Learning About Leadership Part 2: Leadership Day

It has been almost two years since my school officially began our adventure in becoming a Leader in Me School. So far it has been quite a journey. Friday we held our first Leadership Day. It was amazing. I can remember going to other school's Leadership Days and thinking could our kids do this? It was so exciting to see that they could.

The teachers and students have been working on putting this day together for quite a while. As the day finally got closer more and more kids really wanted to take part. We were excited for a big turnout and then... winter finally hit Colorado. With several days of snow and a school kind of a long drive from Denver we all got nervous our big day may not happen. You know it is a big day when neither teachers nor students want a snow day!

Friday morning the sun decided to come out and our Leadership Day began. The kids took over. It was so much fun to see them being leaders. It truly brought out the best in so many kids. Shy kids were introducing themselves to guests and guiding them to their seats. Kids who had at times been difficult were carrying leadership flags and acting as tour guides.

Students holding their habit flags.

After the opening ceremonies our guests spent two hours touring the classrooms and talking with students and teachers. The tour guides were so proud to show off all the work they had done. The walls in our school are all about goals and leadership. Teachers try to integrate lessons on leadership into all the content areas.

Literacy bookmarks for catching characters displaying the 7 Habits.

Kindergarten data wall.

Second grade learning about synergizing.

Intervention classroom thinking about their futures.

The day ended with a speech by Matt Miller who reminded all of us the the reason we do all of this is to bring out the leader in every student!

This day made me think back about why we wanted to become a Leader in Me school. When I was asked this question by a visiting administrator it took a minute, but eventually I remembered. We decided we wanted to do more for our students. We wanted to realize what was great in each of them and give each of them a chance to shine.

An Environment for Learning

After weeks of assessments followed by looking at data and creating new intervention groups I decided I needed some positive change. It was time to reorganize my classroom. Each day I have 14 groups of kids come into the primary Title classroom. I hope when they enter the room they feel both comfortable being there and excited about reading. My wonderful para had found some jungle paper at Michael's and we decided to go with it. I had also decided to get rid of my desk to make more room for all of the kids we work with. I figure this will also help me stay organized. No more drawer to dump everything in at the end of the day.

We used the paper on the wall behind our library. Our books are organized on the shelves by level and in baskets on the floor by theme for free read time. I'll be shopping for some more bean bag chairs soon. The kids love them!

Our floor space which is used mostly with my kindergartners has a rug which they pretend is the grass. It is hard to see, but the leaves on the wall are their sight words. I finally found a way to get them at a level that the tiny kindergarteners could interact with the words as we add them.

The final addition to the room is a mural of a waterfall. I love it and the kids think it is the greatest thing ever. We actually found this rolled up in a storage closet. We added curtains to try to make the room feel more comfortable; my district doesn't allow floor lamps. The kids reaction when they saw the transformation made all of the work worth it. They all say they love coming into our classroom. I realize all of these kids struggle reading and work really hard every minute I have them. It means so much to me to know they look forward to the time they have in our "jungle".

Learning About Leadership Part 1

I work in a Leader in Me school. If you haven't heard of this it is an awesome program for developing leadership skills in kids and teachers. Check out this link Leader in Me. When our school first began the process I was so excited to see how it would impact the kids. I was especially excited because my son attends school there and I would love to see him develop some leadership skills (unfortunately he inherited my shyness).

 Isn't he adorable!

Not long after the excitement began I started to worry about how I would be able to support the program in a primary reading intervention classes. I spend much of my days teaching phonics and early literacy skills to struggling readers. An even bigger obstacle is I only have my students for 15-30 minutes a day. After a lot of worrying, I realized teaching kids about leadership would have to look different in my classroom. I would focus more on teaching kids what leadership is and on goal setting and how to reach their goals.

With Leadership Day approaching quickly I decided I better start my Leadership unit. We are one week in and so far it is going great. Here is what we are up to!

My first and second graders began by thinking about leaders. They each created a web of leaders they have learned about and leaders in their lives.

Our next step was to begin brainstorming qualities of leaders. It took them a while to start thinking bigger than what a leader does in school, but they eventually got there and had some great ideas.

Now we were ready to begin learning about leaders. We will be doing this through a series of books and close reads. The kids are all very excited to learn more about all of these real leaders. We will be reading about a variety of people including Civil Rights leaders, presidents, inventors and even sports leaders.

With the timing being so perfect we will be learning all about Martin Luther King Jr. next week. We will be using this product to begin our unit. Great Leaders of America

 

If you have any resources that might help out with this unit please feel free to post your links in the comments.

Adventures in Kindergarten Interactive Notebooks

So, I made the decision this year to attempt interactive notebooks. For some reason I decided to try them with my kindergarten intervention groups. My thinking was it would be a great way to organize all of our phonemic awareness and phonics activities. What I had forgotten was my kindergarteners come in with no idea how to cut or glue.  After our first activity, decorating the covers, I quickly realized I was going to have to rethink how I was going to handle this project.

The kids were so excited; however, the cutting and glueing took our entire group time (20 minutes). If you have brilliant ideas for solving this issue feel free to post them in the comments.  Our first phonemic awareness activity was matching first sounds. I decided to bring the notebooks home and do all the prep work for the kids. This is how I decided to handle the first few activities. We had a great time matching sounds and they really enjoy their notebooks. In fact after every activity they ask if they can take them home.

As we have gotten further into the school year, they are almost able to hold their scissors and cut close to the line. And they get mad at me when I do the cutting so I have begun to let them cut their own pieces.  This little girl is being very careful.

I feel like they are learning a lot and they are proud of their work, When we have a few extra minutes they go back through and practice the skills they have learned. I am creating the notebook as I go and will sell it only after it has been thoroughly tested and adjusted to work well with kindergarteners.  I have learned some important lessons already.

1. Think about the point of the lesson. The majority of time needs to be spent on the kids learning, not cutting (unless of course they are learning to cut)
2. Remember when giving young kids this type of activity they need directions, examples and help (repeat this many times).
3. The students should have time to go back and work on what is in their notebook. This allows them to continue to practice until they have it mastered.
4. The kids notebooks do not look like mine and that's okay. They are proud of them anyway.
5. Sometimes you need to step in and adjust how things are done.
   

Stay tuned for updates on this topic.

Connecting Reading, Writing and Science

Well, it is officially spring in Colorado (even though it has been snowing all day) and that means it is time for my favorite unit of the year, Incredible Insects.  I love teaching about insects.  This is the unit that my students get the most excited about.  It gives me a chance to go back to teaching science, which is the one thing I miss most about be a regular classroom teacher.  The students get so engaged in this unit they don't want to leave the room.

We began the unit last week and have learned what an insect is and what it is not.  We watched fascinating videos about insects and have read several books.   Thanks to the Westminster Butterfly Pavilion  we have all kinds of cool objects to look at.  Here they are sorting insects and non-insects.

 They used what they learned in the books we have read to classify insects.  The post it notes are all the important ideas they are getting from their reading.

We ended this week with a fictional story about an insect, The Grouchy Ladybug.  This was a great opportunity to add some discussion of The Seven Habits into our unit.  The students discussed attitude and the need for the ladybug to choose her own weather rather than being grouchy.

Now that we have learned the basics about insects we will begin going more in depth.  Each student has selected an insect to study and will complete a webquest next week.  I can't wait to learn more about the Giant Weta from Julian!

Summary Writing

My second graders are working on learning how to write a summary.  Our first summary was of A Chair For My Mother by Vera B Williams.  The first step in our process was to read the book in sections and to write the main idea of each section on a sticky note.

After each student determined the main idea for each of the four sections of the book we worked together to determine how we could put our ideas together as a group.

Finally, each student used their own notes and wrote a summary paragraph.  They did a great job on their first summary paragraphs.  Samples will come soon.

Close Reading

Recently there has been a lot more focus put on close reading.  This is especially true in districts using the Common Core Standards.  Close reading can be an important tool when teaching comprehension.  When doing a close read students are taught to return to the text over and over again.  They learn to use evidence from the text to support answers.  This rereading allows students to focus on content and develop a deeper understanding.

Some things to consider when choosing a text for close reading are…

ü  Passages should be short- Remember your students are going to be reading this multiple times you do not want it to be too much.

ü  Passages need to have content worthy of close reading- Not all passages are created equal and not all passages require close reading.   Make sure there is enough in the passage to engage and challenge your students.

Teaching your students to “Read with a Pencil”

Reading with a pencil helps students to pay attention to the text and helps them to use evidence when answering questions.  When reading with a pencil students are more active.  This is not a skill that young students pick up on their own.  It has to be modeled.  Help your students learn to be reading detectives by guiding them through this process.