Michelle’s Blog - The story of a beginning teacher.

Hi! My second full year of teaching is approaching fast. I had a restful summer and I am ready to tackle first grade. First grade is more my fortay especially since I interned in first grade for a semester. I don’t feel as nervous as last year because I know what to expect.

My first deadline for my Professional Development Plan is also fast approaching. I decided that I am focusing on Guided Reading. I was talking to a colleague and she said to focus on one thing at a time and after you have mastered one thing, then go onto another area. So that is what I plan on doing. I read Guided Reading: A Good First Teaching for All Children by: Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell this summer. I will be reading the Scholastic version of Guided Reading during the school year.

I also bought a Writing Workshop curriculum by Heinnemann Publications so I can use it while keeping my focus on Guided Reading. I read the books for that this summer and I am excited to use it with my first graders.

My classroom is almost all set to go, I need to put up some bulletin boards, then plan the first week of school. I feel the pressure since school starts in two weeks, but after the first couple weeks of school I am sure everything will go smoothly! I hope

HOpefully I will update this more this year also. I have a goal for this year, I am going to get to school every day at 7:45am and leave at 4:30pm to keep my sanity. Also this summer I started running and I am up to two miles. So I plan on running during the school year.

Those are my goals and hopefully I will stick to them!

My first year of teaching is done! Wow, did it ever go fast! Now I am three weeks into summer vacation and already preparing for next year. Paul and I took a much needed vacation to Arizona to relax and not think about the daily stresses. We stayed at my aunt and uncle’s house and swam in their pool almost twice daily. It was wonderful! We also golfed there and in Wisconsin, that is such a stress reliever. Now I am ready to do school work and house work. I am teaching summer school for the second session (3 weeks) during the month of July.
I also wanted to reflect about the past school year just one more time and put my goals for next year on paper. My PDP is going to be about guided reading. I plan on attending one workshop next school year, one workshop during the summer, and reading two books this year. I am also taking a grad level course through our district in connection with Alverno College to help with completing my PDP. Over the course of three more years I plan on reading more books, attending workshops, and taking grad level courses on guided reading. Guided reading will be the focus of my professional development.
Unofficially the other focus of my professional development will be parent communication. I plan on writing notes, calling, and conferencing more with parents in an effort to help their child. To start the school year, I will be sending home postcards welcoming students (and parents) to my classroom. I plan on calling parents with positive and negative comments. I also would like to have more parent volunteers in my classroom. For me, parents are scary and I hope to overcome some of the anxiety I have. For some, parent communication comes naturally and for my it is stepping outside of the box, however I want to do it so that I will become better at it.
The last thing that I am going to do differently is read more about Jim Fay and start the Love and Logic discipline approach from the beginning of the year. Give the children choices, build rapport, and use simple phrases that are empathic. One colleague helped me implement it this past year when other strategies had failed and I really like Love and Logic.
There are some things that I am going to do differently at the beginning of this next school year and that is to be explicit at the beginning of the school year about my expectations and really TEACH what they are and the classroom procedures. I have more of an idea of how I would like some procedural things done in my classroom either because they worked or didn’t work last year.
The last thing I would like to say about the past school year is to thank my kids that I taught. I thank you for being so flexible as I changed many things throughout the school year and tried different techniques. The parents were really great and made me realize they just want to see their children succeed. My colleagues were wonderful and got my through my first year, without them I would never have made it! From this point on, I am looking forward to my second year of teaching and know I have experience that will help me this year! As my golf coach would say, “Focus on the next shot, not the shot you just took.” So I am ready to focus on next year and know I can’t change last year, but I can learn from my experiences.

Wow! I can’t believe the school year is almost over. My first year has been filled with many long hours at work 12+ hours a day on some days, lots of stress about parents, and trying to get a grasp on reading, writing, and discipline. I can officially say, those three areas I want to work on as well as parent communication. I wish I can fast forward 5 years to see where I am teaching, how I am teaching. These first years are sure painful, I know I at times I suck, yet I can’t seem to get the formula of teaching quite right. There are days when I want to quit, days when I think, “wow I can’t believe I thought I wanted to quit,” and days when I think teaching is 10% about the kids and 90% about everything else. As my principal would say, during this first year I have been baptized with fire. I hope that next school year I can write in this blog more and maybe help other first year teachers to know that they aren’t the only ones struggling out there.
Next year, I am moving from third grade to first grade at the same school and the year after who knows where I will be. I would really like to find a position somewhere closer to where I live but I don’t know if that’s in God’s plan or not at this point.
Right now I am reading an awesome book called Writing Essentials by: Regie Routman. It is awesome and gives tips on how to teach writing. It also tells you what to do for writing and gives sample lessons. I really like it. I tried some of it today and it worked wonderfully. One of my friends asked me what I do for writing workshop and I have just made everything up this year. Now I have a wonderful binder of lessons, however I had to make it from scratch and it is still a work in progress.
I am also still trying to get everything organized in my classroom. I think I have finally found a classroom setup that I like. I am still wondering how to organize things like my literacy centers, where do you put all of that stuff so I can easily access it later and get other ideas from it later? I like the bin system for the library that has worked well especially for students to put books back after they are done reading them. Students can easily find books and put them back in an organized way. I use binders to keep all of my curriculum stuff, maybe I will be back in third grade and can use some of it.
I have recently set up a parent webpage which is nice for the parents, however I am having a hard time finding time to update it. I have spelling words on it and special projects, but I haven’t updated the spelling words in a month and I haven’t updated the special project either.
Well, I better go, time to veg and watch Grey’s Anatomy season finale. Hopefully I can write again before the school year is over!

Hi,
Wow, time flies, I can’t say it enough. I can’t believe the last time I posted was on November 20th! Right at this very moment in my classroom I am doing guided reading combined with reading/writing workshop. I love it! It makes my mornings fly by and it so very less stressful! I just reoragnized my classroom library. I got a spinning book cart to put my miscelaneous chapter books on. Then I categorized the rest of those and my picture books and put them all into labeled bins. For my writing workshop stuff, I got bins to put on a bookshelf that are colored so each group has its own bin making it easier for the students to find their stuff. I am in the process of doing the same thing for the students’ reading folders during their independent reading time. I like how my room is slowly getting organized in a way that the kids can keep it organized.
I made binders for all of my lesson plans and lessons. That really helps especially when I want to find stuff next year.
I am working on language arts center ideas for my WORD center. I am coming up with some ideas, but also I am looking for more ideas. I collaborate with a second grade teacher and I bounce ideas off of her, because she does something similar in her classroom. It’s nice to have someone to do that with.
Well, I need to write some lesson plans, so I will write more later, hopefully sooner than later!

My observation went well. My principal observed a math lesson. We played a game: Close to 100. Students added two digit numbers with and without regrouping, then they had to find the difference between their sum and 100. So it had both addition and subtraction. Students used a 100 chart to help them find the difference. It was another means to subtracting without the necessity of borrowing. This was game was part of our math curriculum called Investigations. It teaches students more than one way to do math, it is hands-on, and it is based on real-life problems. So far, I love Investigations!

I have two things to work on: Transitions and waiting for the students to stop talking before I talk.
If anyone has any ideas that have worked to make transitions smoother and so the students don’t talk, let me know. I am still working on this and I feel that I lose a lot of time during transitions. Again, it’s all about the talking issue. I will say that my students are getting better! We actually have some quiet working in the mornings and for a little bit in the afternoon. I just hope they don’t lose everything that I have been working on (in regards to talking) this summer.

There are also a few things that I wish didn’t take me this long to learn. One: I have a few students who are not concentrating on their work because they get done early and it was easy. Yes, I know I learned all about that in a classroom management class I took in college, however it took me this long to pinpoint who they are. So now, I am giving them enrichment activities to do.

Two: Another thing that is a struggle for me is to differentiate instruction. I am learning how to do it and make it easier for me, but I think it will take me a few years to juggle the differentiated instruction and the regular instruction all at the same time.

Three: I am just starting to get familiar with the curriculum. And I am just starting to get to know how I want to teach and what works well for me. I am still experimenting with a few things: whether I want to do Guided Reading or Reading Workshop or neither and if I want to do writing workshop or make up my own version.

I am reading tons of books to just drink up knowledge, hopefully this summer I will read lots more to know what I want to do next year.

After many months of feeling unsuccessful I finally feel successful. I have realized where I need to work on with writing lessons. It’s basically in every subject area. I have decided to start with one subject and go on to other subjects as time allows. I started with math and writing. I know I said only one subject but with feeling ambitious, one subject is too little, especially giving the time frame.

Anyways, in math I am now using the Investigations curriculum instead of just the math textbook. I love Investigations because it uses real life things and teaches math. Also it is hands on and students can use manipulatives and learn how to do math in more than one way. This is great for my class, since they think that there is only one way to do math which is not necessarily true. It is also easier for some of my students to use manipulatives and number charts instead of the “traditional” math ways. I am so glad I found this math curriculum in my classroom.

This week I am getting observed and I am using one of the games in Investigations. So we will see how it goes. I am excited about it and I think my students will be excited about it too! I’ll write back in the blog to tell how my first observation goes.

The next thing that I changed is writing. I actually am doing more writing than I was before. I started having the students write in a journal. Sometimes we use journal prompts, other times they tell about everyday things. I found this awesome book that is Trait-Based Mini-Lessons from Scholastic. I love it because first it has 25 mini lessons for six trait writing. Second, it uses children’s books to teach this lessons. Third, it actually motivates students and teaches them HOW to write. I have used 2 of the lessons so far and absolutely love them.

I have to tell about the sense writing for the first trait of IDEAS. This lesson was adapted from the above book. In back of our school we have a forest. I took the students to the forest and they had to be silent. I told them to look around, smell and feel the air, and third they had to pick up two leaves and take them back to school. We went on a short walk, then went back into the classroom. Next, we made a graphic organizer about the four senses that we used on our walk: hear, smell, touch, and see. We brainstormed as a whole class and they wrote down all of the classes thoughts on their own papers. Next, I used another graphic organizer to organize their brainstormed thoughts. They had to write one sentence about each of the senses they used from the brainstormed list. Then they had to pick two more senses two write two more sentences. So they wrote a total of 6 sentences. Next I had each student write one topic sentence. (I combined 6 Trait Writing and Power Writing, since those are the two main writing curricula we use in the district) I told students that each topic sentence was a Power 1 sentence. Then they shared their sentences and I wrote them on the overhead. Next, I wrote a paragraph like they one I expected from them on the overhead. I chose 1 Power 1 sentence, then I wrote 1 detail sentence from my graphic organizer (Power 2 sentence), then I elaborated and wrote one more detail sentence about the Power 2 sentence (Power 3 sentence). I continued this way until I was done with all 6 sentences. I had 13 sentences when I was done. Finally, I went back to my topic sentences that the class shared (Power 1 sentences) and wrote a conclusion sentence. In all, I had 14 sentences. Then I re-read my entire writing piece. I told the students that is what I want you to do and they got to work.

I was amazed at how detailed their writings were. I was also surprised to see how much they wrote. The students were engaged in their writing and they were excited with their writing. It was awesome to see and I had never seen this before. They wrote this paragraph on leaves and I hung them on a tree in the hallway. I titled the bulletin board Fall in the Woods.

The two leaves that I had them pick up served to purposes. First, students touched their leaves to describe how the leaf felt for the feeling sense. This also brought back memories of things that they touched in the woods. Second, they did leaf rubbings on the covers of their stories.

I plan on going back to the woods to write about Winter in the Woods and Spring in the Woods. We will decorate our tree differently for each season. This lesson took a total of an hour and a half. This was by far the best lesson I have done to date for writing.

It is exciting to feel happy about lessons that are happening in my classroom!

Wow, I can’t believe how time sure flies. Two months down. I just got through parent/teacher conferences. I was apprehensive because first, I am not a parent, I do not know what it is like on the “other side of the table.” Second, it was tough bringing bad news. All in all, conferences went well and the parents were very supportive. Our conferences were different because they were student-led conferences. I had a portfolio for each of my students. I made sure there was a sample for every subject, a sample of an assessment and writing sample. Students started by reading a letter they had written to their parents, then they read other pieces in their portfolio. I felt that I did most of the talking, next year I want to get the students to talk more, so I do more of the listening. I liked having a portfolio because it gave us something to talk about even for the “good kids.” The parents appreciated seeing their student’s work and got a glimpse of what goes on in school.

My students are better well behaved, I am less tired. I have tried many classroom management strategies and have learned that one way doesn’t work for everything. I have many different strategies that I use throughout the day.

I am also learning that with my students every day brings a new challenge and a new learning experience. For my students one day is not like the next day and I am desperately trying to find a pattern and it is not working. I am also learning how to document everything that goes on in my classroom, so I have evidence to talk to parents.

I am very excited to try something new tomorrow. I am trying small group reading. I have four paperback books and I wrote lessons for each book for a week. I am trying heterogeneous groups instead of homogeneous groups. Every student will read all of the books in one month time. The books go with our reading basal series. I am excited to try this and will keep everyone posted as to how it is going.

Another thing I have implemented is writing more during the day. I felt that writing had gotten waysided and we weren’t writing at all. Now we are journaling every day and I am starting mini lessons with 6 Trait writing. Next year I hope to do Writer’s workshop, but for now I am just learning how to implement writing.

Hopefully I will write more soon!
Hope everyone else is doing well and will be enjoying November!

Wow, I can’t believe I haven’t written in here since the first day of school. Three weeks later and I am still treading water, at least my head is above water now. That is the one question everyone seems to ask me, Is your head above water? My response, barely!

Well I am constantly trying new things. I call my first year the trial and error year. My number one problem for the first month of school: Getting the students to not talk to each other during transition times and in the hallway.
Here are my solutions that I have tried:

• Yelling: I lost my voice after two days of school, two days in and I was sick with a cold and no voice. After about a week, I was over my cold, now I clean the room using clorox wipes every Friday. I wipe down each desk, all the tables, and wipe the doorknobs and any other lever my kids touch.
• Taking away recess minutes: This worked for about two days, then they didn’t care. So, then I had them start earning recess back, again it worked for about two days. I decided they needed immediate individual feedback.
• Sticker Incentive charts: This is currently the method of choice, it has worked now for about one week. I walk around the room with my trusty stickers and don’t say a word. If a student is silent, then they get a sticker on an incentive chart that is taped to their desk. When I start walking around the room, I hear, “She’s coming with stickers.” Immediately the room is silent and students are working hard. After 30 stickers, they get to pick out of the prize box which I hide and I take the stickers with me wherever I go and hide the rest of the one kind I use, for obvious reasons that I can’t name over the Internet.

For the walking in the halls silently thing, we walk the halls during recess silently if the students can’t be quiet in the halls and that seems to be working.

Another item that I had to revise was my library. I used to keep my picture books on the shelves and I put laminated construction paper between topics of books, however after one day all the picture books fell off the shelves because they are all different sizes. I mean they all came tumbling down in the middle of a lesson and no one was over there. Now I use topical bins, the kids just plunk the books in the topical bin and it is working well!

My next struggle is getting the kids to think. Many of them don’t want to think and just wait for a classmate to think for them. I am working on this. Right now, after a question I wait until 10 hands go up before I call on someone. One of my students asked why 10 hands and I said because it is about half of the class. If we are doing a problem of the day in math, I wait until everyone has answered the question in their notebook. I am constantly walking around the classroom to make sure they are doing what they are supposed to be doing and not goofing around or drawing when they are supposed to be answering a question or thinking.

Another item that is my weakness that I knew about coming into the school year is communicating with parents. I am not scared of my students’ parents anymore and I e-mail or write letters to many of them on a regular basis. One nice thing that our school does is a daily agenda. Every student in the building has one from Kindergarten through 5th grade. For the older kids they write their homework in it, then I sign it and write anything to their parents that I need to talk to them about. Then every night the parent signs the agenda and every morning I check the agenda to make sure their parent signs it. I know you are thinking, wow that must take a lot of time, but really it takes about 5 minutes a day to do all of it and I love it! Otherwise, I use e-mail and it’s not so scary communicating with parents.

Well that’s all for tonight, its past my bedtime, so it’s reading time for me then off to bed. That’s another thing I am getting used to is being so tired all the time, I wake up at 5:45am adn leave at 6:45am for work, get to school at 7:30am, then school starts at 8:30am, then school ends at 3:20pm and I leave school at 6pm and get home at 6:45pm. So I am gone for 12 hours a day and I go to bed at 9pm because I am so tired. From 7pm-9pm I am usually during school work, such as planning, grading papers, etc.

Also, my feet are getting used to walking all the time. I am not as tired as I used to be, but my feet still ache! I really need to buy more comfortable shoes. I was told to buy more expensive comfortable shoes and I won’t regret it, so we’ll see.

Anyways, I really must go to bed and read a book so I can unwind!
Hopefully I will write more soon!

Well, as you can tell, the first day of school was hectic since I am writing this a day later during one of my specials. It was all about procedures and rules. My voice was extremely horse by the end of the day. My feet kill and I pretty much fell over when I got home. Then I commented on the many inventories that I gave which took until 10pm at which time I fell into bed and was out like a light. I woke up at 5:45am to my alarm and wondered where the night went. Actually, I woke up at 5am and couldn’t sleep and tossed and turned until my alarm went off. I thinking what am I going to do with so and so and the problems from the first day of school. I was also told that my e-mails are soon to be public record so I am also afraid to write too many things here in case this is public record also.

Today seems to be going better and I am just reafirming the procedures from yesterday. We are also starting to get into some “meat” with the other subjects. Today I am feeling less stressed and know the procedures of the school better. That’s all she wrote, I have more things to do during my sacred specials time. So time to go and do them!

I had too much going on yesterday to sit down and write. Today, I am using the computer that is at school. Yea, I am branching out! Tonight is Open House and I give two presentations. Hopefully it will go well. My classroom is all ready, soon the pictures will be on the Internet. Most everything else is ready, yesterday I was running around trying to make my daily schedule and coordinate with the ESL, Speech and Language, reading, and guidance teachers. I think everything is done, I set up a computer time. The librarian was not ready for us to sign up for library time, so that will be done when she is ready for us. I handed in my daily schedule early! The mailboxes are ready, I just have to attach names to the portfolios, make sure everything is ready for the first two days of school, sharpen pencils, and make a classroom treasure hunt. Tonight I plan on going through the parent packets that I made and giving the parents time to look through the reading and math textbooks. I will also tell about myself and the 15 minutes should be up. I hope no parents argue with me and it goes well. I will write more tonight after the Open House and give details as to how it went.
Time to get back to work!