My students this year seem to be slightly more immature than in past years; also more innocent. I love Elijah's fascination with sharks, and the way Dakota swings his legs under the desk, and how eager they all are to please me. (I do not, however, love when they can't focus for the bathroom noises LeMorris is making in his armpit, or when I have to repeat the same directions - not exaggerating - seven times because they're never all listening at once.)
I recognized their lower collective maturity level immediately, but I did not know what this would mean for lesson planning and instruction. In past years, my students were able to follow a grammar lesson of direct instruction, and copy notes from either the board or my projector - nothing extensive or elaborate, just a T-chart with different homophones and their definitions on either side.
But not this year.
On Tuesday, when I taught the lesson, I never had them all at the same time. I understand kids this age need to move - and they were squirming - but in the past they've been able to handle one day of direct instruction (with discussion of course) when they needed it. In this case, they needed that basic low-level knowledge: they just needed to identify and define the homophones before we could go on.
Needless to say, I was dissatisfied with the lesson. Today I followed it with a lesson on homophones much more appropriate for this group and their needs. I created a two-column table in Microsoft Word with the homophones I had seen misspelled in their letters in rows. I left enough space for them to define/use the homophones in sentences. First, they worked alone to see how much they remembered. After a few minutes, I paired them and had them work through the rest together, and discuss the answers they already had to be sure they agreed.
When they were finished, they edited their letters together to see if they had any misspelled homophones in their writing.
They all did a fabulous job. Expectations were clear, and with the team-wide implementation of the CARE program, I had very few who took issue with with whom they had to work. A brief pep-talk about respect and the fact that they didn't have to be best friends with their partner, just able to figure out the answers helped the few who needed extra prompting. As students finished early, I had them read their individual reading books silently, and those who didn't finish editing the letter were assigned it for homework.
great post! just one question. can you go into a little more detail about the CARE program? i know youve mentioned it a few times, and i downloaded the PDF of it that you linked, but im still not 1005 clear on it.
ReplyDeletethanks!
I only know my experience with it this year, three weeks into school. I haven't been to the week-long C.A.R.E. training that was held over the summer, or thoroughly researched the program. Still, I can tell you what little I know.
ReplyDeleteC.A.R.E. stands for "Create A Respectful Environment" and is an initiative to improve school and classroom cultures, so that students feel safe and build relationships with their teachers and fellow classmates. CARE is first and foremost a philosophy that seeks to build community within the school. There are many ways in which it is implemented, but I am most familiar with its classroom implementation.
Each morning we get in a circle, or "C.P.R." - Circle of Power and Respect. CPR has four steps each morning: the greeting, the share, the activity and the news. These can be different each day, and I have a book that gives me options for each.
Today, for example, our greeting was to go around the circle and clap after each syllable of each student's name: "Hi - clap - Ms. - clap - Yost - clap" and so on. It's really good, because all the students learn all the other students' names. Then we moved on to share. Each student had to act out their favorite animal and we had to guess what it was. Many students "passed" because they weren't comfortable doing that, whcih is fine. That could have also been the activity, but instead we played a game called "Honey, I love you." Then I told the news for the day: two dollar dress-down day (my kids wear uniforms) on Friday for the cheerleaders, etc.
C.A.R.E. is much more than this, but I couldn't find anything online that thoroughly explains it. I'll post more about the program in the future.