Its that time again...

The school year begins in less than 48 hours, and I feel pretty good starting off this year.

Friday was "Meet the Teacher" night.  Here is how I set up my table of information while I spoke with my guests.

My welcome letter, supply list, parent questionnaire, and a bowl of mints with a poem I found on Pinterest.

I had quite a few student come to my classroom and I got the opportunity to meet with them and their parents and chat about my expectations for my students this coming year.  I had my information table all set up with the Cafeteria Menu, Parent Communitation sign in log, Welcome letter to the parents (a letter with clear expectations of the students in my classroom - asking the parents to read & talk w/their student to be clear of what I wan to see), my syllabus along with my colleague's syllabus, and a parent questionnaire.  I put a copy of my questionnaire under my Templates & Printables tab.  I also was greeted by many of my past students, both when I student taught in the 6th grade the year before & my kiddos from last year.  It was fun to see how much they had grown and changed over the summer.  You could see the apprehension in their eyes and uncertainty in their voices.  I just reminded them to breathe and enjoy this time.  Because this event took place I can finally exclaim my classroom is finally finished.  Here are some pictures of the final product.

                                                

My classroom from the outside.  My bulletin board includes all the names of the 6th grade students,

                                                                   

This is a closer look of my bulletin board.  The heading states "Welcome 6th Grade Math & Science Superstars!"

Here is the final result of the inside to my classroom...

This is the front of my classroom.  My tables are in an E shape, all the chair facing forward.  This allows the opportunity for Socratic style discussion.

This is the back of my classroom.  I kept my classroom library I accumulated last year through Scholastic book sales and various 2nd hand stores.  Some of my students last year donated some of their books to my collection.  Even though my content focus is Math & Science I will always encourage reading in my classroom.

This is my desk / office area.  I have my SmartBoard & DocCam on a work table next to me so if I need to pull couple of student for reinforcement, I can keep a ready eye on the rest of the class.  There have been a few colleagues tell me I need to come & set up/decorate their classroom for them as well.

So, with all this in place let the 2014-2015 school year begin.  My first days are filled with procedures & expectations.  Then on Tuesday of next week we have our first Benchmark test (the Pre-test) which will give us the baseline for skill leveling and student placement during our OCR/Math Intervention classes which take place the last 1 hr & 30 mins of the school day.  Its going to be a very eventful year and I am ready to go on this adventure full force.

Also, be sure to check out my Printables & Templates tab.  I added some great resources like the Engagement Wheel, Hess' Matrix, and Critical Thinking Skills which I plan on using in my classroom & I thought it might be beneficial to many of my teaching friends.

The best is yet to come....I will keep you all posted....

T Minus 7 days and counting....

It is almost that time again...time of laughter, lesson planning, assessing, and sleep deprivation.  Yes the school year is quickly approaching.  To commemorate this auspicious event my school district held a two day conference of workshops and development meetings.  Here is a list of the workshops I was able to attend.  I am including what I took from each of these courses bulleted below the title....

Thurs 07/24

• Breakfast
• Student to Student Interaction Grades 4-8
• When planning for s-s interaction you need to ask yourself
• How will the students demonstrate individual accountability?
• How will the student demonstrate equal participation?
• How will the student apply content vocabulary?
• How  will the student justify their ideas?
• Some strategies which facilitate academic dialogue include...
• Expert groups
• Reciprocal teaching
• Academic conversation cards

• Critical Thinking for Grades 4-8
• Discussed the differences between Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning & Depth of Knowledge Levels and what they looked like when writing objectives.
• Blooms:  What type of thinking (verbs) is needed to complete a task?
• DOK:  How deeply do you have to understand the content to successfully interact with it?  How complex or abstract is the content?
• Great Resource:  Hess' Cognitive Rigor Matrix - combines both Blooms & DOK into one chart to help enhance planning to ensure appropriate objectives for the lesson.
• Lunch
• Tiered Assignments for Differentiation
• Tiered instruction should not leave the students wanting to do what another group is doing.
• All activities/instruction should be based on assessment.
• Higher level work is not simply more work.
• Use the would/should/could questions to breakdown what type of lesson fits the content needed to learn (whole group/small group/individual work).
• Using Model Drawing in Mathematics Grades 5-6
• I left this workshop more confused than before.  It was presented by Sue Larson, a phenomenal mathematician.  Who at the end let us know she only learned this strategy 2 weeks before she brought it to us, and then highly suggested to Google the topic and watch the plethora of videos available on the subject.  
• I found a great app through Google called "Ultimath" which shows modeling drawing as well.  Why reinvent the wheel when "there is an app for that" (LOL)  The link for Ultimath is here http://ultimath.com/

Friday 07/25

• Breakfast
• Integrated Language Arts Grades 5-6
• This meeting focused on the utilization of thematic units.  These lessons help reinforce all content areas and are a great tool to communicate what the student knows or should know throughour all content areas.
• Plan on focusing this idea especially in Science.
• Mathematical Practices Grades 5-6
• We need to shift our thinking in Math from "how to do it" ----> why we do it"
• Was given a Great Resource for help in finding content: www.illustrativemathematics.org
• Students should explain & share ideas on how to solve the problem.
• Lunch
• Digging Deeper with Student to Student Interaction
• If you want a great attention getter to settle down your class go to YouTube and search Kid Snippets...soooo many funny clips, soooo many laughs.
• Be cognizant of where you place s-s interaction in the lesson, it should align with the lesson objective.
• It will depend on how well the student understands the routine or process which help develop the s-s interaction on a higher level.
• Balanced Math Framework Fluency & Mental Math Grades 5-6
• Fluency goes beyond memorization - it help apply what you know.
• Aromaticity
• Flow / mastery achieved
• flexible / ownership
• accuracy
• help achieve a desired outcome
• How to help with fluency
• provide practice
• expose to different strategies
• connections to prior knowledge
• Mental Math & Fluency help student ownership of numbers.

I took quite a bit of information away from this workshop.  Plus a variety of tools, which as soon as I get the electronic versions sent to me I will be sure to share them with you my friends.
This next week will be filled with final classroom setup, meetings, planning, and to end the event before school begins "Meet the Teacher" night on Friday.  I will post pictures of my finished classroom & the materials I am supplying my parents to help our students achieve success this 2014-2015 school year.

I wish everyone the best of luck on their own school year!!!