This week was short; we had parent teacher conferences Thursday night and Friday morning. It was really great to meet with all the parents, about 20 parents out of the 60 students I have showed up. I feel like this week I have really been focused on what is necessary to make my students successful. It’s a combination of our conversations in grad class about culturally relevant teaching and parent teacher conferences. I know that there are only about two months left in the school year but I still feel like I need to stop and re think my plans for the end of the year so that my students are really entering the next year as ready as possible. Each grade level has made a lot of individual progress and as much I want to beat myself up for the lack of growth in areas I know I need to really prioritize for the rest of the school year. I ask myself, what is truly relevant for my students, I think I’ve spent too much time listening to what everyone else had to say about how to teach my students because I wasn’t sure of my ability to teach them. I need to do what is best for my students based on what I know, I don’t think I’ll stop learning and getting advice, but I have to ask myself what is relevant for my student? How will this help them be people, and be prepared for the world?
-Emma
-Student data/ outcomes - Students averaged 85% or higher on all of their daily Exit Tickets this week. -Student action progress/ Prioritized student action to change - I have seen a huge increase in investment/engagement in every math lesson since I started publicly tracking exit ticket scores. Also, they have a better understanding of why it is important and how it directly connects to their big goals since we had a discussion on why exit tickets are important. -Teacher action to change to impact student action - Differentiate more for my higher students and use them as instructional resources during guided practice for middle of the road scholars. -Plan for development/ solution - I will continue to purposefully group students for guided practice. -Anticipated change in student data/ achievement outcomes - I think this will lead to more confidence from all scholars in math, and increase in exit ticket and test scores.
Chelsea
-Student data/ outcomes - Students averaged 85% on their most recent math test. -Student action progress/ Prioritized student action to change - The students performed much better because of the attitude they took to the review and the work leading up to the test. I also believe this was partially due to my change in teaching the review. -Teacher action to change to impact student action - I put ALL the answers to the review on the board and allowed them to copy the answers next to the questions. However, they were required to show work for all the questions. This allowed them to check their answers and make corrections immediately. Students knew the answer but had to find the method in solving the problem. -Plan for development/ solution - I will continue to teach reviews in this fashion. -Anticipated change in student data/ achievement outcomes - The rest of the year should result in more confident students due to the revised review teaching method. Additionally, I will continue to add higher rigor questions to the daily objectives. Additionally, as I complete the EOY assessment, I can weave the additional objectives into the rest of the quarter. This will ensure that we cover the majority of the standards prior to high school. Michael Nguyen
Student Data/Outcomes: My students took a math unit test this week, and it was a weaker test -- not catastrophic but the average with under 80 percent for one of my classes. In science, students averaged mid-80s on a short quiz they took. We had a short 3-day week with a field trip Thursday and no school Friday. Our field trip was to Miller Park for Channel 4 Weather Day + the Brewers game. During the weather presentation, my students were able to recall and further explain a lot of what the meteorologists were talking about from our weather unit earlier this year -- so that was fun for me to see.
Student Action Progress/Prioritized Student Action to Change: Students are making more progress in terms of their academics as a whole. Based on some of the steps detailed in last week's post plus student-teacher and parent-teacher conferences, students are becoming more invested in their education as a whole. In terms of new student action to change, I want to focus on students respecting one another. I have seen an increase in bullying and gossip with my students recently.
Teacher Action to Change: I need to spend more time making sure my students grow comfortable with each other. I frequently let students choose their own partners in class and I think that has created some of the fragmentation. I have also relied on simple conversations with students and pushed for communication with me when there are issues, but I know I won't always be there. I need to help students develop their own systems for how to tackle situations for bullying and gossip.
Plan for Development/Solution: My religion time this week is going to be focused on lessons of respect. I am also going to discuss strategies with our guidance counselor and dean of students. I want to work with them to develop the best solutions because I, unfortunately, am not an expert in this area!
Anticipated Change in Student Data/Achievement Outcomes: I want my students to not only feel comfortable with me but feel comfortable with each other in the classroom. I want my classroom to be a safe place for all my students, and I want to see students embracing each other and embracing each other's differences more.
Tom Schalmo
This week, I started a pretty intense math remediation with mixed results. One standard that my students were struggling with jumped from mid-60s to 88%, but others only moved a few percentage points and one even was slightly lower. I'm getting concerned that I should have pushed my students to be more independent thinkers this year, and they are not to that point yet. I fear that a lot of them simply aren't taking ownership of their learning. While our over all average climbed 2%, it is clear that many of them weren't adequately reading or thinking through the questions on their "mini-interim assessments." On top of math remediation, this is something that I'm really going to need to push in the next couple of weeks especially because our school is also taking the Terra Nova (our school's major assessment) mid-May. - Sarah Vester
Parent teacher conferences were very rewarding for me this week, since so many of my students made such fantastic progress this quarter. It was the first time I felt generally positive about talking to each parent/guardian, as opposed to walking away with a lot of anxiety. This made me think about ways in which I will try to involve parents a lot more throughout the year in future years of teaching. My parents are so excited to be connected to our classroom, and I'm a little frustrated with myself that I haven't provided more opportunities for this during the year. Perhaps when I have more time and energy, taking this on will be more feasible.
-Aran Nulty
I, too, enjoyed most of my parent teacher conferences-- one parent, in particular, told me she had a "tickle in her heart" because of how much progress her son has made, and he really seems to be set on going to college now, which is so exciting to me. It was, however, a little disheartening to see that a lot of the parents I would most like to conference with because of behavioral or academic issues did not attend conferences. Overall, this week I did not feel as positive about my classroom culture. I think my kids really burned out on testing, and were rather wound up for a lot of the week. I am looking forward to getting back into a normal schedule and routine with less interrupted academic time, especially since I am starting to get a little bit of anxiety about how little time is left before the end of the school year, and how much content I want to cram into the last 6-8 weeks!
Stephanie
A few weeks ago, we were scheduled to have our second zoo field trip as part of the "Zoo Ambassador Program" my kids participate in. When I got to school that morning, I found fire trucks out front and staff ushering us a few blocks down the street to the massive Rockwell Automation complex, where we kept dwindling numbers of students for the day. Naturally, the field trip was cancelled. Given that I'm basically the most "senior" member of my grade level (the bilingual 4th grade is on its fourth teacher this year, and the other monolingual 4th grade teacher was out for a few weeks and now misses at least one day a week due to some family medical issues) I've been responsible for organizing this program. Our school requires a lot of paperwork for field trips, and I managed to pull it all together for this one. When I rescheduled, I informed the school - and I did send home and collect new permission slips. However, I did not think I needed to fill out new lunch order forms, so after school the day before the field trip I was called down to the office, where I was informed that the kitchen didn't know and there was no way they could get bagged lunches together in time. The principal said that our 1:30 return time was too late to eat hot lunches then, so we'd have to cancel the field trip. I didn't want to cancel another field trip (figuring the zoo might just be done with us at that point and boot us from the program) and the kids would be very disappointed. In the end, I ended up ordering 25 pizzas, arranging for a staff member to drop them off at the zoo and paying the bulk of the substantial cost. The trip was wonderful - a lot of fun, and truly educational (they teach a class while we're there). My only point of annoyance regarding the cost was that my principal made it clear she was not going to pitch in any money. When we got back to the school that afternoon, I was called down to the principal's office again where I was informed that the kitchen had forgotten and made 3 classrooms worth of hot lunches anyway. We needed to serve them (and watch our kids just through them out) and mark "1s" on our lunch sheets so that the school would be reimbursed for them. Salt in the wound.
- Eamonn
-Emma
-Student data/ outcomes - Students averaged 85% or higher on all of their daily Exit Tickets this week.
-Student action progress/ Prioritized student action to change - I have seen a huge increase in investment/engagement in every math lesson since I started publicly tracking exit ticket scores. Also, they have a better understanding of why it is important and how it directly connects to their big goals since we had a discussion on why exit tickets are important.
-Teacher action to change to impact student action - Differentiate more for my higher students and use them as instructional resources during guided practice for middle of the road scholars.
-Plan for development/ solution - I will continue to purposefully group students for guided practice.
-Anticipated change in student data/ achievement outcomes - I think this will lead to more confidence from all scholars in math, and increase in exit ticket and test scores.
Chelsea
-Student data/ outcomes - Students averaged 85% on their most recent math test.
-Student action progress/ Prioritized student action to change - The students performed much better because of the attitude they took to the review and the work leading up to the test. I also believe this was partially due to my change in teaching the review.
-Teacher action to change to impact student action - I put ALL the answers to the review on the board and allowed them to copy the answers next to the questions. However, they were required to show work for all the questions. This allowed them to check their answers and make corrections immediately. Students knew the answer but had to find the method in solving the problem.
-Plan for development/ solution - I will continue to teach reviews in this fashion.
-Anticipated change in student data/ achievement outcomes - The rest of the year should result in more confident students due to the revised review teaching method. Additionally, I will continue to add higher rigor questions to the daily objectives. Additionally, as I complete the EOY assessment, I can weave the additional objectives into the rest of the quarter. This will ensure that we cover the majority of the standards prior to high school.
Michael Nguyen
Student Data/Outcomes: My students took a math unit test this week, and it was a weaker test -- not catastrophic but the average with under 80 percent for one of my classes. In science, students averaged mid-80s on a short quiz they took. We had a short 3-day week with a field trip Thursday and no school Friday. Our field trip was to Miller Park for Channel 4 Weather Day + the Brewers game. During the weather presentation, my students were able to recall and further explain a lot of what the meteorologists were talking about from our weather unit earlier this year -- so that was fun for me to see.
Student Action Progress/Prioritized Student Action to Change: Students are making more progress in terms of their academics as a whole. Based on some of the steps detailed in last week's post plus student-teacher and parent-teacher conferences, students are becoming more invested in their education as a whole. In terms of new student action to change, I want to focus on students respecting one another. I have seen an increase in bullying and gossip with my students recently.
Teacher Action to Change: I need to spend more time making sure my students grow comfortable with each other. I frequently let students choose their own partners in class and I think that has created some of the fragmentation. I have also relied on simple conversations with students and pushed for communication with me when there are issues, but I know I won't always be there. I need to help students develop their own systems for how to tackle situations for bullying and gossip.
Plan for Development/Solution: My religion time this week is going to be focused on lessons of respect. I am also going to discuss strategies with our guidance counselor and dean of students. I want to work with them to develop the best solutions because I, unfortunately, am not an expert in this area!
Anticipated Change in Student Data/Achievement Outcomes: I want my students to not only feel comfortable with me but feel comfortable with each other in the classroom. I want my classroom to be a safe place for all my students, and I want to see students embracing each other and embracing each other's differences more.
Tom Schalmo
This week, I started a pretty intense math remediation with mixed results. One standard that my students were struggling with jumped from mid-60s to 88%, but others only moved a few percentage points and one even was slightly lower. I'm getting concerned that I should have pushed my students to be more independent thinkers this year, and they are not to that point yet. I fear that a lot of them simply aren't taking ownership of their learning. While our over all average climbed 2%, it is clear that many of them weren't adequately reading or thinking through the questions on their "mini-interim assessments." On top of math remediation, this is something that I'm really going to need to push in the next couple of weeks especially because our school is also taking the Terra Nova (our school's major assessment) mid-May. - Sarah Vester
Parent teacher conferences were very rewarding for me this week, since so many of my students made such fantastic progress this quarter. It was the first time I felt generally positive about talking to each parent/guardian, as opposed to walking away with a lot of anxiety. This made me think about ways in which I will try to involve parents a lot more throughout the year in future years of teaching. My parents are so excited to be connected to our classroom, and I'm a little frustrated with myself that I haven't provided more opportunities for this during the year. Perhaps when I have more time and energy, taking this on will be more feasible.
-Aran Nulty
I, too, enjoyed most of my parent teacher conferences-- one parent, in particular, told me she had a "tickle in her heart" because of how much progress her son has made, and he really seems to be set on going to college now, which is so exciting to me. It was, however, a little disheartening to see that a lot of the parents I would most like to conference with because of behavioral or academic issues did not attend conferences. Overall, this week I did not feel as positive about my classroom culture. I think my kids really burned out on testing, and were rather wound up for a lot of the week. I am looking forward to getting back into a normal schedule and routine with less interrupted academic time, especially since I am starting to get a little bit of anxiety about how little time is left before the end of the school year, and how much content I want to cram into the last 6-8 weeks!
Stephanie
A few weeks ago, we were scheduled to have our second zoo field trip as part of the "Zoo Ambassador Program" my kids participate in. When I got to school that morning, I found fire trucks out front and staff ushering us a few blocks down the street to the massive Rockwell Automation complex, where we kept dwindling numbers of students for the day. Naturally, the field trip was cancelled. Given that I'm basically the most "senior" member of my grade level (the bilingual 4th grade is on its fourth teacher this year, and the other monolingual 4th grade teacher was out for a few weeks and now misses at least one day a week due to some family medical issues) I've been responsible for organizing this program. Our school requires a lot of paperwork for field trips, and I managed to pull it all together for this one. When I rescheduled, I informed the school - and I did send home and collect new permission slips. However, I did not think I needed to fill out new lunch order forms, so after school the day before the field trip I was called down to the office, where I was informed that the kitchen didn't know and there was no way they could get bagged lunches together in time. The principal said that our 1:30 return time was too late to eat hot lunches then, so we'd have to cancel the field trip. I didn't want to cancel another field trip (figuring the zoo might just be done with us at that point and boot us from the program) and the kids would be very disappointed. In the end, I ended up ordering 25 pizzas, arranging for a staff member to drop them off at the zoo and paying the bulk of the substantial cost. The trip was wonderful - a lot of fun, and truly educational (they teach a class while we're there). My only point of annoyance regarding the cost was that my principal made it clear she was not going to pitch in any money. When we got back to the school that afternoon, I was called down to the principal's office again where I was informed that the kitchen had forgotten and made 3 classrooms worth of hot lunches anyway. We needed to serve them (and watch our kids just through them out) and mark "1s" on our lunch sheets so that the school would be reimbursed for them. Salt in the wound.
- Eamonn