Kindergarten Word Map

I can't get my word map to come up as a gadget. If this works I am leaving it here.

Blogging in Kindergarten...

Classroom blogging has become the hot thing in middle elementary, middle school and high schools. They are fairly easy to use and are great because they are easily accessible by students in their homes and other places outside of school. The McGraw-Hill Series article, Teaching Today: Teaching Tips, Lesson Plans and More listed four basic functions of blogging in the classroom:

1. Classroom Management - Blogs are easy to create and maintain by teachers and students.  This is a great way for teachers to post information, assignments, newsletters and have an active question and answer board for parents and students.

2. Collaboration -Students can work on pieces of writing and get instant feedback from their teacher and/or other students. It can also be used as a mentoring program where older grade levels work with younger students to help them develop better writing skills.

3. Discussions -A class blog allows all members of the class to have the opportunity to share their thoughts and opinions on a topic. It allows students to have time to think and reflect on what they want to say. 

4. Student Portfolios - Individual student blogs are an organized way to protect student work. The information is stored by date so progress is easily seen just by scrolling through the different entries. Students and teachers can conference and students are more motivated to produce good work because they know others can view their entries.

Remembering back to my schooling, I was one of the students who lacked confidence in every aspect of my education. I can remember being called on and just putting my head down and saying "I don't know" even when I knew the answers. I was too afraid of messing up or being wrong. Honestly I still HATE speaking in front of others (except my 5 year olds.)  Blogging is a great way to get all students actively involved in their education...reading, writing, and all other subject areas. Besides the fact that people are not staring at them, they have a chance to look over what they are going to publish - instead of saying something and wishing they could take it back. It is also COOL to type on the computer. Kids that aren't very interested in school will most likely think that blogging is super cool!

One of the best things about blogging is the how much it allows students the opportunity to write, revise, write, get feedback, and write some more. It just seems so much more appealing to students than writing a piece and getting it back with several red marks on it, only to have to rewrite it again.

Awesome Website

I wanted to share a website that a colleague shared with me. It is not related to RtI directly but has great ideas for all different types of classroom management issues. I LOVE IT! I have having kind of a rough year and their are wonderful ideas on it. The site is http://www.smartclassroommanagement.com/. I read the book Dream Class by Michael Linsin, the creator of this website. It was a great book!

Kindergarten Update

Our kindergarten intervention groups have been making a lot of progress. The progress monitoring we have been doing is showing great gains in letter identification. Beginning with 24 students who recognized less than 15 letters, we now only have two students in this grouping, one of them being an ESL student from Saudi Arabia that just moved to our school two weeks ago and speaks ZERO English.

We have changed our groups to the following:

Most Intensive Group: 24 students

*4 classroom teachers working with 4-5 students each on identifying all 26 letters and sounds
*1 classroom aide working with 2 struggling students on a few letters at a time..DRILL!
*1 classroom aide working on rhyming with 6 students

Next Group - Still Intensive
*New Reading Interventionist working with 6 students using McGraw-Hill Triumphs reading program.

Next Group - Pretty Intensive Still (though getting soooo much better)
*1 Title 1 Teacher and 1 aide working with 10 students on beginning, middle and ending sounds.

Next Group - Strategic
*1 Title 1 teacher and 2 aides working with 16 students on sounding out cvc words.

Next Group - Enrichment
*1 Title 1 teacher and 1 aide working with 18 students blending words and beginning sentence writing.

Next Group - Enrichment
*1 Title 1 teacher and 1 aide working with 27 (too many) students on writing skills.

Interventionist Update

Things are going really great with our new Reading Interventionist!  She has been working with our students for about two weeks now and is doing a wonderful job.  She is working with some of the students who are currently in our Reading Recovery program, but may not discontinue when the program is complete.  We are hoping that she will give them a little bit more practice and possibly some new skills to use in order to make it over the hump to discontinue.  She is also working with some students after school each night on reading and math skills.  The students seem to enjoy this small group time with her and are already showing some improvement in their skills.

International Reading Association

This sight has lots of wonderful information for teachers.  It is a great resource for professional development opportunities as well as grant opportunities.  Teachers can find lesson plans and information on RtI.  We have found some great reading lists here, too!

Reading Rockets Website

Reading Rockets is a great website for anyone wanting to help students become better readers and thinkers.  It contains a lot of information for parents, teachers, principals, and even librarians.   A list of books and authors allows you to find new and interesting books to keep students interested in reading.  You can also find a section that focuses on struggling readers.  Check out this website if you haven't already and see what great information is available to you!

Reading Interventionist Joins Our Groups

We received exciting news about a week ago that we would be getting some more help during our intervention times!  Yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!  We have had a Reading Interventionist for the last four years, but were told that we did not receive the grant this year that funds this position.  Something has obviously changed since we now have the funds to have an interventionist this year who will be working with grades K-2.  Our intervention teacher began working with students last week.  She works with the primary grades during their intervention time and also works with 1st grade students after school for tutoring.  She is able to work with one literacy group of 8 1st grade students after school on Mondays and Wednesdays & another literacy group after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  She also works with one math group of 8 1st grade students after school on Fridays.  These groups have been going for a week and the students attending seem to enjoy this.  We are very excited to have these opportunities for our students to work on the skills they struggle with in a small more focused group. 

Random Venting

I just wanted to post a paragraph from a book we are reading for our class - The RtI Edition of our No Quick Fix book...
    "It costs more to educate some children than others. Leven (1989) sugggests that, generally, we can expect to spend about 50 percent more to educate the at-risk child. Obviously, the costs vary from child to child depending on the nature of the child's difficulties and the intensity and duration of the needed intervention."

Why then, Mr. Governor and Mr. Superintendent, is our funding being cut when we don't make AYP? Obviously we don't need less money...we need more.

1st Grade Group Updates

Well, we are two weeks into our second set of intervention groups.  The groups changed slightly; which was expected.  We were given another aide to help with the highest group of students who work in the computer lab and in literature circles.  We have also been told that we may possibly have yet another aide to assist us, which would be great!  Most of the groups are working on the same type of skills, but at a little more difficult of a level.  The activities used have changed some, too.  Some of the groups are using rhyming and fluency passages, retelling using 4-square organizers, on-level text reading, answering questions based on the text reading, and looking all the way through words when reading.  The assessments given are comprehension, word fluency and dictation sentences.  Things seem to be going well and the students really are enjoying intervention time.  There are some rough patches, but this is expected since this is our first year having an intervention time.  We are learning what works and what doesn't and trying hard to get everything done in the short amount of time we have each week to prepare.