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. 

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. 

What Small Groups Look Like During Independent Reading In My Classroom

This year I wanted to add more small group time to my classroom routines. I often use rotations, including a teacher-led station, but not every day or week. I thought about how I could incorporate a weekly check-in with each student. I decided to use independent reading time because it already happens daily. 

In past years, I've had to add small groups to my classroom routine part way through the year to target underperforming students (my school reviews our MAP data each trimester and sets goals focused on students in the lowest quintiles).⁠

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It was always a hassle to figure out how and where to add groups, and the change in routine meant some students felt singled out while other students thought that if I was talking with a group, that meant they could be talking at their seats.⁠

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This year I decided to start with small groups during independent reading time right from the get go. I had already created a schedule for who got to read on our classroom rug on what days, so it was easy to add my groups into that rotation. With 24-25 students in each of my classes, 4-5 are sitting on the rug each day and 4-5 are meeting with me at my small group table.

Teaching Using The Station Rotation Model

One year I had a particularly chatty group with a handful of students that were frequently interrupting instruction, mostly immature boys who could not help but make a comment about everything or made constant annoying  noises. I was following my usual procedure of issuing warnings, assigning behavior reflections, and making phone calls home, which would lead to temporary improvements, but I was still frustrated by the lost instruction time, so I decided something had to change.

I was still pretty new to teaching middle school at that point (I had taught high school for six years and then worked as a middle school reading intervention teacher, which is not the same as trying to command a room full of preteens), but I had had some success with using small groups when I taught math the previous (and only) year. I decided to try it out in my ELA classes, but knew I needed more structure to the class than just adding small groups to the mix, so I decided to try out the stations rotation model.

How I Structure My Middle School English Language Arts Class

I have a 90 minute period of English Language Arts daily with my sixth grade students. And before I break down what the structure of that period looks like, I want to acknowledge that seeing my students for 90 minutes daily all year long is something most ELA teachers can only dream of. Most middle school ELA teachers are working with 45-60 minutes, some even less. Some schools are on block schedules where teachers see students every other day or for only half of the year. And there's schools where reading and writing are broken up into two separate classes. 

While I don't know the pain of trying to jam it all into a 38 minute period, I have taught class periods of shorter lengths and could offer ideas about how to make things work with less time. But that is for another blog post. This one is just about what works for me in my current situation. I'll start with the parts of class that are always the same, the beginning and end of class.

6 Things I Tried This School Year

Last year I tried a number of new things related to how I organized and managed my classroom. You can read all about the 7 things I tried here. Some of the ideas stuck and I continued to use them this year, some of the ideas I modified to see if they would work better, and some of the ideas I dropped completely. 

Different things work for different groups of students, but also if it isn’t working for me as a teacher then it isn’t worth my time and energy to continue it. Just like last year, I tried some new things in my classroom this year and some were successes, but some still need work. Here’s a review of the 6 things I tried in my classroom this year.

7 Things I Tried This School Year

It hasn't been easy to try new things in the classroom in the past few years related to classroom management. Because of pandemic restrictions and all of the shifts in delivering instruction, there's been things I just couldn't do or didn't have the mental space to think about. This year, with restrictions fully lifted and a return to traditional instruction, I had the ability and mental space to try out some different things related to how I run my classroom. Some were successes, but some still need work.

Using Daily Agenda Slides to Stay Organized & On Task

At the end of last school year, the other two members of my sixth grade team and I sat down together to reflect on our year. One of the big issues that came up was our students' struggles with the transition from fifth to sixth grade. 

We work in a K-8 school and the fifth grade classrooms are self-contained, so moving up to middle school and switching classes in sixth grade can be a big adjustment for many students. Moving from room to room and teacher to teacher means students had to now keep track of all of their belongings in additional to several different teachers' personalities, expectations and routines. 

One solution for easing this transition and creating some consistency from class to class was for all of us to use a daily agenda slide made using Google Slides. All of our students have Google accounts and we already use Google Classroom as our learning management platform. In addition to displaying our daily agenda slide at the start of class, we also all posted our daily agenda slides in the same place in our Google Classrooms so students could access them at home.

My daily slide includes the date, our agenda and objective for the day, any materials students need to have out, homework and other reminders, and a timer. Having all of these things together in one place has helped me to be more intentional about connecting the objective to our activities for the day. I never forget to assign the homework or remind students about upcoming events. Having the ten minute timer for our independent reading on the screen means we can go right into reading once we've reviewed the agenda slide.

So that students have access to this daily agenda after class ends, I have the Slides posted in the Stream on their Google Classrooms. That's the only thing I have posted there (in "settings," you can turn off classwork notifications so they don't appear in the stream) so it can't get lost among other postings. I have found that the posting disappears after time, but clicking "move to top" (even though there's nothing else there) makes it reappear. Because Google Drive resources automatically save and update, there's no need to ever repost the Slides.

While I encourage parents to sign up for Google Classroom email summaries and sit down with their child each night to review homework, technically parents can't access Google Classroom on their own, so I also have my daly agenda slides posted on my classroom website (created with Google Sites).

I'll be using the same Google Slides presentation with my daily agenda for the entire year. Each day, I pull the most recent date to the front of the presentation. Having a single presentation allows students to look back at previous days, which is extremely helpful if they missed class for some reason or were absent. I also link other Slides presentations, handouts, etc. to my daily slides to make finding materials easier. This will be such an amazing resource to have next year.

Interested in using a similar daily agenda Google Slide in your classroom? Find it a completely customizable one here, including two different layouts and eighteen different color combinations.

Developing Student Relationships That Last All Year Long

Research shows that students who feel that they have a strong relationship with their teacher are more likely to stick with challenging tasks, enjoy working hard, and know if is okay to make mistakes. This #2ndaryELA Twitter chat was all about building those kind of relationships with students. Middle school and high school English Language Arts teachers discussed how to begin getting to know students during the first days of school. Teachers also shared activities to use to continue getting to know students throughout the school year.

Scroll down to read through the chat. You'll get ideas about class meetings.  You'll also find ways to incorporate student interests and feedback into your instruction.

Hope you'll join us next week for another chat. We'd also love for you to join our 2ndaryELA Facebook group (even if you aren't on Twitter). 2ndaryELA is a group of middle and high school English Language Arts teachers looking to share ideas and best practices. This group is an extension of our Twitter chat and a place for collaboration, questions, and encouragement. Feel free to post teaching ideas, success stories, links, photos, etc. that will enhance our instruction.

Developing Student Relationships That Last All Year Long

#2ndaryELA Twitter Chat on Sunday 8/25: Building Relationships With Students

 Brynn Allison, The Literary Maven, & Lisa Spangler, Mrs. Spangler in the Middle, host #2ndaryELA on Twitter every Sunday evening from 8 - 8:30 PM EST. #2ndaryELA is a weekly chat for secondary English Language Arts teachers focused on a topic. Every Friday, we post the topic and questions on our blogs to allow you to prepare for the upcoming Sunday evening's chat. Thank you to everyone who joined us last year and we hope that you will join us again.

We'd also love for you to join our 2ndaryELA Facebook group, even if you aren't on Twitter. 2ndaryELA is a group of middle and high school English Language Arts teachers looking to share ideas and best practices. This group is an extension of our Twitter chat and a place for collaboration, questions, and encouragement. Feel free to post teaching ideas, success stories, resource links, photos, etc. that will enhance our instruction.

On Sunday, August 25, our #2ndaryELA chat will be about building relationships with students.

The Directions:
1. Log into Twitter on Sunday from 8-8:30 PM EST.
2. Search for tweets with the hashtag #2ndaryELA in the search bar. Make sure to click “Latest.”
3. Introductions are for the first 5 minutes.
4. Starting at 8:05 (@literarymaven or @spanglermiddle) will post questions every 5 minutes using the format Q1, Q2, Q3, etc. and the hashtag #2ndaryELA.
5. Respond to questions using the format A1, A2, A3, etc. with #2ndaryELA.
6. Follow any teachers responding and who are also using #2ndaryELA.
7. Like and respond to other teachers' tweets.

You can schedule your responses to the questions ahead of time using a scheduler like TweetDeck or HootSuite (but don't forget to use A1, A2, etc. and #2ndaryELA). Links are encouraged as well as using images is also encouraged when relevant.

New to chats? Here are the rules:
1. Stay on topic & stay positive!
2. Please do not post or promote paid products unless specifically asked.
3. If you arrive late, try to look through other posts before beginning.
4. Feel free to just read, like, and/or retweet.
5. Always use our hashtag #2ndaryELA, including in your replies to others.
6. Make sure your twitter feed is set to public. (Also keep in mind that Twitter is completely public – that means students, parents, and administrators can and will read what you tweet.)

You can also check out a quick video tutorial in this blog post.

Be sure to spread the word to any teacher friends who might be interested in joining us as well. We look forward to chatting with you Sunday evening and in our 2ndaryELA Facebook group!

Get caught up on past chats here: