If I had to pick a theme for the month of January I definitely would say that I really keyed in on my students' interests. We have been talking about Wind and Water this month and I was really amazed to see how they could think scientifically and a lot of their thoughts and observations and even the connections they were able to make was just really remarkable to witness

It was really rewarding to me as an educator to hear my students leave from school telling their parents about all of the interesting things that they had learned for that day. I'm really looking forward to continuing to speak with them about things that matter to them and finding ways to incorporate those things into my lessons.

In terms of progress with my students, I would say writing has been one of their most improved area collectively and they also really enjoy it. I was already proud to see that almost all of my students are able to identify their names but now it's even better to see many of them try to write it! 

At the end of the day, I think little moments like Malik being so excited that he can finally identify that little letter between the "l" and the "k" in his name that had been troubling him or moments when Marley can literally retell the entire story to his classmates with supporting details without assistance from the teacher really make being not only an educator, but an educator of little people so much more worth it. I'm looking forward to seeing what February brings & I can't wait to talk about African Americans who have made strides in history to my students! :-)