Cortez Corner

Here we go again, people!

It’s time for another school year.  (For those that work at a year-round school, you might have long since settled into your classrooms.  Hope it’s going well.) As I mentioned before, I have taken on a new role this year as an instructional coach.  I’m currently on Day 6 and have attended a total of 5 trainings.  I’d say it’s going rather well!  (I’ll speak on the trainings at a later date because I got some really juicy tidbits to share.)  Anyway, even though I don’t have my own classroom, I will still be posting things I have done in the past.  You know, those things that I always said I would blog about…and didn’t.

The most important thing a teacher can do during the first days of school is to build a positive and supportive classroom culture.  The students need to feel safe in order to take academic risks throughout the year.  If the students are not comfortable, collaborative conversations cannot occur and learning will not reaching its optimum potential.  We all know that learning is social.  So if the social environment is not there, students will not achieve their full greatness.

One of my brilliant professors taught me a motto which I have since stolen and slapped on a poster.  He would say, “Everyone participates, everyone learns.  You either do it with us or in front of us.”  He would make us repeat that each day.  So when students felt like not participating in an activity (I like to incorporate dance moves, songs, cheers, etc.), that would be their choice.  But I would remind them that their only other option was to do it ‘in front of us’.  I have yet to have a student come to the front.

Below are some pictures that I will briefly explain.  The “FAIL” poster was always a hit.  Students glanced at it with scary eyes until I explained that failure was welcomed and encouraged in this class.  When we fail, we learn and try again.  Each day I had a different activity for the students to try to practice this concept (i.e. house of cards, math challenges, domino buildings, any fun thing found on my pinterest board).

Above was my revised book recommendation wall. Originally, I had the books only sorted by fictional and informational text.  But because my “40 Book Challenge” required readings of different genres, I needed to categorize the recommendations for the students.

I always took pictures of my kids on the first day of school and made about 6 copies per student.  You’ll notice in my classroom that I have their faces on everything.  I like that personal touch, more so than name tags.  Personal preference.  The Raining Compliments was a way to teach the students how to give and receive meaningful compliments.  One of my classroom jobs was a compliment coordinator.  This person would let me know when each student had at least one compliment in their bag.  Only then would students be able to collect their compliments during dismissal.

I know, I know.  Multiplication Jail might be considered too negative.  It depends on the relationship you have with your students.  This is always when I used to give timed math tests (operational drills).  I stopped that practice a couple years ago.  Strain your Brain was simply a fun, critical thinking challenge (usually math) that students tried to solve each week.

Love this science challenge of the week.  Again, it was a student’s job.  The less I have to remember, the better for all.  The visual for monitoring the writing process really helped me keep track of where everyone was and who needed help.

Pictures on the writing wall too!  I wrote out the steps of the writing process depending on text type so the students could reference it as needed.

P.S.  Love the “Please excuse our bare board.  Our writing is under construction.” sign.  I always felt guilty with a bare board, but this sign liberated me.

Welcome back to a new school year!  I know many of you are just now getting into “school mode”, but those of us that teach at year round schools have been at it since the beginning of June.

This year I am still teaching 5th grade, but a HUGE change has occurred.  I am now team teaching with an amazing colleague so that I can focus my instruction on my great loves:  social studies and language arts.  Whoohoo for me!  We are five weeks in and so far, I’m loving it.  I already can’t imagine going back to planning lessons for ALL subjects.  No thank you.

Anyway, my first post is just going to share a couple of fun “intro” activities I did with my students this year.  (I’ll share more in my next post.)

The first activity of the 1st day was our “Welcome to 5th grade” Survival Guides.  My previous class made a survival guide for each incoming student.  I placed on guide on each student’s desk and we did a Round Robin read.  I let each student read a guide for 2 minutes (they weren’t that long) and then yelled “Pass!” so they passed the guide to the person on their left.  Another 2 minutes, then “pass”….until everyone had read multiple survival guides.  I then had the groups share their thoughts about 5th grade with their team.  As they discussed, I placed a small piece of chart paper on each teams’ desks.  They had to come up with one prediction statement about their 5th grade year.  Some needed sentence frames so I posted them.  For example, “I predict 5th grade will be _____ because ______.”  Or “After reading these survival guides, I predict 5th grade ________.”

I prefer to do activities like this as opposed to handing out a packet of rules/routines and reading through it.  This way, the students can actually get a feel of how the class will operate and my rules/routines are demonstrated in action.  No need for long lectures.

Click on this link to see the survival guide– End of Year Project

Next, the students were to create “Hands and Feet Art”.  This activity is done for two reasons:  it’s an ice breaker for students to work closely with a partner and it the results are always hilarious.  I love being able to post the final products for Parent Information Night.  (I’ll post photos soon.)

The last activity was the “House of Cards Challenge”.  I have a poster in my classroom that says….”It’s okay to F.A.I.L. First Attempt in Learning”.  I like to give the kids a challenge that I know they will not be able to figure out or succeed in their first try. I use this as a way to let my students know that it is OKAY TO FAIL!! What is most important in any task is our attitude, our plan of attack, and our perseverance.

So the first challenge of the year was to use a deck of cards to build the tallest structure. That was it. No other rules except they had to work with their partner. The results are always entertaining. We did this the first day and again on day 2 and 3. The kids, of course, got better and better. I even assigned a follow up for homework: they had to find a strategy of how to build a house of cards, whether that was online or asking a family member. They loved it! And they got better!

Happy beginning of the year everyone— Until next time…