I’ve Been Busy….Summer Planning

The area that I have thought about the most is my literacy block.  I will be teaching my 3/4’s all of their subjects excluding French but will have 100 min per day set aside for literacy.  Over the last few months I focused on improving my knowledge about assessment, classroom management, and balanced literacy.  I know that the cycle of formative assessment is imperative to use to engage students in their learning and to see improve student success in reading.  Additionally strong classroom management skills, which promote students self-monitoring skills, allows the teacher to focus on instruction and less on management. Finally, I know that gradually releasing the responsibility of learning to students through modeled, shared, guided instruction and independent practice ensures student learning and success.

So I think to myself, I know these facts but what do I do to apply these into actual program practices.  This is when my blog stalking comes in handy.  I find that many of you fellow bloggers are raving about three things: Whole Brain Teaching, Daily 5, and CAFE.  I knew about Daily 5, I was given the text by a principal but never really read it, it was my first year of teaching and I was so overwhelmed that I didn’t know how to try something new when I was just trying to survive.  Over the last few months, I have been inspired by others who feel that this method of teaching seems to have changed the way people teach.  Therefore I have begun to re-read it along with many others on We Read, We Blog, We Teach.  

Through the CAFE program, I can apply many of the components of the cycle of formative assessment to the CAFE model.  I find that conferencing and getting to know your students’ goals and helping them achieve them truly contributes to their success as students.  Through both the Daily 5 and CAFE I can use the gradual release of responsibility model.  Really these three programs are a great marriage that I hope leads to a wonderful classroom environment.  I am so excited to see how these three strategies work together to improve student success.

Finally, I was looking for a great classroom management plan that encouraged students to become self-monitors, promotes engagement, and builds a positive classroom culture and environment. I have used the clip chart previously but didn’t really like this system.  I have also used a ticket system however this took a lot of time to manage.  So instead, I was inspired by Whole Brain Teaching. Many of you rave about how this works in your classroom; so I will be incorporating some of the components into my management plan.  I plan on using CLASS – YES, TEACH – OK, and the SCOREBOARD.  I will use these along with student referees, who look for the character traits in their classmates to earn a raffle ticket, star students who are promoted to this position when they believe that they are student leaders and self-monitors, and restorative justice practices.