Alternative Seating

After rearranging my bedroom over the long weekend, I had an extra set of tall bed risers. I have been thinking that one of my students could benefit from an alternative seating method since he's very active tends to lose focus while sitting. I decided to try putting his desk on the bed risers to give him the opportunity to have a standing desk.

In the past, I have considered getting exercise balls for students to use as chairs. However, moving out to the portables ended this dream of mine. There's nowhere to store a bunch of exercise balls or excess chairs.

I found these risers a while back at Target. They were on clearance from the dorm furnishings in August/September. These ones are the extra tall risers, I think they're eight inches tall. In all, I think they cost me $1.50. I will definitely buy more if I see them on sale again because more of my students would like to try a standing desk.

This kiddo didn't last very long while standing. I watched him as he slowly transitioned to kneeling on his chair, which is when I gave him my stool. (If I have end up giving more kids standing desks, I'll have to find more stools!) He asked at the end of the day if he could keep his desk that way though, so he must like it. He was also more aware and engaged in the classroom.

Long Term Planning

Coming out of college, I thought that I would have a year-long plan for my curriculum for all subjects in my first year. I knew it would take a lot of work, but I didn't realize how hard this really is. When you're not familiar with the curriculum or the district/school pacing guides, it's really hard to make a long-term plan. Even if you manage to make a plan, it is likely to change drastically when you find out new information. In my first year teaching last year, I never ended up with a long term plan for any subject other than science which is district directed. I had drafted some plans for other subjects, but ended up ditching them a month or two into the school year because they didn't match pacing guides or I didn't fully understand the curriculum. Because I never made a long-term plan for each subject and didn't write much down other than my short notes in my plan book, I didn't have much of an advantage going into my second year.

I am currently working on taking notes from each unit that I teach and trying to recognize and note what to add or change next year to fill any gaps. It just doesn't make sense to reinvent the wheel every year instead of having a foundation of a plan to build off of for each unit. Right now, those notes are jotted on random sheets of paper and I'm trying to find a good format to long-term plan for next year as I teach this year and to take those notes of things to change next year. I'm not sure what this will look like yet, but I would like to have one standard form for each subject or each month of the school year that I can have with me at all times. Then, I can jot notes whenever and wherever I think of them.

My biggest piece of advice for a beginning teacher would be to do exactly what I have begun to do, but start it earlier, on day one of school. Get in the habit of taking notes on everything you do and noting what you think you could change. Often we realize that we should have taught a lesson a little different, in a different order, or before/after another concept. Make a note of those things so you can change it next year instead of trying to remember what you did.

Quick Note

I found another benefit of teaching in a portable today; we still have heat when the boiler in the building breaks. Tell me, how are kids supposed to learn when there's no heat in the building and they're still cold, even while wearing their coats all day? Some things in education just need to be fixed and someone needs to find the funds to do so.

Still a negative of teaching in a portable, walking in the rain and jumping over puddles to anywhere we have to go. I'm figuring out the path between the puddles from my door to the building.

Update

Ok... it has been FOREVER since I have posted. I'm sorry for any of you who follow my blog. As most of you know, the start of school is crazy!! I have been trying to take pictures of things that I knew I would eventually blog about, but I'm sure I've missed a bunch of stuff.

Just before the start of school, my wonderful dad finished building my mailboxes. Aren't they beautiful?!? They look even better up close! Each slot has a number to the left and they have been amazing! They save so much time! They are near my desk so as I grade papers in the evening or when I'm given handouts from the office, I can throw them right into the student's box. 

On parent night, I did a few things that I had seen on other teachers' sites and it made the night run very smoothly. First, I had students fill out this Parent Night Kid Quiz which I found for free on Teachers Pay Teachers. The kids filled out the left side and folded the paper in half so their parents had to fill out the other side and couldn't see the answers. Then they could check their answers and write a note. The kids LOVED reading their parents' notes in the morning! 

As parents walked in the door, I had this desk set up. Parents could pick up a star if they could help to provide some of the extra supplies that we'll need this year. I forgot to take a picture before Curriculum Night so these are the stars that were left over. 

I like to offer parents handouts at curriculum night, but don't want to make a bunch of copies if parents don't end up taking them. Instead of making copies, I just provided one or a few copies. When there is only one copy, parents can sign up on the post-it and I'll send a copy home with the child the next day. Then, I only need to make copies for the parents who are truly interested. 

I've received a lot of compliments on my chart organization. I can't remember whether I saw this idea on another blog or adapted what one of my coworkers did last year (sorry!). This year, I am labeling my charts so students can go back to review them without them taking a ton of wall space. I have two spots for reading charts and two spots for writing charts. As I make new charts, I put them up right on top of the old ones and add a post-it with the topic of the chart. It makes it easy for students to flip back to the chart they're looking for and looks organized, avoiding that visual clutter that seems to take over in some classrooms. 

Since taking this picture, I have changed the post-its to start on the left side. I'm not sure why I started them in the middle at first. 

Tonight, I saw this idea on Krazy About Kiddos. Lately, my students have been urgent to talk to me while I am conferring with other students. I am going to revisit our conference norms mini-lesson soon, but I am also going to add this light to my conference table. When I reteach the mini lesson (about how to get help when I'm conferring) I will also make an anchor chart (and reprint it on smaller paper) to put right next to my conference table so I can just point to it if students try to interrupt me. 

For any new teachers or future teachers reading this, I wanted to share this graph with you. There is also an accompanying article here. I found it very accurate last year and think that it still is this year. Last year, I don't think I ever reached the rejuvenation stage and feel that even my reflection phase was shortened and replaced by a longer disillusionment phase. I'm hoping for better this year and so far I feel better than I did last year at this point in the year. 

New Ideas... Maybe

As I've walked around my classroom as I have been making decisions about how it would be most functional for me this year, I realized that some of the things that do not seem very creative to me might be more exciting to someone else.

This year, I waited until the first full week of school (the second week) to lead a discussion about classroom expectations. I wanted the kids to have experienced the routines and schedule so they could make their expectations more specific to what will actually happen in our room. I started the discussion by having students come up with rules they think we should have in the classroom. Once they got started this list became really long really quickly. The rules were all listed individually and were very specific.
Then, I had students work in groups to try to put the rules in categories. (I had categories in mind, but wanted to see what they would come up with.) With prompting, discussion, reflection from past years and some guidance, students came up with the categories Safety, Respect, and Responsibility. Then, I had each group use the original list along with new ideas to write about what each of those things looks like, sounds like, and feels like in the classroom. We reconvened as a class and made a giant list in three categories (looks/sounds/feels) for each expectation. After charting them together, I made them into smaller posters to display in the classroom all year. Here are the pictures.

I hung these on our heater since wall space is becoming limited and they are not something that students need to be able to see at all times. They just need to know where they are for a reminder now and then. Just a note, our heater (as far as I know) does not seem to get hot, so it shouldn't be a safety concern. 

I know the idea of generating examples about what rules/expectations look, sound, and feel like came from my amazing mentor teacher in college! I don't remember whether she did it for class norms though ( I think she did). 

This is my daily attendance/lunch count system. Students come in the door (just to the left of this picture) pick up their card, check the lunch menu, and put their card in their lunch choice (cold, hot lunch 1, or hot lunch 2). Any name left in a pocket is a student who is absent and the lunch count is done for me. I usually have a student count how many students selected each lunch and report to me while I'm recording the attendance on the computer. (This idea is also one I've been using since learning it from my college mentor teacher.)

I bought a large, shallow Rubbermaid container for each student's desk. This is where they keep all their loose supplies. Most supplies in our classroom are community supplies, but this works for the daily stuff and the supplies that it doesn't make as much sense to share. It acts as a drawer in their desk and doesn't take up much space. Also, it limits the amount of junk they can collect. I plan on checking these every once in a while to make sure that students are only keeping the essential supplies in them. I stole this idea from my partner teacher this year although my containers are smaller than the ones she uses. I couldn't find hers but this size works fine!