Classroom Tour: Year 4

It's a new year, and our school is currently going through about 101 transitions all at once. We have switched to an A/B schedule with 4 90-minute classes each day that rotate throughout the week. We have started to implement career academies and small learning communities; we have completely changed up our curriculum in an effort to better deal with Common Core (complete with some pretty intense pacing), and we've started a freshmen academy, which comes with its own host of changes and transitions to navigate.

One of the switches we needed to make for our freshmen academy was to move all of the 9th grade teachers to the same location, which meant that I needed to pack up all my junk and make my new place habitable again. I was just starting to feel at home in my old one, too, but that's usually the way it works, isn't it? In truth, I was a bit emotional about my old classroom...it was my very first, and I had a bit of an attachment to it, but now that I'm settled, I feel like this new room has some potential as well :)

Pictures below!

I opted for book bins (actually dish washing bins from Wal-Mart) organized by genre this year. I love how it makes books a bit more accessible for browsing AND allows me to group books together in such a way that kids might come across some choices that they may not have considered before. 

This is my own take on the choice boards that I've seen floating around for elementary classrooms. I'll be honest...most of my kids aren't flocking to it looking for what they can work on if they're finished with their work, but I'm also using it as one of my sources for extra credit assignments throughout the year. That way, there's never any doubt as to what students can do to boost their grades.

How I deal with absences and make-up work...assignments and activities are written down on our class calendars, and handouts are left in the class folders to the right. 

I've tried a few seating arrangements over the past few years, and this one is definitely my favorite...I love how it creates a space that is conducive to whole class discussion but can easily be changed and rearranged to facilitate group and partner work. I'm moving around constantly, and this set-up makes it easy for me to get to everyone quickly without stumbling over book bags and falling on my face. 

Now the really sad thing is that my classroom is nowhere near this clean anymore. Oh well...evidence of lots of learning happening, right??

My Julius Caesar Gem

I get that this won't be exciting to most normal people, but I get just a little giddy at the sight of this little beauty. We are doing an extremely abbreviated version of J.C. as we wrap up the semester (much like last year's abridged Romeo and Juliet but with a little less chaos), and I wanted something to review and summarize some of the play's most significant aspects while also acknowledging where some of the elements of Shakespearean tragedy come into play (...play...get it? ok, pun over).

I like that it shows the relationship between each item, but don't expect it to go in a circle...notice that arrows are pointing different directions. It throws off my graphic-organizer-OCD just a little, but I'm ok with that for the time being. 

At any rate...

Behold, in all its splendor: 

Speaking of graphic-organizer-OCD, I'm noticing now that I only underlined the key terms in the "dramatic irony" box, which will drive me crazy and probably keep me from getting full night's sleep on this Monday Eve, it's a start nonetheless!

Want one? You can get it here :) 

Independent Reading Essentials--Updated!

**Updated 7/29/13**

A couple of forms that I've found helpful in providing some more structure to independent reading while giving students and opportunity to review important literary terms or expand knowledge of vocabulary. These have also been a useful tool in reviewing for our state End of Course exam, which focuses heavily on identifying and interpreting the use of literary devices.

Like what you see? I just recently added a bundle of Independent Reading forms and organizers to my Teachers Pay Teachers store. Included are the forms from above, a book recommendation form that I use to aid students in gathering info for book talks (and dress up our classroom walls!), and the interactive reading log forms that have been a lifesaver! 

Click here to purchase and enjoy! 

Research Overhaul

I'm in my third year of teaching, and everyone keeps telling me that after a couple of years, I'll have all of my systems and policies figured out, my instructional units planned, and my materials together, so I will eventually not have to work so ridiculously hard to make it through the week. And yet, that has not happened for several different reasons, one of which is that I just can't stand to do the same thing semester after semester. As much as I sometimes kick myself and [sometimes tearfully] bemoan my never-satisfied-and-always-looking-for-more-and-better spirit in my classroom, I usually come our on the other side, thankful for my constant need to shake things up.

This year, it's my research project. I hate, hate, HATE doing research with my kids. It is a seemingly pointless battle in which everyone loses. Our topics (usually student-selected in hopes of capturing just a little bit of interest) are usually too vague, too obscure, or completely non-existent. There's always that one kid who forgets to turn in his/her research topic, and then two days before the whole thing is due is complaining about how they don't know what to write their paper on. It's moments like that that reaffirm my hate of the whole process.

So this year I'm switching up not only my topics but also my process. As far as topics are concerned, I'm going to over the top, melodramatic blood and guts. After spending several weeks reading Holocaust literature and studying the historical context surround that time period, we're researching some of the world's "most evil people" and making an argument about who's worse: Villain X (chosen by students) or Hitler. In doing some of the research to compile this list, I've come to the realization that this may be a bit gruesome and morbid. But hey, I know my kids, and I know they have a much better chance of survival with a topic like this one, ironic as that may seem.

My research process is taking a bit of a turn as well. This year, we're working in collaborative groups to write the "full blown research paper" as all of my professional development leaders call it. My guess is that most of my co-workers wouldn't consider doing such a thing. Groups are tolerated for classwork and practice activities, maybe the occasional poster board or presentation, but collaborative writing is a bit trickier. How do you handle students merging their writing styles together to form something coherent? What do you do with the kids who refuse to hold up their end of the deal and leave their classmates in the lurch?

Those questions made me wonder if I was just a little bit insane for attempting this little experiment but my wonderfully wise sister pointed out that real-world writing is often done collaboratively. Just look at any professional journal article, and it will most likely have multiple authors and contributors. I maintain that this learning experience, however chaotic it may turn out to be, will be a relevant one. As for the other stuff, I'm convinced that kids will be far more likely to actually do their work if they have group members counting on them. Lord knows they tune me out, so my fussing doesn't really make a different. But when one of their peers starts confronting them about their laziness, it's a different story. I'll also include group contracts, role-sheets that describe each person's jobs, responsibilities, etc. and group member evaluations to make everything as fair and structured as possible, but honestly, I'm not that worried about it.

I'm excited and hope that this switch up yields lots of good research templates and organizers that will help scaffold this whole process and make the whole thing less of a headache!

"Ms. F...I'm going to come see you at lunch today, and I'm gonna need you to level with me. You're gonna have to be my guy friend. You got my back?" 

Oh, I just love giving teenagers dating advice during my lunch break. :) 

Mini-Poetry Analysis

This has worked well in providing some scaffolding for the kiddos when it comes to poetry analysis--an assignment walks students through the analysis of a poem of their choice. Granted, we're using the term "analysis" somewhat loosely. We are not ripping a poem to shreds and trying to piece if back together again. We're very slowly walking through the process of analyzing figurative language and evaluating the effect of poetic devices on a piece of text. Oh, and we throw in a little reader response in there at the end to round things out a bit :)

Please excuse my tacky screen shots. I STILL don't know how to convert a word document to a picture file that I can upload...

I do like how this assignment allows us to take our time walking through some Common Core standards (analyzing the effect of word choice in literature) while learning the process step-by-step. It's a start, at least.

Click HERE if you want to download the full assignment! 

So, it has been a little while. This school year has been particularly overwhelming, though I can't pinpoint exactly why. I have nearly half the number of students, more than twice the planning time, and I'm no longer going through the chaos of formal evaluation (the scary kind, anyway). Year three is supposed to be the year that I can take it easy and cruise just a little. That's not to say that I do the same things year after year in the name of convenience, but it certainly shouldn't be as much of a battle as it has been in years past. At any rate...

While this is ridiculously late in the year for such photos, I'm posting some pics of what my classroom looked like before 65 chaotic teenagers made their home there 5 days a week. Perhaps it will inspire me to clean off my desk at some point this week or regain even a shred of the organization that I had established at the beginning of the school year.

Clean and shiny...way back before kids entered through the doors. There's quite a few more desks crammed in here now, too. 

Ignore the horrible colors here...I was working with limited resources. The goal is for students to check the calendar on the bulletin board to see what happened while they were out. Extra copies of handouts and assignments go in their designated folders so I'm not constantly being asked to print assignment sheets again when kids misplace them. I'm still working on how to maintain consistency with this system, though. They have a hard time understanding that this is the first place they should look, which is ridiculously frustrating, but it's still better than anything else I've come up with yet. 

I can only hope that my desk will one day be this clean again. 

Labeled binder clips to organize papers that need to be graded and recorded. 

Bins to keep handouts for each day organized so I'm not searching all over for that stack of papers that I need to distribute (which is particularly annoying when I have a class of new students and they're staring at me in awkward silence while I tear my room upside down looking for the syllabus I was supposed to give them...