Success!

80.25% across the grade level on a persuasive text assessment.

Holler...and on material taught and assessed during the week and a half before break.

My low class went from 52% to 73%.

**I used texts that were written at a 4th grade level for my two lower classes--but with questions that were written to 6th grade level standards.

We will get them to master with grade level texts, but we have to build them up!

Little by Little

I just realized I didn't post back with retake results! I stayed at school that Monday 'til 9:45 when the janitor warned me that the alarm system was about to be turned on so that I could get results ready to be turned back to kids. The overall average on the assessment went from 52% to 71% in one week! Some students are continuing to retake so they can master objectives. It is exciting to see that investment.

We wrote essays this week. Welcome to formulaic 5-paragraph essays! I saw some great work from many of my students. I am excited to start writing tracking. I am also excited to borrow a document camera and show some student examples of both strong essays and common places where people went wrong. Below I am going to type an essay that one of my students wrote. This student is an English Language Learner, though she has tested out of the program. She is incredibly hard working and an amazingly sweet individual. The students got to choose anything they would like to write about for their first expository essay. I had briefly talked about the AIDS pandemic on Monday--World AIDS Day, the day we chose topics. Kelly asked if she could write about it. I helped her get started, but these are her words and sentiments. I am really proud of her achievement. I'll transcribe the essay:


HIV/AIDS affects kids around the world by killing their parents, kids getting sick, need to take care of their parents.

When AIDS kills parents, kids became orphans which affects them because they don't have someone to take care of them. They're with hunger because they don't have parents to feed buy them food to eat. And by that, they could even die. By killing parents you hurt the kids feeling. They could die if they cry a lot of get very, very sad sometimes too.

Kids get sick for a lot of reasons. For example, kids get sick because when the kid is inside the mother's stomch and the mother has HIV the kid were be born with HIV because the kid has the blood of her and her blood is with the disease. If the HIV gets wrose the disease would be called AIDS. The kid will die faster if the kid doesn't have medicen to take. If the kid has medicen to take the kid will die in a longer time.

Some kids need to take care of their parents because they have HIV or AIDS. People that have that disease need a lot of care. But this taking care of your parents could stop them to be educated. Also, it could affect their future because they're not going to be able to go to school. Taking care of your parents is good but bad at the same time.

As you can see some kids in the world have HIV or AIDS that affects their education, future, family, and friends. That could affect letting them succeed in the future.

I commented at the bottom of her paper:
You are going to change the world if you keep writing like this!

I believe it is true.

Retaught

I was really impressed with my students this week. The vast majority of them saw their individual data and then worked hard to master the objectives they had struggled with. I had several students who had mastered the objectives act as teachers or coaches to guide students through practice questions. By Friday, students were able to answer practice questions correctly and explain their answers in a logical way. I also realized the potential for using kids as teachers to develop confidence, leadership skills and investment--but also the coaching that they will need to do so effectively. I saw students getting frustrated when other students weren't listening to them or get overly bossy...I know they will be able to do it, especially because they like the role of teacher so much, but they will need some guidance.

We will see how well this really worked when they retake on Monday...

Reteach?

I am spending the evening with excel...entering assessment data. It is clear that objectives will need to be retaught. Luckily, I have planned each of these POs to be taught at least 2 times during the year...but this data is not pretty. Where I was hoping for us to push the few percentages over the 80% goal, we dropped considerably. It makes sense...expository text is often more difficult for students. However, I am disappointed in myself and my ability to invest my students in working hard to really grasp the material. I am proud that I am assessing and tracking and that I have data to KNOW where I have gone wrong so that I can go back and figure it out. I WILL figure it out. These kids WILL master these objectives...

I think we can, I think we can....

Today I am assessing expository texts. It is a beast of an assessment--I am assessing 5 performance objectives. I believe that my students are more invested in actually working hard on this assessment, and they know what that means. We have drilled and drilled reading carefully and completely. I am hopeful that they will improve their class averages from the last assessment. From how they have done on daily work, I believe they understand these concepts....think happy thoughts....

Oh, and I bought SMARTIES candy for each of them to remind them how smart they are. Hopefully they will be smart enough to realize that if they throw any candy or wrappers that they won't ever get candy again....


I'll update soon!

I lost one of my favorite students today. Mom said they are moving but they don't know where to. There was a look of fear in her face as she said this. She told me her daughter said she didn't want to leave. Right now, I feel like this is an opportunity lost. How long will it take her next teacher to see what a light she is? To see how hard she works, but also to realize how much help she needs to be brought up to grade level...to have the opportunities that she deserves? I realize now how much I have connected with so many of my students this year. Even as some push and push and push...I love and appreciate them. I believe that I am doing right by them.

Another student just didn't come back today and the other kids said she moved. This breaks my heart. The lives of my students are increasingly uncertain as the economy goes south. Some families may be making rent, but if their landlord can't pay the mortgage, what happens?

It is hard. It is real.

Possibility can be tiring

First question: does the new color hurt anyone's eyes? I like it and it seems very "Phoenix" to me, but I don't want to cause any headaches. Speaking of which, I passed out a handout printed on yellow paper last week (not on purpose, it was left in the copier) and one of my students told me that it gave her a headache. I think maybe she just didn't want to do the assignment...but I gave her the original that was on non-headache inducing paper. I think she was a little disappointed. I digress.

Right now I am weighing my desire to post with my desire to sleep. I'll compromise and post briefly. I want to share some of what is tiring me out.

The year is still going well. I am having a wonderful time with my kiddos. This year I am able to focus on my instruction a lot more because behavior is so much more under control. I have been thinking about my instruction a lot and how it is doing a lot of things that I want it to do. My students are, as a whole, mastering the knowledge and skills I am teaching them. Yay! I have identified where some of the gaps are and am working collaboratively with the reading specialist to fill in those gaps. I am working to get parent volunteers to help me pull off the intensive reading intervention that needs to happen for my struggling readers. These things are going well. I want to restate how AMAZING it is to have my classroom be a positive place for my kids and myself to be every day. I am happy to go to work every day. I respect my kids and genuinely enjoy them and they know this.

Yesterday and today I was privileged to attend Understanding by Design training. This is training on strategic backwards planning to increase student engagement and achievement. This is the model that TFA uses to train us--this is the way that I generally understand planning. However, the training the past two days pushed me in two main ways:
a) I realized that I AM backwards planning--planning with the end in mind. I identify standards that go together, figure out the knowledge and skills involved in the standards, create an assessment that measures the knowledge and skills and then plan from there. This is good. However, this is only the basic level. I am not actually pushing my students to higher levels of thinking--I am not actually backwards planning for higher levels of understanding. I am focusing on the level that is required by the standardized tests and then hoping that higher level thinking happens along the way. My assessments are NOT multiple and they are NOT varied and they assess knowledge and skills but NOT greater understanding.

Hmmmm....what does this MEAN?

This means that I am on the right track. I have a firm understanding of all the processes involved here. I have identified what is missing. I have the resources to begin to bring higher level thinking goals into my units. This will not happen overnight, but the important thing is that I am moving in the right direction.

now, for the second way the training pushed me
b) I am part of the Understanding by Design Leadership Cadre for my district. This is new. 15 people are being trained in UbD throughout the year and at the same time using the planning framework to plan how UbD will be implemented in the district. It is EXCITING to think of being part of an initiative that is being thought through and will be implemented strategically and that I actually believe will impact student achievement. It is also OVERWHELMING to think about all of the challenges to implementing it successfully. Instead of criticizing how my district doesn't implement anything consistenly, efficiently or effectively, I am stepping over to the other side and challenging myself to actually put my money where my mouth is (so to speak). Wow. This is scary. And exciting, especially given that in this cadre I am amoungst a group of passionate, effective and SMART teachers. We care about our district, schools, teachers and especially students. Its feels risky to think and believe that what we are doing might actually change things for our kids in a significant way. I have an understanding of my ability to change things for my kids within my classroom, but being part of change on a district level feels way different.

Being pushed in this way the past two days has been tiring, especially since I've been going back to school afterwards and have stayed til 7pm both days. You would think having someone else teach your class would mean less work. It doesn't! Its LOTS more. I also missed being with my kids. I was very pleased that they generally behaved well for the sub and that she would be happy to sub for me again. This means that I have trained them at least reasonably well :)

On that note, I'm going to sleep.