I can't believe it's the last post of the school year. It seems like just yesterday when the entire office staff was knocked out and kicked out with COVID the second day of school! What a year it has been. I loved listening to so many of you talk about different students during our reflection activity at staff collaboration time last week. Seeing you light up talking about certain students or hearing how much energy you devoted to certain students was definitely a highlight of my week. I also love the stories you have sent me about the students that I will be recognizing in our final whole school assembly on Monday. We started the year focused on "Constructing Stories, Building Connections," and I feel like that has consistently been happening all year long. From our focus on writing to our focus on making connections during monthly family time, we have absolutely grown closer as a school community. There is a lot to celebrate...students' growth in academics and social emotional learning. We also need to celebrate staff growth. So many of you have taken courses or webinars, attended or led professional development, collaborated with colleagues, stepped out of your comfort zones, and through it all...kept kids at the forefront, like our community norms says. I would love for all of us to stop and think about what went well this year and what we need to keep improving upon. I would love to hear what our "glows" were - what do we need to celebrate and be proud of? And I want to hear what our "grows" were - what do we need to work on? These could be things specific to your classroom or your role or these could be things school-wide. As I begin the work this summer of planning for next year, I want to make sure I am hearing from everyone. Please take a few minutes over the next week to fill out this "Glows and Grows" form. And get ready for an amazing last week of school! Here are some of the books that we have multiple copies of in the office. We will do our lending library again this summer. Sign out a book, read it, then return it so someone else can read it.
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We have made it to the last two weeks (and a day) of school! This year has been full of hard work, struggle, new ideas, learning from mistakes, being vulnerable, stepping out of comfort zones, and successes. It's important to take some time to think back over the year and reflect. Right now, if we take time to look back, this year is fresh in our minds. It's "closer" to us right now. If we wait until August to think back on the year, we will most likely forget parts. Here are a few questions and reflection prompts to get you thinking about the year, to help you look in the rearview mirror. We will also do some reflecting during our final staff collaboration time this week. Reflecting on the 2023-2024 school year, I am proud of...
2 ideas/new learning/experiences I will take with me into next year are... Something I wish I had done differently... Ways that I have grown professionally this year... Now see if you can picture a particular student for each of these prompts, and think of what you learned or how you will grow as an educator as a result of your interactions: Think of a student that challenged you... Think of a student that made you proud... Think of a student that you felt lucky to teach... Think of a student that made you better... Think of a student that you will miss... I really do enjoy these last few days, thinking back over all that has been accomplished. Thinking about where we all were on the first day (when we were kicking off a year of Constructing Stories, Building Connections) and how we have gotten to this point right now. I also think about what did not work and what are ways to make changes for next year. I like to think about all the new innovative experiences that our students had and how we will help them have even more new and innovative experiences next year. And I am looking forward to growing myself professionally even more this summer, taking time to read, write, connect and reflect. Once you are done reflecting on the year, be sure and think ahead to this summer. How do you plan to be mindful over the summer break and rejuvenate yourself? As we are beginning to think about summer curriculum project ideas, I was reflecting on the summer writing work we started last year. A large group of us came together and created an unofficial vision statement related to writing: We believe that writing is an essential component of becoming a literate individual. We believe that everyone can learn to write. Writing is integrated into all areas of the curriculum. We foster the development of independence, creativity, stamina, and engagement. Teachers will have common expectations for writing across grade levels and will incorporate writing across disciplines. Writing is viewed as an ongoing process with gradual release of responsibility from teacher to students. Assessments help guide instruction and teachers use multiple samples of writing to support this work. Students develop the skills, knowledge, and confidence necessary to become independent thinkers and writers. It is exciting to think about the progress we have made related to this vision. Like the saying goes, if you build it they will come or in this case if we put our vision into words, it will come to fruition. Think about where we started two years ago when we looked at exemplar writing samples and wondered how we were going to get our kids to that level. You have collaborated to create rubrics, have tracked growth using writing prompts, and have worked to build up students' writing stamina by having them simply write more across the different content areas. I was excited to hear from the WELL group during our May PD day. For those that weren't able to attend, I will share that they gave us a little introduction into some of the explicit writing strategy work that they will be doing with us starting next year. I took some pictures of their slides and I will ask them if they can share all of the slides with us. They gave some very specific strategies for writing instruction starting at the word and sentence level. I think my favorite part of the PD session was when one teacher sitting near me said, "That makes so much sense!" We will be working with this group for the next three years. They will be teaching us some explicit writing instructional practices. They will be monitoring our students' progress as we implement specific strategies into our instruction. And we will be helping them with their research! This is truly an exciting partnership that is going to have a lasting impact on our students and help us continue to grow as educators. I haven't had much time to read so instead I will share this quote from a teacher that I saw online...
I had an entirely different post that I was going to share today, all about the writing PD and work we will be doing over the next several years, but like we often do as educators, I switched gears and changed my lesson plan. Instead, after a rollercoaster of emotions in our house this weekend, I decided to share one of my favorite scenes from a movie. Clearly, I will be dating myself with this one, but how many of you remember the movie "Parenthood?" It came out in 1989, and I have definitely watched it many times since then. Here is the scene that popped into my head last night... I was definitely riding the rollercoaster this weekend with my kids. Cayce was super excited to sleep over at his cousin's house and study his Pokemon card collection all night, comparing cards, determining value (I think his cards of value are up to a whopping $6.50.), and trading with his cousin. Meanwhile, I took Emerson to Hartford, CT to see her gymnastics idols, Simone Biles, Suni Lee, Jordan Chiles, and Gabby Douglas. Quote of the day was when we walked into the venue, she said, "I can't believe I will be breathing the same air as Simone Biles!" Definitely a memory maker moment for sure.
We were definitely riding the high of our kids living their best lives. But we knew that things were going to come to a crashing halt on Sunday. We had to break the news to them that one of our cats had been hit by a car and didn't survive. They definitely don't give you the script for that in our parenting handbooks. It broke my heart to tell them and then watch them collapse into hysterical sobbing. As parents, we do everything we can to protect them and take away any pain. In that moment, I felt pretty helpless. So I did the only thing I could do, I hugged them and loved them and let them cry. And then today, I am sending them into school. I emailed their teachers and the counselor and am trusting the educators to take care of them and help them continue on the rollercoaster ride. My daughter has a walking field trip in town that my husband is chaperoning so at least I know she will be distracted by that. My son said he wants to write a sticky note that tells his friends he doesn't want to talk about it. They will each deal with everything in a different way. And thankfully their teachers and the staff know them at school, and will help them in different ways. We are all on this crazy rollercoaster called life. And now as we quickly travel towards the end of this year, the highs and lows of the ride come fast and furious. This week we have trolley rides, middle school tours, concerts, assemblies, iReady assessments, and more. Plus, we know our kids have things outside of school...recitals, sports games, family events. And as staff, we have our own events and daily life stuff that we are dealing with. We are strapped into this rollercoaster. There's no way we are just going to get off and ride the merry-go-round that only goes around and is boring. We need to ride the ride and deal with the highs and lows as they come. We need to laugh and cry and feel all the emotions in between. We especially need to give ourselves and our kids grace. It's all a lot, but we need to just take each part of the ride as it comes. So lower your lap bar. Double check your safety belt. Grip the bar with white knuckles or, if you are up for it, raise your hands in the air. You can grit your teeth, scream, laugh or sometimes shut your eyes. We are riding this rollercoaster all the way to the end of the year. Might as well enjoy it! You might think I am referring to the "Hokey Pokey" song and dance with my title. You could say that this is the time of year when I am singing that song in my head and now I bet you are too. What I mean with the title of this post is that it's the time of year when we are still finishing up the year and many of us are thinking about vacations that are planned, but we are also thinking about next school year already. We are in our door frame era. We are leaving one room and stepping into the new room. There is still a lot for us to do to wrap up this year. End of year assessments. Last modules and units. Final writing projects. Report cards. Celebrating growth. But at the same time, we start to do a lot to get ready for next year. Placement. Budget. Ordering. Planning. While it can be a crazy, busy time, it's also a time where we get to celebrate all the growth that has happened this year, and we get to start imagining what the future can look like. We had a great brainstorming session the other morning, thinking about all things related to the schedule. Andrea, Kristine, Maria, Brianna, Jen, and Julie all came together to start thinking about what we have done with the schedule in the past and what potential changes we can make for next year. There are so many things associated with the schedule! I have to say it was exciting to fill up a chart paper with all the different ideas, plans, things that we want to think about as we are building the schedule. We talked about child study meetings, whole child review/data days, WIN blocks, family meetings, vertical team meetings, special education services and meetings, arrival and dismissal, staggering academic blocks across the grades, half day schedules, chorus, KCR, tech integration, MCAS days, and so many more things. While we didn't come up with any scheduling solutions yet, it was awesome to see everyone thinking about how much is impacted and needs to be included in our discussions and planning of the schedule. Which is exactly why we have a team working on this. It's too much for one person to figure this out. We need to collaborate, think of all our stakeholders, and take some risks with doing things differently than we have done in the past. If you have thoughts or questions, reach out to any of people I mentioned above and share your ideas or questions! I just got a new PD book called Reading Above the Fray: Reliable Research-Based Routines for Developing Decoding Skills that was recommended to me by some of my literacy specialist friends. I am gathering potential books to add to our summer reading loaner library. If you remember, I ordered multiple copies of several books and people were able to check them out to read over the summer. This book might be one that will be in the mix. There are several books related to science of reading in this series. I was excited to be a mystery reader in my daughter's class on Friday. I read one of our favorites from home, Lady Pancake and Sir French Toast: Mission Defrostable. I couldn't believe that her teacher had never heard of Josh Funk. He is a local author who has written this book and so many other great ones. If you haven't checked out his website, you should! https://www.joshfunkbooks.com/ Speaking of local authors, I will be mailing some of the letters and stories that students wrote to Andrew Hacket. If you have more that you haven't sent to the office, send them down and we will put everything in a packet. Andy also asked me if teachers would be willing to write a short testimonial that he could use when advertising his author visits. I know I have talked to many of you about how great he was; if you are able to type up a few sentences, email them to me and I will get them to Andy. Thanks! I did something I haven't done in a while this past weekend. I went to the mall. Actually, I took my daughter and her friend shopping. I was just there to be the chauffeur and help pay at the register. The girls were excited to try to find different matching outfits, and we had to do a lot of hunting to find shorts and tops that matched and were in the right size that they each needed. Definitely not my idea of a "fun" afternoon, but it certainly made them happy. Our little shopping trip got me thinking about our students and the last few weeks of school. I know in education we usually say one size does not fit all. And I do still believe that is true. In this case, as we are finishing our last few weeks of school, I am actually only thinking of one size. XL. This is the time of year when our students need extra from us. I don't mean that they need extra learning...although of course, they deserve for us to keep teaching and learning with them up until the last minute of our last day. What I think they need now is extra love. That is the XL that I am referring to. Yes, at this point in the year, we expect them to know the expectations. We expect them to be making good choices. We expect them to treat each other and their teachers with respect. But I can tell you that for a 5-year-old, a 6-year-old, a 7-year-old, an 8-year-old, a 9-year-old, and even a 10-year-old...when summer is right around the corner, when the weather outside is taunting them through the window, when we are planning end of the year activities, it is hard to remember all of those expectations. So when you are frustrated when a student asks a question that you think they should know the answer to or when two students who are supposed to be collaborating with each other start arguing or when a student interrupts you for what seems like the hundredth time that day...remember that right now they need XL from us. Our students all need a little extra love this time of year. I know I need this reminder after several conversations I had with students last week. Before you let out a frustrating breath or tell them you are disappointed in them, stop and think about XL. Give that student and all of the others some extra love these last few weeks. Soon they won't be around to get your extra love and they won't be around for us to give them extra love. And I can guarantee you that we will both miss the giving and the receiving. How will you use the one size fits all model of XL, extra love, for all of your students during these last weeks of school? I am still reading many of the books I shared last week, but I wanted to use this section to tell you that it's Children's Book Week this week. The theme for this year is "No Rules, Just Read." You can get some free resources and learn more about Children's Book Week here: https://everychildareader.net/cbw/celebrate-2024/
I have to say...I might really love their theme...maybe you can find time in your classrooms this week to do exactly that, no rules, just read! We know that April showers bring May flowers, but the month of April coming to an end also means that Teacher Appreciation Week in May is almost here. Seems a little cruel that teachers get just a week and it doesn't happen until the school year is almost over. I hope you know that I certainly appreciate each of you during Teacher Appreciation Week. But more importantly, I appreciate you every day of the year besides just next week. I appreciate you on the Friday afternoons before vacation weeks. I appreciate you on the Mondayest Mondays. (After today, there's only about 6 or 7 more?!) I appreciate you on the days that caffeine helps you get through after worrying about students kept you up all night. I appreciate you on the days when you have an awesome lesson win and on the days when you have epic lesson fails. Thank you for today and all the days that came before and all the days that will follow until the last day of school this year. I am cooking up some treats for you all throughout the month of May...will keep you posted! And our awesome PTO will be treating you to lunch on Friday, May 10 so come hungry. Speaking of PTO, many of you sent me supply requests and the PTO has purchased almost everything that was sent to me. So awesome! There will be lots of Amazon boxes arriving this week I think. If you didn't get a chance to send me your requests, I will reach out to them to see if they have any funds left. Since I just went to a reading and writing conference, I of course purchased some new books. I was excited to get the book How To Become a Better Writing Teacher by Carl Anderson and Matt Glover. I also enjoyed one of the keynote speakers, Lorena Escoto German so I purchased her book Textured Teaching: A Framework for Culturally Sustaining Practices. Even though it is geared towards secondary, I feel like there is a lot I can learn from it and it's an important read. I also finished reading Holes, such a great book! I purchased some new picture books including this one: The Leaf Detective: How Margaret Lowman Uncovered Secrets in the Rainforest. Welcome back! I hope everyone enjoyed vacation week. Get ready, because the last few weeks of school come fast and furious now. It feels like we were just gathering together in the library in August and now we are preparing to finish up the school year. I wanted to share more that I learned about when I attended the ASCD Conference in March. One of the last sessions I went to was all about using technology in the classroom, going beyond just having kids use devices or digitizing assignments. I learned about this awesome new free online warehouse of video clips that teachers can use. It's a free online platform created by AT & T in collaboration with Warner Bros called The Achievery. This site has over 500 videos and connects to seven different content areas. And there are free learning activities that connect to different video clips. Take a few minutes to check out The Achievery! And bonus...you can access the site in English or in Spanish! Some other online sites I discovered: Make music and play around with songwriting at the Chrome Music Lab. Have fun doodling with QuickDraw. Think of all the ways you can use Mentimeter with your students! Looking for ideas for reading and writing, check out ReadWriteThink. My current favorite tool is Canva.com. I know Jen Hall has been having students experiment with creating in Canva. The possibilities are endless! Have you played around with Canva yet? I know many of you have lots of digital tools or interactive tech that you use in your classrooms. If you come across something that you think the rest of us should know about or you have something let worked great with your students, share it with us or invite your colleagues in to see what the tool looks like in action. Or if you try any of these options mentioned above, let me know your thoughts! I loved having time during last week to do some reading! My to be read piles in my library at home are still rather tall, but I love being able to just plop down in my upholstered rocking chair and read for a period of time during the day. I run a virtual book club on Wednesday nights for 5th and 6th graders so I have had the chance to reread some favorites and explore some classics that I actually never read. I had never read Number the Stars so just read and discussed that one over the break. An interesting historical fiction book; I really didn't know about Denmark and their help with hiding Jews or helping them escape to Sweden. I am currently rereading Holes, getting ready to discuss that one with students. I also got a new book that I am excited to dive into: Tell Your Story: Teaching Students to Become World-Changing Thinkers and Writers. I have worked with the author Pam Allyn before and I heard her speak at ASCD. The Friday of April break was a pretty special day for me. I was asked to contribute a chapter to a book and the book was published on Friday! The book is called What Makes a Great Principal, and what I love about the book is that they reached out to students and teachers to ask them about the impact school leaders had on them. I was asked to write one of the chapters about being a visionary leader. Very excited to be included in this book! Did you know there is a solar eclipse happening today?! Have you heard about it? Have you seen people frantically trying to find glasses at the store? It's the last full week before April vacation, we just had to deal with MCAS, we have Community Reader day on Wednesday, we have students presenting at School Committee on Monday night...oh and there is that whole teaching kids that we will be doing everyday. It only makes sense that we kick off this week with the excitement of a solar eclipse that only happens every 21 years or so. Seems like a lot, but I know that you all will be awesome,' totality' awesome! Since April is also Poetry Month, here's a little poem just for you... A solar eclipse is heading our way In "totality" is what they say, The sun will be covered while the moon overachieves But rest assured, this leader believes You are all supernovas, rockstars, it's true! Who needs the sun when we have each of you! And in honor of the solar eclipse craze that has taken over everywhere, I had fun building a little Total Eclipse of the Heart playlist for you! I could go on and on with more songs, but I think this is enough for now. Everyone is eclipse crazy and then tomorrow we will go back to not thinking about the eclipse.
We have makeup MCAS on Tuesday this week, but I wanted to thank everyone for your help, flexibility, support during MCAS last week. We had to adjust schedules, use different spaces, and pull staff to help proctor. I appreciate the whole school doing what was needed to support our 3rd and 4th graders. The days were long and our students worked incredibly hard. We only had a few meltdowns (kids and adults). What was amazing to see was how our kids persevered. That is a direct result of the adults who have helped them, encouraged them, and taught them to persevere. Thank you! I attended lots of great sessions at the ASCD Conference, and I want to share my learning with all of you. One session that was really interesting was called "4 Must Haves to Support Math Fluency for Every Student." The woman who presented, Dr. Jennifer Bay-Williams, has a book related to math fact fluency that I plan on ordering for us. It has over 60 games and assessments to support math fact fluency. The 4 things she focused on were: 1. The correct definition of fluency 2. Number sense focus 3. Explicit strategy instruction 4. Meaningful practice Here is an infographic that she shared from NCTM that reiterates the importance of conceptual understanding in order to have procedural fluency in math. When thinking about the first point, the correct definition of fluency, we need to remember that fluency is not just getting the answer right. The correct definition of fluency talks about efficiency, flexibility, accuracy, and using the appropriate strategy. Fluently adding is not the same as fluently using the standard algorithm. And we all know that timed tests do not assess fluency; they simply cause stress and anxiety. During the session, the presenter had us do some mental math and she had us play a game using the number line. She helped us see how math is all about relationships between numbers. Using number lines with kids is so important; it helps them see number relationships. Memorizing math facts does not help anyone see number relationships. The second point she stressed was all about needing to focus on number sense. I don't feel like this is anything new for all of you. So many times when we are discussing students, the idea of number sense comes up in conversation. We did some activities where we talked about subtraction meaning "take away" but also meaning "find the difference." Using number lines, ten frames, and other tools, we talked about giving kids sentence frames so they can verbalize and visualize if they were using take away or finding the difference. That's just one example of helping kids work on number sense. For the third point, we know that memorizing doesn't work, but explicit strategy instruction does work. Students need to learn basic math facts through explicit strategy instruction. They need to develop an understanding of mathematical ideas. Any of our struggling students or our students with learning disabilities especially need explicit instruction, not reverting to drill and kill. The final point focused on the importance of meaningful practice. I loved that the presenter said: "Students must learn to use strategies and then learn to choose strategies." The meaningful practice happens through games and other meaningful activities. We played a Trios game that had us practicing compensation beyond basic math facts. Games provide a low stress way for kids to practice facts and strategies. When you have partners think out loud their learning strategy, they are verbalizing their mathematical thinking out loud. Students get a chance to listen and learn from their peers. It's good to have students record their reasoning with different sentence frames. And while they are playing and thinking out loud and recording, you can be assessing their math fluency! I started listening to a new book called Unbound: The Story of Snow and Self-Discovery. It is a memoir written by an author I have recently read. I took my son to the library on Saturday and read some great picture books while I was waiting for him to pick out his books. The first one was called Eyes The Weave the World's Wonders. I have shared this author's books before, but what I loved about this one is that it's about a girl who is adopted and how she realizes that she is the connection between two very different worlds. The other book I read was called Zora, The Story Keeper, a great book about the importance of oral storytelling within our families. |