by Carly Black | Jul 30, 2018 | Home Solutions, Mom Solutions, Organization
Summer is winding down and the stores have already stocked the shelves with school supplies. This will be my first school supply shopping trip where I will need to follow a list not created by me. My son is entering preschool in the fall. It’s adorable how he tells people he’s going to work but he really means school. #teacherparentproblems
Because this is my first time starting the school year as a teacher and a parent of one school-aged child things are a little different. My entire morning routine is going to change. The first week or two I’ll be running on those start of the school year fumes. But eventually the teacher tired is going to set in and my son’s new sleeping schedule will make him irritable making us all want to press snooze. This is why I’m putting together a Make Over Your Mornings email challenge that will begin after the Labor Day holiday. You can learn more about it by signing up below.
Organizing my mornings will only be part of what needs to change. Thankfully we won’t be looking at any homework time in the evenings with a preschooler, but some of you may be in the same boat of added “to dos” this school year. As a middle school teacher, I’m well aware of the changes that come with students starting school-sponsored sports teams. The added amount of homework. An increase in the number of academic classes and teachers to student schedules. All of these are big changes for kids, and for parents.
This is why I have teamed up with my friend Amy from Organization Boutique. As a parent of middle schoolers herself and an expert on organizing, Amy shares how parents can prepare for life in middle school. My added teacher perspective ensures you can feel confident and ready for the changes that come with starting middle school.
Why Students Need Organizational Skills
Look at how many people are searching for time management tips. It’s so much easier to learn when you are younger and have fewer responsibilities. Not to mention how it can prepare for high school, college and beyond. Many job postings want to hire people with strong organization skills. Parents and teachers can’t always remind them of what needs to get done and how to do it. Taking on responsibilities helps build self-esteem and confidence.
Organizational Skills = More Efficient + Less stress
Time Management Skills for Students
Teacher Advice: Start with the class schedule. Most districts offer a time for students to walk their new schedule. Specifically, the incoming grade that is new to the building. This is a great time for students to familiarize themselves with the school building. Take notice of the distance between classes and the student’s locker. Students should work out the times they will have to stop at their locker and which materials they will take with them at each stop.
Buying materials for middle school might look a lot different than elementary. There really aren’t a lot of supplies needed. Teachers may ask for items they will collect and use as a community supply rather than expecting students to keep track of them individually. So stick to the list! Avoid your child having extra materials that might be distracting during class time or clutter their lockers.
Parent Advice: Use a paper or digital calendar/planner to plan long-term projects and keep track of activities outside of school. Have your child schedule out their school hours, activities, chores, and any other planned events. This will help them see how much free time they have so they know where the best time to schedule homework and anything else that comes up. Have them follow the schedule for a week and then talk about how it went and make any needed adjustments. Keep doing this on a weekly basis until they are confident in their planning skills.
Stop procrastination in its track! Many parents have been up until midnight helping their student finish a project they just started that evening even though they knew about it a month before. Teach your child to plan in advance. Have your child write out all the steps they will need to take to complete a long-term assignment, then schedule each step by putting it on their calendar with a deadline.
Don’t be the alarm for your kids. This may take a lot of time and effort depending on your child’s personality. Some are naturally early risers and don’t have a problem waking with an alarm. Others are heavy sleepers or slow to wake and may need an extra loud alarm clock or to have the alarm across the room to avoid snooze.
Lockers
Teacher Advice: You might be a teacher if you roll your eyes while walking down the locker decorations isle. Seriously, why do kids need carpet in their lockers? Ok, the chandelier lights are kind of cute and much more practical. The shelves that you can add are definitely a great idea! I also like the magnetic containers for holding loose pens or pencils.
Some schools, like mine, provide a color coding system for class folders. This makes it easier to organize the locker by placing materials in the order they will be needed. For example, if books, folders, and notebooks are placed together, spine facing out vertically, in the order of class period from left to right students can keep them in that order throughout the day. Each time they grab a set of materials from the left they should return them to the right. This will cycle materials keeping them in order. Using a strategy like this from the start will hopefully keep the locker clean and homework where it belongs.
Parent Advice: Learn from my mistake – buy a locker shelf to help organize the locker. When attending the orientation day before school starts, most of the locker prep revolves around learning the combination and adding decorative accessories. Students don’t have all their books yet so it’s just putting some supplies in there. I didn’t really think about how much other stuff needed to be stored in the locker and my son’s binders and folders were destroyed because he needed to stack so much in it. He literally brought one “binder” home at the end of the year and it was just the front cover.
Extra Clothes and Lunches
Teacher Advice: Most schools will provide or suggest students keep a daily agenda. It’s a good idea to mark each day that will require Gym clothes or sports practice clothing. Especially considering these are not always year-long activities. Seasons change, quarters change. It’s important to have these dates marked ahead of time.
Another question to ask on Open House nights is where to keep extra bags at school. For example, our football players have a special place to keep all their pads and equipment during the school day until it’s time for practice. If the bag isn’t going to fit in their locker find out what the expectation is for students.
Lunchtime in middle school is often precious social time. Which is why teachers can find it effective to revoke this time as a way to motivate students to complete assignments or show better behavior in class. A working lunch doesn’t always need to be a punitive though. Encourage your child to talk about what lunch looks like for them. Everyday! It can change every day.
Parent Advice: Middle-schoolers should be responsible for remembering to take gym/sports clothes to school and to bring them home for washing. Have your child create a checklist posted to the door they exit. It serves as a double-check that they have everything for school and after-school activities without you needing to remind them.
You may want your kids to plan out their outfit the night before or the beginning of the week. So far my kids have been pretty drama-free with clothing but I remember stressing out about school clothes. Pre-planning can help but it’s not a miracle-worker. Sometimes preteen/teen hormones win.
Middle schoolers are old enough to be able to pack lunches on their own. Just double check that it’s not filled with Doritos and Oreos!
Setting up lunch prep areas in the pantry and fridge with pre-portioned servings will help make packing lunches easier. Your child can help prepare the portions at the beginning of the week. They are more likely to eat it if they’ve helped in the process.
Homework Tips
Teacher Advice: Homework is a hot topic in many educational conversations right now. There are a number of schools that have created homework policies. Anything from expecting a specific amount per week to absolutely no homework should be assigned. My best advice here is to know what the homework policy is for your child. It might be a building policy or it might be that each teacher has their own. Be sure to pay attention to that first week of school papers or emails teachers are sending home. As an English teacher, I will plug here for reading every day, regardless of the homework assigned.
A few questions to ask teachers: When is there time to complete unfinished assignments? Is this scheduled every day or does it need to be scheduled when needed? Some middle schools may still have study hall included in their master schedule. We do not. If students are behind on assignments and are not completing them at home they would need to schedule work time with that teacher. It might be before school or after school.
Parent Advice: Using a planning system will help your child identify time available for homework and plan out longer projects. Just because they know they have time available, doesn’t guarantee they will actually do their homework. You still need to check in with your child about homework every day.
It’s so important to have a distraction-free homework space. Create a homework center at home, stocked with all the school supplies your kids need to complete homework. Some supplies middle school students may need at home: pencils, erasers, pencil sharpener or extra lead for mechanical pencils, highlighters, colored pencils/markers, glue sticks, scissors.
If you don’t already, have a rule that all school materials go back in the bookbag immediately after finishing homework. Don’t let their homework clutter the kitchen table or home office. They will likely forget stuff at home if it’s not put away right away.
Interested in additional tips? Check out How to Organize and Prepare for Back to School or Parents: How to help your middle schooler (and you) navigate this season
If you have any of your own advice that would help please share it in the comments. Good luck this school year!
by Carly Black | Jul 16, 2018 | Blog with Students, Classroom Solutions, Curriculum, Teacher Solutions
Blogging in the classroom is a total writing program for any teacher. Even if you aren’t the writing teacher, you can still use blogging in the classroom with your students. Most teachers have a website attached to their district’s website. It’s mostly a place for students and parents to find important information about grades, assignments and future events. However, a class blog can provide all that and more. Want to create your own beautiful class blog? Sign up here to receive a FREE 5-day email course.
As an ELA teacher, I had tried the many different routes for writing about reading. Reading logs and journals are some of the more popular options, but these are incredibly time-consuming to grade. Reading logs quickly became the bane of my existence as a language arts teacher. We think that asking parents to sign reading logs students will have integrity with this assignment. That also assumes parents will uphold the integrity of the assignment, but really it becomes a thorn in everyone’s side.
Journals force students to be more accountable for their reading and require them to consistently write. However, that’s a whole lot of reading and grading for teachers. Not to mention the lugging home of a crate filled with journals. I even tried grading in a rotation so that everyone only received a weekly grade. This did not take into account the number of absences that would happen regularly. Needless to say, it was overwhelming each week and I needed to find a new solution.
Writing Skills
Consider the opportunity for students to actively use the writing process weekly. A process that every standardized test is asking them to do. In a short time frame, students are asked to read the prompt, plan a multiple paragraph response, type that response, revise, edit and submit. Blogging will do the same. Each week I post 3-4 different prompts on the same topic in our Google Classroom page. These prompts are reflective of the lessons planned for the week. We might be writing about the characters from novels to prep for a lesson on how the setting affects characters. When it’s a holiday or school-wide theme week I might ask students to write in reference to those events.
Blog posts are informational and opinion writing. When teaching students how to write essays in these genres, having the background and practice with blogging helps. Subheadings are encouraged with blog writing which helps students who have trouble with multiple paragraphs. When sharing your opinion in a blog post you can’t get away with giving that opinion and no evidence for why. Those are two writing skills the majority of students struggle to do well.
Technology Integration
Obviously, you can’t blog without typing and word processing skills. Both are essential now for state testing. I have seen a number of my students not finish the essay portion of their state test because they couldn’t type fast enough. Blogging in the classroom weekly gives them practice typing. I don’t mean pecking at a keyboard, I mean they must use two hands and practice the correct way.
Now let’s add in the technical know-how for creating images to feature in their blog posts, linking within a text, and how to write a thoughtful comment on classmates’ posts. Each of these provides computer skills that can be transferred to other subjects. Creating digital images can help students learn the basics of visual appeal that can be added to any type of digital project. Linking within a text is a skill EVERYONE should know how to do. I find it super funny that kids think they have to cut and paste the entire website into the document as their link. I try to teach them that any text can have a link, which makes the document look a whole lot prettier.
The writing of comments can become a type of writing for your class. Think about all the applications to anti-cyberbullying you could include with these lessons. Talking with students about their digital footprint and what they are posting to social media accounts. It helps when they are hearing it from multiple adults. Writing comments can also help students learn the art of elaboration. It’s not enough for them to comment, “Great post.” They need to learn how to compliment and show they read the post or ask a pointed question because they are genuinely interested.
Plus, when using Edublogs, students will learn the basics for navigating the WordPress platform. Considering WordPress runs 80% of the entire Internet, and that number is growing, this gives students future career knowledge. In my opinion, this makes blogging in the classroom the total package writing curriculum.
Parent Communication
Let’s talk about keeping in touch and informing parents. With Edublogs you will set up a class blog that you can use for classroom communication with parents. It will look like a real blog with pages and widgets that you customize for your needs. Keep parents (and administrators) informed on units, assignments, needs, and all your foundational teacher information in one place. Simply send a link in an email and parents have all the information they need. Available to them at all hours of the day every day of the year. Fewer emails from parents asking questions you’ve already answered? Maybe.
Plus, parents will be able to follow their child’s writing progress and make comments to support their child. Now students aren’t just writing for a teacher-only audience. They now have a global audience. There is a hashtag specifically created for teachers to solicit comments, #comments4kids. If you have a student who needs some encouragement throw out the link to their blog post with the #comments4kids and they will get replies.
How do I make this happen in my classroom?
If all of this sounds like the total package writing program to you then you’re going to want to take my Blogging with Students course. Here you will find lesson plans and videos that you can use in the classroom to write quality blogs with your students.
If you would like to see what my classroom site looks like visit our Colorful Classroom. Not sure you want to blog with students, but the idea of a class blog is appealing? Try my FREE 5-day email course. Learn how to create a beautiful class blog that can help you connect with parents and keep student resources in one place.
Stay up to date with all things Blogging in the Classroom by dropping your email below.
Tell me what questions you have about blogging with your students.
by Carly Black | Jul 9, 2018 | Classroom Solutions, Organization, Teacher Solutions
Teacher planners are a really big deal. The hunt for the PERFECT teacher planner is a fierce experience. I often equate it to trying on bathing suits. You know they aren’t going to have the absolute perfect fit for you, but it’s a necessary accessory. So you venture out asking for recommendations, trying out different styles, and finally settling on something that mostly fits.
On my personal hunt for the best planner, the frustration lies in the layout of the pages. Most teacher resources seem to be geared toward elementary teachers. Very few calendar layouts allow for teachers to plan for multiple classes within one subject area. The other things I really hate are the super small boxes! Who can actually plan within that tiny 2×2 square?
Price is also a determining factor when making a final planner purchase. I know there are teachers who swear by the Erin Condren series, but I can’t bring myself to spend that much money year after year. Plus, once again the pages that are offered don’t apply to me. If the price is that steep then I want the whole package!
Some of the links found in this post are affiliates. This means if you make a purchase after clicking through we will receive a small compensation at no extra cost to you. Thank you in advance for your support and please know that we only endorse products we use and love.
Last summer I was introduced to the Create 365 Happy Planner for teachers. This planner style allows for some major customizing that other systems don’t allow. It uses expander rings that allow you to add pages to the planner itself. For example, you could print your district calendar and add it to the front of your planner so it’s always in a convenient place. Another great reason to use this planner with expander rings is to add your own formatted pages. Perhaps you’ve purchased some forms from a TeachersPayTeachers store; with this style of a planner, you can easily add them among your pages. The system also provides 2 pocket folders that can be added. Check out this pack of folders, checklists, stickers, and notes pages. Make sure you also grab the Big paper punch to add all the pages. There is an upfront investment, however, with all the options and ways to customize I feel it’s worthy of the cost.
I’ve been very happy with my Big Happy Planner, so much so that I bought a smaller size for keeping track of family events and meals. I never thought I would be the kind of person who decorated my calendar pages with stickers. Turns out I’m exactly that kind of person! I love sitting down on Sunday afternoons and planning each week. Choosing fun stickers to give my week a theme really helps to make Monday a day to look forward to.
Now, my husband, who is also a teacher, had a much harder time finding a good teacher planner. Most of the options are styled for women. This seems to be a common problem. The other day several teachers on Instagram commented that they struggled to find a plain, flowerless, non-script font cover option. Not every female teacher is looking for a flashy planner. So I decided to help!
If you want planner pages that are simple and you can print yourself, use the form on the sidebar to grab yours today. Choose to be added to our Teacher Tribe list and you’ll get this free download plus access to our growing resource library.
Print your FREE planner pages and go super simple with a three-ring binder. Or you can follow my lead and invest in the Happy Planner system that’s reusable year after year. Either way, these FREE printable pages should help you stay organized throughout the school year.
by Carly Black | Jun 12, 2018 | Teacher Solutions, Teaching Methods
Let me confess. My grammar is sub-par.
That’s right. I’m an English teacher with sub-par grammar skills. In fact, I recently applied for a position with NoRedInk and did not make the cut, by two points, on their grammar exam. Was this a surprise to me? Not really. I’ve always struggled to remember all the grammar rules of the English language. This is why I’ve been ecstatic to learn about the app Grammarly.
Some of the links found in this post are affiliates. This means if you make a purchase after clicking through we will receive a small compensation at no extra cost to you. Thank you in advance for your support and please know that we only endorse products we use and love.
Time is incredibly valuable when you’re a working mom of toddlers. I don’t always have the luxury of extra time to look up a grammar rule or ask someone to spend their precious time proofreading my work. Using an app like Grammarly can provide me with the answers I need quickly and allows my writing to be polished.
This morning I read a Facebook post by another teacher who was asking for advice about her principal’s incorrect word usage. She mentioned that he was continuously misspelling a word that gave the context new meaning, incorrect meaning. She wanted to know if she should correct him. Most people shared that they have also had a similar situation and if they had a close enough relationship they corrected them. Someone commented that friends tell friends when there is spinach in their teeth, therefore, pointing out a grammatical mistake is the nice thing to do. Many also commented that she should subtly use the word correctly or during a teaching observation. A majority of comments simply said do nothing. My advice was to casually share the Grammarly app. This is what I shared as a way to let a colleague know they were not always composing grammatically correct emails to our staff.
Plenty of people working in leadership positions didn’t get there because their grammar was perfect. However, these leaders often write for a large audience. That audience can lose faith in their leader when simple grammar errors become consistent. Back in my single days I once told a guy we’d never date because he couldn’t properly punctuate a sentence. He was completely offended, but so was I. Grammarly would have helped him get a date. Although it would not have helped his face to face conversation.
I’m constantly telling my 8th graders that we now live in a world of written communication. Text messages, emails, status updates, Tweets, Instagram and Snapchat captions. A large audience will see all of these types of written communication. If part of that audience wants to hire you someday they may be paying attention to your grammar and spelling. What you write represents you, and that means it’s important to put your best foot forward. This also goes for adults.
Using the Grammarly app will help save you time and allow your writing to be polished. Educators may want to look into their education options because it also includes a plagiarism checker. Sharing this app with students could give them added confidence in their writing and help provide them with a new writing resource. I always tell my students to use the available resources when searching for an answer. Digital dictionaries, spell checker and Grammarly can all help students increase their writing skills. I know that after only a few weeks of using the app myself, I began to correct my most common mistakes before typing them.
Try the app for yourself! I think you’ll find it saves you time and possibly some embarrassment.
by Carly Black | Jun 4, 2018 | Classroom Solutions, Library, Teacher Solutions
Have you seen the #KidsNeedBooks movement? It was a small gesture that turned into a Twitter hashtag movement by author Ann Braden. A number of authors have jumped on board giving away free stacks of their books to teachers so that they can, in turn, give them to students for reading over the summer. The heart of this movement is to help kids avoid the summer slide.
Booksource, an educator’s best friend in the book department, has also been tweeting about how to help students enjoy summer reading and avoid the summer slide. Their infographic that explains how to stop the summer slide inspired me to write this post. Based on student reading personality, we’ve put together a list with links to their Amazon page. Please know that some of these links are affiliate links, and if you choose to make a purchase we will be compensated at no extra cost to you.
As a career-long middle school teacher, and wanting to incorporate some high school titles, I asked my friend Melissa Kruse from Reading and Writing Haven to help curate this list of titles. With our own students in mind, we created each category based on popular book choosing habits. Any of the titles that are meant for a more mature audience have an (HS). We hope your students, or children, enjoy their summer of reading!
For the student….
Who has read EVERY book on the shelf
Who says he/she “hates” reading
Who likes a visual
Who likes their plots twisty
Who likes a good belly laugh and ugly cry
Who wants to go on an adventure
Who wants to figure out “who done it”
Who likes a happy ending
Who wants to travel back in time
Who wants to join a revolution
Who likes their characters out of this world
Who always has a good joke
Who saw the movie first
Who needs to see the relevance
Who is a mathematician
Who loves science
Who enjoys art and music
Who is an athlete
Who wants to be in the military
Who is “outdoorsy”
Who likes apocalyptic fiction
Who has always wanted to live in a castle
Who enjoys Christian lit
Who needs pictures to stay engaged
Reading over the summer is imperative for students’ development. Teachers can partner with parents to increase the likelihood that it will happen. Send home this recommended reading list and a few tips for how parents can help students enjoy reading. Teachers can also take students to the library so that they can browse the shelves and create their own summer reading list.
If you’d like tips on how to create more of a literacy culture in your classroom, read Melissa’s post on how to run a classroom book club. For a set of FREE Notice and Note annotation bookmarks and other great resources join the TeachMomRepeat newsletter.
Help add to our list of summer reading novels in the comments! What book is always checked out in your classroom? What book did you teen talk about endlessly?
by Carly Black | Apr 20, 2018 | Classroom Solutions, Lesson Plans, Teacher Solutions, Teaching Methods
When it’s test-taking season and the kids have worked so hard, they need a day to use that knowledge for fun! Rather than more practice with multiple choice questions, try a BreakoutEDU session.
What is a BreakoutEDU?
The best way to describe it is to compare it to an Escape Room activity. In a similar fashion, students are working to determine the code that will help them unlock the box. Creativity is the name of this game! The purchased kits come with a box, multiple kinds of locks, a hasp (for adding multiple locks to one box), Hint cards, a deck of reflection cards, invisible ink pen, UV flashlight, red lens viewer, and a blank USB. With all of those options, there are a bazillion ways to create tasks for students to discover a code to unlock a lock. For the ELA teachers, this would go great in a mystery unit, for Science teachers may be a forensic unit. Honestly, there are endless possibilities here.
How did I do this?
After posting a series of photos and videos to Instagram, a number of teachers contacted me about how to do this. My first suggestion is to take a look at their website. If you’re completely new to this idea their website is the place to start. Fortunately for me, our librarian had all the tools and knowledge I needed to get started. She was able to provide me with the tools and some ideas for creating the session.
If you are choosing to create your own, start with the material. Decide what knowledge the students will need to know in order to complete a task. This works best for the end of unit review or test preparation. I had shared a test prep slideshow at the start of the week, which you can find in my Teachers Pay Teachers store bundled with a Jeopardy game.
Next, you will need to create the tasks associated with each lock. I chose to make this pretty challenging, so I had 6 total locks on each box. This is where you can get creative! Choose if you’d prefer tasks to open locks or have them moving around the room to find clues that will lead to opening a lock. If trying to figure this all out sounds daunting, it did to me at first, be sure to check out the website for complete session ideas. To organize myself, I laid out each lock and gave it a sheet of paper. We used 2 key locks, a 3 digit number lock, a 4 digit number lock, a 4 letter word lock, and a directional lock. I started with the number locks. Looking at my materials there were a few questions I could ask that created a number series. You can also use ciphers to translate letters into numbers. The key locks were made from the most complex material. I asked students to complete a task that needed to be checked by a teacher and if correct they were awarded the key. To add a little more fun to this you could also include a riddle that would lead them to a hidden key. The letter lock can be used as a four letter word answer or you can use multiple choice questions. Tackling the directional locks took some thinking, thankfully my co-teacher came up with a great idea.
In order to make the directional locks work we had to create a series of directions by color coding answers. On the board, I had the directions written in the color that answers were highlighted with on a slide show. Students matched the right answer to the color and direction to create the correct series. For example, if the correct answer was highlighted with blue then students had to match that to the blue word UP that I had written on the board. I didn’t tell students what the words were for, they discovered this on their own. This is part of the critical thinking that students will need to use. Ask them to pay attention to their surroundings for finding answers.
Once they had all the locks opened the small box held a riddle that leads them to a key hidden behind one of my anchor charts. I did this so that there would be only one group to win the treasure chest of candy. My classes this year are very competitive, so it worked to my advantage to make only one winning group. Each of the small boxes could easily contain a “prize.”
Can I make my own?
Now, you may have already visited the website and noticed the price of one kit ($150). Most teachers don’t have the money to spend on one kit so let me suggest a few ideas for making this happen. First, you could always ask the team or grade level to split the cost. In our district, we are given a supply fund, but I know this is not the case for all districts. Our librarian used her book fair funds to purchase a school kit for our building to use. Then a second kit was purchased through Title I funding that we receive. If none of these are options for you, consider writing a grant. The uses of a kit such as this are endless and adaptable for any grade or subject. If you still aren’t able to purchase a name brand kit, I’m certain you could find locks and a box at any dollar store. The quality may not be that great, which makes the possibility of cheating greater. Start with a discussion on integrity and it should work well.
Whether you purchase a name brand BreakoutEDU kit or choose to create your own, you won’t regret bringing this fun activity into your classroom. Comment below and let us know how your Breakout session goes!
by Carly Black | Apr 11, 2018 | Classroom Solutions, Teacher Solutions, Teaching Methods
Starting this blog has been the best professional development in my 15 years of teaching. Learning about the teacher community of social media that supports and encourages one another has been an incredible inspiration alone. I’ve also discovered other blogging teachers who share fantastic ideas and resources. The most important professional development has come from making professional connections to teachers around the world. One of those teachers is Kasey Bell from Shake Up Learning.
Some of the links found in this post are affiliates. This means if you make a purchase after clicking through we will receive a small compensation at no extra cost to you. Thank you in advance for your support and please know that we only endorse products we use and love.
After attending my first EdCamp, the information I learned from Kasey’s blog was invaluable to my classroom. You see I didn’t have the time to drive half an hour on specific days to attend training in order to learn how to better use Google Classroom with my students. Instead, I read every blog post and resource Kasey had posted on the topic and taught myself in the convenience of my own home, and usually in my jammies. There was so much she had to teach me, so when her email swooshed into my inbox asking for book reviewers I immediately responded. Reading the book, Shake Up Learning, opened my eyes to a number of new ideas, but also validated so much of how I already teach.
Change is inevitable
“Learning has changed, and it will continue to change. Before we can tackle all the technological changes in our classrooms, we must first take a step back and redefine what learning is and what it looks like in the twenty-first century.”
YES! Change is inevitable. We can either let it break us or we can learn to find ways to turn it into an advantage. We’ve all probably heard much of this before and been made to feel like we have to change the way we do things in our classroom tomorrow. However, this is not Kasey’s approach to adapting lessons in our classrooms. At the end of each chapter, Kasey very clearly lays out action steps. This provides teachers a plan of attack for accomplishing the transformation to our lessons that students need. I remember attending a technology conference in the first few years of teaching and the lead speaker said that 80% of our students are in school training for a job that doesn’t exist yet. Now I have no idea if that percentage is currently accurate, but I can’t imagine in a decade this has decreased. Either way, this idea has stuck with me and encouraged me to create the kind of lessons Kasey describes in her book.
The second part of this book goes into detail about the attributes of a dynamic lesson. Kasey begins by stating, “…it’s going to be uncomfortable.” Teachers are possessive creatures. We take pride in our classrooms, we attach ourselves to students and it takes a lot of blood sweat and tears to pull off a successful unit. So when someone tells us we need to make changes it can sometimes sting. Teachers are also passionate about learning, whether it’s their own or their students’. This is why we should be willing to learn new ways of bringing content to our classrooms.
A dynamic learning experience is about empowering students to take a lead in their own learning. It’s like I’m always telling my writers, show them don’t tell them.
The last part of this book walks you through the steps it takes to produce a truly dynamic learning experience for your students. Starting with the planning process and even sharing a few sample units. In the online resources available there is a template to help as well. With all of the online resources for each chapter and Kasey’s self-paced workshop, I’m looking forward to some curriculum planning this summer.
The book, Shake Up Learning, was just the beginning of what Kasey has created for helping teachers turn those static lesson plans into dynamic learning for their students. She now hosts a Shake Up Learning podcast that drops new episodes every Tuesday. Have a listen to my favorite episode, the one where Kasey coaches me through a lesson that was a struggle for me. I enjoyed the collaboration and push she gave me in order to transform this idea.
Another free opportunity Kasey offers is the online book study. She hosts a self-paced and community collaborative book study in her Facebook group. Grab a copy of the book and join the next book study that begins February 13, 2020.
by Carly Black | Apr 7, 2018 | Mom Solutions, Parenting, Teacher Solutions
Hidden in the bathroom, you try to steal five minutes to take a moment to breathe and scroll through mindless social media when that teacher tired meme pops up mocking you. Teacher tired? Sure, but teacher-mom tired is more like it. The loss of two hours sleep from 2:32-4:38 am is more likely the culprit of my tired. A tiny knock with a powerful scream of “MaaaaMaaaa,” interrupts your thoughts on how tired you truly happen to be in this moment of rest. Now enter teacher mom guilt. You’ve just spent the day being fully present with everyone else’s children. When you open that door you will need to muster up the energy to be fully present with your children.
Teacher Mom Reality
Most nights I find myself wide awake at 11:00 pm, even if I had been nodding off a few hours ago while reading bedtime stories, I’m often up late at night. The quiet is what keeps me awake. No one is talking to me, my phone is not buzzing in emails or messages, there are no tiny fingers grasping my shirt; it’s the only time of day I have all to myself. After having two babies back to back my body has become used to the sleep deprivation and because the pregnancy or new mom fog has lifted I actually find myself thinking more clearly this late at night. This seems an oxymoron considering a good decision would be to go to sleep, but I love the quiet and I love to read. I suspect many of you consciously choose to forego sleep to allow yourself to do something that feels far more satisfying than sleep at the moment. At least at the moment, it feels much more satisfying. You forget about how tired you were all day and choose to do something for yourself. At this moment you choose yourself because the roles you’ve played all day have been put to bed.
Let the Teacher Mom Guilt Melt Away
Have you ever made a list of all the roles you play in a day? I start the day (after midnight) as a mom, then I kiss my husband goodbye as a wife, I turn the lights on in my classroom as a teacher, I allow a co-worker to lean on my shoulder as a friend at lunch, I answer texts or emails from my parents and siblings and in-laws throughout the day, before heading home I pick up groceries to make a meal for a church member in need and then the cycle starts all over again the moment my kids and husband hug me as I walk through the front door. That’s a lot of roles to play within a 24 hour period. That’s a lot of people who count on us to play these roles each day. This is where we can allow for guilt to set in and cloud our judgment.
May I suggest we all choose to let the guilt go? It’s hard to feel like you’re being a good mom when you have to grade papers instead of playing cars on the floor with your toddler. It’s also hard to feel like you’re being a good teacher when you can’t stay after school to provide a struggling student with extra help because you have to pick up your kids from the babysitter. As a full-time teaching mom, this is always going to be the case. You are always going to want more time with your babies and more time to help your students. It comes down to choices. Choose and feel good about your choice. Either way, you are choosing your kids, making it a good choice.
Shine in All Your Roles
My network of Instagram teachers has started a #stopteacherguilt campaign. We all need to take care of ourselves or we will not be able to be our best for our husband, our kids, our students, and our families. We’ve all heard the advice to take time for self-care, but do we allow guilt to rob us of a truly relaxing moment? Let it go! You spend enough time thinking about you can enrich other people’s lives, don’t feel bad when you take time to enrich your own life. Whether it’s a weekly yoga class, a quiet moment of scrolling through social media or enjoying a new flavor of ice cream if it’s what you need to relax your mind and body then soak it up and don’t feel bad about it. You need to be your number one priority. Share your favorite ways to relax and indulge, then share a photo on Instagram with #stopteachermomguilt.
by Carly Black | Mar 6, 2018 | Classroom Solutions, Library, Teacher Solutions
An eighth-grade teacher’s classroom library is where I found my favorite book, Goodbye Paperdoll. She had a closet-sized classroom, but still felt it was important enough to sacrifice the space for bookshelves that lined the back wall. If you, too, are a language arts teacher with a major book obsession as embodied in your own classroom library, you’ll want to check out this amazing resource I found and have been using since 2011.
Getting started
Booksource.com launched Classroom Organizer as a free online classroom library checkout and return system for teachers, and it has made all the difference in my classroom. When I started teaching in 2001 I had collected a small library and kept track through index cards. Each month I would add books through Scholastic book orders and bonus points, but I was terrible about using the index card system. There was too much I needed to do for the system to be effective, and by effective I mean keeping track of books that traveled to and from my classroom. One summer I thought I’d trade up to a spreadsheet that students could enter book information for themselves, but that quickly became a true nightmare. Then one afternoon I was scrolling through iTunes, searching for new teacher apps and the heavens parted when I saw a free app called Classroom Organizer.
This FREE resource has revolutionized my classroom library! At the time I had a student helper, so I created an account and put her straight to work scanning in my 1200 plus classroom library. Back then there wasn’t much to the system beyond the title, author, ISBN, and book cover photo. Now, Booksource offers you a number of options to really get the best out of your library. If you’re ready to transform your classroom library then check out these features and tips for using the Classroom Organizer. Want a FREE editable poster to show students how to use your new online book checkout system? Sign up for the TMR newsletter!
Making it work for your classroom library
First, you’ll need to create an account. When creating your account keep in mind that students will be using the username and password to access the student page. Capitalization counts here! Originally I was not married when I created my account, MissBBooks, and it was not a difficult task to have my username changed, however, I did have to contact the website to make the change. Changing the password can be done on your own. I always make my password the room number. This makes it easier for students.
Once you have an account, the website will walk you through the features of your dashboard to give you a full picture of what the site offers. Before you start adding books, be sure to visit the Preferences page found on the Your Account page. Here you will be able to list any genres you want to include. In order for these to be part of the drop-down menu in your library check the Genre box under Library Data, but be sure the Fiction/Nonfiction box is not also checked. I suggest looking through all of the details that you can provide with each book, like the genre, location, condition, lexile, etc. and decide what labels you feel will truly benefit your classroom. I have never kept up with the conditions, but I would like students to know the lexile of a book and where it belongs in my classroom. The problem here is that these are updates for me, so in order to add them I would have to input this for each individual book; with more than 3,000 books being housed in my classroom that’s a ton of time updating. It’s my advice to make these decisions before you begin! As you input books you can add these options from the website. Books are organized alphabetically by title, so once you get a number of your books into the system you’ll want to search the title to make those additions.
When you’re ready to add titles I would suggest using a laptop and scanner, if you have access to one. This is a quicker method when the book doesn’t have an ISBN number or fails to pick up information, like the author or book cover. Using a device with a camera is an option, but it will not show you the detail that the website provides.
Once you have scanned in your library there are a number of reports to help you make new book decisions. For example, you can see what genres you have very little of and start adding more. You can even create a wish list of books to share with parents! Need help finding titles? Read my post on 50+ Summer Reading Recommendations, they aren’t just for summer.
One of the other great new features is Teacher Resources. Booksource has provided lesson ideas for thousands of titles and gives you FREE access to them. You’ll notice a small TR maroon circle in your library view.
Using this system has made it so much easier for me to keep track of books, see what kids are reading, and find new teaching ideas. Some of my voracious readers even added the app to their phones to make check out faster! Let me know how the Classroom Organizer works for your classroom. Don’t forget to subscribe to our exclusive teacher newsletters for a FREE poster to help students with the login and check out process, among other great free printables.
by Carly Black | Dec 28, 2017 | Classroom Solutions, Organization
How many of you had a new planner or personal calendar on your Christmas list? None. Me either, because for teachers the year began in August, and will end in June. Our resolutions and goals, those were set back in the fall when school was just about to start. For teachers, this time of year is not about setting new goals but evaluating the ones we set for our current school year. This is the approach I’ll be taking with my students when we return to the classroom on January 2.
Middle schoolers have a hard time seeing a full year into their futures and let’s be honest, twelve months is a long time. Young teenagers don’t want to think that far into their futures, because a lot can change for them in that amount of time. I’ve already had two students this school year leave my class because their parents decided they wanted to be living in a different state. My guess is that those students didn’t have much say in that decision. This is why I feel resolutions are not practical for middle schoolers or this teacher. From January to June 2018 they will be in middle school, but once the summer hits they take on the new title of Freshman. A very different distinction.
Consider my year, at the start of 2017 I was trying to figure out exactly how I could handle another 6 months nursing my daughter because pumping at school was taking a serious toll on my schedule and sanity. Today, my daughter is a fantastic eater so maybe I can chalk this year up to a success. Either way, the start of my year looks a whole lot different than the end, and that can be difficult to plan for, especially when there are two separate school years on the bookends. I like to think of January as a time to evaluate my teaching thus far and consider how we cross that school year finish line maintaining the pace. My students are keeping track of their major data pieces: AIR test, SRI tests, and CFA quarterly tests. With each score, they are writing a reachable goal for the next opportunity. They also made general reading and writing goals that could be short or long-term. We will have to start talking about what their high school schedule might look like based on how they are meeting goals. Side note, a number of my advanced students will need to seriously consider staying on the advanced track in high school; it’s been a rough first half with turning in quality writing and keeping up with reading assignments. Which is why I prefer to use this time of year as a lesson in evaluation rather than resolution. The goals have been set, now is the time to measure achievements and amend any goals to round out the school year.
I plan to ask my students to answer 3 important questions:
- What goals have you reached now that we are at the halfway mark?
- What new goals do need to set to finish the school year strong?
- What goals do you need to change or create in order to reflect the high school career you envision for yourself?
Their answers will help me have important conversations about making the middle school to high school transition. I’m new to this conversation, so any other 8th grade teachers out there with advice for helping students through this transition be sure to leave a comment.
