Animal School

I've seen this video many times, and I have yet to watch it that it didn't bring a tear to my eye. What are we doing to kids? What can I do differently so my classroom recognizes my students' uniqueness and gifts? What can YOU do for all kids?

Real Life Experiences

I often spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to make the assignments my kids must do meaningful for them. If they have to write to a writing prompt, how can I make that prompt something that they will actually care about because we all know we write best when we're writing about an important topic.

We're currently working on our persuasive writing skills. To try and make that a little more meaningful, I told my class the principal wasn't sure if we could have a holiday party. It was their job to convince him we should or to explain why they agreed with his point of view. My kids latched on to this and did well with the assignment, but Friday afternoon they one-upped me big time.

Our dismissal time takes about 10 - 15 minutes, and I enjoy the last few minutes I have with the students who ride the last bus. As we were waiting for their bus to be called, I noticed that one student was chewing gum. He didn't try to hide it, and when asked he told me it was, "An amazing key lime flavor," and he just couldn't wait to get home to have some. As I opened my mouth to go through the "you know you can't chew gum in school" speech, I realized how ridiculous it sounded. We GIVE kids gum during PSSAs (our state tests for my dear readers outside of Pennsylvania) to help them concentrate, but it's forbidden during the rest of the year. Hmmmmmm.....

Well, the kids picked up on it faster than I did, and TAAAA-DAAAAAAHHHHH, a natural learning opportunity was born. Their persuasive skills immediately kicked in and, being the rule-breaker that I am, I was inclined to agree with their points: we get it during PSSAs, we can be responsible, we shouldn't all be punished because one person can't be responsible. All very valid points. But I decided to push them further. "I like your ideas," I said, "but you'll need to talk to Mr. S." If it was really important to them I thought they would stop by the office Monday morning and make an appointment to see the principal.

Clearly I underestimated my kids. By 6PM Friday evening I received notification of a new blog post from one of my last bussers. She had already addressed Mr. S. in a blog post entitled, "Bubble Gum." Now I haven't posted it yet (but I will add the link here as soon as I do!) because I want her to collaborate with her friends and make sure she has included all of the ideas they shared, but I am so proud and impressed that she went home and put her skills to use to solve a real-life problem. They may not realize it, but these kids are really starting to understand what I mean when I say there is more to life than filling in bubbles on a test!

I can't wait to see what Mr. S. has to say about all of this!

Check Out Some Videos

Click here to visit the student's favorite poems that I talked about in my "Add Technology..." post. You'll need to click on each student's name to find their posts.

Are We Meeting Students' Needs?

I'd like to think I am, but every time I see a video like this it makes me wonder if I'm doing enough. Special thanks to @NMHS_Principal for tweeting this out.

Add Technology and Presto!

During the days leading up to and following Thanksgiving break my class spent some time looking at poetry. We talked about the tools poets use and became poets ourselves as I mentioned in our last post. Each day I offered the kids a chance to share their favorite poems that they've been reading with the class, and for our final day of poetry I kicked it up a notch. We (some of my student recorders and I) video taped the kids (using Flip cameras I received via grant) reading their poems so they can share them with everybody in the world!

At first some of the kids were not too thrilled about this, but the same small group that has been sharing the last two weeks hopped right up into the blue chair and started reading their poems. All of a sudden, a miracle happened. The sharing list... it started to grow, and grow, and grow! Mr. B, who I introduced here, assured me that I wouldn't have to worry, HE was not going to be sharing a poem to put up on the Internet. I told him that was fine; everybody had the choice whether to be recorded or not.

I looked at the list again. The growing continued, and now pairs and trios had been added. Of course we weren't able to get everybody's sharing videotaped Friday afternoon, but I assured the kids that if they wanted on the blog or the website, they would be on blog or the website. I'll be spending a lot of time uploading videos this weekend, but it'll totally be worth it when they see their sharing!

The kids left, and as I was cleaning up I looked up at the list one last time, happily thinking about how technology had encouraged my kids to find poems they enjoyed, practice reading them with love and expression and share them with others. As I scanned down the list, my eyes landed on the last entry - a trio. Mr. B and his two friends. :)

Writing Excitement!

It has been a busy time in the Bair's Den since parent teacher conferences. To up the ante and hopefully get the kids as excited about writing as they are about reading, I introduced our class blog.

http://kidblog.org/TheBairsDen

My kids, well, if you go and read some of their posts you'll see that they were excited and nervous about posting for the word to read and comment. But as you'll also see, they took to this challenge with gusto and have not looked back. It's so exciting to see sad, pouty faces when I have to tell them that it's time to put the computers away to head to lunch or special.

The best thing about the blog came from Mr. B, my resident jock / cool guy. After our first session on the blog we were headed back to the classroom. Mr. B looked at me and said, "I never thought I would like writing this much!" And you should have seen their faces when they got their first posts from a very special class in Nevada. (Thanks, Mr. Crosby!)

They have fallen into my trap -- they are loving reading and writing!!!

Parent Teacher Conferences

Parent teacher conferences require a lot of preparation and energy. For many teachers they are also extremely scary and nerve-wracking. I think I'm in the minority of a lot of teachers when I say that, while they do require a lot of prep time, conferences do not bother me. I look forward to the opportunity to sit down with parents and see if what I'm seeing from their child in school matches the kid they know at home.

This year I have 22 students, and one of my teaching friends asked me, "So, which conferences are you dreading?" I honestly said none because there truly were no children whose parents I was not looking forward to meeting. All of my kids who are below level have made some growth, and I have some pretty amazing kids who are surviving and doing pretty impressive school work despite some pretty awful situations. In the end I had 21 excellent conferences (one will happen Monday because of a vacation), and here are some of the highlights:

- 8 parents asking me what I did to their child because he / she NEVER wanted to read and now he / she is reading ALL the time! (This was the best, best, best comment of them all, and every time I heard it I practically squealed!)

- several parents saying, "Oh my yes, that is my kid!" when I described my picture of their child and how he or she learns and works best

- One set of parents asking me who I was talking about because they have never had a positive conference about their child before. Seriously?? I had heard the rumors, but their child earned every word of praise I shared with them.

- 7 moms crying (all good tears)

- 4 sets of parents telling me that their kids come home every day to show them our websites so they can see what we've been doing

- several parents telling me that their child can't wait to come to school and says it is fun

- being able to show so many parents a ton of growth, even if their children haven't quite met the benchmarks yet

- all parents being really excited to hear that the kids will start blogging this week

Since we don't have formal conferences again during the school year, I can add my 13th round of conferences to the old teaching belt. They never get easier, but this year's seemed to be a lot more rewarding. Hopefully that trend will continue.