(3b) Using Questioning and Discussion Techniques
This year, the district I work in, implemented a new reading curriculum. The program is called Journey's and it has a lot of pieces to make it a successful curriculum for students. My team and I realized that we wanted to find a way to grab our students attention with this curriculum and really get them engaged. We thought about creating our own powerpoint slides, but with 6 units and at least 10 pages of instruction a day, plus all of the supplies to aide teaching, we figured we would look into what other people have created for Journey's. We ended up finding an incredible, interactive slide presentation on Teachers Pay Teachers. We buy the copyright licenses for every unit and split the cost between the four of us. We find it extremely helpful material for our students and if you look at the pictures I included, you can see why. The slides are created with student's in mind. The point of these lessons is to help the students learn the information, so why not make it as fun and engaging as possible?! Lessons last for a week and there are 5 lessons in each unit. With each new lesson, we have themes and fun activities to help students learn sight words, vocabulary, get excited about reading, and make connections. We have really found these lessons to help our students ask deeper level thinking questions and these power points definitely provide opportunities for discussions. They get really excited to come up and move the chick into its egg or the penguin onto the ice cap in order to match words and definitions or to uncover high frequency words.
This year, the district I work in, implemented a new reading curriculum. The program is called Journey's and it has a lot of pieces to make it a successful curriculum for students. My team and I realized that we wanted to find a way to grab our students attention with this curriculum and really get them engaged. We thought about creating our own powerpoint slides, but with 6 units and at least 10 pages of instruction a day, plus all of the supplies to aide teaching, we figured we would look into what other people have created for Journey's. We ended up finding an incredible, interactive slide presentation on Teachers Pay Teachers. We buy the copyright licenses for every unit and split the cost between the four of us. We find it extremely helpful material for our students and if you look at the pictures I included, you can see why. The slides are created with student's in mind. The point of these lessons is to help the students learn the information, so why not make it as fun and engaging as possible?! Lessons last for a week and there are 5 lessons in each unit. With each new lesson, we have themes and fun activities to help students learn sight words, vocabulary, get excited about reading, and make connections. We have really found these lessons to help our students ask deeper level thinking questions and these power points definitely provide opportunities for discussions. They get really excited to come up and move the chick into its egg or the penguin onto the ice cap in order to match words and definitions or to uncover high frequency words.
(3c) Engaging Students in Learning
My team has really helped me create some great student charts for testing growth. Together, we created Visible Learning Packets to chart students sight words, CORE test data, and IRI data. We find it to be a great visual for students and parents at conferences. It makes for great discussions in one-on-one conferences between me and my students as we go over where they started and compare it to where they are now. They love being able to color in their growth and to make connections as to what they have been working on to reach such a level of growth. As a second grade team, we also created a chart to compare Fall, Winter, and Spring MAP scores. This was also a helpful visual for parents at conferences and is beneficial for students to see where they are at, in this point of the year. We set goals together and hopefully in the Spring, a lot of my students can color higher than they have before. The other visual learning I love, is testing my students in their fluency books. The blue color code means that was their first read. The red means that was their second read. It is so exciting watching my students growth with just their words per minute. I have even started noticing more students read with expression instead of like a robot. Their skills are improving and they love charting their progress. I love providing all of these visuals to my students so that they can recognize their hard work paying off, but also staying in the right mindset to keep pushing through to get where they need to be by the end of second grade.
My team has really helped me create some great student charts for testing growth. Together, we created Visible Learning Packets to chart students sight words, CORE test data, and IRI data. We find it to be a great visual for students and parents at conferences. It makes for great discussions in one-on-one conferences between me and my students as we go over where they started and compare it to where they are now. They love being able to color in their growth and to make connections as to what they have been working on to reach such a level of growth. As a second grade team, we also created a chart to compare Fall, Winter, and Spring MAP scores. This was also a helpful visual for parents at conferences and is beneficial for students to see where they are at, in this point of the year. We set goals together and hopefully in the Spring, a lot of my students can color higher than they have before. The other visual learning I love, is testing my students in their fluency books. The blue color code means that was their first read. The red means that was their second read. It is so exciting watching my students growth with just their words per minute. I have even started noticing more students read with expression instead of like a robot. Their skills are improving and they love charting their progress. I love providing all of these visuals to my students so that they can recognize their hard work paying off, but also staying in the right mindset to keep pushing through to get where they need to be by the end of second grade.
(3d) Using Assessment in Instruction
I chose to include one of my formal observations from my principal because she mentioned multiple times about my ability to use assessment during my math lesson. All of the assessment strategies that my principal noticed, I use on a regular basis and find great success with in my classroom. I find myself using alot more formative assessments (exit tickets, think-pair-share, checks for understanding, etc.) as I teach lessons. I find these forms of assessment to be the most meaningful. I know it helps my students when I break up the monotony of me constantly talking, to guiding them and eventually just observing them discuss ideas with a peer. These are the experiences I feel are more beneficial for my students. Pulling their ideas out of their heads and putting them into words with another student is very effective. Also in my debrief, with my principal, we were able to discuss some ideas that she thinks would work well in my classroom for quick checks for understanding. She suggested that I have separate bins in my room for students to put their work in, based on how they feel it was, difficulty wise. My principal also suggested that I let my students write either a 1 (need a lot more help), 2 (struggled), or a 3 (independently solved and correct) at the top of their work so that I can pull kids back that need extra attention. Obviously, I would have to teach my students to take more ownership of their learning and understand what requires a teacher's help vs. the ability to solve independently. However, I think that these are both great ideas to help my students understand how they are doing with their work.
I chose to include one of my formal observations from my principal because she mentioned multiple times about my ability to use assessment during my math lesson. All of the assessment strategies that my principal noticed, I use on a regular basis and find great success with in my classroom. I find myself using alot more formative assessments (exit tickets, think-pair-share, checks for understanding, etc.) as I teach lessons. I find these forms of assessment to be the most meaningful. I know it helps my students when I break up the monotony of me constantly talking, to guiding them and eventually just observing them discuss ideas with a peer. These are the experiences I feel are more beneficial for my students. Pulling their ideas out of their heads and putting them into words with another student is very effective. Also in my debrief, with my principal, we were able to discuss some ideas that she thinks would work well in my classroom for quick checks for understanding. She suggested that I have separate bins in my room for students to put their work in, based on how they feel it was, difficulty wise. My principal also suggested that I let my students write either a 1 (need a lot more help), 2 (struggled), or a 3 (independently solved and correct) at the top of their work so that I can pull kids back that need extra attention. Obviously, I would have to teach my students to take more ownership of their learning and understand what requires a teacher's help vs. the ability to solve independently. However, I think that these are both great ideas to help my students understand how they are doing with their work.
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