H.E.R.O Mentor Program

 Tuesday, May 4th, 2021:

https://www.mentoring.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Success-Mentors-School-Checklist.FINAL_.pdf

https://nationalmentoringresourcecenter.org/index.php/30-topic-areas/182-school-based-mentoring.html

I'm extremely excited to share that since I have began my Educational Leadership certification at Cabrini University, our administrative team in the Brandywine Heights Area School District, has allowed me to work on bringing the H.E.R.O Mentor Program to our district.

The H.E.R.O program stands for Helping Everyone Recognize Opportunities and will act as a mentoring program for elementary aged students.  Our mentors will be partnered up with one student and they will meet once a week for ten to twenty minutes to discuss how they are doing, do they need anything, and just a general check-in about how they are doing.  

This is not an academic mentoring/tutoring program, but rather and program that focuses on the well-being of our students.  We want to focus on how they are socially and emotionally.  

We will have our next meeting set up for Tuesday, May 11th...stay tuned for more information!

Brain Breaks and Exercising in Education

 Brain Breaks and Exercising in Education:

One of the most important things that I try to express to my parents at the beginning of the school year is that my goal as their teacher to not only educate them academically, but I strive to teach the whole-child.

Beginning at Meet the Teacher night, I communicate with our parents that we will cover all of the necessary academic standards, but along the way we will also make sure that we are exercising, discussing healthy life choices, social-emotional learning, and effective communication.

Here is one of my favorite websites that we use in our classroom:

GoNoodle

I used this website for different things at different parts of our day and for a variety of different reasons:

• Morning exercises to help wake up our students!
• Helps students work on their coordination.
• Left side/ride side and crossing their mid-line.
• Better conditioning.
• Brain Breaks help to refocus our students:
• After recess, gym, or another exciting activity a brain break can help to calm students down and refocus.
• Allow students to get out of their seats to stretch, dance, sing, etc.

Grit and The Power of Perserverence

 Grit and The Power of Perserverence:

Two years ago at the beginning of the school year, I was a presenter at our Technology Fair to kick off our new school year.  During my presentation, I spoke on the topic of Grit and The Power of Perseverance, after being inspired by the book from Angela Duckworth.

The concept of Grit and the Power of Passion and Perseverance explains why certain people are successful when other people fail.  It elaborates that even the most academically advanced students are not the same students that are successful during difficult situations.  

The concept of grit and determination are a better determiner of success, rather than grades.

These concepts along with growth mindset, have helped to reshape my teaching and has shifted the way that I look at education. 

What COVID-19 Revealed About US Schools - And Four Ways to Rethink Education

What COVID-19 Revealed About US Schools - And Four Ways to Rethink Education:

 

I listened to this Ted Talk on my way home from school one day and I found the video and wanted to take some time to share!  

I hope you enjoy the video and I hope it provides some insight for all of the teachers out there!

Imagine Math...Imagine That!!!

 Monday, May 10th, 2021:

During our math block this morning, as I was circulating my students, while they were completing their work.  One of my girls raised her hand to ask for assistance on our math program, Imagine Math.  This math program is designed for the iPads and allows students a completely individualized program that allows students to progress at their own pace, through the lessons.

The student that I was working with was working on adding a single-digit number and a teen number, without regrouping.  What caught my eye was how this program was helping students better understand how to complete problems like these:

1. Students are able to listen to guided directions about how to complete the problem, along with a magnified pointer for students to easily follow along on their iPads.
2. To help students focus on the specific part of an addition problem, specific parts on the problem may shake, glow, or expand to help students follow along to the step-by-step lessons.
3. Another important part of this program that I noticed today was how the color coordinated the different place value locations.  
4. Finally, the students are asked to solve the problem by dragging and dropping numbers into the correct locations on the screen, to successfully complete the problems.
5. After a student correctly adds in the "ones place value," they move on to another screen where they add the "tens place value," and then finally they have the students add both the "ones place value," and the "tens place value," in order to complete the entire addition problem.

Ultimately, while I was working with this individual student, I began to reflect about how I could use this program's teaching strategies into my own instruction.  

I have two ideas to use in my own instruction:

1. Color coordinating the different place values for students to follow along better with (Ones - Yellow/Tens - Blue/Hundreds - Red).
2. Have students only focus on one place value, then the next, and then finally solving the whole problem.

Kid Writing in Kindergarten Continued...

 

Kin Writing in Kindergarten Continued...

As I have began my second year of teaching Kindergarten, I made it a personal goal of mine to find a way to make our Kid Writing new and exciting each day!  I want students to be inspired and excited about their writing and during the same time, give them exposure to other things that they may not necessarily see.

My idea was to use YouTube to stream Live Camera feeds of different places and different animals all around the world, in order for students to have something new and exciting each day to look at and hopefully write about!

Most recently, our Kindergarten class read a story called "Panda Kindergarten," as a part of our Wonders reading curriculum.  As I searched for a live camera to display, I found that the same wildlife reserve that we were reading about in our anchor text, was the same location of the live camera that we used for our Kid Writing.

By using a live camera each day, students have seen different locations around the world, countless different animals, amusement parks, and a variety of other locations around the world, that  has proven to be inspiring and have helped to drive our Kid Writing!

I hope you try this out!

Kid Writing in Kindergarten

 

    Before I discuss the topic of Kid Writing, I would just like to provide a little bit more background on my teaching career.  I have now taught Kindergarten for the past two years.  Prior to teaching Kindergarten, I was a second grade teacher.  I had went lower than second grade once, to first grade, as part of a looping program.  So being told I would be moving to Kindergarten made me both excited and nervous.

    I was excited because I never had taught Kindergarten and was ready for a new challenge.  I was also told that some of the biggest growth occurs from the beginning of Kindergarten until the end of the school year.  Students are entering your classroom with all different levels of learning.  Some students do not know their letters and numbers, some students do, and then there are some students that already have a basic understanding of how to read, write, and have a strong number sense.

    The biggest challenge that I was not ready for was Kid Writing!  In my previous years of teaching, my students would come into my second grade classroom with at least the background knowledge of how to write and what writing is.  However, for five year old children, I was going to have my work cut out for me!

During my first year of teaching Kindergarten, I had their monthly journals put together and stapled and ready to go.  However, I would struggle with having students come up with a topic of what to write and draw.  

Point blank...I could not find a way to inspire them to want to write each day.  I needed to think of a new plan to strengthen their writing ability.