My Professional Resolutions

January 3, 2010 | Posted in: Class Updates

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Greetings and felicitations!  I hope you had a wonderful school vacation week (more like week and a half) and that you got to relax and have some fun!  I think we’re all in denial of school resuming tomorrow, but it’s going to happen one way or another.

I like to take some time each winter vacation to look at where we are as a class and to make adjustments to how I run the class or how I teach certain concepts.  Sometimes I change classroom management techniques, and other times I refine my appoach to teaching various skills.  This year, I’ve given a lot of thought to reading and language arts instruction.  One of the big changes from third to fourth grade is a shift in focus from teacher led instruction to more student-led learning.  Of course, that doesn’t mean that I expect students to take out a book and teach themselves how to properly diagram a sentence while I nap in the corner (although with Charlie’s recent sleep habits, I must admit to liking that prospect!)  Rather, it means that students take more responsibility for their learning, whether that’s by choosing what skills THEY think they need to practice more, or working with a partner to solidify a concept, or practicing skills independently while I work with a group of students on a specific activity.  That’s an important transition from grade 3 to grade 4, and as someone who taught third grade last year, it’s a transition that I am working hard to continue to implement.

With all that in mind, my two big “Professional New Years Resolutions” are to implement Cross Curricular Learning Stations (CCLS) and to begin to use differentiated spelling programs.  I know, this is a bit of a cop-out because I discussed both of these goals at the very beginning of the year.  My transition from third to fourth grade came with a lot of new challenges, and my priority has been to properly address the major instructional tasks, such as reading comprehension, narrative writing, problem solving, higher order thinking, etc.  As a result, differentiated spelling and CCLS both went on the back burner.  For more information on both goals, click the link right below this message to continue reading!

This past week, I had a chance to examine, in detail, the work kids did earlier in the year to prepare for the differentiated spelling program.  The kids completed several pretests in which they had to spell several hundred words of varying difficulty.  Now, each student has a list of the words he or she was UNABLE to spell in the pretest.  We’ll call this their Personal List.  Put that thought in the back of your mind for a moment.  Moving on… Until now, I have given the week’s spelling words on Monday and a quiz on Friday.  But starting tomorrow, we will also have a pretest on Monday, right when I give out the words.  This pretest will NOT count for a grade.  Rather, it will tell each student (and me) which of the 20 main words he or she already knows, and which words he or she still needs to learn.  When a student does well on the WEEKLY pretest, he or she will be able to pick a few words from their Personal List.

Here is a draft of how I plan to manage differentiated spelling.  Please bear in mind that this is a work in progress!

• Students who get 15 or more words correct on their weekly pretest will be able to choose FIVE words from the week’s spelling list that they can already spell correctly.  These five words can be replaced with words from their Personal List.  (The reason for this limit is pretty simple – I don’t want kids to run out of words on their Personal Lists after two or three weeks.  When it happens, we’ll address it, of course.  I hope to lift that limit once we are able to build a larger list for each student.  I won’t initially invite students who incorrectly spell more than five words on the pretest to participate in the differentiated spelling for that week because I want them to focus all their attention on learning the words that they struggled with.)  We will correct pretests as a class so that each student gets immediate feedback.
• Students who are participating in differentiated spelling for the given week will cross out up to five words from their weekly spelling sheet (words that they WERE able to spell correctly on the pretest) and will write down the words they have chosen from their Personal Lists.  They may choose any of the highlighted words from that list.  These will be the 20 words that they will be responsible for on Friday’s spelling assessment (along with the usual five challenge words).
• On Friday, I will give the regular spelling assessment with the 20 regular words.  It will be up to each student to remember which words he or she is skipping (because he or she replaced them with words from their own Personal List). After I read the 20 main words and the five challenge words, students with personalized spelling words will be able to pair up with a partner.  One student will read the personalized words in sentences while the other student spells them on his or her spelling assessment.  Then they will switch.
• When grading the spelling lists, I will not curve or scale scores for students who are involved in differentiated spelling.  That’s because every student is working toward the same goal: to learn new spelling words.  Whether those words are from the weekly list or from his or her personal list doesn’t change the process.

Hopefully this has given you an idea of how I plan to manage differentiated spelling.  There is no doubt in my mind that we will hit bumps and hurtles, and we’ll work through them as a class.  I appreciate your flexibility as we work to get differentiated spelling up and running!  I want to make sure that this spelling program works for you, your student, and for me.  So if you have any questions or concerns that I may not have anticipated, please bring them to my attention so I can fine tune the program to meet everyone’s needs.

If you’re still reading, thank you!  Let me tell you a bit about my second resolution; implementing Cross Curricular Learning Stations.  CCLS are activity clusters that address a variety of curricular skills.  They mostly focus on reading.  (More information here.)  We have actually started the stations a little bit this year, beginning with the library station.  But there are more on the way.  Everyone who uses learning stations/centers says the same thing:  they’re tough and time consuming to set up, but once you have done that work, they’re pretty easy to keep up and running.  To date, I really haven’t had much of a chance to move forward with setting up the CCLSs, but I really do believe in their academic value.  So I’m committing to make this a priority and will focus on setting up a few initial CCLSs (to establish the routine with the kids) and will add more stations as time goes on.  Stay tuned for updates!