Leo Carrillo, CA 5-4-2019 Painted Ladies

Chumash Native Plants! Ethnobotany.. how fun is it to learn something new! These are what they look like.

How are students being set up for success?

When practicing math skills, teachers and students have several options. Cooperative games VS. Ipad apps are two choices. There are many apps for math skills practice. My personal favorite is a paid app, QuickMath. For this app, students are shown fluency facts growth at the end of each session. Students enjoy telling me how much faster they have become at math facts fluency. Others like Sushi Monster, IXL and AR Facts in a Flash are pretty good.

This year I've returned to cooperative math games. They do take time due to modeling and training, but I see the benefits in the added challenge of turn taking, listening skills, speaking skills, materials management, emotions management and social skills practice. For me, it would be easier to have students practice in isolation on their individual ipad app or individual worksheets, but the added level of social skills practice and regulating emotions is what students need for long term success. There is a difference between setting students up for success by eliminating challenge THAN setting students up for long-term success by creating challenge.      

 

Back to Nature: Day 2, Sharpen Observations with 5 Senses

During this environmental education lesson students built on Tchart notes (I NoticeI/ I Wonder) from Day 1. The learners sharpened observation skills by using 5 senses to describe a living thing in School Yard Habitat. I provided a list of words/adjectives for vocabulary development.

1. Class discussion about Day 1 chart. We created a class web of all nouns from Day1 observations. Defined noun.

2. Reviewed 5 senses and word lists.

3. Modeled a web where the living thing they chose is in the center and adjectives are outside.

4. Went to SYH. Reviewed appropriate behavior when being a scientist

5. Reviewed directions and example web. Reminded them to make CLOSE scientific observations based on 5 senses and record observation on their web in their science notebooks.

6. Ended with a whole class discuss about scientific observations.

3 Resources to Help Focus on Process over Product

2 Curriculums that Focus on Process over Product and Old Faithful, Reading Strategies that Work

When we switched to Common Core Standards, teachers scrambled to have an example or curriculum to understand how to teach in a student and process focused manner. I found Units of Study, Writing by Lucy Calkins http://www.heinemann.com/unitsofstudy/writing/ . It is hard to explain, but all the components including, a revamped writing process to included repeated, repeated, repeated revisions, lesson format, lesson delivery, organization of unit plan, and especially teacher and student writing conferences helped me make process focus mind shift. Teaching writing is NOT my strength, but I ended up enjoying  teaching writing because of this program.

The second program my principal found which helped our school switch to process focused teaching was Engage NY Math. They used math diagrams for students to really understand math concepts. The tape-diagram caused students to think about components in math word or computation problems, identify their relationship, then input and label them to tape diagram. Creating the visual representation of math problem was student goal not necessarily the answer. Engage NY helped me understand the shift because I saw my students focus change.

Reading Strategies that Work has been around awhile.  It transformed how I teach reading comprehension, years ago. Metacognition helps students tremendously with process. It's awesome when students can explain to other students HOW they think about something.

Glad to be Back! Because Twitter just doesn't have enough character allowance for me!

It's been over a year! Since my daughter is now able to return to physical activity, yet has some bad days, I feel I have time to return to sharing my experiences and expertise in teaching. Yes, I say expertise. As teachers we need to own that label, not be so humble. We are implementing. We are making it happen. We stumble, fall, and pick ourselves, our students, and their families back up. We are experts. This is hard for us to internalize because there are so many aspects to education that it's impossible to be in expert in it all. One thing we know how to do, and do it everyday, is motivating kids to learn. 

Disclaimer: My opinions are my own. I can be passionate about my opinions and am highly motivated by them, but better than that as an educator I love to change and grow from hearing about what my students, families, and other educators are experiencing and have opinions about. I've noticed that opinions about education/teaching/learning are based on real experiences, and real experiences are the key to change and growth. A pitfall for some can be over generalizing based on experiences. Each child is unique. I've taught over 400 students just in my classroom and have interacted with many others, and not one has been the same. Generalizations make it easier for those involved in research fields of ed. and curriculum development, but teachers know generalizations are biased and impractical. My desire to remain in the classroom as a practicing teacher after 18 years is a reflection of my value of real experiences. I hope the joy of experiencing learning stays in my heart for the next 20 years. On the other hand, my pet peeve and the one thing I just don't get is apathy. My world is filled with the joy and enthusiasm of children, occasionally I've seen some apathetic kids, on rare occasions. All most all of the time there are other stresses or disabilities affecting that child that can mask itself to the outside observer as apathy. So, that is why it is hard for me to be around apathetic people. "If the kids can do it, why can't you?" That's the thought that gets stuck in my mind. There have been very few apathetic people I've met in education. Most  are incredibly motivated. It may not be about what I value that sparks their motivation, but it's still impressive how motivated and dedicated educators are! I happen to work with some of the BEST!

History: This blog was set up 2 years ago in my quest to integrate 1to1 ipads in my classroom. I had this amazing tool and wanted to figure out how my students could use it for research, creation, production, and collaboration. I still have a lot to learn as technology changes, but I'm better. It's been three years of ipad implementation, so I pretty much can say what works and what doesn't. I started a different blog a few years ago for sharing of classroom teaching practices as we transitioned to Common Core Standards. At that time, I was freed from demanding curriculum restraints and was able to implement centers among other things, so I had to remember and find out how teach differently. It was fun, but I didn't make much of it as you see. http://moserssecondgrade.blogspot.com/

Future: As I look to the future of this blog, I'd like to change the name among other things. It will reflect my experiences and expertise in all that is teaching, education, and leaning. Currently, my focus has been environmental education, project based learning, and my never ending quest to find solutions that support struggling readers and their families.

The Beautiful Hum of Children Learning

Last Friday, some students shared their projects. The sound was like a beautiful orchestra to me, so I recorded this harmony to share.