Help!!

I was perusing Abby's blog The Inspired Apple and saw her adorable "School Rocks" theme and it got me thinking about classroom themes.

Our school wide theme this year is "Learning is a Treasure." Soooo, that's where you come in. I need help coming up with ideas for things to do/display/etc... in my classroom this year to go along with the theme!

Back from the Dead

I am so sorry for my prolonged absence but I hit a little summer fever back in, oh...April...

I still haven't really started thinking much about school yet, but I am getting there with only 3 weeks of freedom left!

I will begin my comeback soon! I promise and I will share all that I can!!

On another note, if you are interested in art, I have just posted some new paintings in my etsy shop. Please click here.

Happy summer!!

Busy Busy!

I have been super duper busy at school and sort of overwhelmed. I haven't had much of an opportunity to visit the blog world and so for that, I apologize. We recently studied the American Revolution and read, "The Revolutionary Swamp Fox," by Idella Bodie. It is a biography about the life of the infamous Swamp Fox. If you have ever seen "The Patriot," starring Mel Gibson, that movie is based on his life, although not entirely accurate. Anyhow, the students got really into learning about him because he was from South Carolina. After we read the book, the students created Bio Bodies. They had to draw him and write what he would think, say, do, feel, and where he would go. Here are some really cute examples.

We have also learned about habitats and animal adaptations. We made some cute habitat lotus diagrams (another quality tool to be blogged about later.) Here are a couple of the better examples. We discussed the types of animals and plants that live in each one and how they have special feature and adaptations.

This time of year always makes me feel stressed out, but I really hope to work on posting more fun things going on in our classroom. You other teachers out there are so inspiring and you all doing such amazing things that it inspires me to want to be better about posting the things I am doing as well.

Stay tuned...more to come soon...

Tool of the Week: Affinity Diagrams

So, I realize I was supposed to do another quality tool last week, but I got busy. Such is my life. Here is another example of how you can use a consensogram in your classrooms. I think it's really important to track student progress and growth throughout the year and this is a great way to let kids see their growth. We take the MAP test three times a year. It tracks Reading and Math progress throughout the year and then gives us correlations for how our kids will perform on the state standardized test at the end of the year. Anyway, the picture below shows our first MAP scores of the year in red and our mid year scores in green. Look at how all of those dots moved! Well, most...

Another quality tool that I have just fallen in love with is called an affinity diagram. An affinity diagram is a great tool for sorting and grouping things based on common characteristics. Here are a few examples.

It's important to have your kids come up with all of the information, but you guide them in the sorting and grouping. You also help them name each group based on their commonalities.

I hope everyone is well! I will try to be good and post again soon!

Quality Tool of the Week: Consensogram

Our school has recently taken the initiative towards implementing Quality Tools into our teaching. If you aren't famliar with quality tools, they are also commonly known as the Baldridge model or continuous improvement. The idea is to use these quality tools to help improve student achievement, motivation, goal setting, and ownership of student learning.

I have decided to share a tool each week for you to possibly try in your classrooms. There are so many tools you can use, so I recommend trying to implement one at a time until you feel comfortable using them in many ways.

There are various ways this model can be used in the classroom, but I won't bore you with all the details. Today, I am just going to share my favorite way. It is called a consensogram and it can be used in a variety of ways and it is the easiest one to implement into your daily routine. A consensogram is a tool used to gather data quickly to gain a group's perceptions, knowledge, effort, or understand about a particular subject.

Here are some examples:

I use it most often to have students select their reward of choice. I write several different options on a piece of chart paper, and students put their sticky dot on their choice. It's clear to see the class choice.

Other ways you can use the consensogram:

*Surveying the class by asking questions to learn about them
*Gauging whether or not students are prepared for a test.
*Behavior
*Pre and Post Test knowledge
*Learning what students favorite topic learned was
*Letting students determine what they want to learn next
*Reflecting on activities such as field trips, lessons, assignments, etc...
*Determining which vocabulary words students know
*Displaying data (grades, MAP test scores, standardized test scores, etc...)
*Assessing which skills students need more work on
*To identify student motivation (or lack of)
*For student views about classroom/school environment
*What worked well-wrapping up a unit

There are so many other ways you can use this tool. The sky is the limit! Please share if you have any ideas of how you use the consensogram or how you would use it if you never have.