5 Things I Tried This School Year

At the end of the school year, before it starts to run into all the previous years, I like to take a moment to reflect on the new things I tried this year, what worked and what didn't. This will be my fourth year of reflecting this way and it has been so helpful to look back at my past posts to see how much I have grown as an educator and to see which practices I want to continue, which I want to try again differently, and which I want to let go of because they no longer serve me. 

You can rest about what I tried in past years here: 

8 Things I Tried in the 24-25 School Year

6 Things I Tried in the 23-24 School Year

7 Things I Tried in the 22-23 School Year

I especially appreciated having these posts to look back at this year, one when I felt like I didn't try many new things, to remind myself that there are seasons in teaching, just like in life, and some will be more innovative than others. Here's what I tried this year: 

1. Vertical Learning

This was a teaching practice I learned about in a staff led PD session the previous year and wanted to bring into my own classroom. The basic idea is that when students are standing at whiteboards (that's the vertical part) to collaborate versus sitting or even leaning over a table, they are more likely to be engaged. Edutopia has a video you can check out here.

To implement this in my own classroom, I first needed to think about the surfaces students would work on. I have two whiteboards on my wall at the front of my classroom and I acquired a double sided whiteboard easel that another teacher was giving away at the start of the year, which put me at four vertical spaces. I also allowed students to write on the windows to create a total of eight vertical spaces. With 26 students in my largest class, this allowed for 3-4 students in a group (I think 3 is the magic number for group work like this). 

Vertical learning is best done with prompts that are open-ended or have more than one possible answer so that all group members have the possibility of contributing. This type of prompt is much easier to generate in math (i.e. what are different ways you can use two numbers to come up with 24 as an answer) and the PD I took, which was led by a math teacher did not offer many ideas for ELA. What I landed on were slight modifications to activities from my spiral review do nows; I just had to tweak the directions.

Once a week I asked students to combine or unscramble sentences (they could create multiple sentences) and once a week I asked students to identify words from a list that shared the same prefix, suffix, or root and define the words they selected using the word part's meaning, which I provided for the,. The other days of the week we started class with activities that didn't involve vertical learning. To break students into groups I handed out a deck of cards with just numbers one (ace) through eight. 

For the most part, students seemed to enjoy vertical learning . They had experience with it from the previous year. There was some disengaged behavior, and as needed  I would send students back to their seats. Some students would also switch cards so they could be in a group with friends, so for next year I might look into a random digital generator.

2. Filling Out Planners Weekly

In the past I had students fill out their planners (agenda books) daily at the end of class and then I would stamp their planners on the way out the door. My students this year struggled with doing this along with their exit tickets in the last 5 minutes of class (quick transitions and executive functioning in general were weaknesses) so I shifted to having students fill out their planner for the whole week at the start of the week instead. 

I gave students about 5 minutes to do this at the start of class on Mondays and then walked around to stamp their planners. The stamping allows me to check that students are recording their homework and doing so accurately. When parents ask about homework, I can explain this routine and encourage parents to check their students' planners nightly if homework completion is a struggle. 

This shift to filling out all homework at the start of the week was especially helpful for students with busy schedules filled extra curricular activities to be able to plan out their week. The only downside to this shift was if students were absent at the start of the week, it was on them to record their homework. I did still include homework on our exit ticket slides as a daily reminder.

3. Student Helpers

At my K-8 school, seventh and eighth graders are eligible for National Junior Honor Society and this year teachers could request a certain number of helpers in the morning and/or afternoon during our arrival and dismissal times. 

I had two seventh grade boys who came a few mornings a week that I would have work with students who struggled with homework completion or needed support with studying (it helped that these two boys were well liked so students wanted to work with them). 

I had two other seventh grade boys who came every afternoon who primarily helped with maintenance of my classroom library. They would reshelve returned books and repair damaged books. They also added images to books missing them in Booksource (the system I use for managing my classroom library) and worked on editing author's names so that they would all be in last name, first name format to make it easier to inventory books at the end of the year. As needed they also helped with basic paperwork management: checking off turned in assignments, stapling grading rubrics to writing assignments, and filing graded work in students' writing portfolios.

I will definitely be requesting helpers again next year to help support my students and me. Anything I can take off my plate is a win.

4. WIN (What I Need )Time

My school has tried many different ways of providing interventions to middle school students and finding time within the students' and teachers' schedules is always the biggest challenge. This year we decided to dedicate half of a class period (we have 90 minute blocks daily of ELA and math) once a week to interventions. 

As a charter school we are not required to provide gifted services, but this year we started an advanced learners program to begin to meet the needs of our higher performing students. Those students were pulled during our WIN time as well as students who needed speech or hearing services, or students who receive direct instruction as part of their IEPs.

For the students that remained in class with me, I structured our WIN time a little differently each trimester. During the first trimester, it was a time I targeted specific students who had struggled with an assignment or were missing work. During the second trimester, I focused on specific standards that testing data showed as a weakness for that class. During the third trimester, I focused mostly on grammar standards because that was a weak area for all of my classes. 

I hope that WIN is something we continue as part of our schedule next year. Similar to this year, how I structure that time with the students I have will probably change again throughout the year in response to their needs.

5. Single Purpose Readings

Last summer I attended Unbound Ed's Standards Institute, and while much of what I learned reinforced practices I was already using in my classroom, one shift I committed to was to stop trying to do it all with a single reading of a text.

One a first read, students should just be reading for comprehension and then on subsequent reads, students should be focused on a single standard or skill. I am guilty of not always giving students time to do that initial read for understanding before asking them to start applying skill just as I am guilty of asking questions related to a variety of standards at the same time. 

This past year I was much more conscious of keeping first reads to comprehension and targeting key vocabulary and on subsequent reads focusing on just one standard or skill at a time.

All five of these tries are things I want to carry with me into next year. I want to tighten up my procedures for vertical learning, but otherwise I would consider all five a success. Let me know in the comments if you try any of these ideas with success!