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.
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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. |