It’s been happening in little bursts this year:
And EVERYBODY has a notebook! It’s been a long time coming, and every writer in our class has done an amazing job of working hard to prove they are ready. I am super excited at how excited they are about learning to be better writers by WRITING EVERY DAY!! If you know a friend from Rm. 202, please tell them how proud you are of their hard work and grit!!
Remember last year when we worked on organizing our classroom library? You might not, because I couldn’t find it on the blog….:( Maybe the post I thought I wrote got lost in the “it-has-to-be-finished-and-perfect” list I told you about yesterday. Well, since my pledge is to tell all the stories, not just the finished ones, I’ll share the parts of this story that we have finished (and that I have pictures of!).
We left at the end of 1st grade with a (mostly) organized library, which we had worked on together little-by-little last year. We packed it away in that same way, which always helps when I put the classroom back together the next fall. We figured out, though, that we had never gotten the boxes fully labeled, and so as we started using the books again this year, they got all mixed up. We decided we should probably just start over; I was the only one who knew what most of the categories were supposed to be.
We started by pairing up, and first going through the boxes we already had established. I gave each pair a box, and their job was 1) to figure out what their books had in common, 2) decide if they had any that didn’t match that category, 3) and then make a label that matched their newly decided-upon category. All of the extras got piled up in the middle of the room for later.
The second year together has been a great learning process in many ways. Of course, for many reasons, we’re doing many things differently, but there are also some things that are the same that they are doing differently. This is a perfect example. The understanding they have of genre and the difference between fiction/non-fiction, as well as the ability to see similarities and differences is deeper than when they did the library sort as first graders, so the same activity is even more meaningful than the first time. Even the way they “get” why we did it, why we did it together (as opposed to just having ME take care of it), and why we should keep it organized is different than last year.
Wow–I didn’t initially intend for this to be a two-parter, but I got to the end of #3 and figured it made more sense than continuing towards that 15-year-to-read post I mentioned. Ok, here we go again. And here’s Part 1 if you missed it.
4. In 2012, our family made another step in the stages of growth when my first baby went to kindergarten. Um…in case you didn’t know, the first day of kindergarten (i.e. real school) is VERY different than the first days of preschool. At least for me. Oh, the tears! Plus there was an added level of fun stress responsibility because I was sending him to my same school. That meant I had to quickly dry the tears and get back to my big kids for our first day of school. Needless to say, being a parent of a school-aged child was a learning experience. I think I’d say the hardest (and more surprising) part was parent-teacher conferences. As a mama of a kindergartener I learned that parent-teacher conferences are nerve-wracking from the other side of the table. No matter what. And wow–that was a big deal for me. After over a decade of going through that routine as a teacher, I finally “got it” as a parent. I knew that from then on I would do everything in my power to ease any nerves that came in with parents to my own conferences. And even though I’ve now done 5 of my own conferences, I still cry. I’ve learned to let Mr. Bearden be in charge in this realm. 🙂
5. As I mentioned before, I went back to primary last year, after 9 years with “big” kids. At first I was super scared. Ok, I was nervously excited. I knew it would all come back, but here’s perhaps the biggest way in which I know I am a better teacher a parent. I was not a mom the last time I taught 1st and 2nd grade, but now I have an 8 1/2 and a 5 YO. That definitely has added to my arsenal of strategies and tricks that I can use in countless situations. Remember how I mentioned that classroom management that first year was so hard to learn and how I thought I might die? Ok, I didn’t say that, but it’s funny to see the difference with managing things in a primary grade the second time around. Yes, part of the ease is that I have now been teaching for so many more years; this has been an education in itself. But being a mom has also given me another set of eyes in the back of my head. I know better what to anticipate (and then hopefully prevent) with 7-8 YOs, because I have one at home. I can speak to little ones in a better and more meaningful way since I’ve had so much more practice since the last time around. I can better predict what will be the right words to motivate, the right words to encourage, or stop or which words might send a little one into tears (and yes, I try to avoid those!). The extra treat that I didn’t anticipate was being able to understand the “culture” of this age; I totally understand their games, books, TV shows, etc., because they’re the same as what I have at home!!
Ok, so back to the initial question. Do parents make better teachers? For me, that’s definitely true. However, there are many ways to define “better,” and there are of course AMAZING teachers who are not parents. I have, however, learned many lessons and can better understand many of the ins-and-outs since I am on both sides of the equation. That education has been such a gift.
What I’ve known–and truly believed–all along though, is that regardless of their career, the job that parents do as their child’s first teachers is priceless. It is therefore not my job to replace them as the teacher, but to work together on a new team of teachers and parents to help mold our students into the best versions of themselves they can be. The work that mamas and daddies do before I even get their kiddos is so important to the work that I will then do with each student once they enter my classroom. What fun to join the family of learners to work together towards a common goal!
We are lucky to be able to take field trips–pretty much to anywhere we want to go! This year our team was trying to think outside-the-box a little more than usual, planning for field studies that not only connect to our 2nd grade curriculum, but that are important experiences for all kids to have in general. We’ve thrown out some amazing ideas, and this fall we ended up with a trip that I’m pretty sure no one had ever gone on before. It was related to our study of economics, and was loads of fun, too. 🙂
Mrs. Driscoll worked it out for us to be able to visit the Federal Reserve Bank (and I hate to admit I didn’t even know we had one in our city!), as well as the Old Courthouse, which is a great historical building to visit. But wait–the best part (or at least the fancy-schmanciest part) is that we got to eat lunch in a hotel ballroom! Yep–she worked hard to secure a venue that would accommodate us no matter what St. Louis fall weather would throw at us–and we ended up being welcomed by the Crowne Plaza hotel, which was right across the street from both of the places we were visiting. And yes, it was a lucky find–by the time it was time for lunch it was pouring down rain! Way to go, Mrs. Driscoll, and thanks Crowne Plaza!
One more picture:
Look! Ava got to have both of her parents on our trip–Mom came along as a chaperone, and Dad works at the Federal Reserve Bank and got to join us for lunch! He was working that day and planned it so he could be on duty when we visited the museum at the bank. What a special surprise!
We learned much, laughed a lot and had a great time!
I apologize for the fact that it’s been nearly THREE WEEKS since I last wrote on this blog. I’m not even sure what happened. Oh wait, I do. Life happened. And I was tired. It was one of those times in life when you have to do really cool things and take pictures of really cool things, but not write about it, you know? Oh well, here’s to trying to fix that. Starting now. So onward we go!
Monday
We were starting a new unit in math this past week, so the warm-ups were no longer addition and subtraction. This one is connected to some essential questions we will be chewing on throughout the unit, as well as serving as a way for me to know with what background knowledge everyone is starting.
Tuesday
Another essential question from our unit…
Wednesday
This pic is obviously NOT a math warm-up but is instead a view of where we were on this particular morning. I sometimes use our warm-up routine as a way to make plans for our day, or to highlight a goal that we will all be working on together. This was related to the work we were doing last week with remembering to focus on caring for others rather than just ourselves first.
Thursday
Back on track with measurement. 🙂
This last one isn’t a math warm-up, nor do I remember what day it’s from, but it was a great example of how math happens all the time in our room! Oh, and it used skills we had just learned in our last unit, so it was great practice. We were starting a new chapter book (Thanksgiving on Thursday by Mary Pope Osborne–a Magic Treehouse book), and were interested in knowing when the first Thanksgiving took place. We figured out we could subtract or count up to figure it out. We decided to use the Circle, Split, Subtract with a Number line strategy that we had learned. It worked! 🙂 And….Thanksgiving started a long time ago. 🙂
Whew! It feels good to be back in the blogging game again. 🙂 Thanks for coming back to read!
If you haven’t read the first part of this story, check it out here.
In order to know when the next step after Tiny Notebooks was coming, kids had to do some thinking. After chewing on the question of “What’s the right way to do “real” notebooks with my kids?” I asked them a question. It was one I knew they had an answer to, and one that I should have asked them sooner. It was easy: How will we know when we’re ready? And as I expected, they knew the answers:
And so after this conversation, I explained the way my friends had made my head hurt (in that good way!), and how I wasn’t sure what to do. We agreed that it made TOTAL sense that kids would get their notebooks at all different times and they were TOTALLY good with it. They knew that they were in charge of when they were ready and that they simply had to PROVE to me that they were ready. Challenge accepted.
And so later that week, I came into Writer’s Workshop with this pile of goodies:
And these smiling faces were the first round of Rm. 202 friends who were ready for their REAL notebooks! Yippee!
The excitement that then filled the room was contagious!
And so what I was worried about was that kiddos would walk away from this first Notebook Day discouraged, that they would be sad that they weren’t included and just give up. Instead, most everyone else sat down and got right to work continuing to prove that they were ready for the next round:
Since that day, I’ve had many small group and 1:1 conferences specifically answering the question “Mrs. Bearden, when will I be ready?” It’s been so great to be able to use the list we made as well as notebooks of kids that were ready as examples of what they had to do to get to that next step. It’s just the way our standards-based rubrics work: this is what you have to demonstrate to me in order to show me you’re ready. I LOVE THAT! And again, rather than being discouraged, kids are ON FIRE with their writing, working towards the day when they will get that red, polka-dotted gift. 🙂
A few days later…
And just Friday…
So, thank you 2nd grade team for igniting a passion I didn’t even know needed to be ignited and for nudging me to rethink the way I’ve always done things. Most times “the way you’ve always done it” isn’t a good reason to do it that way again. 🙂
I love it when thinking is nudged. I love it when someone asks as question that makes you think in a COMPLETELY different way than you were headed, and you are COMPLETELY surprised when it happened. Well, since my team is all working from the same writing plan this year (which is not really something I’ve ever done before!), there have naturally been some questions that have come up related to what we’re doing. Of course they have been, “Hey, tell me more about this…” kind of questions, not “What in the world were you thinking?” questions, which is nice. 🙂
So…you know we’ve been doing work with tiny notebooks as a way to introduce Writer’s Workshop this year. Well, eventually there comes a time when our 2nd grade writers will prove to to us that they are ready to graduate into their “real” Writer’s Notebooks. As a matter of habit, I guess, I put that step into the plan right around Day 12, when I figured that everyone would be ready; I’ve always done it that way with everyone on the same day (like here, and here).
I proceeded normally, working a few days ahead of my team, which was nice so I could work out the kinks of the plan (I’d used this idea with older kids, but never with 2nd graders, so I wasn’t quite sure how it would work! LOL). Then one day, at a working lunch, the subject of notebooks came up again. Everyone wanted to know how I had decided to actually handle it, and what procedure I was going through to get them to my kiddos. I mentioned that I was going to plan Notebook Day for the following week, with everyone celebrating on the same day (which is again, the way I’ve always done it). The next thing that happened was really interesting. Most of my friends around the table just said, “Hmm….” and I could tell they were trying to work it out. They asked me about the purpose of teh tiny notebooks and how it didn’t make sense to do everyone’s Notebook Day on the same day if everyone was ready at different times. They were, after all, supposed to PROVE to me that they “got it.” I explained that the real thing behind the tiny notebooks was, in addition to teaching them how to use their “real” notebook, the expectation and anticipation of getting their new notebooks. I rationalized that I’d always gotten everyone on board in a really positive way and that maybe it didn’t really matter if they were ready; Notebook Day was more about the ceremony and excitement around being a writer. We agreed that probably everyone else was going to give individual kids their notebooks when they were ready, rather than all at once, and that I was probably going to go ahead with an all-class celebration. Most importantly, though, we agreed that there was no RIGHT way to do it. Personal choice and professional judgment was paramount here.
Well, the meeting ended and I went on with the rest of my day, but I COULD NOT get that conversation out of my head. I had a headache in a really good way. You know those kind? The ones when you know that you’re chewing on something really important and you’re actually ok that it hurts? (You don’t have those? I hope so, because it means that you’re surrounding yourself with really great people who challenge you to improve your practice and evaluate how you do things. 🙂 ). I finished out the day, still unsure how I would proceed, and went home to have the same conversation with Mr. Bearden. I was pretty sure that (while it wasn’t a right/wrong issue) he would side with me, agreeing that a whole-class Notebook Day was a great idea. Well…he didn’t. He was actually really great about asking many other questions about it, and making suggestions about how I could have better explained my thinking to my team. He sided agreed that my team’s thinking that “when you’re ready” is the best time for new notebooks.
I chewed and chewed, trying to figure out why I’d always done it that way, and whether or not it would (or should!) work for this particular group of kiddos. Why hadn’t I ever done it “when they were ready,” as I had always explained to my students it would be? Why had I always done notebooks as a one-size-fits-all type situation? Well, ok, honestly probably because it’s easier. Especially with bigger kids, I probably didn’t want to manage keeping track of who had their notebook and who didn’t, as well as not wanting students to feel like they weren’t good enough or good writers. The whole thing, after all, was based on helping kids see themselves as writers, learn to live like writers and WANT TO BE WRITERS. In my mind, any negative (or something they could perceive as negative) was a no-go.
But maybe a one-size-fits-all what this group needed. Maybe, since they’re younger writers and this is the very beginning of their lifelong journey as writers, this was the year that I changed my whole process and really did what I said I was about all along (novel idea, right?)? And really, now that I admit it, when does one-size-fits-all ever work for kids?
So I decided I’d jump in and change up the whole “real” notebook deal this time around. There are pieces of it that I knew I wanted to keep the same, but the “when” of the process would be different for this new group of kiddos. And you know what? It’s been totally great and then some. Better than I could have imagined, and the anticipation and excitement are actually increased since kiddos aren’t sure when their Notebook Day will come.
(But really they can be sure…read more here. 🙂 )
I start almost every day in Rm. 202 by saying something to my students that still had some of them very confused:
I remember the first time I said it. No kidding, some of their eyes were as big as saucers and they thought I was kidding. “You mean you want me to mess up?” “You want me to fail?” Well….yes, actually I do. Not because I want you to feel badly, or because I want anything negative for you, but because I want you to learn something. When we make mistakes, we learn what NOT to do, or we learn how to do things differently, which helps us next time. If we’re always comfortable, and everything is easy, then we’re coasting and not learning. And THAT is not ok with me.
We have been talking a lot about our brains and how they work, and a couple of these videos have helped some of my friends look at me a little less crazily when I mention mistakes:
All of this fits in perfectly with our YET talk, and helps us all get on the same page as we learn and grow together. Not everyone is there yet, but I know that as we continue to understand how being perfect is not the goal, but learning new things is, more will get on board. Their new successes will help spur them to WANT to make mistakes, for that is when they LEARN something new. 🙂
We are lucky at Robinson. While I could go on with lists and lists of reasons why that’s true, the biggest reason right now is because Pacifique and Tresor are here. All the way from Rwanda!
Through work and love and more work (and fundraising!), we (I mean Mrs. Berger) were able to secure some AMAZING artists to spend the next two weeks with us. We are SUPER excited to have them here, and it’s funny how much our kiddos treat them like celebrities. It’s so fun to hear, “I saw Tresor in the car rider line!” “Did you see Pacifique outside? I did!”
I think my favorite part of this once-in-a-lifetime experience is the way it was planned, and how it’s about so much more than just learning how to dance, how to play a drum or looking at beautiful paintings (although those are FABULOUS things in themselves, for sure!). Like with most everything else we do, the focus was on bigger ideas, and on how this could change our kids in big ways for their future lives.
This residence asks our kiddos to chew on these big ideas and essential questions:
And while I am certain that there will be more stories to tell, dances to dance, drums to bang and art to share at the end of their time here, for now I can share some pictures and videos from their first day here with us. We had an assembly to welcome them, and to get the party started. As you can see, the energy is contagious (and so are their smiles!)!
It was hard to decide which videos to share, but I’ll start with these:
We are excited for the weeks to come, and for all the things we will learn! 🙂
That last post got a little long (and probably all my entries get a little too long!), so I figured I’d share the last part in another story.
On Day 3, after we had gotten back into our notebooks, I found a way to easily share our writing with a random partner. When I made our tiny notebooks (by cutting regular spiral notebooks in half), I was looking at the halves and thinking about how they could be put back together…
So kiddos found their sharing partner by finding the writer who had the other half of their notebook. So quick and so cool!
They shared their entry with their halfsies partner and had some great conversations!
Next time they are supposed to find their other halfsies partner (because there are 2 notebooks of each color), and we could match up in a couple of other ways. SO glad this happy accident happened. So simple but very useful. 🙂
20somethingkids and 1kookyteacher 