New School Year - Connections are the Crucial Element in a Successful Classroom!

Connections...being connected...being a part of the community of classroom...its a bold statement to say that this is the most crucial element but I truly believe it is.  If a student is not connected, not a part of the community of the classroom, then they simply become a seat filler, another paper to grade, another voice.  Think about how often you have walked into a room, a wedding, a party where most of the people know each other, have a shared connection and you are the "odd man out".  How do you feel?  While there are a few people who could jump right in and walk up to people, most people wait for someone to approach them, to bring them into a circle.  As teachers, that is our job - to bring our students into a circle, a community, a safe place where they can learn, grow, explore.  So how do we do it?  How do we make that connection, build the community that our students need?

1.  Be tuned in.  When you are in your classroom, be there mentally as well as physically.  So often we are in our classes physically, but our minds are consumed with the forms we need to complete, meetings we need to have, our families at home, what are we doing for the weekend and 1,000 other things.  As hard as it is, we need to shut those things off or at least try to and focus on being present mentally when we are in the classroom.  How this occurs is different for everyone.  It may be featuring artwork from your kids or pictures of your family so they are "with you" but not your primary focus.  It could also be making a "To-Do" list of everything you need to accomplish so that you don't forget but can focus your mind on other things.  Whatever it is that works for you and allows you to be tuned in, do it!  Your students will thank you!

2.  Create an environment that is safe.  Students, whether they are in Kindergarten, their senior year or anywhere in-between are still kids.  (If you don't believe me, just break out the crayons and see what happens! :)  They still need to feel safe and secure in order to be truly successful.  They need to know that there will be supportive words to encourage them, a safety net if they fail and accolades when they succeed.  They need to know that they won't be ridiculed by their peers if they have questions and that it is a safe place to express their thoughts.  In order to create this safe environment I suggest starting by with clear expectations (I go into more depth about this here) about what is and is not acceptable in they classroom, establish clear norms about how discussion will occur and more importantly be tuned in to what is happening in the classroom.  Do not let behavior slide for some students but come down hard others for the same behavior.  Be fair and consistent.

3.  Partner with parents.  As both a parent and a teacher I know first hand how important it is to be in a partnership with parents and not a competition.  Communicate with parents about the spectacular things that their students do, not just the negative.  I had an experience with past year where I would get notes home from my son's teacher about how his day went.  They were a checklist of six areas of behavior and rated with a smiley face, straight face or sad face.  He got quite a few sad faces, so many at one point that I started dreading getting the note at the end of the day.  I would start to have that anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach when I would see his backpack.  This teacher never sent home a note when he had a great day, just when he had a bad day.  BTW - my son is 5.  After a few weeks of this, my husband and I requested a meeting with the teacher where we expressed our concerns.  We found a way to partner with the teacher.  The communication got better, our son got happier and the behavior improved.  You can partner with parents with written communication (notes, e-mails, etc.), verbal communication (phone calls or meetings) or through practice (become the teacher that impacts their student(s) in a positive way to make a positive impact).

4.  Make a personal connection.  Humans are social.  We love to talk, to interact, to communicate and to share of ourselves.  Being a teacher allows a million ways to make a personal connection.  Notice the things that change about your students - a new haircut, cool new shoes, etc. and comment on them in a positive way.  Remember the things that a student tells you - an upcoming vacation, a new puppy, a job interview and follow up to see how it went/is going.  Attend after school activities when possible - a club, band concert, sporting event and then mention it the next day.  Share of yourself and common interests and experiences.  The more human you are, the more you can connect with your students.

5.  Nurture skills that will help them to be part of a bigger community.  We have our students for a short fraction of their lives - a semester, a year, maybe two and it is our job to help them to move on to the next part, chapter or adventure that their lives will offer.  At the high school level this means teaching them job skills, social skills and other skills that will help them to be successful in getting their first job.  We get the opportunity to help them figure if the job market, college or the military is where their strengths lie after high school.  We have the responsibility to help mold them into the (young) adults who will lead future generations.  We can give them these skills through conversation, prodding and modeling them ourselves.

Whatever you do, make connections with your students.  They really will translate to greater success for your students and for yourself as a teacher.  How do you make connections?

Classroom Management Tips: Secondary Level

No matter how many years you have been teaching, be it just starting your first year, starting your last year or somewhere in-between there is one necessity that never goes away - Strong, Effective Classroom Management.  I have found over my years of teaching that regardless of the class, topic or even grade really, that there are few standard practices that will always hold true.

1.  Start day one with a clear set of expectations in your head.   
Spend some time before the first day thinking about what you want your classroom environment to be like.  Do you want to establish a routine where students know that as soon as they come they get started on warm-ups (bellwork/do-nows, etc.), then homework questions, lesson etc.?  Do you want to have students hand in work to a turn-in bin, do you want to collect it or perhaps you plan to walk around during the warm-ups to check it in and conference with students.  Do you plan to give bathroom/locker/hall passes?  If so, when in the class is it acceptable to ask?  What is your acceptable use policy for technology? These (and many more!) are questions that you need to have an idea about ahead of time.  By knowing what you want your classroom environment to be like, you can devise ways to make it happen!  The less that you have clear in your head before you start, the more likely you are to lose control of your classroom.

2.  Stick to your word.  If you say that doing "x" will result in "y" consequence, then do it!  The minute you let a behavior slide once, you are done.  You will start hearing "but you let so and so get away with it...".  On the flip side, if you express to students that they will get a reward of something for completing a task (i.e. the winning team gets a candy bar tomorrow), and then don't follow through, you will lose their trust.  One very powerful way to be able to stick to your word is to talk to your students about what you expect (see #1), what they expect and devise consequences (and rewards) together that everyone can find acceptable.  Students are far more likely to "buy-in" if they feel like they had a stake in creating something in the first place.

3.  Create an environment where students feel safe to make mistakes.  Math students, especially at the secondary level, are very afraid of failure as well as getting something and therefore tend towards not trying unless they are pretty sure of success.  When students aren't trying, they aren't engaged and therefore become behavior problems.  In order to combat this I employ two very powerful strategies.  First, when I make a mistake (especially if I am at the board teaching) I acknowledge it.  I don't try to cover it, I just go with it and use it as a teachable moment.  I will often ask students if they can help me find my mistake.  I even been known to make a mistake on purpose to further this goal.  The second thing I do is to talk to my students about what it feels like when you make a mistake in other situations, how you learn from them and then we discuss how that can be applied to our classroom.  This goes a long way to showing students that getting it wrong is part of the process of learning how to get it right!

4.  Establish norms for the different situations that will arise.  
Just as knowing how your want you classroom routine structured is important to effectively managing your classroom, so is knowing how you want the different situations that occur in a classroom to run.  The first situation that you may want to consider is group work settings.  What is your plan for when students work in groups?  Do you choose the groups or do the students?  Do you have limits on group size?  Are you going to assign roles within the groups?  Do you want a single paper turned in per group or do you want all the students to complete an activity and staple their papers together as a group?  The second situation which is crucially important to have a plan for is classroom discussions. Do you call on the students or can they call on each other?  Can students opt out of answering a question or must they give it an attempt?  Are you going to keep track of participation for points or is there not a need for that?  How are students allow to talk - to each other or just to you?  A great strategy to structure classroom is discussion is "Math Talk".  

5.  Enjoy your job and communicate that enjoyment to your students.  
Nobody wants to be around someone who is miserable and wishing they were somewhere else or doing something else.  I'm so sorry to be the one to say it, but its true.  If you hate what you are teaching or where you are teaching it, the students will know it and they feel rejected.  This attitude also bleeds through into your ability to teach you students and to help them to feel connected.  On the flip side, if you are pleasant and genuinely want to be doing what you are doing, it draws the students in and helps to make a connection and communicate that learning can be enjoyable.  The more you want to be there, the more your students will too!

I realize that there is a great deal more that goes into effective classroom management, but these are five things that I have found work for most anyone!  Do you have any other strategies that you have found work well?

Why Collaborative Work Needs to Occur as Often as Possible

Looking back on my own schooling experiences I cannot clearly identify situations where we worked  together.  I cannot remember my teachers telling us to "turn to the person next to you and share your answer" or coming into the classroom and working in groups.  After talking to a few people who I went to school with I realized that I can't remember it because it rarely happened (except for labs in science class).  Knowing what I know now about the power of collaborative communication, this makes me incredibly sad.  I wonder how my own school struggles would have been diminished had I had the chance to work with others.  I know that for many of us, collaborative work and communication causes fear.  I addressed the ways that I handle this by setting up the classroom for collaboration from day one in a recent post (available here).  What I want to address today is not the HOW of collaboration but the WHY.

Reason one:  It helps to aid with classroom management.  I know, the first thought that goes through the mind is how in the world is it possible that getting them to talk will help with classroom management?  Hear me out, I promise it will make sense.  Teenagers have difficulty sitting still and listening for long periods of time, this is a proven fact.  Just watch your students for a few minutes and see what happens.  They start to shift in their seats, they doodle, they try to sneak a peek at their phone and/or they start talking to the people near them.  By taking collaboration breaks in a lesson such as "turn to your neighbor and work out this problem" or "collaborate with your elbow partners to restate ______________" you are giving them an outlet for that nervous energy.  It helps them to focus on what you are teaching and has the added benefit of identifying misconceptions about what you are teaching if they exist.

Reason two:  Teenagers are social creatures who live in a world where information and communication is literally at their fingertips at all times.  As teachers who desire to meet our students in the ways that they best learn, retain and reference information we have to move outside of our comfort zones and meet our students how they learn best.  Today that means collaboration, communication, sharing of ideas and talking with classmates as often as possible.  Students need to work together to clarify information in their own minds.  I have even seen some "social media" templates that work perfectly to get at the information on the students' levels.

Reason three:  We need to teach our students how to work cohesively with all types of people.    We are preparing these students for the "real world" (I really dislike that term) beyond high school whether it is college, the military or the workforce.  Regardless of what path they take, there will be people that they have to be able to effectively communicate with.  As educators, it is our responsibility and privilege to give them the opportunities to practice and refine these skills.

Reason four:  Studies show that information is retained most effectively when it is shared with others. I saw this graphic online and it stuck itself in my brain.  This is why teachers need to to embrace collaboration.   We teach in a world of high stakes testing, constant competition, and we have to do what it takes to set our students up for success.  The majority of teachers get entrenched (and often trained) in the top part - passive teach methods.  In the past, it worked for the most part.  Looking, however, at the 5% (which yes, may be a little low) of information retained from lecture compared to the 50% for group discussion and the 90% (which yes, might be a little high) from teaching others I'm left with one thought - how can we not try???  If there is even a chance (and research shows there is) that group collaboration can help with retention, learning and connections between concepts we have to try.

Reason five:  If students don't communicate, you have no idea what they know and don't know.  I have had many students in my career who have difficulty showing their knowledge on paper but when you talk to them they can explain it fantastically!  Additionally, by talking to their classmates students will often clarify their own understanding.  In my experience, students can use the same words that you as a teacher use, but it sounds completely different to their classmates and can make a great deal of sense.  

Whatever the reason, I challenge you to try it.  Get your students talking and see what happens, you just might be surprised! :)

Branching Out on Social Media

While I am not anti-technology, I usually prefer face to face contact (or at least voice-to-voice on the phone)!  That being said, I realize that I live in the year 2015 and that a social media presence is a necessary means by which to communicate.  The odd looks I get from my students when I ask what something is, lead me to do some research and get educated on social media!  So, I am pleased to announce that now you cannot only follow The Secondary Math Shop on Pinterest, but also on Twitter and Facebook!  I am getting ready to do my first give-away on Facebook when I hit 100 likes and 50 followers on Twitter.  I will announce the give-away on Facebook and on Twitter so keep your eyes peeled!

New Year, New Resolution to Get Organized

At the beginning of the school year I went through and spent time getting myself organized both as a teacher and in my classroom.  As the year has gone on, however, I have found certain things lacking.  Namely the cohesiveness of the walls, boards, turn-in, pick-up and supply bins.  They are just a mess and it drives me bonkers!  I have tried different ways to overcome this mess including sticker labels, folders and other random methods.  But for me, since it is handwritten, it still looks sloppy.  

As a result, I turned to my favorite teacher store first - Lakeshore Learning - to see if they had anything that would meet me labeling needs!  I found some great little plaques/name tags that I could laminate and write on with dry erase markers.  They are really nice and cohesive looking...but after getting them home and trying them out, I realized that they still didn't look...well professional enough for a high school classroom.  

 

Vintage Digital

So I did what I have done for a while now - I made them myself!  I downloaded some fantastic retro and vintage digital papers from Stacey Lloyd on TeachersPayTeachers and got to work!  I used the papers as a background in PowerPoint, added some frames, did some other coloring, manipulating and modifying and had a template.  I then started thinking about everything I needed to label in my room and created professional looking labels for everything in my room!  I even created labels for my group numbers so I don't need to recreate them every I put students in groups. To make them functional and long lasting I am going to print them on card stock and laminate them.  

Starburst

After a couple of days of staring at them (since I made them over winter break when I was still over a week from getting back in my classroom) I decided that if they would benefit me, then maybe they would benefit other secondary math teachers too!  So I made four more sets with different backgrounds and posted them in my TeachersPayTeachers Store.  I also included a powerpoint file so that teachers can make their own labels and change the phrasing if something that I labeled isn't what they call it!  The labels come in Starburst, Circles, Diamonds (a black and white design for those without color printers), Stripes and Circles and Stars (this prints really well in gray scale if you are color ink challenged!). 

What is your favorite way to get  organized?

***Thank you to Stacey Lloyd for the fantastic background for my blog cover slide***

The Delicate Balancing Act - Parent and Teacher, part two

As a parent we are faced with many challenges as our children grow. The first days they come home we have to figure out their many cues and what different cries mean. We have to figure out how change a diaper without getting peed on (especially if you have a boy or two) and how to burp a child without getting spit-up on. We have to figure out how we balance being a parent, a spouse, housework and for most of us, working a job too! We spend time wondering if we are doing it right, wrong or like most of us, somewhere in-between. Then that magical day comes and we send our first child off to kindergarten and a whole new balancing act begins.

My husband and I had this joyous experience a few months ago when our oldest who will forever be "our baby" boarded the bus that would take her off to kindergarten. I had written in a previous post about my trepidation about doing so and for the most part, that trepidation was unfounded. Her teacher is awesome, she has made friends and genuinely loves going to school.

So while my original reasons for worry were most unfounded, I have found things to worry about that never occurred to me! First, my daughter is smart. Not Sheldon Cooper smart, but smart enough to be reading at an almost second grade level in Kindergarten. This has resulted in her doing first grade ELA in Kindergarten at a time when most of her classmates are still on sight words. This led to issues the first few weeks because she couldn't understand why she was in a reading group with only one other girl while everyone else had reading groups of 5 - 7 students. She felt singled out and got sad. After we explained that she was being challenged and was doing well, she calmed down and felt better about it.

Until they started doing math that is...now being the daughter of a math teacher and an engineer with teachers and engineers as grandparents she is inundated with math in one form or another on a pretty consistent basis. She and her brother will "help" me check papers, "assist" me creating activities, "build" with daddy and so on. As a result, she is also advanced in math. This lead to a great deal of frustration on her part because everything was so easy for her. And her frustration lead to her acting out in class in the form of "helping" her friends do their work which really translates into giving them the answers. Cue another discussion about the difference between helping someone and doing it for them.

On the flipside, while my daughter is advanced on an academic scale she is exactly where she needs to be on a maturity scale. She has difficulty keeping her hands to herself, gets cases of the giggles, forgets to use her inside voice and is the most adorable, wonderful little girl that I love more than any other. She is strong-willed and while that will serve her well someday, it does earn her strikes in school for wanting to do things her own way. She is a unique little girl with a well developed imagination who will be a handful as a teenager. I still haven't figured out how to teach her to temper her impulse to act on the things that cross her mind. I know as a teacher that this can lead to big(ger) problems the older she gets. But, she is five and that ability comes with time. So in the meantime, I'll keep doing the delicate balancing act and hope that it serves all of us well! How do you handle the balancing act?

Parent, Teacher...Protector?

Boo-boos that need a Band-Aid?  Check, I've got that covered.  Hurts that need a "mommy hug or kiss" to make it all better?  Check, I've got that covered too!  How to handle the following conversation, not so much...  One day not long before the school year let out I went to pick my daughter up from preschool only to find her sitting alone, trying not to cry, while the other little girls were all playing.  I asked her what was wrong and she said "mommy, they said they don't want to play with me and I need to go away".  She is a five year old, beautiful, sweet, little girl and at that moment my heart broke.  Thinking back on it now brings tears to my eyes.  I can protect her from the physical, make boo-boos go away with the magic of a Band-Aid and a kiss.  But, I cannot make other little girls be nice.  I can't protect her from the emotional hurts that potentially await her when she starts Kindergarten this fall.  That terrifies me. 

As a teacher at the secondary level I can and do intervene when I see bullying.  We have a support system in place and a zero tolerance policy.  I have spent years working to make sure that it doesn't happen in my classroom and as a school we work so hard to make sure that if it happens in the our building that there are outlets, support systems and interventions to stop it.  But as a parent, I don't have that same access.  She will be out of my sight, my reach, my "protection" all day, five days a week.  While I know that she is going to an excellent school, with a great reputation for stopping bullying in it's tracks, I also know that as parent I have to prepare her.  I have to give her tools to combat what she is already encountering.

So, I did what all people do and I started researching how I could give her the tools to not only face what she *may* encounter, but also how to overcome it and not let it hurt her like that moment in preschool did.  I found an absolutely awesome series of blogs by a website named "A Mighty Girl" (http://www.amightygirl.com). 

 

The first post is entitled ""The End of Bullying Begins With Me": Bullying Prevention Books for Young Mighty Girls" and has excellent books and resources for young girls (and I'm sure they would work for young boys too!) that begin the conversation about feelings, bullying and the result.  The post is broken down into "Another Person’s Shoes: Teaching Empathy" which features books about how other people are feeling, that they may feel the same way and that it's okay to be different.  It goes on to a section entitled "Beginning With Me: Dealing With Bullies" which showcases books about how face bullying, how to stop bullying and how to not let it stop you.  The post ends with "Additional Recommended Resources" which features links to other parts of the site and other types of books.  I spent a great deal of time with going through these sources and picked a few of them up to spend some time reading during our story time daily! 

From a teacher's standpoint I was quite interested in the second part of the series "Taking a Stand Against Bullying: Bullying Prevention Books for Tweens and Teens" (and the third  which I will address in just a minute!)  This entries in this part of the series features books that I think would be excellent to pick up and keep in my classroom for when I have students come to me with bullying problems or for when I notice them myself.  It features two types of books; ones about fictional bullies and also non-fiction books about how to deal with bullies.  In the first section "Mean Girls: Fictional Bullies" I found books that I think would greatly appeal to some of my students who need to read about others situations without it being "too real".  In the second section "Taking A Stand: Non-Fiction About Bullying" I found some wonderful workbooks and implementation types of resources that I am going to recommend to our counseling department!  I think that they would find them very useful for those students who come to them and need constructive ways to address the problems.

I spent a great deal of time on the last post from both a parent and teacher standpoint.  The last post in the series is "Leading the Way: Bullying Prevention Books for Parents and Educators"  and it is broken down into three phenomenal areas.  The first, "It Starts Young: Bullying in Preschool and Elementary School" has great resources for both parents and teachers of our youngest children.  (One I already ordered is " Little Girls Can Be Mean: Four Steps to Bully-Proof Girls in the Early Grades").  The second area, "Social Drama: Bullying Among Tweens and Teens" helps parents and educators to carry the message on to the next level.  It features books to keep the conversation going when young girls really start to stop talking to the adults around them and are more influenced by their peers.  The last area, "New Dimensions of Bullying: Cyberbullying and Bullying Adults" has some amazing resources to address how bullying is being taken to the next level and how to shut it down.   

While I know that books alone will not solve the problem, at least they will help me to feel less helpless.  If I can arm my daughter and my son with the tools necessary to be strong against what they face, maybe next time my daughter won't feel so alone.  Maybe next time she'll have the words to speak back or the strength to go to her teacher.  By the way, I had a conversation with her preschool teacher after this incident.  Her teacher said that she is working hard to address these issues.  I forwarded the above blogs to her and she is going to order some of the books for her classroom library.  Every step helps.

Time To Get Organized, Part Two!

One of the many challenges of teaching is organization of not only myself, but also my classroom and my students.  I cannot tell you how often I have planned to do an activity and found that I was missing some basic essential such as glue sticks (because they dried out), scissors (because for some reason they just "grow legs" and walk away), color pencils, crayons, etc. 

Once I do have everything I need, I find myself in one of two situations for distribution of those supplies.  Situation one:  I spend way too much time walk from group to group handing out, counting out the required number of each item.  Situation two:  I have students come up to get them and then have this free-for-all grabbing.  Both situations waste a great deal of time and the second one leaves me with a mess.   The clean-up, on the flip side, is just as much of a nightmare, especially if a project is long and students work right up to the bell to finish.  This leads to students that are scrambling to clean-up, supplies left on desks, or having fallen on the floor, etc.


Really Useful Box 4.0 Liter

  So, what then, is the solution?  Well, the solution I am going to implement this fall involves boxes with lids, a checklist and student roles!  I found boxes at Office Max that are big enough to hold everything that I need (including rulers!) with lids.   While they come in multiple sizes, I found this size best able to fit my needs.  I will initially stock the boxes with whatever I feel a group needs and then change the supplies out (ahead of time!) if an activity requires something more specialized.  I can label the boxes with group numbers and best of all - the are stackable!  Easy and neat storage!


Once I found my box, I needed to address the question of accountability.  I created a "Resource Box Checklist" that I will include in each box.  One person in the group will be responsible for checking off at the end of the hour that all of the supplies are accounted for at the end of the hour.  If something is running low, then they can let me know so that I can restock it. 

While I won't know until fall whether this will "fix" all of the issues that I am finding, I know that it is the first proactive step in addressing them!  You can download the resource box checklist here in editable PowerPoint format!




The Delicate Balancing Act - Parent and Teacher

I have been a teacher for just over 15 years now and in all of that time I have only ever been on the teacher side of the desk.  This fall, however, I will start a new journey with my oldest child as she enters kindergarten.  I will have to learn how to walk that delicate line between being the teacher of 120 students a day and the parent of one very small student!   

How do you walk that line?  How do you go from being the one who is entrusted with the education, the safety and well being of someone's child(ren) to being the one who entrusts your child to someone else?  School hasn't even started yet and I am already worried.  I worry that the teacher won't understand my daughter's unique personality, that the teacher won't foster her love of learning, that the other students will be mean to her.  I worry that my little girl, who has been reading since she was four, who loves using her imagination to entertain herself and her little brother and who LOVES to learn will be crushed by the new CCSS and hate school.

I went to the new parent orientation and found out that she is expected to be able to write a paragraph by the end of October and that recess is now combined with the 30 minutes they get for lunch.  So in the course of a 7.5 hour day of school she gets less than 30 minutes to play.  I know, trust me I know, that school is not playtime but at 5?  At 5 they still learn best through play and investigation, now sitting at a table...

But, I also know that if I expect others to trust me with their children, that I too, must trust that others will teach my children and protect them and give them what they need when they are out of my hands.  It will definitely be a fine balancing act but hopefully one that I will be able to use to enrich my own abilities as a teacher. 

In the meantime, I have started going through different stores on TeachersPayTeachers to find resources that we can use to "play school" this summer.  Three of my favorite stores so far are:
1)  Christina Winter
2) 1st Grade Salt Life
3)  KB3Teach