Hello and welcome to my first ever blog post!
I have to be honest here, I am a huge nerd and spend the majority of my summer messing around with different classroom ideas. For this first post I want to compare my preparation going into my first year last year and what I’m doing now to prepare for this upcoming year.
Last year was my first year as a lead teacher and I changed grade levels from 4th to 3rd grade. Prior to this I was an Educational Associate, or TA, for a year and a half. If I’m being honest here, I didn’t think the grade change would be an issue– what’s one year? I was so completely wrong. The maturity level of brand new third graders is way different than fourth. They are still so needy and I myself am definitely an “upper elementary” personality. Needy and I don’t mix. After my first week I made it a priority to foster independence with my kiddos.
I also spent a lot of my time not really having a set purpose for each part of my day. Throw morning meeting off to the side without any purpose, transitions taking too long, more time telling and less time making expectations and learning easily accessible to my students. A huge first year teacher problem.
So, I decided this year I would change that. I would sit down and map out what a typical day in my classroom would look like. I started with every meticulous detail that I expected to see. I’m a firm believer that to combat crazy you have to be crazy. And as we know, kids can be crazy and that’s ok. That doesn’t mean we have to be driven crazy.
Last year when I became firmer and clearer about expectations I saw results both academically and behaviorally. Once my students took responsibility they were able to internalize expectations and didn’t need reminders from me. It was Heaven and my teacher heart sang every day on the subway ride home.
Much of these ideas came from a CHAMPS seminar I attended mid last year. It made so much sense to me: your students can’t read your mind so why treat them like they can? With that in mind I spent this summer setting some expectations for myself and typed them up so I can hold myself accountable. I spent most of my time focusing on 3 different times: morning expectations, math and dismissal.
Below you’ll see what expectations I set for myself and how I organized myself.
Mornings are so important in setting a class culture and environment. I spent much of my time envisioning what I would like my students to do upon arrival. I would really like to use the morning work time to do math preview questions/math talk questions, pull reading intervention kiddos or helping kids with new concepts. The only way I can do this is if the other 29 students are working and have enough options to keep them occupied once their morning work is done.
Multiplication Wizards are our fluency check in that is completed and logged daily.
School wide we have ELA whole group and small group at the same time. This is our “sacred reading block” that needs to be done daily. Furthermore, our small groups are created with all 90 students from the grade in mind and is not done in room. With this in mind, I planned to create separate plans with my new students and team teachers in mind.
I am by far the most excited to launch my math block. I’ve been doing most of my summer research on math rotations and really enjoyed launching math talks last year. If all goes well, I may make a separate post about math block.
As you can see, Writing, Science and Social Studies have not been planned that in depth. I’m still not sure the direction our school is taking these subjects. I do however, have a skeleton of which days I will be teaching these subjects as well as what needs to be covered.
I try to complete my dismissal like a well oiled machine. It’s a bumpy road at first, as this is the first year students are writing their homework in a planner rather than getting a teacher generated weekly homework sheet. In the beginning of the year I sign everyone’s planner once I notice that they have copied everything from the board and have all necessary materials out. By mid year, students are trusted to do this on their own and I let the class self manage their dismissal.
At the end of my document I listed my incentives and punishments. I must have tried 20 different management strategies last year. From those, I picked the ones that A) lasted the longest B) Were the easiest to upkeep and C) Worked! Something new I added for this year is a reflection sheet for students who get on “red.” I’ll make a more in depth post about my management strategies at a later date.
I am so excited to start the year and implement my new ideas. I look forward to adding my successes and failures to this blog and to hopefully help some of my newer teachers out there.
Until next time,
Caroline