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Use final 5/10/15 minutes of class for journal entry each day/week

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The Importance of Student Journals and How to Respond Efficiently

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Educator and blogger Todd Finley on why student journals are an important tool for measuring comprehension. And he shares his favorite reflective writing formats and describe a labor-saving method of teacher response.

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Set a learning goal with teacher each week/month/unit

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Have a means of holding students accountable for their progress in the digital content (ie: digital badges, tracking wall, etc.)

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So it's been a crazy first week of school! I had great intentions of posting my classroom photos last week but...you know, stuff happened! It seems like at the beginning of the year a teacher's job is never done (who am I kidding, all year long that's true!). As much as a love my new batch of little ones I find myself longing for the reading and writing workshops of last year where everyone knew what to do and where to go. I always forget just how long it takes to be running like a well-oiled machine! I'm kind of wishing we could just skip ahead to October but I'm forcing myself to love these few days when random declarations of "Kindergarten is fun!" or "I Love School!" are common! These are precious times...

On to the main topic of this post- my new room. As I mentioned in a previous post I was gone for most of the summer and then when I came back I took care of my ten-month nephew for two weeks. So I had about a week to get my classroom together before preplanning started. This wouldn't have been a problem if I hadn't decided to change around EVERYTHING! Kind of silly on my part because I really loved my old classroom set up but I just got the rearranging bug and I had to follow through. Plus I had five more students on my roster than previous years so a little rearranging was necessary! I will say I tried to be super strategic about all my choices so that things that didn't work well in previous years were addressed and hopefully fixed. So here's the final product, what do you think?

This our math focus wall. The white signs are the problem solving strategies from KindergartenWorks (her guided reading pack is awesome!). The green pocket chart is for our essential questions and our math vocab cards. The clipboard holds our class data pages (I use the pack from lakeshore). The colored circles are burner covers from the Dollar store which makes them magnetic (I'm using them for grouping my kids into guided math groups- easy to change weekly based on our pre-tests!). The small numbered boards to the left are for our math stations (these are white boards from the dollar store). I attached velcro to the right of each number where I'll put smaller colored circles to indicate which group is going to each center. I'll write math station specifics (i.e. computers, addition yahtzee, numeral practice) on the whiteboard part. Oh, there's a hundreds chart too!

Trying out the FACE acronym this year instead of CAFE. I'm going to surround our menu with the faces of my little kindergarten readers. I'll try to remember to post a picture of the completed project!

The front of my classroom, math station materials under the FACE board and math station board. My SMART board is down there too!

The rest of the front of my room and whole group space with our Reading Tree, Spin and Play Phonics Games, and our Language Arts focus board (its the blue board on the right side of this picture).

Part of our classroom library, green books=fiction, yellow= favorite authors. I moved my word wall to this wall this year. I used pocket charts from Target's Dollar Spot. It makes putting up words SO easy (definitely a plus!). The blue bins on top of the cubbies are our book bins.

Here's a view from the door. To fit all the kiddos I have this year I had to switch my smaller rectangle tables to the really long ones- they fit 8 kids! I also still have two circle tables that seat four. I like how our whole group area is really sectioned off. It makes distractions coming from the hallway a lot less noticeable.

This is our fence area that serves as word work storage, listening center space, and backpack hooks. It's a cozy little space that the kiddos love! We only take the cushions out when we're using this space, otherwise we store them on the shelf above the hooks.

Another look at our word work bins. The blue bins are our cubbies. We keep our math "toolkits" and calendar books in here.

Further back view from the front of the door. I LOVE my new guided reading table. Totally got inspiration from Deanna Jump (Love her classroom). The black stools are great because you can lift off the tops and store LOTS of stuff inside. I have lots of teacher stuff hidden behind this space.

Our Fancy Words board and computer station. Lots of other good stuff hidden under these computer tables. Seriously if you do anything skirt your tables! It triples your storage space!

A little corner near the computer station, a good place to read and our clip chart. Love this thing!!

Hope you enjoyed my classroom tour! I'm loving this space so far. We've made a few changes since the kiddos have come back but most things are working out great! Looking forward to really making this house a "home" with my new little kindergarten family!

Happy Decorating!
Jessie Roberts

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So it's been a crazy first week of school! I had great intentions of posting my classroom photos last week but...you know, stuff happened! It seems like at the beginning of the year a teacher's job is never done (who am I kidding, all year long that's true!).

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Have a means of holding students accountable for their progress in the digital content (ie: digital badges, tracking wall, etc.)

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Here is a sample of our ever changing Data Wall. The kids add a sticker every time they get a 100% on their spelling tests. As you can see from the sticker chart, we went from less that 50% of the kids achieving a 100% to almost 100% once we started keeping track of the data! The other charts consist of Excel graphs made up of various pieces of classroom data. The post-it notes on the graphs are the students "thinking" in regards to the data. This wall became a great motivational tool for my fifth graders!

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Here is a sample of our ever changing Data Wall. The kids add a sticker every time they get a 100% on their spelling tests. As you can see from the sticker chart, we went from less that 50% of the kids achieving a 100% to almost 100% once we started keeping track of the data!

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Have a means of holding students accountable for their progress in the digital content (ie: digital badges, tracking wall, etc.)

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Have a means of holding students accountable for their progress in the digital content (ie: digital badges, tracking wall, etc.)

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Do you use data walls in your classroom to help your students meet classroom and individual goals? Does your district require you to do goal setting with your students? Data walls can be a great resource to motivate students if they are used the right way. And, there's definitely a right way.

I recently read two blog posts about data walls that got me thinking about how I help students monitor their progress and see improvements, both academically and behaviorally.

If you have a data wall in your classroom, you must read these two posts (post one (no longer available), post two).

As you probably know, I do a lot of work around goal setting, specifically setting SMART goals and helping students monitor their progress. This is good stuff people. Goal setting helps students see their progress and focus on their learning. As a teacher, it helps me see where a student needs assistance and where I can focus my attention.

Let me make this very clear: NEVER SHAME A CHILD. Though the use of goal setting, NEVER make a child feel like they aren't measuring up. That is not the purpose of goal setting.

If a child is not reaching his goals, think about the goals that are being set. They're probably too high for the student. Reset the goals to something more appropriate and within the student's zone of proximal development, or ZPD.

A good rule of thumb is a 10% increase, whatever that looks like for the skill you're working on. You'll need to adjust that for some students, depending on their need and your standards. Be continually adjusting the goals to meet the needs of your students.

If you use a data wall in your classroom a few recommendations that get to the heart of goal setting with elementary students.

Set whole group SMART Goals

DO NOT put student names or numbers on rubrics. Don't identify which students are at which level. One, students probably already know where they are at, and if they don't, that should be done during individual conferencing. Two, identify who is losing creates an unhealthy learning environment. You NEVER want to tell a student in front of the class that she is not making it. This doesn't motivate them to do better.

Use amounts of students, not specific students

For instance, I created a chart for Kindergarteners when setting a goal with letter sounds that included three levels. We focused on the number of students who knew a certain amount of sounds and those who were close and those who had far to go. We set a SMART goal that X number of students would know their sounds, which is a sum of those who already know their sounds and those who were close.

Here are a few examples from my 1/2 combo class a couple years ago. In the first example, my groups of students were working toward reaching a certain benchmark. At the time, our district was still measuring reading rate. Everyone worked toward the goal, but we counted our success based on the "we did it" and "almost there" groups. We all celebrated when those two groups met the goal (which they did every time because the groups were specific enough to the students who could do it).

This is a very blurry photo (sorry!), but each strip has the numbers 1-24 on it, which is the number of students in my classroom, and the addition strategy underneath it. As students mastered a specific addition strategy, I colored in one more student space on the strip. No names and no numbers are attached to it, but it shows us working toward ALL students reaching the goal of learning that strategy.

If you only have 1-2 students in the lowest rubric area, fudge you numbers. Again, you don't want to single students out. It's okay to tell students where they should be at a point in the year, but don't single out those who aren't there yet. Most of the time, students know if they aren't making the grade. Putting it on a wall is not new information.

Here is another example for a math assessment. We created the rubric together, based on our grade level's rubric. I put the student paper's pinned to the wall facing back, so students couldn't see the names; however, we could see the number of papers.
This was a pre-assessment, so we could see what we needed to do to improve. Again, it displays a level of anonymity. I didn't leave these up on the wall, by the way. It was used as a teaching lesson about rubrics and what we needed to learn.

Create a Super Improvers Wall

A Super Improver's Wall is a great resource to showcase student improvements. It is wholly focused on improvements. Each student is working on his or her own goal and making improvements on becoming a better and better student.

This is a little harder to monitor, but this way, all students are moving forward at the same rate because all students have goals that are within their ZPD. Nothing is too hard for a student and they're all making improvements and becoming a better learner. You can read more about a Super Improver's Wall in this blog post.

Focus the class goals on non-academic goals

Behavior, organization, participation, or something else that doesn't exclude students based on their academic ability make great goals. Almost anything can be a goal, as long as it is specific and measurable.

Here are a few SMART goals my students set for behavior. Although these are individual goals, they emphasize the ability to set non-academic goals. This is especially helpful for those kiddos who have a hard time learning and making progress academically.

Each month, our school has a different character trait theme, like responsibility, citizenship, fairness, etc.. We will often use that trait as a whole class goal, brainstorming things we can do that illustrate that trait.

Don't make it a competition or a race

Set up the wall so that all students are winners. There is no one ahead of the other. Competitions have a lasting negative effect on how students see themselves, either positive or negative. We don't want students' self-worth to be based on external factors, but help them develop a positive self-worth and community within the classroom.
Here's another example from my 1/2 combo and those students reading at a first grade reading level.

This chart was after our January assessment cycle. I showed students where they had been in the September, where the same student was in January and the goal for June. Notice that not all students had the same goal. Some were to get to G and some to L, depending on where they started. I also showed students how many levels they had improved in the months they had been in school (the June goal was based on a similar amount of improvement).

Encourage collaboration and teamwork

Make it a class goal for ALL students to meet the goal. Even if one or two can't for whatever reason, fudge the data and reward everyone for trying their best. Have those who can, help those who can't and give the lower students credit for the collaborative effort. Whatever you do, encourage a sense of teamwork and an idea that you're all in this together. It's not me against you to win a prize. Show students that everyone needs to succeed.
Are you required to have a data wall in your classroom? How do you do it? Do you help your students set goals? I'd love to hear about how it goes in your classroom.

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Do you use data walls in your classroom to help your students meet classroom and individual goals? Does your district require you to do goal setting with your students? Data walls can be a great resource to motivate students if they are used the right way. And, there's definitely a right way.

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Work with students to develop portfolios of work and reflect on the progress of their work over time

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Work with students to develop portfolios of work and reflect on the progress of their work over time

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I still have every single project I ever completed in preschool. My dad collected them and kept each one in a grocery bag that he tucked away in the back of his closet. Looking through his collection now, there's nothing incredibly prodigious about the work that I created as a four-year-old boy. I see doodles, collages, coloring pages and awkward attempts at writing my own name. Nevertheless, the story that it tells is special to me.

This is the effect of good portfolios. They craft a narrative of learning, growth and achievement over time. Though mine was created by my perceptive father, often the best portfolios are those put together by students themselves. And as our focus in the classroom continues to move toward performance-based assessment, the following four web tools will help you and your students to compose narratives as memorable of their learning as my paper bag portfolio did of mine.

Kidblog

Kidblog is unique among the web tools featured here because it is built by teachers for teachers. Their website explains that their mission is "to empower teachers to embrace the benefits of the coming digital revolution in education." And as students continue to become creators rather than simply consumers, Kidblog provides teachers with everything they need to help students create their digital portfolios safely. It gives teachers administrative control over student blogs and accounts. Though Kidblog is private by default, teachers can choose to make posts public or password-protected so that parents can view their students' blogs, too. But whether or not they access their child's blog, Kidblog gives mom and dad peace of mind as it is fully COPPA compliant and does not require any personal information from students.

Google Sites

If your school is fueled by Google Apps for Education, then using Google Sites to create student portfolios, or "Googlios," makes perfect sense. With Sites, students can create media-rich websites to display their work throughout the school year. By starting with a template and a site structure in place, students are able to integrate their work with other Google apps to create a comprehensive story of what they have learned. This obviously means that such apps as Slides, Blogger and YouTube integrate seamlessly. And as long as your students and you have Google Apps for Education accounts, you, as the teacher, have administrative control over who sees student sites and how they are used.

Evernote

For classrooms with BYOD or 1:1 initiatives in place, Evernote can serve as a viable option for creating student portfolios. For those unfamiliar with the app, think of Evernote as the Swiss Army knife of organization. In other words, it does just about everything. As opposed to a blog or website, Evernote allows students to write, take photos, record audio, upload content and more with the ability to tag items, create notebooks for organization and share content socially. Something else that makes Evernote so versatile is that it can sync across multiple computers and mobile devices. While students may start cataloguing content into their Evernote portfolio with an iPad at school, they can continue working on their entry from a laptop at home and vice versa. Additionally, Evernote offers a variety of apps, including Skitch for annotations, that all work great together. However, unlike other options, Evernote doesn't give teachers any way to moderate its use by students. Then again, unlike the alternatives, Evernote isn't publicly viewable, either.

Three Ring

A mobile app with a desktop version, Three Ring is worthy of consideration as well. As with Evernote, students can create and upload content from their own devices and tag, search and share their portfolios. However, what Three Ring offers that Evernote doesn't is teacher-created class accounts. In other words, teachers initiate the use of Three Ring in the classroom by creating classrooms within the teacher account and adding students to each class. Students can then access their teacher-monitored account with a username and password provided. Whether from an iOS or Android device or from a desktop or laptop computer, content can be added by the teacher or student and commented on by both. Three Ring even allows parents to view their students' accounts once linked by the teacher.

Regardless of the platform you choose, empowering and authenticating your students' learning with digital portfolios is a decision that you won't regret. Through providing them with web-based space to collect their own work, you will be helping them practice digital citizenship while simultaneously helping them learn important technology skills. But perhaps more importantly, like my dad did for me over 20 years ago, by connecting your students with their own digital portfolios, you will be allowing them to compose a narrative that will not only inform your own assessment of student growth and achievement, but will leave a legacy of learning and who they have become years after leaving your classroom.

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4 Free Web Tools for Student Portfolios | Edutopia

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I still have every single project I ever completed in preschool. My dad collected them and kept each one in a grocery bag that he tucked away in the back of his closet. Looking through his collection now, there's nothing incredibly prodigious about the work that I created as a four-year-old boy.

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Allow students to work with other students to receive peer feedback example

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Education Week - Inspired Instruction: Videos From the Teaching Channel

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" Using Tech Tools for Formative Assessment (Video) | Main | A Classroom Strategy: The Work of Play (Video) "

Marion Ivey, a kindergarten teacher at the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow School in Oak Park, Ill., models a growth mindset as she teaches her students to give and use peer feedback to help them set personal goals in the classroom.
More on this topic:

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" Using Tech Tools for Formative Assessment (Video) | Main | A Classroom Strategy: The Work of Play (Video) " Marion Ivey, a kindergarten teacher at the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow School in Oak Park, Ill., models a growth mindset as she teaches her students to give and use peer feedback to help them set personal goals in the classroom.

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Allow students to work with other students to receive peer feedback example

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Writing Peer Review (Peer Critique) TOP 10 Mistakes

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Allow students to work with other students to receive peer feedback example

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Peer review refers to the many ways in which students can share their creative work with peers for constructive feedback and then use this feedback to revise and improve their work. For the writing process, revision is as important as drafting, but students often feel they cannot let go of their original words.

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Allow students to work with other students to receive peer feedback example

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Some strategies are particularly suited to younger students, where often the names that teachers have for these strategies provide a 'shorthand' way of communicating to students that they wish them to provide peer feedback.

For example:

In addition, teachers of all levels can also use the following strategies:

For younger students, it is easier and more effective to encourage oral rather than written feedback.

Two stars and a wish

Students identify two positive aspects of the work of a peer and then express a wish about what the peer might do next time in order to improve another aspect of the work. 'I want to give you a star for the start of your story and a star for the way you described the house. I wish that you will tell us more about Billy.'

Teachers model this strategy several times, using samples of student work, before asking the students to use the strategy in pairs on their own. They check the process and ask pairs who have implemented the strategy successfully to demonstrate it to the whole group.

Plus, minus and what's next?

Students comment on what was done well in relation to the success criteria, and also on what could be done better. This strategy may be better used after the students have become adept at using Two stars and a wish. This strategy can also be used as part of self-assessment, where students use 'What's next?' to set a personal learning target.

Warm and cool feedback

When students comment on the positive aspects of a peer's work, they are said to be giving warm feedback, and when they identify areas that need improvement, they are providing cool feedback. They provide hints on 'how to raise the temperature' when they give advice about how their peer could improve their work.

Traffic lights

Students green-light (using a green highlighter on the margin of the work) the work of their peer to indicate where the success criteria have been achieved, or amber-light where improvement is needed.

This strategy is best used on a work-in-progress, although it could also be used, with coloured sticky notes, to provide feedback on a final piece of work. The suggestions for improvement would then relate to the next occasion on which the students undertook work which required similar skills - writing or number skills, for example.

Using models or exemplars

Teachers demonstrate for students how they can match the work of a peer to an exemplar which most closely resembles its qualities. For example, for young students exemplars of handwriting which reflect a range of qualities (letters on/off line, no spaces/spaces between words, straight/crooked letters, mixture of upper- and lower-case letters etc.) can be displayed in the classroom and students asked to match the handwriting of the peer with the appropriate exemplar.

Students explain to the peer why they have selected this particular exemplar and, using other exemplars, explain what the peer needs to do in order to improve his/her handwriting.

Exemplars of various products (written and 3-D) can be displayed in the classroom for use both by individuals to self-assess and also by peers to provide feedback. If there is concern that providing a model will lead to copying or stifle imagination and creativity, the teacher might consider providing exemplars of parts of the product - for example, an effective introduction or an interesting use of media in an artwork.

When employing exemplars as a self-assessment strategy, students use the exemplars to help them articulate what changes they need to make to their own work in order to achieve the success criteria.

De Bono's Thinking hats

Because the Thinking hats encourage thinking from different perspectives, they can be used to focus students' feedback to their peers. Again, teachers model the use of the Thinking hats and train students in their use before asking them to use the hats as one of the peer feedback strategies.

The Yellow hat, for instance, encourages students to think about the 'good points' and to ask themselves questions such as 'Why will this work?' The Black hat urges caution and evaluation: 'Is this true? What are the weaknesses?' while the Green hat encourages creative thinking: 'Is there another way of doing this?' 'What would be better?' 'How else can this be done?'

Giving different students different hats can make peer feedback more focused and manageable for younger students. That way, each individual doesn't have to consider every aspect of the peer feedback but can concentrate on just one.

Using a rubric

For larger assessment activities conducted over a period of time, the rubric, which has been negotiated with students at the beginning of the task, can be used as the basis for paired discussions about progress. If students are very clear about the qualities of work implied by the various levels of performance described on a rubric, they can provide useful feedback to their peers.

If rubrics are to be (a) designed so they do capture the difference between levels of performance and (b) used effectively by students not only as a peer feedback tool but also as a self-assessment tool, then students need explicit teaching so they understand the differences between, for example, work which lists benefits as opposed to work which describes those benefits or explains them or evaluates them. An understanding of the language used by the rubric is essential.

Click here to access an example of a rubric for a letter-writing task for a Year 8 Geography class.

Helping students to decide how this rubric would be applied to a model letter would be a valuable learning activity.

The teacher:

1. shows students a model of a letter written in response to this task

2. goes through the language of the rubric with the students, unpacking any terms that they do not understand

3. involves students in the process of using the rubric to provide feedback on the model letter.

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Some strategies are particularly suited to younger students, where often the names that teachers have for these strategies provide a 'shorthand' way of communicating to students that they wish them to provide peer feedback. For example: In addition, teachers of all levels can also use the following strategies: For younger students, it is easier and more effective to encourage oral rather than written feedback.