If at first you don't succeed...the power of PERSISTENCE!

On December 4th I began the hardest job I ever have, and probably ever will, face...the job of being a first-time mom!! As I began this journey I was optimistic...after all, I had read all the books, talked to all my first-time-mom friends...I was ready!

NOT.

Ever since my son was born he's been one giant mystery to me! I've tried everything I could to "figure him out" as we struggled through feeding, acid reflux (we think?), sleeping (and NOT sleeping...), and desperately trying to get into some kind of routine.

Being the slightly type A person I am and the fact that my job thrives off of routines, the fact that I'm in week 8 and still feel so helpless often causes me to feel like...I'll just say it...I'm bad at being a mom.

However, when my grad school facilitators presented me with this image:

something sort of sparked in me. 

As I read through the above suggestions on "how to be persistent," I realized how many of them I'd been tapping into the past 8 weeks. 

To start, I've certainly learned from my mistakes! To better try and learn from my son, I've created a "plan" of sorts and recorded his feeding and sleeping patterns. I've then been able to refer back to that "plan" when things didn't go so well, or did (!!), and adapt or stick to something. I've found that having this persistence within the plan has helped us to understand his cues and signs a little better.

Also, I've checked in with so many experts (thank you Google, Partners in Pediatrics, and my fellow new mommies) that I'm finally starting to feel (ever so slightly) like an expert myself! 

The one area that struck me as a necessary reminder was that which is accompanied by a smily face: "Keep positive. Start again if you have to. Just don't give up. You will succeed."

I know that someday, maybe even just a few weeks from now, I'll look back and realize how many things we've done right with our first-born and how happy he is because of the love and persistence we've shown him. 

While my family is truly my whole life right now, in just a few weeks I'll be returning to the classroom where I'll be faced with 24 students who need me to follow the above suggestions on a daily basis. My "high-flyers" will most likely need me more than ever as their routine and structure hasn't been what they're used to with me being gone and the multiple snow days we've had. My sweet, shy and quiet kids will need me to show this persistence as I get our class back in order and help us to return to the swing of things. And I, I'll need to keep these suggestions in mind as I begin my journey as a full-time working mom who has to juggle lesson plans, grad school and all my mommy duties. It will be hard. But I'll persist..and I will succeed :)

"I Don't Care"

Let me start by saying..I DO care! In fact, I care so much that I tend to take things to heart that I shouldn't. Like, for example, when a student...who I've spent almost all year working on, looks me dead in the eyes and says "I don't care!" I think it's a natural thing to go into that fight or flight mode when you hear that. You tend to think one of two things.."SERIOUSLY?? Well fine then...you don't care? Well I don't care either...so there!" (yes, we've all digressed to a 7 year old at some point or another) OR "Oh really..I'll make you care. You can go sit in the office for 7 hours until you CARE!" (At your breaking point...)

Unfortunately, this is a saying that I've heard as a teacher who teaches in a very high-poverty school where many of my students have developed this default phrase as their number one defense mechanism. Thankfully, I've learned the power of building relationships and trust with them so I don't hear it all too often.

However, when I do hear it, I tend to immediately run the gamete of "What did I do wrong?" "How could they not care when I spent over 3 hours this weekend putting this really cool lesson together?" and "But I care SO much about you! Don't you see that?"

I very frequently found myself taking their negative behavior and hurtful words very personally. (Hi my name is Natalie and I have very thin skin. "Hi, Natalie.") However, when I recently read a chapter on classroom management written by Robert Marzano he spoke about the importance of having an appropriate mental set in order to effectively manage. One aspect of your mental set is that of emotional objectivity: "the ability to address disciplinary issues in an 'unemotional, matter-of-fact manner'...carrying out the various aspects of classroom management without becoming emotionally involved or personalizing students' actions."

I suck at this. Pardon my French. But I do.

I love my job, and my students, so much that I emotionally invest to the point that I take things personally when I really shouldn't. After reading that article I set myself a new year's resolution not to worry so much! To learn to let things slide of my back and not think too deeply about it. Then, as if it were a sign from above, one of my grad school cohort members presented our group with an article about working with students when they "don't care." This article  provides three positive strategies that help work with students who seem disengaged: get to know your students, take time to talk to students and don't take student antagonism and inaction personally. Since this is my resolution, I chose to focus and reflect mostly on strategy #3. The author highlights a teacher reflecting on one of her disengaged students: "The less I take their immature behavior personally the more engaged I am. I'm realizing that their behavior is much more about their own lives, trials and tribulations that it is about me."

With this in mind, my goal upon returning to my classroom after maternity leave is to step back and take a breath before making an emotionally charged judgement or rationalization. I'll do this because I do care, about them and about myself, and by keeping my emotions in check I'll be doing us all a favor!

Using iPad Apps to Engage and Enhance Creativity and Inquiry

While I'm currently out of the classroom on maternity leave I find myself frequenting some of my favorite blogs during the late night feedings (trust me...there's not much on TV at 3am!). One of my favorite blogs, Minds In Bloom recently hosted a guest blogger who wrote about iPad apps that can be used in multiple ways throughout the year to enhance creativity and inquiry among students. My classroom was lucky enough to continue with our 1:1 iPad initiative this year so, having looped with my 2nd grade students into 3rd, we're able to deepen our experience with this technology!

This post brought about some great points about the difference between what the guest blogger, Katherine Fountain refers to as "content/skill apps" and "creator apps." A content/skill app is one that is used to practice a certain set of skills, such as fractions or geometry, and usually, once the skill is learned, the app is set aside as the students become bored and find no need to continue practicing. No creativity or critical thinking is needed.

Then there are creator apps: these apps or websites are resources that can be used across multiple curricular areas throughout the year and give the students a "platform within the app to create a product to share." A few of these apps are Screen Chomp, Educreations, Show Me, Story Me, Doceri, Drawing Free and Drawing Desk.

In a prior post I blogged about how I've been using Educreations to allow my students to send me their learning while I'm gone on leave. I've had a few students do this consistently and I LOVE getting a lesson from them showing me what they're up to. However, Fountain suggested another great way to use this app that I'm hoping to implement when I return in February. When she plans to be out of the classroom, instead of typing up pages of sub plans, she's chosen to use an interactive whiteboard (Educreations, Screen Chomp or Show Me) to create her lessons ahead of time and simply posts them to a class website. The sub then plays these lessons for the students. While I've used Educreations to create differentiated lessons for my different groups, I've yet to use this app in this way but am anxious to give it a try!

Another app I'd like to try is "Story Me." This app allows students to use real pictures, captions and word bubbles to create a sketch, actual photo or comic strip. I'd love to use this as an incentive of sorts for when a student reaches the publishing stage in the writing process. They could create an accompanying picture or one that shows a "how-to" writing. I think this would highly motivate my students and allows them to show their creative side!

Literature Circles During Daily 5 (for my conference bloggers)

One new literature strategy that I've begun using more intentionally this year is Literature Circles (aka "Book Clubs). I should begin by saying that I had this group of 3rd graders last year as 2nd graders so was able to spend the entire year setting up the expectations for Daily 5 and practicing each element (especially Read to Self and Read to Someone) until we had them down pat!

With that in place last year, we were able to spend a few of the first weeks of school practicing and reteaching, and we were off and running! I saw this as an opportunity to go deeper with my guided reading groups...

While I've done guided reading for the past 4 years, it's taken many shapes and forms and (other than implementing my fluency research last year) I've never really felt like the students enjoyed this time or really grew as readers because of our group work. I wanted to change that.

I decided to try using literature circles with my highest readers as I felt that they'd be a good "test group" and one that could handle the increased responsibility during reading. Here's a quick run down:

-My group consisted of 6 readers (rigby levels between Q and U)
-This group so happened to have 3 boys and 3 girls so I split it into two mini-groups who still met at the same time
-With the help of our media specialist, the girls selected 3 copies of the same book that they all wanted to read and the boys did the same.
-Once they had the book, I introduced one role at a time. These roles were:

• Book Club Leader-this person had a checklist of meeting "duties" to be addressed each time they met to discuss
• Question Asker- as they're reading this person was to come up with at least 3 questions ("thick questions" that caused them to think outside the text)
• Word Wizard-find at least 3 interesting words, denote the page number and state why they chose the word
• Connection Maker-as they're reading, make at least 3 text connections to themselves, the world around them or another text they've read
• Artful Artist-after reading their selected pages, they are to draw a picture that was created in their mind at some point during the reading

Each student was given a role to complete while they read a selected amount of pages. The next time we got together the students would use their role to guide the discussion and then decide on the next set of pages to read. 

Because this was new to my students, I acted as the book club leader for the first few weeks so they could see what a book group should look like and know how to take the discussion deeper than simply reading what they'd found. 

I was VERY impressed with how well they took on their responsibilities and by the 3rd week they were exchanging phone numbers so they could call each other at home while they were reading (SERIOUSLY!!?!...it was definitely a teacher moment :)

While I'm no expert on Literature Circles, please click here for more resources to implement this wonderful strategy into your daily reading block! 

Reflecting on another round of action research

My how things have changed since my last reflection! Since then...I've become a "stay-at-home-mommy" to a beautiful little boy!! While it certainly isn't the easy, glamorous life that most people think of when they hear you stay at home (usually in your pj's) all day, I absolutely adore every minute with him and, quite honestly, have struggled to think about work. I miss my students dearly but my focus has solely been here with my family.

On that note...as I began my AR reflection/write-up I had to step out of my current state of mind and place myself back in the classroom to reflect on how my data collection went this time around. While I feel it was pretty successful, and I saw some wonderful growth in my students as writers, I feel that this round went a little less smoothly than the last AR cycle. I think this came about because of all the unexpected that happens in our day-to-day teaching. I had big plans to lead my students through at least 2 complete "units" of writing (mini-lessons and stories taken through the complete writing process) with the hopes that I'd have beautifully written pieces of writing to publish at the end. Not quite.

I didn't anticipate the amount of time it would take just to get my writer's workshop time up and running! Each day, for about the first 2 1/2 weeks, began with a need to review expectations and reflect on our previous day. I found that when I began to try and move to fast, things quickly fell apart. Any other time I would've felt completely comfortable taking that time to build up the expectations and practice them until we could do it in our sleep, but because I knew I was going on maternity leave at the beginning of December, I had a sense of urgency to get things moving for my sub. My hope is that I've left her with enough structure and that my lesson plans were detailed enough for her to continue this model when I'm gone. In a perfect world, I'll be able to pick right back up where we left off when I return in February...in a perfect world ;)