Teaching with Intention Chapter 3 Book Study

I am once again joining in on the book study, Teaching With Intentions put together by Kindergarten Smorgasboard.  You can find Chapter 1 here and Chapter 2 here if you missed them.  This week host's are Sassy, Savvy, Simple Teaching, Surfing Through Second, and The Learning Chambers.

This chapter talked about Classroom Environment.  One of the key points that Debbie Miller made was that classrooms can always be changed throughout the school year.  I am constantly changing up my classroom in little ways throughout the year.  I generally keep the set up the same as far as furniture from year to year.  This past year I did rearrange some shelfs to make more space for the blocks center and to provide a bigger shelf for students to store their materials on.  I also created signs for centers that hung on ribbon.  This helped me to organize materials more precisely and also helped students know where to go for specific centers.

I like her idea of "clearing the decks" and getting rid of things that we do not need.  I moved schools 3 years ago and still feel that I am throwing random stuff away each year that I discover the previous teacher left.  I am also going through my own teaching materials and getting rid of items that I have not used in a while.  This past year I shifted to using centers more than anything else.  I plan on creating a system to organize them all this summer.  My ideal organization system would have the centers categorized by standards so I can easily meet standards that are presented within our units.

I love the way Debbie Miller closes this chapter "Classroom environments are organic-they grow as we do.  The best of them reflect the hearts and souls of those who inhabit them.  They're never really finished.  They're never really "done".  How could they be, when every day students and teachers learn something new?"  I love this idea of having the environment grow throughout the year to accompany my own needs as well as the students needs.

Check out what other teacher's thought about this chapter by clicking here.  Have a great Wednesday!

Teaching With Intention Chapter 2 Book Study

I am once again linking up with other teachers in this book study put together by Greg, from Kindergarten Smorgasbord.  This week's chapters are hosted by The Primary Gal, Mrs. Dailey's Classroom and Flying into First.  Check out their blogs to link up and/or see posts that others have linked up.

This chapter made me seriously think about what my vision and beliefs on teaching truly are as well as how they look in the classroom.  The hosts have come up with some great questions that will help to further your thinking and reflection of this chapter.  

I feel that I have always had the same general vision for my classroom: that all children will feel they are in a safe nonjudgmental environment where they can learn at their own pace.  I love the idea of this vision and often reflect on how I can maintain this environment in my classroom on a daily basis.  During this past school year, I created new resources that I eventually began selling on TPT.  While creating these resources, I spent a lot of time gearing them towards where all my students were, which meant differentiation when possible.  My students really thrived this year due to the fact that lessons were truly differentiated for them and were often hands on and engaging.  While I still have ways to improve in this vision I feel like I am on the right track.  

I have to admit, I really struggled with this question. Even though my school year just ended last week, it is difficult for me to reflect what my ideal classroom beliefs would be.  I love how Debbie Miller stated "Whether you're a beginning teacher or a veteran teacher, the time is right to trust yourself and begin the process of defining your beliefs and aligning your practices." While I truly do have beliefs that are shown in my classroom, I need to refine their definition and guidelines.  I appreciate how she suggests collaborating with other teachers by trying new ideas as well as doing research when clearly defining your beliefs.  I hope to reflect on these more while reading other teachers posts about this chapter and to deepen my own beliefs and visions to reflect more personally in my classroom.  

I am looking forward to developing my own personal set of visions and beliefs in my classroom in the next school year.  

Teaching with Intention Book Study Chapter One

I am so excited to be joining Greg at Kindergarten Smorgasboard in his book study this summer! This is the first book study I have participated in as far as writing a blogpost for each chapter. I followed along with bloggers last summer on a Daily 5 Book Study where I learned a lot from reading different teacher's blogs. I am excited to participate in this book study and learn along with other educators.

I loved the flow of chapter 1 in this book. It was an easy, quick read and immediately had me imagining what my dream classroom environment looks like. In 2 days, I will be finished with this school year. I always find myself reflecting at the end of the school year how my year went and what I could have done differently. This chapter fits into my reflections because it allowed me to dig deeper by asking me to visualize what ideal classroom looks, sounds, and feels like. Just today, while I was putting away my leveled readers, I realized that I would like to make a book hospital where students can place books that are broken and need to be fixed. I started visualizing this "book hospital" in my head as I finished placing all the books in the proper bin. Debbie Miller talked about how "Two children carefully tape the torn page of a well loved book, another matter of factly fills the stapler." in the third grade classroom that she was observing in. I would LOVE for my students to be able to fix a book with no help from me. I don't know if this is ideal for the beginning of the school year expectations in a Kindergarten classroom, so for now I will stick with my "book hospital" and model for students how to fix a book.

In order not to make this post extremely long. I will stick to the questions that Mrs. Plemon's provided to guide the discussion.

As I stated above, I think the end of a school year always makes teachers reflect and think of ideas to make their classroom better. When I first began this chapter and was asked to envision what my ideal classroom looks, sounds, and feels I immediately thought of a classroom where the students were engaged in learning in small groups, individually and in pairs. Student work hung throughout the room on clothes lines. In my visualization students were engaged in Daily 5 centers. I love teaching reading so I think I always imagine my students engaged in reading activities. My ideal classroom would have a HUGE library filled with lots of fiction and nonfiction books. As well as a decent sized couch, chair and pillows for students to sit or lay on while reading.

In my ideal classroom the students would of course know the routine and be able to function with minimal help from me. I would love for students to lead discussions and learning with each other. It thrills me when I overhear students sharing knowledge with each other like they are experts. I would be working with a small group of students or individually with a student teaching them key concepts. Whole group instruction would of course take place but it would take up minimal time and would be straight to the point teaching towards a specific goal or standard.

My principal encouraged us to implement Reading using Daily 5 centers. Last summer I followed a Daily 5 Book Study where I read along with the chapters each week. Following this book study allowed me to gain a deeper understanding of key components of Daily 5 and brainstorm ideas of how I wanted it to look in my classroom. I feel like I did a good job implementing Word Work Centers, Writing and Listening to Reading Centers. I created engaging and interactive centers for Word Work where students worked individually or in pairs in order to master standards. My students were great writers this year. I feel that this was because we practiced writing daily and students were given lots of example of what good writing looks like through morning messages, modeling of journal entries and sharing their own writing with each other. We used the document camera for students to display their writing and had whole group discussions about what was good in their writing and how it could be improved. Students loved sharing their writing and seeing it displayed on the SmartBoard. Due to the fact that my classroom was a Kindergarten classroom some adaptations had to be made during the Listen to Reading time of Daily 5. Our district subscribed to TumbleBooks, so my students were able to listen to a fluent reader read stories to them where the words were be highlighted. I feel that this helped my students become better readers because they were able to follow along on the computer screen making a one to one connection with the words being read.

I always feel like there is such a long list of things that I could work on in order to better my classroom. Following along with the ideas I listed above. I need to work on obtaining more fiction and nonfiction books in order to build my library. I have found that my boys are always drawn to nonfiction books rather than fiction books. I also need to create a more welcoming library sitting area. I currently have rocking chairs which the students love to read in but in order to make it more comfy feeling I need more pillows form them to sit and lay on.

Thank you for following along and reading my first ever blog post. I hope you gained some insight reading this post and that you will check back in next week for my chapter 2 reflections.