I have 4 things that I am definitely going to do next year & here they are in no certain order.
I came across Whole Brain Teaching (WBT) from this video of Ms. Freundlich doing a math lesson, on Pinterest & I was immediately drawn in. From there I started researching WBT & found so many amazing Youtube videos, like this one of Ms. Farrah Shipley introducing WBT & the rules to her students or this one of her teaching her students about fractions. The level of engagement that these students experienced during the lesson amazed me. There were no glazed over eyes to be found, as the students sat there & listened to their teacher drone on. I know in times of student centered learning, workshop approaches, etc. there shouldn't be much of that left, but you'd be surprised. So even though I teach Basic Skills and only see my small group of students for 30 minutes a day, I'm still going to give this a try, which might be the best method for students who are in need of the extra reinforcement.
I was fortunate this year that my school purchased a subscription to Reading A-Z to provide some of the teacher's like myself, Basic Skills and Specialists, with a leveled reader database. First, let me say that I love Reading A-Z. (Maybe more about that in a Thursday Rave ;) ) Now onto the organization part. Currently all of the books that I've printed and made student copies of are piled into a basket on my window ledge, as I have no place to store them & they are a wide range of levels, since I pull 1st and 2nd grade students during the day for Reading, I just didn't know what to do with them. That was until I read a post from this linky from Mrs. H over at Mrs. H's Resource Room about a method she found on Pinterest.
Click on the picture to read about how Miss French from Wicked Fun in First Grade organized her Reading A-Z books. I absolutely love this idea, but my OCD would probably have me laminating ALL of the pages instead of just the covers. Boy would that be time consuming. So I need to give a big THANK YOU to Mrs. H for posting about this or I never would of found it.
In my quest to help my struggling reader's I obviously need to find a different method of approaching the material, if it's not sinking in in the classroom, than I need to attack it a different way. My school is starting to head in the workshop direction. Well administration would like it to go that way, so it is still in the very early stages of coming to fruition. I have been reading about both and have implemented Writers' Workshop in my Kindergarten class, when I taught K a few years ago. I'm hoping between WBT & the workshop approach it will be the method that will reach my kiddos.
Being a Basic Skills teacher I not only pull small groups of students for Reading, but also for Math. At the beginning of the year I had my students working in centers, but as my group re-sized and changed over the months I slowly did away with them, because the numbers shrunk down. However, I really like this approach, just like for Reading and Writing, so I'm still working out in my head how this looks and feels for me. Unfortunately, there's not as much written on this subject as there is for Readers' and Writers' Workshop.
Remember to join up with Kim and let us know what you will be doing differently next school year. The linky closes Sunday....What are you waiting for? Start reflecting and get to typing!!!
