Unlocked and Happy

Finally my blog has been unlocked. Since they realized it was not a spam blog I am back and ready to post. It actually felt strange not being able to blog and I've always been one to shy away from this sort of thing. I would be happy to bring food next week to class if anyone wants to help out. I don't know what I will bring so if anyone has ideas or requests send them this way. Have a great week.

Comparing Reading to the Kardashians??!!??

I know that when you read the title you are thinking what in the world, why is she posting something that has to do with the Kardashians. Well I wondered why I was so intrigued to open this article which then just leads to why the article makes so much sense. I love the idea of using caution tape to close off a section of the classroom library-all the while the kids are seeing just enough to be interested and wanting so badly to see what is in there. Brilliant! Obviously, if Kris Jenner, who in my opinion has done absolutely nothing worthy of being a celebrity can get the whole world to want to know her every move we should be able to get kids to want to read. I'm going to see if I can "brand" myself a bit differently so that my students want to know about everything they can about reading.
I am a bit bothered by the fact that I found this blog now, knowing what happened yesterday on the Today show but setting those feelings aside I think that this just shows how turned around our country is right now. Why is it that people feel they need to follow the "reality" of others and forget they have their own life happening right in front of them?
Love to hear your comments.

Preschool Educators

Since I am a first grade teacher I have a lot of appreciation for the preschool teacher. As I was looking for articles about reading I came across this one that discusses many issues surrounding the preschool educator. It is a long article but is basically stating that preschool educators do need to hold a BA degree from a program that was well developed to meet the needs of preschool teachers. I'm going to keep looking for my 'reading' article but I just thought this was interesting. This site actually had a lot of titles that looked like good reading, some of them were from the late 90's so I know that we are trying to find more recent info but still could be good reading.
article
Once you are on this page scroll down until you reach the title

Degrees in Context: Asking the Right Questions about Preparing Skilled and Effective Teachers of Young Children

 

MTSS Symposium

I had the opportunity to go to the conference last Thursday and Friday. Wow. The sessions that I attended were very informative and refreshing. Sometimes it's nice to hear the experts talk and realize, ok I am doing something right (and then also realize, oh I was so far off!). I went to a session with Anita Archer on explicit instruction and it just helped cement the idea that we have to model, model, model what we are wanting from the kids. She is not only an expert in her content but she is a great presenter as well. I only attended one session that was a little difficult to attend to because we had to sit for the entire 1.5 hours without any breaks or time to talk to a neighbor about how we would use the information given in our classroom. That just reminded me that if it is hard for an adult to sit and listen it is even more difficult for our students to sit and stay focused without having any brain breaks or time to talk about what they are learning. I especially enjoyed the session with Randy Sprick. His focus is on behavior and he had some great tips on how to collect data on behaviors that we are hoping to help change for the better. Just wanted to share my thoughts on this great conference and to let educators know that if they have the chance to go that it would be very beneficial.

Article #2 Technology

This article is about schools in the Kansas City area and what is happening with all the technology and apps that are available. I really liked the one comment from an adult about letting some of the power go and having students help us learn about the technology.

Article #1-Collaborating

This article made me think about the comments that Sir Ken Robinson made in his lecture called Changing Education Paradigms. I enjoyed watching that animated video of his lecture and really wanted to be able to come to school today with no lesson plan and just decide the day as we go. That didn't happen but maybe I will get closer to that as this journey continues.
I find it interesting that these Harvard students were very confused about what was expected of them on these tests. It will be interesting to see how all of that ends and if anyone has a degree revoked or is suspended from school.

Philosophy of Education

I took the quiz last night and found that my top 2 (tied for first place) philosophies of education are progressivism  and social reconstructionism. I'm not really surprised about this although a lot of what I think about or hope for in education I can't quite seem to make actually happen in my classroom (as much as I would hope for). I love trying to help students become better people in our community. That's one reason why I like teaching the 8 Keys of Excellence. I want to do more projects in my classroom but I'm finding a challenge in how to make it all work. I have a lot of reasons in my head that it might not work but I'm thinking if I saw more of this in action some of those reasons might go away. I'm hoping that through this class and the sharing of teacher information I will find more ways to bring project based learning into my classroom. Thinking about each student as an individual is something I try to do in the classroom as much as possible. We have an overall system set up in the classroom but modifications are made constantly so that individuals can be successful.