The Boardroom

This morning I received my first issue of The Boardroom, which is the monthly electronic newsletter published by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.  According to the congratulatory letter that I received from the CEO of the National Board when I certified,  an automatic subscription would be available in my in-box after I became Board certified.

 

I read the issue cover to cover but was particularly interested in several sections. There was a piece that reported the results of the first ever National Board Certified Teachers (NBCT) census.  I participated in the census (it felt like 1000 questions!) the week after I became certified and the results are now being published. I am pretty humbled by the company I keep. Here are some of the results:

A second section that I know I am going to enjoy is "What we're reading." This month's recommendation is Professional Capital by Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullan.  I have read some of Michael Fullan's books for a graduate class I had taken on school leadership so I am familiar with his work.  Professional Capital makes a case for investing in the the capability of teacher leaders such as NBCTs to advance the entire teaching profession.   I received a generous gift certificate to a book store from one of my students for Christmas, and this will be the book I buy!

Leisurely reading the issue was a great way to spend Saturday morning, and I'm looking forward to January's edition in my mailbox!

Holiday Celebration and Author's Tea

Every year just before the holidays I invite families in to our classroom for a Holiday Celebration and Author's Tea.  My students have been writing informational books.  The Tea provides a very specific audience for their writing which causes them to become motivated to write.  Families send in snacks and drinks, the children share their books, and parents provide feedback.  These are pictures of the children practicing reading their books before the tea.  You will notice how they have learned to become excellent listeners and speakers.

Here are some of the pictures from the actual Author's Tea and Celebration:

Parents then provided feedback to their children with this "Two Stars and a Wish" form.  Parents were able to write two great things their child had done in their writing.  Then they wrote a wish - something that their child could work on in their writing.  

Thank you to everyone for your support in making this event happen for your children!

National Board Certification

 Earlier today the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) released their scores for 2013/2014 candidates.  Similar to the National Boards that doctors and lawyers voluntarily take, the NBPTS has set teaching standards.  The standards define the specific knowledge and expertise that National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs) in different subject areas and developmental levels use to frame their practice. To be board certified, teachers provide evidence of their ability to meet or exceed these standards via both a digital portfolio and constructed responses on a computerized test. Only 3% of all teachers in the country are Nationally Board certified. 

National Board Standards define the specific knowledge and expertise that teachers in different subject areas and developmental levels use to frame their practice. - See more at: http://www.nbpts.org/national-board-standards#sthash.LrtZ9GjC.dpuf

National Board Standards define the specific knowledge and expertise that teachers in different subject areas and developmental levels use to frame their practice. - See more at: http://www.nbpts.org/national-board-standards#sthash.LrtZ9GjC.dpuf

The NBPTS sent emails to all candidates informing us that scores would be released by 12:00 noon CST on November 15.  I woke up this morning at 3:23 a.m. and decided to check if the scores were released.  When I opened my computerized profile the words, "Congratulations!  You are a National Board Certified Teacher!" appeared.  Next, I had to enter the name I wanted to appear on my certificate, and then give releases to the media, and finally I was able to access my actual scores.

Scores are on a 0-4.25 scale for each of the ten submissions.  The digital portfolio entries are weighted higher than the constructed responses.  The certificate area that I chose was Literacy: Reading-Language Arts Early through Middle Childhood.  The certificate covered the ages of three through twelve.  My biggest challenge in achieving National Board Certification was proving that I could teach children between the ages of eight and twelve since I have never worked in a school with a grade level higher than second grade, and my undergraduate degree is in early childhood education.  Therefore, I have no practical or theoretical experience with the ages of eight through twelve (except for personal experience with my own three children).  
 
For me, the process of becoming a National Board Certified Teacher required about 400 to 600 extra hours beyond teaching in one school year and costs $2500.  Those hours are high; however, I passed on my first attempt so the long hours were worth it to me. In Maine, teachers are fortunate because the State annually reimburses the first 20 NBCT candidates who apply for funding.  I was fortunate to receive one of those grants.  In addition, the state of Maine provides a stipend of  $3000 per year for the life of the ten year certification. This stipend is also calculated into a teacher's retirement benefits if he or she is still certified at the time of retirement. 

I decided to become a National Board Certified Teacher for a lot of reasons but mostly because there is significant research that provides evidence that students who are taught by NBCTs obtain higher levels of achievement.  National Board certified teachers are recognized as meeting the nation's highest standards. Although there are many reasons to become a teacher, the primary reason that I became a teacher is to actually teach young children the academics that they need to be successful. The NBPTS is all about proving how the decisions teachers make positively impact student achievement, so becoming a National Board Certified Teacher was a perfect philosophical match for me.

 

Thank you to the families of my students for your congratulatory cards, emails, and best wishes!

Technology in the Classroom

Every Wednesday morning from 9:40 until 10:25 I instruct my students using the computers in the computer lab at my school.  My overarching goal for my students is for them to feel comfortable and competent when using a computer.  To achieve this goal, I am teaching them several different computer programs including Raz Kids, Microsoft Word, and eventually Kidspiration.

For the past several weeks we have been exploring Microsoft Word.  They have learned to

• type upper and lower case letters
• use the space bar
• make their letters larger or smaller
• click on the blue self correct word to replace their invented spelling with the actual spelling of a word
• use the back space key

For this lesson, they learned how to find an illustration that matched their writing using Google Images.  They had to describe the picture they were looking for and I typed their key words in the search bar.  They then chose the illustration that best matched their writing and I moved it to their page.

This was a meaningful lesson because it helped answer the guiding question, "How do animals prepare for winter?"  I duplicated their pages and created a class book to provide repeated practice of reading their own writing.  The class book is readily available in our classroom library.  Students also have another copy of their work in their personal reading binders.

Here are some samples of their work:

Halloween Surprise Party!

This morning I surprised my students with a pumpkin pancake Halloween Party.  I had help from a pumpkin flipper.

This is the pumpkin flipper.

Here they are. . .and they were delicious!

They were hungry!

Spiderman stopped by. 

So did Pete the Cat!

And a younger sibling who was very helpful.

Cruella Deville was here!

Elsa from Frozen loves to read in the library. 

They worked hard to put this puzzle together. 

A wonderful parent volunteer and her beautiful daughters. 

Heidi and a Ladybug!

This is a huge fan of Bad Kitty!

Using Stellaluna to Support Reading Comprehension Strategies: Making Connections, Determining Author's Message, Retelling, Compare and Contrast, and Fact or Opinion

I remember the first time I heard Stellaluna by Janell Cannon.  It was 1999 and I was student teaching in a preschool at the lab school connected to the college from which I earned my undergraduate degree in early childhood education.  Stellaluna currently rests at a well-deserved Number 71 on the School Library Journal's list of the 100 top picture books of all time.

Stellaluna is a fruit bat (aka "flying fox") who is separated from her mother after an owl attacks them while they are in search of fruit one night.  Stellaluna survives and befriends three baby birds; she eats insects like them and learns to sleep right side up during the night.  Unbeknownst to Stellaluna, her mother survives the owl attack.  The two types of illustrations in Stellaluna simultaneously depict the story of Stellaluna and her mother.  The pencil drawn miniature illustrations on the top of the left page of the book intricately detail Stellaluna's mom's relentless search for Stellaluna after the owl attack.  The full blown, colored, scientifically correct illustrations on the right depict the story of Stellaluna's journey after the owl attacked. 

Stellaluna fell headfirst into the nest of Pip, Flitter, and Flap, three baby birds. 

Over the past two weeks, I have used Stellaluna in a big book format as a mentor text to teach different comprehension strategies.  During the second reading of the book, students made connections to events in the book.  For example, when Stellaluna cries, "Where are you?" after the owl attacks them, students remembered a time when they needed their mothers.  They wrote their connections on sticky notes and attached the notes to the places in the book where they made their personal connections.  Some were able to make text to text connections from when Stellaluna ate a grasshopper to when the main character ate peas in Night of the Veggie Monster (a mentor text we are using for our narrative unit of study in writer's workshop). 

We watched this 13 minute video of Thomas, an orphaned fruit bat in Australia.  In Australia, fruit bats are often killed while they hang on electrical wires.  Although Thomas's mom was electricuted, he survived and was raised by a trained volunteer.  The video does an outstanding job of changing the viewer's opinion that baby bats are scary and evil to baby bats are sweet and cuddly, just like puppies.  After viewing this, I used a document camera and projector while my students made a list of facts about fruit bats and a list of opinions about fruit bats.  I then typed the list, added an illustration of a fruit bat, and placed copies of the list in students' reading binders.  Re-readings of the list they generated helped to develop their reading fluency, cemented their understanding of the difference between opinion and fact, and increased their understanding of bat facts.  

We listened to and viewed Pam Reed, from the Screen Actor's Guild Foundation reading Stellaluna. Hearing a story read aloud by different people increased my students' awareness of the choices readers make when reading aloud - such as tone of voice, tempo, character voices, and prosody.  

We also made story boards to help us retell the story of Stellaluna. This is the third story board we have made this year; past story boards have been Papa, Please Get the Moon For Me by Eric Carle, and Frederick by Leo Lionni.  I planned the story board activities so that the degree of difficulty in retelling each of the three stories increased.  Story retelling - the process by which a child listens to or reads a story and then summarize, or "retells," the story in his or her own words - is a technique that ties into these learning experiences and is an effective way to improve children's reading comprehension. Studies on story recall have found that extended use of the technique of story retelling leads to large improvements in story comprehension, making inferences, understanding story structure, and language development.  Here are some pictures of students in my class retelling Stellaluna: 

This is the Stellaluna story board.  There are 3 settings and 7 characters.

For a second shared reading text, I chose Helpful Bats from the extensive library in Reading A-Z.  Helpful Bats is available in a projectible format; I can project it onto my whiteboard.  The projectible books at Reading A-Z are interactive in real time, which means that my students and I can use a highlighter to highlight words, manipulate text, add illustrations, and a myriad of other manipulations.  At the end of the Stellaluna study, each student will receive a colored, hard copy of Helpful Bats.  Helpful Bats is a persuasive book. I will refer back to it as a mentor text when we study the persuasive writing genre in writer's workshop. All students will understand that Lisa Harkraker, the author of Helpful Bats, gave multiple reasons why bats are helpful in her book.   
 
The next comprehension skill that I am going to teach is Compare and Contrast. Using Kidspiration (a software program which I will write more about in another post), together we are going to create a Venn diagram comparing and contrasting bats and birds.  (Later, students will independently use Kidspiration to create their own Venn diagrams.) I anticipate that the Venn Diagram will look something like this after it is finished:

Because of the deep immersion I have provided into the story of Stellaluna, my students understand that Janell Cannon's message is to value the sameness and differences in each of us.  At the conclusion of the book, the three birds and Stellaluna wonder how they can be so much alike, and yet so different, and still be friends.  To identify the author's message, students must infer, or "read between the lines."  Determining the author's message is a tricky skill to learn in first grade because developmentally, six year olds are concrete, literal learners.  Repeated readings help support their budding abilities. 

I chose to teach Stellaluna at this time in the school year for lots of reasons.  First, because it's almost Halloween, and learning about bats fits right into my students' wheelhouses.  Second, our next unit of study in writing is non-fiction chapter books. Front loading all of my students with extensive schema on bats will make it easy for me to model bats as the topic of a class created non-fiction chapter book.  My students will be active participants in creating a class bat book because schematically they will have a deep understanding of bats.  In addition,  Stellaluna is a sophisticated story with one main character, six supporting characters, and three settings.  Its plot is complicated and definitely challenges their retell skills.

Finally, Stellaluna is one of my favorite books of all time.   My enjoyment of the book will rub off on them, and another generation of Stellaluna-lovers will be born. 

What does Frederick do to prepare for winter?

The title of this post is a play on the essential question of the unit of study that we are undertaking in science.  The question is actually, "What do animals do to prepare for winter?"  As part of our study, we read,  Frederick,  by Leo Lionni.  Originally published in 1967,  Frederick is the story of a field mouse who chooses to collect sunshine, colors, and words instead of the usual corn and wheat that other members of his family collect to prepare for winter.  When Frederick's mice family is freezing and without food during the winter, they appeal to Frederick's "supplies" of sunshine, colors, and words to help them make it through the winter.  Frederick delivers in the end - all three of his supplies lift the spirits of his family.

I like this book because in the end, the wayward character, Frederick, does not get chastised for not doing what the other members of his family do to prepare for winter.  Instead, Frederick's family is impressed with his supplies.  Thematically, Leo Lionni's book honors those of us whose heart beats to a different drummer.

This book connected to our science unit by teaching where and what mice do to prepare for winter, and how they survive during the winter.  Its multilevels are a perfect match for our science unit.

One of the activities that we did was to retell the story in pictures and words.  Each child was given a sentence that describes an event from the book.  They illustrated the event and we arranged their illustrations on this bulletin board:

This is the completed bulletin board inside the classroom.

This is one student's illustration of the wayward Frederick

And then winter came. . .

Frederick said his words in the form of a beautiful poem at the end of the story.