Hold My Chalk

You may not remember those commercials from the 80s.  Some of you are probably not old enough to remember them.  So as a refresher, here is one of them. The same ideas apply in the classroom.  When it comes to classroom management, the longer you keep your cool the better.  Just like a great white shark is able smell blood in water from three miles away, students can sense when a teacher has lost control or doesn't care. So how do you keep this from occurring? Be prepared.  This doesn't just mean writing down lesson plans and making copies.  It also doesn't mean get out the script for the lesson and have it handy.  You do want to have your materials ready ahead of time, not the morning of the lesson.  What if something happens and you are unable to get everything ready that morning?  You are running late, the copier breaks down, etc.  Another aspect of being prepared involves planning for your transitions.  Know how you are going t...

This is a duplicate from a post I shared with my staff this week.  With some of the humorous (or not so humorous) videos included, I thought it worth cross posting. In case you have yet to realize it, Spring Break is over. What does that mean for us? Several things, the  greatest of which is that the end of the school year is just around the corner.  Some people upon hearing that, immediately think we are in the downhill slide to the end of the year.  That is far from the case, in reality it is more of an uphill climb to the end of the year. Just as in mountain climbing, the last leg of the climb is often the most challenging.  It is challenging because by this point, your energy is spent, your supplies are running low, the air is thinning and the people you are leading on the climb are ready to quit and go home for the summer. What are some of the challenges facing us on this last leg of the hike up the mountain? Testing...as we approach the testing window we h...

Each week brings a different set of circumstances to work through, and this week was no different.  One of my goals each week is to spend as much time as possible in classrooms observing and taking care of the instructional leader aspect of my job.  Some weeks that just doesn't seem to happen as planned, and this was one of those weeks. Instead of working with teachers, I spent much of my time this week working one on one with students.  Discipline consumed the week.  This week also included truancy court and a music program, each of which consumed half a day. In this week leading up to spring break, my hope is to have a much more fruitful week.  My goals for this week are: To visit each classroom at least three times this week. Provide at least one personalized idea for each teacher this week. Complete at least one formal observation each day. One thing I also intend to do, as always, make sure every decision is what is best for kids.  

I have been struggling with this for a while, and I am sure several others have been as well.  In a little over a month, 3rd grade students all across the state will take the Oklahoma Core Curriculum Test in Reading.  This single test will consume a minimum of three hours and for some students can take up to six hours just for this single section of the state mandated testing. This is the test that will determine if the 3rd grader will be allowed to move on to the 4th grade or not.  Despite countless studies that indicate otherwise, our legislature had determined that retaining students is the best solution for students that are struggling to read.  I could go on for hours about how frustrating and asinine this is, but what I want to focus on is the test itself and the value it holds as a reading diagnostic. As has been stated before, the OCCT Reading is not a test designed to determine the reading level of a student.  It is a test designed to see if students ha...