New year, New school, New Goals!

I will admit that I started this blog post about a month ago.  Thank goodness that I outlined my goals so when I revisited it, I could just write.   Past me was looking out for future me!  Thanks!

Here are my goals and their current status.   I know that there are currently 7 goals but I am feeling good about this year.

1. Remind - I previously have used Class Dojo to track not academic behaviors, communicate with parents and have students reflect on their behavior.  Since I made the move to high school this year, I didn't know where it was going to fit in but I know I needed something to communicate with parents in addition to phone calls and e-mails.  Remind has rocked my world already.  Once a parent or student signs up for your class (using a code that they text to a 6-digit number) they instantly have access to 'reminds' that you send out.  Also, there is a chat feature.  This all occurs through a text message on their phone!  It is so easy it almost too good to be true.  I want to get ALL students signed up.  This week we have open house and I am going to be hounding my freshman parents like crazy!  Not only do I want ALL to sign up, I want to challenge myself to use Remind on a daily bases. 
2. Visible Learning-  This will be my biggest challenge for the year.  I learned about this during new teacher week and I have a lot more to learn!  Here is the gist of it.  There are different instructional techniques that have an effect size.  The idea is that the larger the effect size, the greater the learning is.  Also with VL, it is about communicating Learning Targets, Success Criteria and Why we learning something to all students.  This is a lot harder than one thinks!  More to come on this topic soon... I hope. 

   

   50 Effect Sizes of Visible Learning

3. Twitter/Google-Coming from a district that was ALL tech to a district that is just starting I find myself wanting to help streamline things!  First, the district has a twister but the high school does not!  I want to tweet at my high school!  I am still getting my feet wet and don't want to disrupt things much right off the bat.  This also goes for google.  Google docs... as much as I hate the phrase, 'create a google doc for that' it is actually pretty functional.  This past Friday, I witnessed the same birthday list be sent out 4 times through email.  That was because on the 1st draft, people were left off.  The 2nd, corrections were made.  The 3rd, mistakes were found and the 4th was the FINAL I guess.   I so wanted to create the google doc and share it but I know that people aren't ready for that yet.  So my goal for Google is to educate my department on how to use google docs to streamline things.  I have started a little bit but once again, don't want to rock the boat as they say.  
   
4. Co-teaching- Work towards sharing the classroom, letting go, letting someone else in, finding a balance, working together.  Lots of work to do but hopefully some district provided PD will help me with this. It's for the better of the students.  
   
5. Workload-  I don't want to be in the 'new teacher' funk again.  This means, I have a life and I need to find a balance between my work and my home life.  I need to set time aside to work and have fun the other times.  I have found myself saying, "I am going to have to do work on that Sunday so I can't _______"   That's not fun.  
   
6. Blogging-  I want to blog at least once a week.  Ideally I want to do it every other day but I know that will never happen so I will write at least once a week.  Once I get in that habit, I will up my goal.  

What are your goals for the year?   Do you have something that you have started and will do whatever it takes to follow through with it?  I would love to hear from you.

Have a great day!

Minute to Win It: Winter Celebration!

The day before winter break always gets me.  It appears tradition in the school is to rotate from each room and do something different in each.  Year 1, made snowflakes for Sandy Hook.  Year 2, made cards for family/friends/teachers.  Year 3, totally stepped it up a notch!

Searching around my favorite Pinterest, I found inspiration!  Minute to Win It was conceived!  I narrowed it down to 6 games we would play
1. Do you want to Build a Snowman!
2. Stack 'em Up
3. M&M Movers
4. Holiday Card Scoot
5. Marshmallow Toss
6. Face the Cookie

So I set up the classroom with a spotlight table where each team had their place then in an arc, there were two tables where the teams could sit together. When students walked into the room, I simply assigned them a team and that is where they sat!  It was actually easier than I had expected.

First game, building a snowman.  The object was to stack 3 mini marshmallows, the team that had the most still standing at the end of 1 minute wins!  Biggest problem, the snowmen would fall over.  It took a special technique to get them to stick!

Second game, cup stacking.  The previous week, we had done an unplugged coding activity with cups so I had plenty of cups that are usable for drinking. The students were given a stack of cups and they had to make a perfect pyramid and back to the stack using only 1 hand.  If any cups fell over, they had to start again. So fun!

Third game, M&M movers.  The object of the game, pick up M&M's using only a straw and put them in a cup (had a different size left over cup from our week of coding) This may have been my favorite game because it was fun to watch! The most in the cup at the end of 1 minute was 35 I believe.  WOW!

Fourth game, getting the holiday card to hand off the end.  This was way harder then I had expected!  They were given a stack of 4 cards and they had to blow through a straw and get the card to hand off the edge without it falling off the table.  I had collected holiday cards from home and other teachers for this.  When I was done with the cards, I gave them to NJHS to repurpose. 

Fifth game, marshmallow toss.  The object was for 1 player to toss a marshmallow through a hoop (aka a piece of foil shaped like a circle) into a bucket.  This required a little bit of skill and a whole lot of communication between the partners.  It was pretty interesting to see who really excelled at this, the one you least expected!

Last but not least, the facing the cookie!  The object was to start with a cookie on their forehead and shimmy it down to their mouth.  What a hoot!    I ended up having the entire team up to the table and do a relay out of it.  There was one student who did it in no more than 4 seconds... AMAZING!

Hope this has inspired you to step up your winter party!  Middle schoolers loved it!

Positive Attitudes Win!

I had the pleasure this fall to coach a 7th and 8th grade girls Intramural basketball team.  I always find girls sports more enjoyable because middle school girls just love to talk and so do I!

So it was our second game of the season and we were playing a team that had some not so nice girls that had some bad attitudes.  Along with bad attitudes, they were pretty physical too.  This really got to my team and all they could focus on was the negatives of the game.  After we lost that game 10-0, we vowed the next time we played them, we would have a better attitude.

Believe it or not, the next time we faced them we won.  Not because we had more talent but because we didn't let their actions get to us.   After we won that game, we did not lose a single game after that and went on to be intramural champs!  I am so proud of my 'Green Lanterns'