School and the City

Recently I posted this photo to my Instagram : It's a close up of my data wall that I'm trying for the first time this year, and many of my followers wanted to know more, so here you go! My administration is really pushing for data meetings, data-driven instruction, and data tracking by students and teachers. (I'm sure your is, too.) Although I know data is extremely important, it can be a lot to manage. The data poster that I'm trying this year was simple to make, and will hopefully be beneficial to both me and my kiddos. I got this idea from my team leader. I take no credit for her brilliance! First, I printed reports (STAR scores) that ranked my students based on state standards. STAR provides like a million types of reports, but standards are the easiest to organize. There are 9 big math standards for 2nd grade, and then we chose the 9 ELA standards that we spend the most time on throughout the year. (This is because 23 standards is too much to chart,...

Work smarter, not harder. That's the goal this year. I have to admit, job charts are just too much for me. I used to have a chart where each student had a clothespin with his/her name on it. Every two weeks I had to rotate the clothespins to new places. Sounds simple right? Well, some jobs needed 1 person while others needed 3. Bathroom monitors required one boy and one girl. Some jobs were only for trustworthy and responsible students, while others were for efficient students that wouldn't forget. I would spend at least 15 minutes every other week trying to reassign jobs fairly. It was just TOO MUCH. I didn't want to deal with it on top of everything else a teacher has to deal with. This summer I knew I needed a solution to my problem. I did some research, where I found the idea of collaborative or team jobs in the classroom. I liked the idea of students working together and collaboratively towards a goal. It would mean that all jobs would get done every...