Red/Green Writing

In WBT, writing is super important!! I know it seems like every thing we do is out load, oral repetition. BUT at some point students have to get all that knowledge on paper and compose intelligible coherent thoughts. One way to encourage this, while differentiating for your students is Red/Green writing. It's so simple it's almost silly: as you are waking around the classroom monitoring and conferring, you carry a red marker and a green market with you. (Side bar - I found single markers for sale at Office Depot during back to school! Bonus: their scented!!!)

So, anyway, you're walking around and conferring and walking and conferring. But where are the anecdotal records? Where is the visual feedback for the students? Insert markers here. Green means go. Red means stop. Use the green marker to dot anything the student does well based on his or her personal goals. (More on goals in a bit.) Use the red marker to dot a few (repeat with me: no more than two of three!!) things the students should avoid doing in the future. Like I said, so simple it's almost silly. But it's EFFECTIVE!! 

In conjunction with red/green writing, we have been practicing genius ladder sentences. Here are the results for our pumpkin writing today. My kids did all rotations and independent or partner work for the whole reading and writing block while I met with every child. Every. Single. Child. My kids were given the instructions: "Write a genius sentence about fall." (We haven't gotten to the detail adder sentences yet.)

I was IMPRESSED with my kiddos!! I hope you are too. Can you incorporate Red/Green Writing into your day?

Finally a Win!

Today is Friday and I couldn't be happier! 

I'm actually on a short weekend family trip and not at school today, but, I have some really good news to share! 

I took my schedule and Coach's idea of using a tally sheet to track the use of WBT elements. I've created a quick snapshot of my day that includes a basic overview of what I'm going to teach and check boxes for the elements I'm currently improving. This way I am accountable to myself and my students. 

I'm currently working from my phone but I'll post pictures and freebies as soon as I'm back at my computer. This efficiency has really helped keep me on task and noticing my WBT behaviors.

What strategies do you use to help yourself keep track and stay focused?

Scoreboard 2.0

If you have been following my blog at all, then you will remember that I have trouble all year remembering the Scoreboard, and it's by far one of the best aspects of WBT.  I don't know why I have so much trouble remembering it.  Maybe all those droning years of "I'm waiting for you to be quiet..." created a really really REALLY bad habit that I am STILL trying to break.  Coach B, of course, found a way to make the scoreboard even more FUN, more ENGAGING, and more AWESOME!!  He says that this upgrade will truly bring the scoreboard to life as a live video game!  Oh sweet, mama!  This, my friends, is going to be good!!

Review of Scoreboard (Chapters 11 and 14):

If you want more info you can check out my older blog posts here and here.  The Book Club Blog has some excellent ideas and strategies for chapter 11 and chapter 14.  And you can always access the original web info from the WBT site here.

Remember:

1. The reward for "winning" the scoreboard is the joy of academic learning.  Say it with me... No more treasure box! NO MORE TREASURE BOX! No stickers.  No sugar.  No trinkets.  No crap!
2. Positively reinforce desirable behaviors with smiley.  Negative reinforce unwanted behaviors with a frowny.
3. No frownies for individual misbehaviors.
4. Keep it close!  Difference of +/- 3.  

Coach B's Big New Idea:

LEVELED SCOREBOARDS THAT KIDS PROGRESS THROUGH!

There are 15 predesigned levels and a variety of wild cards that will keep the scoreboard going for the whole year, and never require you to buy any crap!

A "win" on the scoreboard is anytime the class has more smileys than frownies.

10 "wins" means students progress to the next level.

Level 1 - Basecamp.  Generic scoreboard with variations like we are already using.  Mighty Oh yeah!  Mighty groans!  Keep the kids on their toes.  In Halloween, do "Trick" when the kids get a frowny and say "Treat" when they get a smiley (thank you Krystal Long!).  Or, "trick-or-treat" when they get a smiley and "boo" when they get a frowny (thank you Southern Teacher!).  Modify to fit seasons/skills/classroom themes/etc.

Level 2 - Rulesville.  Add a "Bonus" section to the scoreboard and write a rule in it, such as rule 2.  You will continue to award points as usual, AND add smilies or frownies based on the bonus rules.  Better at rule 2! Oh yeah! Awww, too slow.  Mighty groan!  You can still incorporate ping-pongs, and psych-outs to keep it interesting.

Level 3 - Double Bonus.  Include a rule and a call back, such as Help me!  Levels 1 and 2 still apply, but you are adding to it with the double bonus.

Level 4 - No traitors! Girls vs. Boys (which the kids ALWAYS love!)  If a group has a weak response it is a score for the other team.  To earn a class win, there must be more smileys than frownies for BOTH groups.  Otherwise, it is just a girl win, or just a boy win.  You can still include bonuses at this level to keep kids working hard and engaging in the management of the classroom.

Level 5 - Victory Line.  Take level 4 and add to it that now the winning team gets to line up first.  The kids will eat it up!  I mean... eat.  it.  up.   They love this stuff!!!

Level 6 - Blue Dubs.  Occasionally use a blue marker to mark the scoreboard.  Blue lines count for double.  Levels 1-5 still apply at this level.

Level 7 - Leaders rule.  Students choose leaders for the week - students that they would like to emulate.  Teacher can sometimes pull them aside and work on leadership training, or leadership skills, to help them help the rest of the class. Leaders can change daily/weekly/monthly... your choice.

Level 8 - Time out.  The leaders from Level 7 can now call up to 1 time out per class to work with their group on how to earn more smiley points.  They are still girls vs. boys.

Levels 9 - 15 - Brainy City!  Start by adding two brainies in the bonus area.  Each week add 2 more.  You pick 1/2 and the kids pick 1/2.

Wow!  Are you as excited as I am???  I've made a background for Level 1.  I'm attaching below so you can download the freebie.  Check out Coach B's broadcast.  It's video 584.  I highly recommend it, as he goes into more details, and gives more examples.  This revamp of the scoreboard is truly going to reinvigorate my management strategies.  I am hoping that keeping this more structured, I will utilize the scoreboard more often as I should, and harness its power!  Click the picture below to download the PDF and enjoy! 

Leave a comment below... what's your favorite scoreboard level?

47 Days of..... Paper :/ #thistooshallpass

I cannot believe it has been 47 days since my last post... AHHH!!!  So much to tell you, so little time...  Alas, this has been my nightly battle:

How DO you manage all the paper as a teacher????????  I dream of a paperless world... except my eyes go all squinky looking at a screen and I like highlighters and colored pens.  They have become quite an obsession of mine since college.

Anyways....

Where are my kiddos with WBT stuff, I heard you ask.  Well... ponder no more!  This post has the answers for you.

Ready???

Do you want to know???

Do you need to know????

Can you handle it???

Ok, enough teasing and lollygagging....

My.

Kids.

Are.

drum roll.....

in exactly the same spot they were 47 days ago.... wah wah wah.....  Well, not exactly, but their progress has been less than stellar.  I haven't been posting for the same reason my kids aren't making the progress I wish they would: I am barely surviving.  

I know what you are thinking... "But wait, Super Woman doesn't have bad days??"  (I know you all refer to me as Super Woman.)  I'm not really Super Woman, and I really do have bad days.  This year has been full of a slew of them.  But, tomorrow is a new day and after hearing Coach B's reinvented Scoreboard ideas tonight, I am FIRED up to begin with Level 1: Basecamp tomorrow AND get my kids rolling in the Super Improve League competition.

I don't know about y'all, but this year started with a rocky beginning.  I am SUPER glad to be moving along, BUT I also feel like so much time is already lost.  I plan to "make it" through this week and a long weekend tending to family things, and then do a little better next week and go to Houston for a training for my school, and hopefully even better the next as I roll into my sweet angel girl's first birthday (cue the nail biting!).  After that, it's smooth sailing on the waves of fully implemented WBT!

Hold on to your hats, ladies and gents, because we are turning up the heat in third grade!!!

(And yes, I'm aware that all those "idioms" and whatnot do not necessarily go together... Hehe!)

Follow my kids on the Facebook competition.  We are Kelley's Dynamo Super Kids!

The following Hashtag fun are to amuse you and describe my last 47 days... feel free to comment your own!  :)

#papermountain   #teacherlife   #ineedapersonalassistant   #dontgetpaidtopushpaper   #papercutsarearealproblem   #toobusytoactuallyteach   #turnanewleaf   #dontsweatthesmallstuff   #dontevensweatthebigstuff   #backtobasics   #teachingismypassion   #doitforthechildren   #teachthewholebrain   #worksheetsdontgrowdendrites   #morepaperdoesnotequalmoreteaching   #gottausethatbrain   #readyforWBThardcore

Hip Hip Hooray!!!!

OH MY GRACIOUS!!! 

My class had a HUGE and I mean GARGANTUAN milestone today.  My student who is ELL and selectively mute TALKED to me today.  But hold on to your chair... he not only talked, he approached me and ASKED A QUESTION about how to spell a word...  TWICE!  Then, he even sounded out the words with me and attempted to spell them.  

OH SWEET MAMA!!!! I could not believe it! 

Every time I've coerced words out of him before, I've had the kids give him a 10 Finger Woo AND he's earned a star on the Super Improver Wall.  17 days later HE TALKS!!!!!  Can you tell how excited I am??!!?!?! If we continue at this pace, he will be singing Opera in front of an audience by Spring Break! HA!!!  

I feel so proud of him.  I feel so blessed that I have WBT as a mindset that is so positive and encouraging.  I love that my classroom feels safe enough that he was willing to talk after only 17 days.  

I really wanted to share!  Please tell me how excited you are for my kids that they are making such amazing progress so early on!  I want to share with them how proud other people are and let them know that other people care about their progress.  

Have a great week!  My week can't get better after this....

Wowza!  TGIF!!! 

I finished the first full week with my kids today.  Whew!  It was rough around the edges this week.  But each day has been better.  We have the Super Improver Team up and running, my kids LOVE Crazy Professor Reading, and we are consistently using capital letter and end mark brainies!  Yay!!!

After a Skype session with the fabulous Ms. Nancy Stoltenberg on Thursday night, I felt even better about our progress.  I was feeling a little deflated early on because I started with such enthusiasm and expected that my good intentions would be enough for me to internalize the skills so that they felt routine.  Welllllll..... as we all know good intentions provide motivation but it's the practice, practice, practice that provides the skill.  None of this feels "routine" yet (of course it is only the first week of school so I guess I should cut a girl some slack right?).  I'm just daily evaluating my consistency and setting goals EVERY afternoon for the next day.  So here are my goals for next week (deja vu):

• Scoreboard
• Assign homework
• Scoreboard
• Introduce more brainies (have them printed for the class)
• Scoreboard
• SuperSpeed 1,000 partner routine
• and oh yeah, SCOREBOARD!!!

I really really REALLY want to do better at the stinkin' scoreboard!  The days I feel like I make progress and my student behaviors are most under control - TONS of scoreboard points.  However, the days I feel defeated... NO scoreboard points.  Coincidental?  I think not!

First Day Failure....

So it's Sunday night at 8:39 and I'm watching the minutes tick by until I must force myself to go to bed and tackle another Monday first thing tomorrow morning....  Let's back track a bit, shall we?

We started back to work Monday last week and had three days of PD.  Our kiddos started on Thursday.  I've been on the edge of my seat with anticipation about school starting this year for WEEKS.  I've worked really hard all summer to organize, decorate, plan, learn, and instruct.  With all my new WBT goals I've been super excited to get into the thick of things: meet my new kids, start my lessons, really rev up the year from the very beginning.

Thursday morning... <sigh> did NOT go as planned.

My kiddos came in and had Play-Doh and a letter from me as usual.  They played quietly and whispered with neighbors for a bit and read their letter and even had an opportunity to write a letter to me in return.  I began my first day lessons with strength and passion.  We rocked through Rule 1 and learned the scoreboard before I had to deliver my sweet darlings to their enrichment class at 8:45.  At 9:15 my kids returned and we reviewed Rule 1 and practiced earning Smilies and Frownies on the Scoreboard.  (By the way, I was given all the special friends for third grade this year so my dynamic is a bit different than before.)  I had one sweet little dear who spent the next 2 hours asking when is lunch.  Every. Three. Minutes... Literally.  I could have set a clock by it.  Even though we had started on the rest of the rules and we were practicing rules 2 and 3 (not to mention 5!!!) the little dear just - kept - going.    

We made it through lunch...  Finally! so for the next 3 hours he asked for a blanket so he could take a nap because he was tired.  (You know I teach THIRD grade right?)  Sweet little guy just couldn't help it.  We played games - a version of the Name Game with Brainies.  We read stories and interviewed our new friends.  We heard all about German schools from a new friend who just recently moved to the United States (she is American, but her family has lived in Germany for longer than she has been alive).  It should have been a FUN day.  

This year is my seventh year to teach and the first time I've cried on the first day.  I was also asleep on my couch before 7:30 and we went out to eat that night.

I have two other special friends who require a lot of attention.  One is fine as long as he is hugging me.  However, sit him at a desk for even a second and he becomes Mr. Chatterbox with no one but himself... so my solution for the time being is to let him walk in step with me in a hug as often as necessary to help him adjust.  And I have a third friend who cannot articulate.  Anything.  And has difficulty listening to the whole direction.  Even a very short one like "Put this in the keep at home pocket in your binder."  That one was a hard one.

I really shouldn't complain because the other 17 kids are amazing.  They were ON IT with my WBT activities and seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves and learn a lot.  Which should have made me smile.  And on Friday when I thought about it, I did smile.  But Thursday... to say I was overwhelmed is an understatement.

Friday was better.  MUCH BETTER!  I'm not sure if maybe I was a sensory overload for them and they weren't ready... or they are just adjusting more slowly... or if I worked so hard that I was already a little tired.  But Friday was so much better!  I made a colored pictorial schedule for my time-oriented friend and made him my class chair-taker-downer (still working on that title) in the mornings, but only if he goes home on green or better on the clip chart.  Those two things seemed to help.  Plus, the positive peer pressure and rule rehearsal seemed to make a big difference as well.  But, I completely forgot about the scoreboard all day!  I felt dumb when I realized it was blank.  Buhhh-lank I tell you.  Craziness.

When I got my afternoon class for the first time, it went amazingly well in comparison. (We are departmentalized, so I teach a different class in the afternoon for more reading and writing.)  Except that I have one child, who is Hispanic, that refuses to speak out loud.  Not because he doesn't know it in English though.  He will whisper to another kid, or even whisper to me... but doesn't want to do the activity aloud or even with a partner.  I am struggling here.  I've had kids who were reluctant to speak, but I've always managed to win them over quickly.  I'm a little stumped with this kid.  Several kids would respond "He doesn't talk much." to which I responded that it was an unacceptable answer.  I even gave him plenty of warnings that I was coming to him, would call on someone else and come back to him, sandwiched him in between other kids kinda near the end of the group during the name game.... everything I could think of.  I need a prayer because my personal goal is to have him talking out loud to the class by Christmas.

So now it's 9:14 and I'm 35 minutes closer to Monday morning.  I have everything planned and ready: Shark Week!  I'm using texts about sharks to teach my classroom routines and procedures.  My goals this week include:

• Utilize the scoreboard MUCH more often (like stop forgetting about it)
• Begin Universal Homework
• Introduce more Brainies - because, and, in addition.
• Practice, practice, practice the rules
• Super.  Improvers.

How is the beginning of your year going?  What are your goals?  Leave a comment and let me know!