So I realize that yesterday’s post was a bit long, 2351
words long, in fact. I decided not only
was it long but it took a good two hours to write last night. I do enjoy the fact that I was able to get
all my learning from the day down into a readable format and that I did it the
day I learned it so it was a good reflection of what I learned in a timely
manner. But, I also am in Vegas, I need
to pretend that I am enjoying Vegas nightlife and not going to bed at 9
PM. So to shorten up my blog post today
I decided I would only post five highlights from each of the sessions I
attended. You know, a summary instead of
a novel.
Implementing Math Stations
Presenter: Julie Brinkley
Julie started off by begging for mercy as it was her first
time as a presenter. She also brought
her husband to Vegas with her and he was in attendance in her sessions. He served as her in house techie and he got a
big round of applause from the ladies.
Julie is a lady after my own heart as she loves Pinterest almost as much
as me, she has 994 pins and I’m well over 1600 now. (I’m not really sure if this is something one
should brag about but what the heck.)
*Her session was over the BUILD concept of constructing math
learners through hands on math. BUILD
stands for B-Buddy Games U-Using Manipulatives I-Independent Reading L-Learning
Numbers D-Doing Math. If you search
BUILD centers on Pinterest you’ll come up with many different ideas. BUILD is similar to the reading center called
Daily 5.
*She had an old school concept called Math Work Jobs in
which has come back around in the educational world. It is timely as it fits right in with our
Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The
way she uses them she’ll make five boards with, for example, a tank on the
board. She then uses plastic army men as
the counters and the student will lay out all the work boards, in this scenario
a tank, and then show all the different ways s/he can make the number 7. The idea is to keep your mat so there is an
inside of the and outside place on the mat for kids to show separation. So a student might put 3 army men on the tank
and 4 outside the tank and show that 3 & 4 make 7. On another board they’ll put 2 on the tank
and 5 outside the tank. They continue
laying out army men in all the different ways they can think of to make a
7. Julie then had a quick check sheet
the kids could look at to determine if they’d found all the ways to make
7.
*Math is about patterns and we kept hearing all day about
this and how we need to work on patterning in kindergarten. With the new CCSS patterning is not a
standard in any grade as we have performed it in the past. But since math is based upon patterning the
presenters seem to be pushing patterning, which I agree with
wholeheartedly. They integrated some
various methods for getting patterning into their day. Julie has a special book the student made at
calendar each day so if they were doing an AB pattern October 1st
would be a green bug and October 2nd would be a red lady bug and
continue this in a small booklet she made with the correct number of pages for
the month. Then the pattern book could
be added to one of her BUILD centers for students to read during independent
reading time.
*One of her simple ideas was having students order numbers
by putting them into a pocket chart and ordering them. She also had them put number cards in order
by punching holes into either side of the number card and joining them together
using the simple math link manipuatives that we all have in our classroom. She also took one of the simple number
borders you can get at Dollar Tree, cut it apart and the kids could put it in
numerical order. The genius thing about
the Dollar Tree border is that is has a slight puzzle like quality so it was self-checking.
*Finally, she did her math calendar time a little bit
different. She had a folder that had a
pocket for holding chips and a popsicle stick with a pom-pom to use as a
pointer & eraser for dry erase markers. She had boards with the 100s chart,
a ten frame for practicing writing numbers and a chart for after Christmas
where students would write a number in the middle box (usually chosen by
rolling a dice or two) and then the students would write the number that comes
before it and after it. She would do many activities with each board. One idea for the 100s chart included counting
to 16 then having the kids draw a triangle around the 16, geometry, number
recognition and counting all in one fell swoop.
Recipe for Success
Presenter: Kim Adsit
We went to Kim’s session yesterday and we came back for more
today. She is not only a good presenter
but an excellent story teller. I love a
good story and especially when they do the voices and actions along with
it. In this session Kim used one theme,
bats, to show how even though bats are not a state standard in GA, she was able
to use it to teach all the different standards that she is required to
teach. It was a good reminder that we as
teachers need to stretch our imaginations a little and use what we know to
incorporate it into our teaching.
*She stressed how you can use a fiction and non-fiction text
(CCSS says all text read in the classroom needs to be at least 50%) and use
them to compare and contrast real versus not real.
*She uses interactive writing charts in her room. I’m not very familiar with these and would
like to do some more reading about them and see if I can’t use them in my
classroom as well.
*Labeling is a precursor to writing and she used lots of
ideas for labeling pictures to teach science, in this case bat body parts, and
then use the same picture to demonstrate in writing that the kids already knew
how to use labeling and had a concrete model for kids to look at to demonstrate
the skill.
*She makes many, many, many different classroom books that
are predictable for the kids to practice reading. Not only were they fun the books taught
prosody as the kids could read the predictable text. Many of her ideas where based upon already
know songs or were from known books the kids read within the unit. One of her examples was based upon the book
Silly Sally. She integrated in the bat
unit as a rhyme since bats hang upside down.
She took a picture of the student with their hands up in the air then
glued it into the book upside down so it looked like the kid was hanging from
the ceiling. She then had a poem: Silly
____ went to town, walking backwards, upside down. Each student then had their own page in the
class book. She gave several examples of these types of books.
*She also talked about we don’t want students sitting on the
carpet while we are doing all the work. We want activities where the students
are also engaged in what is going on whether this be by having a paper with a
small Venn diagram they fill in as we build a Venn diagram or a list where
students write words as we list them on the board or a small picture that
students label as the class labels a bigger bat on the board. She says we need
to stop having kids sit and get and hope and pray that they are getting what we
putting out there for them. We need to
provide activities that the kids are involved in as we do them together. She was good about presenting not only the
top work out of her class but she also showed us examples of what her lower students
were producing so we could see she worked in the reality that not everyone was
at the same level but students could still gain something while
participating.
 |
| Julie Brinkley showing her self checking tennis ball that she cuts a slit in and then the answers for her math work jobs are inside. |
The First 30 Days
Presenter: Donna Whyte
I love Donna. I saw
her 3 years ago at the conference and I love her. She is also WONDEFUL storyteller and has a
great kid voice she uses. She is rooted
in the reality of what we do. Our
session was to discuss what we can do at the beginning of the year to set up
our classroom and routines to make our lives run much more smoothly throughout
the school year. If our routines are not
in place at the beginning of the year we will spend the rest of the year
repeating useless instructions to our kids and wasting valuable instruction
time.
*Donna has only 1 rule in her classroom: Do the right
thing. She says it always comes back to
that. Although, she takes time and does
daily mini-lessons on what it means to do the right thing. She’ll go through scenarios in which she’ll
trip and drop all her things and then they discuss what the right thing to do
is: ask if the kid is ok, help pick up the dropped materials, etc. They also
discuss what they shouldn’t do; laugh, kick the dropped things, etc. She then tells them that they know what the
right thing to do is so I expect you to do the right thing. She has many of these types of
scenarios.
*Donna also explicating teaches kindness through a two week
mini lesson on kindness. She thinks it
is very important and not a social skill that all kids understand. She says you’ll ask a kid what it means to be
kind and they’ll always answer to be nice.
She takes the same method as before and demonstrates what it looks
like. On day 1 she teaches: what it
means to be kind and only uses positive examples. Day 2: Give an example of a
kind thing to do and then discuss what an unkind thing would look like. Day 3: Use story book characters and discuss
why or why not that character is a kind person.
Those were some of her examples.
*She makes a classroom scrapbook that she keeps in class all
year with a brief description of each student and a photo or two. A great way to connect to families in which
each family made and filled out and all the teacher had to do was put it in a
three ring binder. She also advocated
using the picture frames of family pictures in your classroom as we heard about
yesterday in Kim Adsit’s presentation.
*An easy method for diffusing tension with a parent is to
say (especially when they are hopping mad): I’m happy to see you. I want you to know that you and I have the
same goals for your child. We care about
your child. She says it works like a
charm. We’ll see if I can use it
effectively next time when the heat is on.
*Donna’s passionate plea to us was to reach out to new
teachers and make them feel welcome. Fifty percent of teachers leave the
profession in less than five years. It
takes that many years for a teacher to become proficient at what they are doing
and many are leaving before they do. The
stressors put on teachers have pushed them out before they develop their
craft. She had a cute note that she uses
and puts in new teachers mailboxes at the beginning of the year extending a
helping hand and listening ear for a new teacher to seek her. She encouraged us to become building mentors
if our school has the program or be informal mentors if not. The funny part to this story is I decided not
to reapply to be a mentor in my district this year after being one the past
four years. I enjoy it but it does take
a lot of time, especially when your mentee is in another building. Tonight I got a call from Dustan saying I got
a letter from the district thanking me for applying to be a mentor this year
(you reapply yearly) and they’d assigned me a mentee. Dustan asked why I signed up after telling
him I wasn’t going to do it. I told him
I hadn’t and figured there must be some confusion. He asked if I was going to
call and tell them I wasn’t going to do it this year. I said no, I figured it must be fate for me
to do it. Plus, how could I let Donna down by refusing to help a new teacher to
our profession? Timing is
everything.
I’ll not report on our last session as we spent a little bit
too much time (and possibly money) in the exhibit hall and before we knew it we
were 20 minutes late to our last session.
By missing the beginning I feel that I may not do her session justice as
I came in the middle. I’d hate to be
judged by someone who walked in and didn’t get the whole message. In other words, I wasn’t impressed, but I
learned so much in my first three sessions I felt I learned more than any one
person could ask for in a day.
So here I am at the end with as many words as last night and
as much time spent as last night.
Hummmm…..maybe less bullets? I
don’t know and I’m not sure I care as this a great reflection piece on my
learning today. Tomorrow Jill and I are
getting up early to hit the exhibit hall so there won’t be as many people in
our way and we have enough time to shop without needing to run off to our
sessions. We also have some things we
need to acquire. That’s right, I said need.
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