8 Things I Tried This School Year

We all do something a little different each year, but may not always take time to reflect on what has worked and what hasn't. I know I haven't always.⁠ This year will be year three of me putting my reflections into a blog post. The process of putting my thoughts down on "paper" helps me to consider what I want to do again the next year and what I want to do differently.⁠

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I also really like being able to look back at previous years to see what I was doing before and if there's a teaching practice I want to bring back in my classroom.⁠ You can find my reflections on what I tried last year and what I tried the year before to see if there's anything you'd try out in your own classroom. 

1. Fluency

Over the summer I took a course about improving reading for older students, and one of my big take aways was incorporating fluency into my daily routine. Most of the time we used passages from the vocabulary program that we use (Sadlier Vocabulary Workshop) for fluency practice, but other times we used our independent reading books or other assigned novels. In addition to giving students practice reading aloud each day, this routine helped build classroom community and led to discussion about new words. I’ll be continuing this next year and I’m thinking about ways to make the practice even more meaningful. You can read more about my fluency routine here.

2. Sticky Note Summaries

Another takeaway from the course I took about teaching reading was the importance of having students summarize as a way to check their comprehension as they read. I did this by having students complete summaries on sticky notes as a part of their nightly reading, whether it was an assigned novel or a self selected one (we alternate between the two throughout the year).  I’ll also be continuing this next year. You can read more about this practice in this blog post about meeting with small groups during independent reading time.

3. Word Matrixes

This was my third takeaway from the course about teaching reading I took last summer. I only did the activity once, but would like to create more to use next year. There’s a website you can use to create the matrix, but you have to have a list of all of the possible words students could create, so it was very time intensive to create one.

4. Monday Soft Starts

To start classes on Mondays, I created a must do/may do list of tasks I wanted to be a consistent part of our weekly routine, but didn’t want students doing at times when they were supposed to be working on learning tasks. Some of the "must do" tasks included checking PowerSchool (our school’s online grade book) and checking out their independent reading book on BookSource (the free classroom library management system I use). Some of the "may do" tasks included updating their bookshelf tracking their books read or watching a book trailer to build their to be read (TBR) list. The book trailers were part of a previous routine that I wanted to bring back.

5. Morning Soft Start Cart

Our arrival and homeroom time spans a half an hour from 7:45 to 8:15. Some students are present for that full time period and others are straggling in late after that. I have never wanted to create any required or even optional work during that time period because the number of students in attendance varies from day to day. But the students need something to do, especially those that are there for the full half hour.

I do not allow students to use their devices during this time period. I like to set the tone that devices are learning tools, not toys, in my classroom. In the past when students were using their devices in homeroom, it was difficult to monitor and the mentality of being able to use devices to play games during homeroom bled into class time. 

This year I put together a cart of activities students could choose from, like coloring and puzzle books, and a rotation of games and STEM activities. I did something similar last year, but everything was in bins that I would forget to take out or put away. The cart this year made taking it out and putting it away easier, and I could offer more options without having more bins to take out and put away.

In the last fifteen minutes of our arrival/homeroom time, students have to be in their assigned seats so I can take attendance and we watch CNN10 or World News From A to Z with Carl Azuz. At the very end of the year, when both news programs had ended for the school year, we watched compilations from America’s Funniest Home Videos. 

This morning routine provides students with choices about how to use their time and enough structure to keep them busy, but also allows me to do any last minute preparations for the day without interruption. Many of the activities are designed to encourage positive peer interactions, and even the shared viewing of the daily news builds class community .

6. Sadlier Grammar Workshop

In addition to Sadler’s Vocabulary Workshop, which my school started using last year, this year my school added Sadler’s Grammar Workshop. My approach to teaching grammar is focused on using mentor texts and having students apply concepts to their own writing, so I didn’t get much out of this grammar book this year. The practice exercises were fairly basic, mostly underlining or circling, and often a concept I wanted to focus on was combined with a concept I wouldn’t teach at all. I brought the book home with me over the summer. I’ll get it at least one more try before I completely shelve it.

7. John Collins Writing Program

This was a school wide initiative this year in an effort to increase writing across the content areas and create a more standardized approach to teaching writing at my K-8 school. The Collins Writing Program has several different components that we were introduced to throughout the year, but the aspect I am going to focus on incorporating more into my existing writing routines is the idea of focused correction areas (FCAs), which is the identification of a few, usually no more than three, things to grade in students' writing. The FCAs are discussed with students before they begin to write and students read over their draft when they are finished writing with those FCAs in mind.

8. Go Guardian

This was another school wide adoption this year and it was a game changer when it comes to using devices in the classroom. I like to use rotations and now when I'm working with a group of students I can monitor students' screens digitally without having to walk away from the small group I'm working with or arrange my classroom so that I can physically see all of students' screens. I've also gotten better at setting "scenes" that only allow students to the websites or parts of Google Suite that I want them to for an assignment.

I would say six out of eight of these tries were a success, with two of the eight (word matrixes and the Sadlier Grammar Workshop) needing more attention or a different approach next year. And even though fluency practice and the use of the Collins Writing Program fell in the success category there is still work to be done with both of those tries as well. Let me know in the comments if you try any of these ideas with success!