I love my job! I love teaching little kids ( I have 1st and 2nd grade). I love being a teacher and I am not ashamed of what I do! I think that being a teacher is one of the most important and rewarding and necessary jobs around.

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I was on vacation last week and on a rainy afternoon my husband and I found ourselves in a bookstore( surprise, surprise!) This particular Barnes and Noble had just opened, was huge and had an aweseome teacher's section...talk about bliss ! Anyway I gathered up a lot of new titles in that section and the children's section and settled down in a cozy chair....

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I have decided to organize my science curriculum around the Big Idea of Constancy/Change/Measurement. I want to coordinate this with the use of Science Notebooks to introduce more rigor into my science teaching. I have wanted to do this for several years since going through National Board certificiation, but I had other more pressing things on my plate.

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I have been thinking some more about the idea of a Science Workshop and using Science Notebooks rather than Science journals this coming year.The difference to me in the two terms is that a Notebook seems to imply more rigor and organization than a journal.

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In the Sunday New York Times, there was an op-ed piece by Nicholas Kristof, talking about the summer IQ slide in children. Now, to all of us, this is not big news. He, however, was "aghast" at the research about what happens to children when they do not read over the summer. He gives a call to parents to "pry your kids away from the keyboard and the televsion and get them reading."

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So I promised my family I would not spend the whole summer on school related matters and I truly meant it. And I have kept my end of the bargain...mostly!

But... I am also spending wayyyyy too much time on PT which gets me thinking about next school year. The one thing that keeps me from really plunging in is I do not know what I will be teaching next year yet.

I had gone so far as to not ordering any of the teacher books in my cart at amazon until the last day of school. That way I knew I would have at least a week before they arrived to do other things. But after I ordered them I kept checking my porch several times a day to see if they were there. So when they arrived I decided I would just leave them in the box for a while. That lasted about 2 hours. Then I reasoned that I needed to make sure I got the correct books so I opened the package. After that I put them under my desk, vowing not to look at them until some of my summer to-do list was accomplished. Somehow they have now migrated to the top of my desk and they are taunting me with their titles and promises of new learning. I ordered:

The Corgill book has really been calling to me! I am spending time with my mom at the hospital tomorrow while she has tests done so I think I will take that to read. Well, I made it a whole 2 weeks!

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Last Wednesday I said goodbye to my 12 2nd graders that I had taught for 3 years. They wandered in as tiny kinders ( 3 of them only 4 years old) and marched out as much taller almost 3rd graders. It was a glorious journey and one I am afraid I won't get to repeat. I taught a multiage k-1 class and then looped twice with that group, up to a 1-2. We were like a family, with all of the attendant joys and annoyances. We had laughed and cried and celebrated and cheered with one another for 540 days! We have gone through serious illnesses of parents, deaths of grandparents and beloved pets, broken bones, stitches, countless missing teeth, sorrows, struggles and triumphs of all sizes. We have supported one another, cared for one another and, yes, nagged and challenged one another and struggled for understanding.
Last week we went through their portfolios of 3 years work. We marveled at how far they had come...from shaky crayon drawings and indecipherable writing to the awesome poems in our class anthology and their fairy tales that went on for pages.
We hugged and held hands and remenisced. And then it was over.
I felt a huge piece of my heart go with them when they hugged me one last time and skipped off to the buses.

Right now I am not thinking about school....much. I need time to process all of the last three years before I am ready to think about a new one. I am working in my yard and reading and cleaning out closets and going for walks. But, wait...here are some books on reading and writing I ordered from amazon ....new things to learn and try ...here is an e-mail from one of my students telling me how much she misses me and oh, my..here is a tree for my yard sent as a gift from another student....It is not really the end...just a new beginning.

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Writing Workshop was my first step in creating a workshop style classroom, and it is still my favorite part of the day. Nothing else comes close at being multi-level and differentiated just by the nature of the process and the structure. Once you get your framework in place ( procedures and rituals) and plan your units, then the structure allows you and your students to take flight. Unlike math or even reading, teaching in WW really is more about facilitating, rather than instructing. Because so much of WW depends on what the children bring to it, it is never the same.

This year I have really expanded my poetry unit. I have been using Georgia Heard's books Awakening The Heart and for the Good of the Earth and Sun. I highly recommend them to anyone at any level who is teaching poetry. It has caused me to stretch my thinking and teaching, which is great! We spent a lot of time just reading all kinds of poems and talking about what makes a poem. I used my new SMARTBOARD to post poems each day. We talked about them and noticed the language , the beat, the patterns, the repetition and the rhymes. I also used the Big Book and accompanying resource books by Georgia Heard and Lester Laminack called Clinb Inside a Poem. We read a lot of the poems from all the small poems and fourteen more by Valerie Worth. I love these because they really show that poems can be about anything. I was so ecstatic that my children really loved them too. Those poems helped them really see that poetry does not have to rhyme.

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Last week, the reasons why I teach were brought back to me in several simple, but meaningful ways. I have always said that teaching is not a job for those who require instant gratification or visible results. We often toil many days/weeks with a struggling student before we see any progress. However, once in a while we get a glimpse of why we do what we do.

So on Friday afternoon I was introducing a science activity to take place outside. We had already spent time using binoculars to look at the trees outside our classroom and we had taken hand lenses out to look at many different things..bark, rocks, leaves, rotting logs, etc. on our school's nature trail. So on Friday I put the children in groups of 3 and gave them hand lenses and a loop of yarn. They had to take their yarn loop and place it in the ground and then observe, draw and write about what they saw within the loop. Within the first minute, of course, they all said they couldn't see anything in their loop...this despite the fact that there were leaves, rocks, grass, small plants etc. They were eager to move their loop to a better spot. I insisted they keep looking and really notice what they saw. After about 5 minutes of moaning and groaning and realizing I expected an entry in their science journals, they began to discover things...cocoons on leaves, pill bugs, beetles, seed pods, leaves that had been nibbled or that had really interesting colors. Everyone was so intent, I had a hard time getting them to come in. Once back inside we talked about how much they had found in that one spot. One of my little fellows spoke up, "It's like focusing in on a Small Moments story, you don't realize how much there is to see in the small space until you slow down and really notice things." One of the others said, "We are making a connection between our world and nature and our writing. You had us look at the trees far away with binoculars and then at the trees close-up and then at a small circle. Now we know how to look at things and write about them." Another child said, "It is like a text-to world connection only it is a self-to world connection. There is a lot to see when you pay attention."

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Yesterday I wrote about how all of the "literacy" parts of the Learning Lab were working. Today I need to think about math and content areas.

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We just completed our first grading period yesterday. The students have Monday and Tuesday as Fall Break. We have Parent-Teacher conferences and workdays. I have conferences scheduled for Monday. Tuesday will be a much needed day to "bulldozer" the piles of stuff on my teaching table and to reflect, rework and retool the Learning Lab. I have so much that I want to do, I know that one day is not going to be enough. So I am blogging to help me think through what is going well and what I need to change. Hopefully that will help me make better use of my day on Tuesday.

I am quite pleased with how my new approach to spelling and word study is going. I decided this year, after several years of dabbling with Words Their Way, that I would try to implement it completely in my classroom. At the beginning of the year I gave the spelling inventory from WTW to all of my 1st and 2nd graders. After analyzing the results, I had 4 distinct spelling groups. Interestingly enough, there are both 1st and 2nd graders in each group. The groups are : a group learning CVC short vowel words, a group learning beginning and ending blends with short vowels, a group learning long vowel spellings and a group learning multisyllable words with prefixes and suffixes. The range is from beginnning first grade level to 5th grade level. I wondered how I would be able to manage this many groups but it has been less complicated than I thought. The groups are color coded purple, green, blue and red. Each groups' words are written in their color on index cards cut in half. On Monday they are introduced to each group during Writer's Workshop. I place them in a pocket chart and discuss the meanings of words as the children write them in their spelling notebooks. Then I have the children notice and name the spelling patterns and we sort them together. On Tuesday the children do an independent sort of their words that have been run off for them. They take their words home in an envelope to re-sort for homework and then they copy the sort and underline the patterns with markers or crayons. On Thursday they practice their words on white boards and practice with a spelling partner. So far this year every child has made 100% on their spelling test every week!! This has never happened in my class before. I attribute this to the children having "just-right" spelling words and the systematic nature of the WTW program and the sorts.

Reading Workshop has been going fairly well. I incorporated the Beanie Baby strategies for the first time this year. They have been a big hit. We call them our "Reading Buddies". So far we have worked on Making Connections ( Spinner the Spider), Visualizing ( Rocky Raccoon), Asking Questions ( Questioning Owl) and Digging for Facts/details ( Digger the Dog). The children have built up a lot of stamina for reading. They can read for up to 40 minutes ( 30 independently and 10 with their reading partner). They love to read and all have made lots of progress. My difficulty is having time to conference with everyone regularly. I have 3 second graders who began the year struggling with reading. All three were reading at Reading Recovery level 12, which is mid -first grade. They have been my priority and I have spent most of my time this first quarter with them... working on decoding skills, fluency and choosing appropriate books. I have met with each of them individually and in their small group every day. Two of the three have made great gains and seem poised to truly " break the code". The third has made progress, but still needs a lot of work. I am pleased with their gains, but I feel guilty that the other children have not gotten as much attention. My conferences with them have not been systematic at all. Fortunately the rest of my second graders and all of my first graders are reading at or above grade level. My at grade level 2nd graders (3) have met in small group twice a week. My one at level first grader has met with me at least twice per week. I have not had small groups or book clubs with my above level students yet.. I really want to do that next quarter, plus be much more systematic with my conferencing with everyone. I do have shared reading with the whole class or one of the grades several times a week using Scholastic News, Big Books, poems, news articles or the basal ( I am required to at least have them read the stories..we do not use workbooks at all). It sometimes feels a bit haphazard and awkward and there is never enough time. I guess that is the teacher's eternal cry, isn't it? The best thing about RW is my choice to not use AR in our class this year. I have never liked it and I think the children have not missed it. The parents are happy that we are not using it as well. I just told my students that we are reading for fun instead and they have accepted it. They love to read!!! We had our Reading Celebration yesterday as we dressed up as our favorite book characters and shared our stories/books. The one thing that is still something of a problem is the children choosing just right books. They do well for a while, but as soon as I think that we are OK with it and stop talking about it, the issue pops back up. I think part of the problem is my lack of systematic conferencing again. Also the fact that with 2 grades the reading abilties are so wide that I have to have books on so many levels. There are just so many tanatlizing "chapter books" available for my high 2nd graders and the others want to choose them. I do have a good portion of my books leveled and I do have FYOE reading time in the morning, but the issue of "sneaking" books into their reading bags continues. I am going to address this again next week.

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We finished our second round of publishing last week in Writer's Workshop. I have 2 bulletin boards in the hall that I devote to showcasing my students' writing. They each have a space large enough to display a published writing piece. I took pictures of each one sitting in one of the adirondack chairs in our Reading Treehouse holding their "Forever" books. Their published books go under their pictures. Yesterday as I was taking down the old books and replacing them with the new pieces, I decided to advertise by taking a cue from the bookstores. I took sticky notes wrote

and then decorated around the sticky with stars. I placed a sticky note on each book cover. The children noticed right away and were so pleased. I also saw a couple of parents notice and stop to take a look at our new books.

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We have completed 7 weeks of school in the Primary Learning Lab. To sum it up: the days go by quickly but the weeks go by slowly. I am sure ( or at least hope)that you know what I mean by that! Each individual day seems like a race to get everything in and done before dismissal. It feels like I scarcely turn around and get going and it is lunch time and we have a late lunch! But as fast as the days go by Wednesday the week feels like it has lasted for nine days! I wish I could reverse the feeling... long days and a short week! I know that I feel this way because I am trying to "front load" so much into my workshops. There are so many things I want to teach first. It is hard to know what to choose especially when my priorities differ from what the "higher ups" think is important. But mostly it is a problem with me, not the children. I am getting anxious to really break out into small groups. The needs are pretty varied in this group. I have three 2nd graders who need to consolidate their decoding skills so that they are automatic. They can decode but it is slow and therefore affecting both fluency and comprehension. I have another group that needs to be moving into book clubs or novel studies. I have a wonderful group this year: 13 2nd graders and 8 1st graders. The only glitch so far was getting a handful of them to really accept the notion of reading "just-right' books. I wrote about that in the Debbie Miller room on PT. ( Book Selection Woes) I stayed firm with that and they finally came around last week. That was a concern because I felt like I could not go on with small groups until I was sure that everyone was using their independent reading time to best advantage. So I think the quick days are a reflection of my trying to cover everything and the long weeks are coming from being exhausted by Wednesday in trying to do too much. I know that I do this same thing every year and somehow I forget what the beginning of the year is like. My teaching buddy and I talked about it this week. We want to quickly get routines going and get down to business when we know, or should know, that you cannot rush the 'training process" Why do teachers have this beginning of the year amnesia?

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We had our first round of spelling this week. It has gone really well! When I gave the pretest yesterday only four students did not make 100%. Each of them had only missed one word and today on retakes they all made 100%! The emphasis on noticing word patterns is the key I think! Doing the word sorts really makes them look at the words. They did the word sorts in their group on the pocket chart on Monday, independently on Tuesday, for homework on Tuesday night and then they copied the sort into their spelling notebooks on Tuesday night. One of my second graders (that I did not teach in first grade)was so thrilled to make 100%. He said he had never made 100 before. His mom said that last year he usually made 40 or 50. To me that is confirmation that this is the way to go.

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I wrote in an earlier blog that I was going to attempt to use Words Their Way for spelling this year. I had given the WTW spelling assessment to see what spelling patterns each of my students knew. When I analyzed the assessments I had 4 groups of spellers, hence 4 spelling lists, from beginning first grade level to 5th grade level. We started this week. My assistant and I introduced the spelling words to one group at a time while the others were in Writer's Workshop. She did 2 groups and I did 2 groups. We used pocket charts to put up the words while the children wrote them in their spelling notebooks. Once the words were up we asked them to look at the words and notice any patterns. Then we sorted the words on the pocket charts together. In all it took about 20 minutes. I chose to do at the beginning of WW because my assistant is in the room at that time. For Tuesday morning on the desks each child had their words on a word sort sheet from the WTW book. They cut them out and sorted them on their desks. I checked their sorts and then they put them in an envelope to take home and sort for homework. So far it seems to be working OK. Tomorrow they will practice their words on white boards and then take a practice test. If they score 100% on the practice test then they do not have spelling homework on Thursday and do not take the test on Friday.

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We had our first Reading/Writing celebration on Thursday. My first unit was "We Are Readers, We are Writers". We celebrated by having each child choose a writing piece to publish and share and by signing our Bookworm's Reading Club pledge. We posted our writing and our pledge in the hallway for parents to read at our Curriculum Night. The children also made bookworm bookmarks ( I happened to find the perfect foam bookworm kits at Oriental Trading) and then we had goldfish crackers and juice boxes. Our next unit is going to be "We are Meaning Makers" in which we work on Small Moment Stories and Comprehension Strategies. Some of my students still need to work on choosing just right books; there is so much pressure on them to choose harder books ( from parents and their peers) than they are ready for. I think I cleared up some of that ( with parents, anyway) on Curriculum Night and with a couple of parent conferences last week. For a couple of students I have had to be rather "heavy handed" in book selection. I wish this were not the case, but they are wanting to read A to Z Mysteries when Frog and Toad is still a challenge. I am going to move on, however, and keep working on just right books with those that need it. We have not set up Book Nooks yet. That is going to be part of the introduction to the next unit. They have done so well with their reading at their desks that I hated to disturb that until we had some stamina built up.

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As I mentioned in my last blog, I attended a weeklong training on the new Investigations Math. The training was really good and I learned a lot! My school was one of those in our district chosen to pilot the new Investigations this year with an eye on the whole district adopting it next year. So far, I love it and so do my students! If you are familiar with the "old" Investigations, it is much more user friendly. It really fits well with my personal approach to math which is a heavy emphasis on problem solving strategies and "hands- on" activities rather than worksheets. I have been using a workshop model for math for the past 4 years. When I began teaching multiage classes I realized that I needed to develop a structure and approach that would account for many levels of skill in math. I have worked really hard on my math workshop and the Investigations is an almost seamless fit with what I was already doing. I am pilotting the 2nd grade level program so I have had to make some adjustments for first graders, although they have done quite well with the 2nd grade workshop activties so far. I use a lot of different programs to supplement the Investigations including Touch Math, Read- It! Draw it! Solve It!, Otter Creek, Marcy Cook Math tiles, Box- It and Bag-It, Math Their Way and my own task cards and many, many math manips. Math Workshop is one of my favorite times of the day!!

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I do not know where the last six weeks went! I returned from vacation August 4, went to Investigations Math training the entire week following and then got swallowed into the "back-to school" vortex. So we just completed our first three weeks of school and I can finally come up for air long enough to do some processing. The Primary Learning Lab is open and beginning to resemble my vision of what a classroom can be.

I am teaching a 1st-2nd multiage class again this year. My 2nd graders ( except for one new child) have been with me since kindergarten. My first graders are new to me this year. So, while the overall frame work of Reading Workshop, Writing Workshop and Math workshop are unchanged, some of the details and outer trappings had to change so my "old friends" would not feel that everything was a repeat of their other years with me. That is always a concern for parents and to a lesser degree with me as well. I rearranged my room a good bit which helped me get a more workable environment. I am a bit organizationally challenged when it comes to keeping a tidy room. My planning for instruction is highly organized, but the room tends to get really messy. So I ordered and read Debbi Diller's Spaces and Places book and it really helped! I created a new reading area I call Bookworm's Treehouse. My room is in a building built on the side of a hill with a large natural area outside the classroom. When you look out the windows we are almost even with the treetops and it feels like we are in a treehouse. I purchased a 6 foot artificial tree from Michael's. I also bought an unfinished wooden double cube and a bookshelf that looks like a dollhouse. I put polyurethane on both and stacked the dollhouse shelf on top of the double cube ( which I turned sideways). The shelf stands about 4 feet tall with the tree behind it. This is in one corner of my reading area...that is the treehouse prop. Then I have 6 bookshelves around the tree and dolhouse shelves. 2 of the shelves go under the window that looks out over the trees. I found a small stufffed inchworm and a Fun Foam treehouse kit from Michaels. They sit atop the bookshelf that is kind of the entrance to the reading treehouse. Then I painted 2 small chalkboards that said "Bookworms Treehouse" and "Readers Welcome". I put all of my Strategy Beanie Babies ( which are new additions to my class ) either in the top shelves of the dollhouse shelf or hanging in the tree. I have some pillows I made and two small Adirondack chairs in there. It is very cozy and the children and I love to sit together in there for read alouds and for RW mini-lessons. It has helped focus RW since it is a different part of the room from the large meeting area where we sit for Morning Meeting and for Math Workshop and Writers' Workshop.

setting up of the reading bags. Most of the children are good at selecting books...some of the 1st graders still need a lot of guidance. In our Kgs. the teacher always selects books for the children so the notion of choice is a new concept...which is also true of WW. The 1st graders are not familiar with choices in writing since in Kg they always wrote to a prompt. What really helps me is the fact that over half of my class has been in a Workshop/Lab setting for 2 years. To them it is natural. They lead the way by example and the first graders watch and model what they see. It is like having 12 teaching assistants. That is the beauty of multiage...so much of the training is done by thier peers. More tomorrow!

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In my last post, I put forth the idea of using Discovery boxes in science and social studies. This is something that I started thinking about last school year and I continued over the summer to kick it around. In response to my last blog, some of you posted some of the same questions and concerns that I have been thinking about. I appreciate you thinking this through along with me:

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So, let's get a discussion going about Math Workshop! I love teaching math and have lots of ideas and strategies gleaned from different programs I have used. I posted previously about how I organize my MW. The over-arching structure looks something like RW or WW:

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While on vacation in Chicago I read a great article in the Tribune about girls and math that should go a long way in refuting the stereotype that girls are not as good in math as boys. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin and the University of California, Berkley did a 2 year study on 7 million students from 10 states. They found that girls do equally well on math tests taken from 2nd to 11th grades. This is great news , but the article also went on to say that many teachers still assume that girls either cannot do as well in math or that they don't need to because they will not need math as much later in life. Teachers tend to call on girls much less frequently in math and science classes than they do boys. Several young girls voiced their concerns that teachers treated them differently in math classes. The article said that math and science, even in the very early grades, tend to be more "boy-friendly".

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For the past 10 years or so I have been transforming my teaching practices from "program" based to workshop style. It has been an interesting journey so far. I have read widely, taken classes and tried many ideas...some I have kept, some I have discarded. For a while I taught in a 4 blocks school, which was the first step in stepping away from reliance on basals, teacher's manuals and worksheets. Then, one summer I read On Solid Ground by Sharon Taberski and I started trying some of her ideas. I went to a 2 day workshop with her and I was hooked! The next summer I read Mosiac of Thought which was such a revelation to me. I had never thought of having primary students think about their reading like that! I loved the ideas but I wasn't sure what to do with them. Then along came Debbie Miller and her Reading With Meaning which was just what I needed to see how to apply the ideas from Mosaic. Kathy Collins and Growing Readers rounded out the picture for me there.

I wanted to work on math next, but then I ran into what at first looked like a detour. Three years ago, after 7 years of first grade, I was assigned a K-1 class. As it happened it was also the same year that I had decided to seek National Board certification. I decided to teach the class as a multiage class rather than a split class. The difference between the 2 is that in a multiage class you really pay very little attention to which grade the child is in and instead focus on what each indiviual child needs. The class became what I call a "continuous progress classroom" in which each child works at his or her own pace. That is not to say that I did not pay attention to grade level standards for each grade. Of course I had to. More about that in part 2.

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I am excited about starting my Blog! I will be writing about what I have learned, what I am learning and what I am still trying to figure out about setting my primary classroom up to function like a learning lab. It is definitely a process!

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