Exhusted Teachers

One of my friends posted this article on her Facebook last week.

http://theeducatorsroom.com/2012/09/the-exhaustion-of-the-american-teacher/

I think that every educator can relate to some portion of this article. I think we can all agree that we are all tired AND it is just the start of the school year.  We are constantly taking on new endeavors given by our state while trying to become proficient in teaching the new mandates and at the same time attempting to explain the WHY to parents. ( Why does my 10year old need to know this? or Why is my 6 year old taking so many tests??" etc) After reading this article I am still exhausted but I do feel better knowing that this is a nation wide issue. 

So, as parent/teacher conferences approach just stick to the facts, leave your exhaustion behind and talk about what you know for sure ... you know your students...you know their strengths and weaknesses. Do not let political turmoil, education reform or personal feelings take over your conference. We may not have solutions for the way teachers are being portrayed but you can avoid being a scapegoat if you keep conversations to the point, factual and focused on the individual student.

Unlike the article ...my ending quote would say something like

 "Get Up,  Fix what you can in your circle of influence, Continue to Make a Difference because Exhaustion is a sign of Doing" 

Back at it !

Let me first wish everyone a successful school year ! I hope all of you had a restful summer and had a chance to explore the CCSS (Common Core State Standards) at some point this summer. Maybe your district offered training, perhaps you attended a Work Wives Workshop, or just researched on your own. We would LOVE to continue the Common Core conversation this year and by now we are all back at it ... 

EXCEPT for me (Michele...one of the 3 Work Wives). I am pleased to announce that I welcomed my baby girl on August 22. Lena Rose was a health 8lbs and has been an absolute joyous addition to our family. Some bragging pictures are a must :o)

Leaving the hospital...all smiles and a bit of nerves...we ask ourselves - Can we handle 2 under 2??

Miles is a proud big brother!

 

Happy In Polka Dots

 To update you all on the rest of our Work Wives... Diane is expecting her second baby in November and Kelly has completed her Administration degree (Wahooo). I could not be happier for both of my Work Wives. We have also experienced some excitement and change in our school. Our administration has been shifting and we welcome a new elementary principal to our building. Kelly has changed grade levels from 3rd to 1st. I will be going back to teach 2nd grade with open arms as I was able to loop with 11 of my 1st graders from last year. Diane will continue until her leave as a 2nd grade teacher. We are all experiencing larger class sizes too. We average about 23 students in our classes this year.  With all this change we also need to embrace SLOs (Student Learning Objectives),  teacher evaluations AND of course CCSS. Is that enough on everyone's plate??? We hope that this blog continues to be a place where we can talk about our frustrations, come up with solutions, ideas of implementation and celebrate all our successes.

If you are an educator trying out The Math GNOMe and Common Core 4 please let us know how it is working for you in the classroom. Let us know if and how you may have modified it to fit your classroom and teaching style. We are open to suggestions and comments, as we are very aware that this is a learning process for all of us.

We hope you will find this blog useful and will let your friends and fellow colleagues know about us - follow us here and on Twitter. We are also available to present for workshops - half day, full day or in depth 3 day on our Math GNOMe and Common Core 4.

You can also purchase our book, The Math GNOMe and Common Core Four: Creating the Math Common Core Classroom on Amazon.

Please check our Teachers Pay Teachers store periodically for lessons, freebees, and other useful teaching tools to compliment the CCSS in both Math and ELA. 

Picture taken from http://leading-learning.blogspot.com

TPT 2 Day SALE!

Announcing the Teachers Pay Teachers Back To School SALE! 

We are excited to participate in this HUGE event. 

20% OFF all our products on Teachers Pay Teachers. 

Enter Promo Code: BTS12  for an addition TPT discount 

2 Days ONLY - 8/12 & 8/13

 Visit our store :

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/The-Work-Wives

 Happy Shopping & Best Wishes for a successful school year! 

Workshops

July has brought us 2 wonderful workshop opportunities. Who knew other teachers would want to hear US speak??!! We are very humbled and excited that others want to hear about how we are handling the Common Core and what we have done to make it a smooth shift for ourselves and for our students.

So, last week we conducted a 3 day workshop for area teachers (about 90 teachers to be exact...LOL ) Needless to say we were a bit nervous as this was our first time presenting to educators outside of our own school. However, after a few minutes it was like talking to our friends. After all...we are all in the same boat. We quickly found that everyone had the same dreads, concerns, nerves, panic, and a hidden excitement as we did. The 3 days consisted of many discussions "teacher talk", we dove in to what the Common Cores purpose is and its major shifts, gave in depth explanations of the Math GNOMe & Common Core 4, and provided a lot of work-time to get plans and classroom materials ready to execute a Common Core Classroom.  At the end of day 3 the feedback was beyond kind. We had the most receptive, open-minded group of teachers. Thank you again to our BOCES and Letchworth Central School for hosting us AND to Letchworth, Perry, Mt. Morris, & Warsaw teachers for supporting our ideas. 

Tomorrow we will be doing a shorter more condensed version of the previous workshop. We look forward to guiding some wonderful discussions, sharing about the Math GNOMe & Common Core 4 and learning from other educators. 

Another Year Down

Wow, this sure has been a crazy year. We have really enjoyed developing the Math GNOMe and Common Core 4. As our own school year comes to an end (next week...wahooo) we are already planning lessons, creating templates, and tweaking how all this will look in our own rooms next year. This has been a wonderful learning process and has really allowed us to get in the Common Core mindset. The ELA plan has also come to take form. As we continue to create this summer we will be posting, tweeting and blogging about our ideas. We also have workshops that we will be conducted throughout our region! We will be blogging about those experiences as well.

On top of all this excitement we have to "blog brag" about our book... Our book which has been available on teacherspayteachers.com is now available on Amazon for print as well as Kindle version to download !

So, as our school year comes to an end and the summer begins we look forward to taking a bit of a breather and then really focusing on both our ELA and Math Common Core journey. 

What is one to say about June, the time of perfect young summer, the fulfillment of the promise of the earlier months, and with as yet no sign to remind one that its fresh young beauty will ever fade.  ~Gertrude Jekyll

New Videos!

Here are some of our newest videos! 

This first video is of a 1st grade GNOMe lesson. The lesson skills comes straight from the Common Core domain for Geometry. Students here are working on Partitioning Circles and Rectangles. Following this clip we have posted a quick video showing students checking in for Common Core 4 directly after the GNOMe mini lesson.  

* A special thank you to my student teacher for conducting the mini lesson and check in. 

This last video we have a panning of 2 classrooms while students are hard at work on Common Core 4. Notice that everyone is working on Math, talking about Math (if there is even any talking) and thinking about Math. Aahhh makes for a calm and focused teaching/learning environment. 

*These are 1st and 2nd grade students using Common Core 4 

What The Kids Are Saying...

Here are a few of our 1st , 2nd  and 3rd grade students talking about Common Core 4.

SALE 20% OFF Work Wives Products on TpT

Click on the banner below to visit our store and check out our goodies! 

Literacy SkiLLS for LIFE

As promised we have began to explore the ELA Common Core Standards and have created 1 page snapshots of the Common Core ELA Standards for grades PreK - 6. We call these snapshots our Literacy SkiLLS for LIFE. This phrase stands for the 6 domains represented in the CCSS. Speaking & Listening ; Language Standards ; Literature; Informational Text; Foundational Skills; Experience Writing. 
Our plan is to use these snapshot boards as you would for the Math GNOMe. We created them to be a tool for both teachers and students to use. This way we have a clear visual of what the learning/teaching expectations are for ELA. You can purchase the Literacy SkiLLS for LIFE snapshot boards at our TpT store (our 5th grade one is FREE!). 

Have no fear because we have also created independent practices that model after our Math Common Core 4. The ELA Common Core 4 activities we have in mind and will put in place with our students next year are...Read, Write, Spell, Respond. Stay tuned for more on our ELA plans. 

As always we are looking for feedback, ideas, and suggestions on all of our thoughts and products. Feel free to comment anytime! 

  With the Common Core in Mind  ~ The Work Wives

To Grade Or Not To Grade? That Is The Question

This post is inspired by a question we received at our TeachersPayTeachers store  http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/The-Work-Wives.
One of our newest buyers asked us ... “How do you grade during Common Core 4?”

NO GRADING is required for Common Core 4 activities. That is the BEST part :o) . Take a breath of relief now. LOL. Now, we for sure understand that not having your inbox full of papers to grade and checking to see if every student understands the center you have going on is a change in mindset. You have to remember that Common Core 4 is meant to give you more time one on one with students to work on specific skills rather than waiting for them to fill out a worksheet. The hardest part for us was letting go of a certain amount of control. We felt that without the paperwork we did not have the self validation that we did a good job teaching the specific skill to the class. However, with Common Core 4 the validation you get is amplified. You now have the time to reach all your students on an individual basis. You can focus on their mathematical level to pre-teach, reinforces concepts or meet with small skill groups.

Ok, so you may not be grading everyday but you are summatively assessing. Here is a thought...you will always need to assess your class based on the skill you have taught whole group and based on what your district requires you to do. What Common Core 4 allows you to do is that digging deeper with your students that the Common Core Standards asks us to do. What about having a “show me what you know folder” in their math box? Here you can store a GNOMe snapshot , and assessments for each skill. When the student is ready to show you what they know give the assessment and mark it down in their folder and in your grade book. Remember this is for the individual students.

Now, the next step would be finding appropriate assessments. This is where we are at a bit of a road block. Our district does not have assessments set for the core and are in the process of implementing a program or structure for administering formative assessments. In the mean time we wanted to find some assessments that we could use to directly assess the skills from the Common Core. I have come across some websites that have some wonderful assessment resources that I know I will be using right now as well as in the next school year.

These first 2 sites give examples of what is expected from the students for each domain and specific skill
http://www.illustrativemathematics.org/
http://schools.nyc.gov/Academics/CommonCoreLibrary/SeeStudentWork/default.htm

The following sites is what I have found so far to help with the development of assessments to use
coedpages.uncc.edu/abpolly/elemath/core-assessments/k-tasks.pdf
http://web.me.com/acaciatc/UACC/PARCC_Resources.html

As we discover more helpful tools we will post them for sure. Please feel free to comment if you have any helpful sites or tools to add !