Help Yourself: Build Consistency

The end of the third week is upon us, and I find myself reflecting on the beginning of my first year and this second year. I kept a journal throughout my first year (though I admit my submissions were intermittent), and I read through the first few weeks to compare and contrast to this year.

This year has been less frustrating for me and I think it's for this reason: Consistency. Students don't know it, and they won't admit it, but consistency of expectations is what they like and need. Consistency is also good for me. (Maybe I'm like Sheldon Cooper?) It helps provide organization, a sense of purpose, and saves time.

My first consistent behavior was to quit bringing school work home. This is not easy for me. Looking back on my journal entries, I was at school for ten hours and then working for another two at home. I'm still at school for ten hours, but at home is for me now. (Except on weekends when I finish my lesson plans.) A few things have helped me cut down those few hours that I was working at home.

• Consistent bellwork: Each day of the week has the same bellwork, so students know what to expect and it takes less prep time for me. I refer to this as our Word Study, and I have created a packet that has bellwork for the entire quarter. I collect it every couple of weeks to grade for daily work.

• Daily reading: I end each class period with 10-15 minutes of reading. Sometimes it's frustrating because I would like to complete what we're working on. But...remember that magic number of 20 minute activities? By breaking up the schedule, we actually accomplish more during our work time. This reading time also allows me to decompress before the next class by reading with my students or organize papers (both to grade or to hand out next hour). This means I don't have to do that during my prep.

• Lesson planning: Every Friday, before leaving school, I map out my lessons on my white board agenda for students. This forces me to have a plan for the next week to keep me from scrambling Monday morning. It also helps me plan a lesson with a realistic time. When writing my lessons on my laptop, I can fit so much on the chart with my typing! My weekly agenda that I share with students allows for realistic planning, and helps me to be more focused and concise with my formal lesson plans.

It took me a year, but I realize that by relaxing at home and taking care of my home life, I am actually a better teacher. It means when I walk in the classroom, I don't have to worry about my home life and I have a genuine positive attitude.

What didn't help my first year frustration was my uncertainty of how to teach junior high students to be organized. Why don't they teach this in college? I learned hundreds of before, during, and after reading strategies; hundreds of writing prompts and workshops; and learned of hundreds of resources. But how do you explain to 7th and 8th graders to be organized?

Junior high students lose a lot of their materials. I found myself creating handouts and printing off tens of extra copies. I would go through them all and make more. These would continue to disappear. How did I solve it? Honestly, I quit giving extra copies. I started requiring them to hand write a copy in their notebooks by looking at their neighbors. 

This year, I did some more research and decided to try interactive notebooks. My use of glue sticks and scissors is limited, but by having students keep a table of contents and write their notes on the same page, many of them are actually hanging on to their materials! 

If you're a new teacher, talk to your colleagues about the strategies that work for them. Sharing strategies helps provide consistency for students in other classes. It's also great collaboration and saves time. Perhaps they use two pocket folders with "graded" and "homework." 

As a few more weeks pass by, I hope to share with you how I created my Word Study packets and interactive notebooks. We'll see if they past the test of first quarter.

English 2.0: Improvements for a New Year

As my colleagues and I prepare for a new school year, I find myself reflecting on what routines and procedures worked and did not work in my 7th and 8th grade classroom. In this post, you will find classic first year blunders; now that I've learned from these, I will share with you my new strategies for this year.

My first mistake occurred at the beginning of several class periods. My school requires bellwork, as suggested in Harry Wong and Rosemary Wong's book The First Days of School. I began the year by writing journal prompts for each of my classes. (Luckily I was able to type them!) This became a significant amount of time for me. Not only did I prepare these every morning, but students began to expect me to grade ALL of them. If they felt like they weren't graded, many would simply not complete them. When I was grading them, I collected them weekly, and this was a huge headache!

Did absent students need to make up journal prompts? Crap...where did I save it? What days was Elaine* gone? And Jared*? What about the students who have lost their journal prompts? Yikes! It was a nightmare.

At the beginning of second quarter, I introduced weekly vocabulary words. They defined these once a week as their bellwork on our alternative block days. This worked great! They came in on either Tuesdays or Wednesdays knowing exactly what to do while I took attendance. This has inspired my new bellwork strategy for the upcoming year.

Each day of the week will have different bellwork, but will remain consistent from week to week. With the exception of their planners, the materials will be given to students in a packet for either half of the quarter or a full quarter to keep in their binders until complete.

Monday: Fill out planners with this week's lessons and assignments. Please complete in pencil to accommodate changes. After attendance, I will present spelling words. (There will be an activity sheet related to spelling as early-finisher work.)

Tuesday/Wednesday (block days): Complete this week's vocabulary word with the corresponding prefix/suffix.

Thursday: Edit the following paragraph using the editing marks used in class.

Friday: Free write about the lessons and activities this week. What have you learned? What topics are still confusing? (This will then be a short discussion for me.) Then we can take our spelling test.

My other "big" mistake was not having a behavior plan on the first day of school. Maybe I thought the school had one or I needed to see how my students acted. Either way, plan on being over prepared with a plan. 

I began looking through my materials for an idea of a behavior plan. Lo and behold! I had created resources back at the beginning of August and completely forgot to include them in my syllabus and class introduction. Well, guess I didn't need to make new materials.

My behavior plan is also taken from The First Days of School. I use a ticket system. 

In class, my students know what these tickets mean. If a student is off-task, I can slide a ticket on his/her desk without disrupting the class. The student then takes control of their behavior by recognizing what the behavior is and making a decision to either change it or continue the behavior. If the behavior does continue, I hand him/her both a second ticket and a Behavior and Action Plan. The students then go to a quiet area of the room to complete the reflection sheet before returning to the class. This helps me to know what may be causing the behavior, such as a seating chart or hunger. If a student still continues the behavior that disrupts the rest of the class, I direct them to visit with either the principal or the dean of students.

When implementing a behavior plan, make sure that you're following school expectations. It is easier for students if the policies are consistent in all classrooms. If there isn't a school-wide procedure, make sure you share your behavior plan with your administrators. If you'd like the behavior tickets and the My Behavior and Action Plan, use the links to make a copy for you.

The next big change I'm making in my classroom is the use of reading logs and reading days. The high school teachers in my district implement reading days where the students spend the hour reading and completing reading journals. I thought I would implement the same expectation in my classroom. Nope. Turns out the attention span of 7th and 8th graders requires them to build the ability to sustain their attention for that long. After fifteen minutes, few of my students remained reading. Hopefully they would complete their reading logs with the title, author, pages read, time, and a summary. Nope. 

These reading logs were lost, shredded between science textbooks, left at home. I've heard almost every excuse. By the fourth quarter, I completely gave up on reading logs and given grades on reaching their one hundred minute goal each week.

This year, I think I am much more prepared! Rather than reading days, we will spend the last ten to fifteen minutes reading in class. These should be student choice books for a majority of their free-reading time. As students are able to sustain their reading, we can change to longer periods of reading on a fewer days of the week.

Reading logs, well, they've changed quite a bit. Rather than having students hang on to sheets or bookmarks that never return, I've designed a bulletin board. The envelopes are similar to those placed in library books (for those old enough to know) for the check out cards.

Inside these, the students will have their own index card with their name and reading goal. Each Friday, students will be expected to write down the name of their book, the author, and the page they are on. At the end of the quarter, students will reflect on whether they were able to obtain their goals. 

Hopefully these changes will help the school year run more smoothly. What changes have you made in your classrooms that make a big difference?


*Student names have been changed.*

Teachers and Students Need "Focus"

After my FIRST formal observation review with my principal (which was not as terrifying as I expected), he gifted me with a copy of Mike Schmoker's text Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning. Thankfully, he told me that I didn't need to read it immediately, but to save it for my summer reading. Woo...it's like he saw the terror on my face of "How will I have time to read this?"

I found a lot of points that I agree with throughout this text. Granted, I also use a lot of these strategies. Below you will find summaries of Schmoker's main points that hung with me and how they have (and haven't) worked for me in my classroom.

Lesson Planning:

Schmoker argues that there are four important aspects of a quality lesson: clear learning objectives, teaching/modeling/demonstrating, guided practice, and checks for understanding/formative assessment (53-4).

During new teacher orientation, my principal sent out an example lesson plan format. I didn't know it until I began reading this book, but it's the format suggested by Schmoker. Theoretically, I love this format! I think it makes logical sense and provides consistency through lesson plans. 

If you like it, make a copy!

Link to Lesson Template  


This is the form that I try to use for all of my lessons, but sometimes it doesn't tie up in a nice bow for me. For example, some lessons take multiple days so I don't spend a significant amount of time demonstrating EVERY class period. However, I have found that it helps me better organize time in my classroom.


Formative Assessments:

Please allow me to summarize Schmoker's points on good habits of teachers using formative assessments:

1. circulate around the room2. randomly call on students3. have students indicate level of understanding through hand motions4. have students use dry erase boards to respond to questions (54).

When reading this, a swell of pride appeared in my chest. I do all of these! Sometimes I wonder why I even have a comfy chair, but then a Friday rolls around where my feet are sore and I like to scoot my chair around the room. 

One of my tips for number two, randomly calling on students, is to use index cards. During the first week of class, I ask students to make an index card with their name written on it with a drawing that represents their personality (later this is a reference for symbol). On the back, I ask the students to write three facts about themselves that they would like me to know about them. I keep this in a pouch and use them to randomly draw student names to answer questions. They also work wonderfully for quickly creating work groups in class based on who is present.

My students are also very familiar with the thumbs up, thumbs down, or thumbs sideway prompt during lessons, especially when demonstrating or lecturing. This is simple and doesn't require me to replace slips of red, yellow, and green paper on desks when they've "mysteriously" disappeared. 

Schmoker also advocates for "interactive" lectures (68). To me, this basically means that during lectures, or note-taking--if you prefer, you take a few minutes after presenting a block of information to have students revisit the information through writing, pair sharing, or question and response. This sounds great! It'll keep the students from falling asleep for too

Personal annotations

long periods of time.

Terrifying Expectation:

Despite the many great things that I found in this book, there was this major concept that I could not help but balk at. Please read the quote below:

In general, for every English course, I would recommend that teams establish standards that approximate the following, for all students:

• About 15-20 books and plays, depending on length and lexical density
• Multiple poems and short stories (perhaps 5-10 each) 
• 20-40 newspaper/magazine/online articles

These should be divided sensibly among the following categories:

•  Fiction (imaginative literature and poetry--about 40-60 percent).
• Nonfiction/literary nonfiction (biographies, memoirs, true stories--about 40-50 percent, of which 25-40 percent can be self-selected).  (Schmoker 116)

My jaw dropped to the floor, and I'm almost certain I read this three times. At first I wrote a note to myself in the margins: "As a grade level team they read this much throughout all courses, right?" Now that I've reread this, yet again, I realize, alas, no.

This summer I've been developing my own curriculum maps. (Once I feel that they are successful by a 2nd year status, I may share my process for this.) Designing year long curriculum is intimidating! I look at my computer screen and wonder, "How will I get through this much?" 

I don't know about you, but the shortest time I spent on a single novel was three weeks. The rest took longer. If I could get through a book length every three weeks, we would still only read twelve books. How on earth do we have TIME to read this much and still incorporate a minimum of two discussions and two to three writings per week? Don't forget the one to two presentations per semester. Yikes!

Schmoker explains that most of this reading should be done in class (123). That would be awesome! However, when class periods are forty-eight minutes, my students can typically only read fifteen pages each class period. This is equivalent to twenty-five minutes of reading time. That leaves twenty minutes for bellwork, instruction, and writing/discussion. Again...Yikes!

Questions I still have:

1. How long should a lesson be?
In math, it's easy to break equations and problems down to multiple steps or level of difficulty so that a lesson (hopefully) lasts a single class period. Why is it that I have difficulty getting English lessons to do so? I consider it a GREAT day when seventh graders have a single paragraph written in twenty minutes (hopefully with a topic sentence and quality supporting details; a great transition is bonus!). Is it still considered good practice to have lessons last multiple days? I try to refresh students with mini-lessons or a review to get them started.

2. Regarding calling on random students, what should teachers do about students who refuse to answer or show signs of anxiety?
Personally, I stole a trick from one of my college professors, good ole British Lit. Professor Hamrick, and give my students one pass. They have to use it wisely. However, I still have some students who don't want to share so they'll quietly answer or refuse to answer at all. The perfect answer is to have a classroom climate where the students all feel as if they can share their thoughts without fear of criticism from me and their classmates.

To read more about Mike Schmoker's work, visit his website here. 

Note: This text also discusses authentic literacy, writing, and discussion.