Social Justice SMART Goal

Last week Monday, I got a new student in my class.  At this point in the year, I find it difficult to get new students...for the simple fact that it frustrates me that I will not have the same opportunity to get to know this child the way I did the other 18 in my class.  My new student has had an extremely rough life, and all the while, I keep questioning- What can I do to make this child's life great at school?  How can I make him feel loved, cared for, respected, and proud at school?

I am hopeful that my Social Justice SMART Goal will help me to find the answers to some of these questions.  Being that I give a weekly feelings survey, it gives me the opportunity to dig deeper into some areas that wouldn't have necessarily been shared in any normal setting.  When this student was taking this survey on Friday, after one full week at a new school, I was able to follow up right away with questions as to why he was feeling the way he was feeling.  One thing I really try to work hard on is sharing feelings beyond "happy" or "sad."  I want my students to be able to start to decipher deeper feelings than those because I really feel that them being able to recognize their true feelings will help them to diffuse situations more effectively.

One thing I find interesting about teaching younger students is their perceptions of what is "normal."  Some of these young kids have been through more in their six years of life than I could ever imagine.  However, they know no different, and they find it to be no different than any other student they are around at school!  It makes them totally open about what goes on in their lives.

Our Buses are Moving!

We have a lot of fun keeping our buses moving in our room.  At the end of each day, we take time to share 3 positive things from the day.  Right now, they are pretty light statements, but I am hopeful that as the year goes on, we will be able to get a little deeper with our thoughts.  To choose the students who will share, I pull sticks from the can.  I really encourage each name that I pull to think of something positive.  I do not want the same 5 kids to be sharing positives, while the rest aren't forced to put some thought into their school day.  Of course, I offer help if they are struggling, but I try to scaffold it as little as possible.  I have seen positive results!  

I can see that the students really enjoy this time.  I also have really enjoyed it!  No matter how difficult the day was, the end of the day is left to leave energy vampires behind and to start fresh the next day!   

19 New Energy Buses

Today, my class and I created 19 new energy buses.  I gave each student a yellow card with a bus on it, wrote "Bus Driver (Name)"  on the top, and on the bottom I wrote "My goal is_____."  I began by explaining to the students that they only had one half of First Grade left and that it was important to revisit our Hopes and Dreams. We talked about how our "magic buses" were going to represent our new hope, and that these buses would be fueled by positive energy.  The students immediately referred to the Magic School Bus, which I thought was kind of a fun connection.  


I sent them back to their desks with the card and said they could decorate their bus however they wanted to.  In the meantime, I called each of them over to revisit our current Hopes and Dreams, and to see whether or not they had reached it and if they wanted to work toward a new goal.  I was very impressed with what they created!


I will admit that I was a little skeptical about trying this at first.  With it being such a metaphorical expression, I wasn't sure they could make the connection.  They had so much fun with it, though, and were so excited about their creations!!!!!!


My next step....to create a long bus with me as the driver, and all of them as passengers....and ask for their trust on the journey.

Energy Bus!!!

I read some more of The Energy Bus tonight and got one more idea for my classroom!  George's coworkers told him that he had never really done anything for them, so why should they choose to ride his bus?  All of a sudden, he turned from a continuously negative person, to one who wanted everyone to be positive with him.  When the book started to talk about how building positivity takes a lot of energy, every single day, similar to building muscle, I got an idea!


I thought that was a very intriguing point.  If you start exercising, but then stop for a week, when you come back the next week, it is never as easy to pick up!  Similarly, if you lose your positive energy, it makes it more difficult to pick back up.  It is easy to get the "poor me" attitude and hope that things will turn up, but you are the driver of your own bus!  


I think this can hold true in the classroom.  If you think your class has had a bad week, your students may go home feeling negative and not being excited to come back the next day.  While not everything can always turn out the way you had hoped, looking at it in a constructive manner can help it to improve for the next time.


My idea for the classroom is to end each day with three positive things that happened that day.  I will use a class list to make sure that everyone gets a turn each round to share a "positive."  I am hopeful that this will also help us to realize that we are all riding the same bus!  

The Energy Bus

Getting back into the "swing of things" after our Holiday Break seemed to be very difficult for me this year!  I love my job, and I love my class, but for some reason, the first week back seemed long and drawn out, and things that don't normally bother me were really getting to me!  I needed a pick-me-up.  I am so glad that I started reading The Energy Bus by Jon Gordon.


The first thing that really struck me was the simple gesture that one person seemed to impact George's day.  The first day he met the bus driver, she did not leave his mind until he had seen her again.  While his attitude toward her was portrayed in a negative manner at first, it is obvious that she impacted him enough to wonder when he would see her again. 


This made me think- what kind of impact do I want to have on people?  Do I want people to remember me as the negative or positive person?  Of course, the answer to that is simple. The actions behind it are the difficult part.


I read on to discover Rule #1: Be the driver of your own bus.  Everyone has crisis situations.  Everyone also has the chance to react to them in two ways- negatively or positively.  How you choose to react will drastically affect the outcome.  


This makes me think about the summer I spent all of my free time applying for teaching jobs.  Everyone had told us it was a tough business, and the chances were good that we wouldn't succeed.  I decided to be the driver of my own bus.  Of course I was bummed each time I received a rejection letter, but support from my family and friends helped me by encouraging me that there was a reason for those rejections.  When I finally got my dream job as a First Grade Teacher, I felt like I had accomplished so much!


It is not always easy to react positively.  I get easily stressed when I feel unorganized.  I am hopeful that as I continue reading this book, I will learn more strategies of coping with this!


Rule #2: Focus your energy.  I loved how the book said that without focused energy, all it is is unorganized energy.  This fits perfectly with my lifestyle.  If you have energy, but aren't sure where it is going, it can be pointless energy!  It's better to take your bus and steer it in a direction, even if it doesn't always turn out as expected, than to be driving around aimlessly with no direction!


I have found this book to be a great read so far.  In my classroom, we have been talking about revisiting our hopes and dreams.  This fits in perfectly.  I am going to explain to students that, now that we know each other better, it may be easier to set goals.  I want them to trust me as their bus driver, but I also want them to each be their own bus drivers.  My plan (taken from an idea that Janet mentioned- thanks, Janet!) is to tape a bus on each of their desks as a reminder of our conversations.  On that bus, I am going to have them write one goal for the remainder of the school year.  I am excited to use this analogy.  I think it will be one they can easily relate to!

Action Research

As I start to being the Literature Review process, I am filled with both excitement and a sense of being overwhelmed.  I have begun to compile my resources and believe I know what I would like my focus to be.  When trying to decide on my topic, I knew that I wanted it to be related to reading.  In First Grade, reading is a critical and time-consuming component of our learning day, and no matter how much time is allotted to reading and writing, it never seems like enough!


Because of this, I want to make sure I am doing everything I can to maximize the time I have toward reaching each student's learning potential.  While I believe strongly in phonemic awareness, I also believe that sight words can really help to boost a student's confidence in reading.  Seeing a word and knowing it immediately has a powerful way of making a student feel good about reading.  


Similar to most elementary school classrooms, I have a Word Wall. We learn the words and put them on the wall.  However, after they are there, my activities using the wall are limited.  My wonder is that if I increase the number of word wall activities, will reading fluency be improved among my students?


My next step is obviously to research.  I also would like to find some effective fluency assessment tools.  


Let the journey begin....!

Action Research Results

Last night, I compiled my results from my Mini Action Research project that focused on vocabulary instruction.  I paired direct instruction with exploratory learning to engage students in the process of recognizing, understanding, and using vocabulary words correctly.


I was very happy with the results that I got!  Although I will share more specifics at our conference this weekend, I was pleased that my vocabulary test given using the new strategies raised 25% from the test given using the old strategies. 


I have noticed students being "word detectives" with these bigger words- picking out letter sounds or letter combinations that they know.  They recognize the words out of my direct questioning and pick them out of any sentences that I say.  It has been really fun!


This makes me motivated to do the large action research project. Although, now, I know I will have an even harder time choosing what I want to focus on!  Ideas I have thought about are best practice strategies for struggling readers, examining gender differences, classroom management, etc.  Ahh!!