Reflective Practice

Facebook

I deleted myself from Facebook. But now I've been sucked back in, like a moth to a flame. What is it about this site? It's like high school politics all over again, so unhealthy yet so impossible to avoid. You check it and you think, "Why am I checking this? Everybody just writes garbage." But then you keep checking to see if someone MIGHT NOT write garbage, but of course, they all wrote garbage so you are disappointed. And then, someone actually writes something kind of important or profound and almost always, nobody comments on it. Instead they comment on things like, "How do I know if my acorn squash is rotten?" Seriously. You need to post that on Facebook? What did you do before Facebook? Eat it? Let it sit there? Let it get more rotten?

Maybe the Crazy Days Could Be the Best Days

Saturday was a crazy day.  It was the type of day that I normally hate because I would just rather sit at home and relax.  But, for some reason this Saturday's craziness seemed fitting, appropriate.  My son had two birthday parties to attend.  My daughter played in two different divisions in an all-day racquetball tournament and she sang in a Christmas concert.  There was just enough time between each event to get to the next event.  We left the house at 8 AM and did not return until 7:30 PM.  This would normally be cause for an instant panic account on my part, but for once I relaxed and just decided to celebrate the day and the fact that we were lucky enough to be able to have that kind of day.

The first celebration was the first birthday party.  I brought my son to one of his favorite places on earth: a little place where you can decorate your own pottery and have tea, hot chocolate, etc.  I brought him thinking, well, either I will stay and watch him paint or maybe I will go to the book store next door.  Whatever happens, happens.  It ended up that my friend was also there dropping her twins off.  We decided to go to the book store and then have coffee together.  I bought four books for my daughter's Christmas present, and my friend and I sat down and had lunch AND coffee for a whole hour in a sweet little restaurant on the third floor above the bookstore that looks out over the bay.  The bay was bright aquamarine, all covered with whitecaps.  And for once, I finally took the opportunity, while in the situation, to say to myself, this is really nice.  This just happened.  I am here, with a friend, relaxing.  My son is doing something he loves and so is my daughter.  It wasn't planned, it just happened.

As the day progressed, I did this at each event.  When my daughter won all of her racquetball matches but one, I just told her how awesome she did and I was just there.  I wasn't melting down because we only had ten minutes to get to the next thing.  I was just there.  Telling her she did great.  At the concert, I just soaked in the white twinkly lights, the beautiful girls as they stood on stage in their white blouses and their black pants.  They had on sparkly Christmas necklaces.  I teach or have taught most of the girls who were up there on that stage and I was able to think about each of them, but especially my daughter, as they sang.  I was able to reflect on what amazing people they were all turning out to be, having known most of them since they were little sweet girls who would wear pink dresses with flounces.  Now their day to day life consists of sweatshirts, Aeropostale t-shirts, and jeans, so it's hard to notice how beautiful and grown-up and wonderful they've become.  But as they stood there beneath those lights, their beautiful voices wrapping us all up like Christmas presents I thought, yes, this is a good day.

Finished...Next...

I finished my Aran Saddle Shoulder Cardigan. I am very proud of it and all the work I had to do to make it, but especially all the math it took. Next I want to make the Estes Vest, but my own version.  I don't like the horseshoe cable and am not sure the hexagon either, but do like the finished look when it is used.  I'll be using Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Bulky.

For My Writer's Group

I have a love/hate relationship with exercise. When my alarm clock rings at 5:00 AM, I can't think of enough words to describe the depth of my hatred. Hatred for the alarm. Hatred for morning. Hatred for the extra helping of rice and gravy I ate the night before, necessitating the 5:00 alarm. As I struggle to swim up out of sleep, I repeatedly slap the snooze bar, knowing that with each desperate swing of my arm, I am coming closer and closer to the type of exercise I hate most: the type where I won't get a full workout in because I won't have enough time. This will prompt me to ask the constant question: was this workout really worth getting up for? If I only do 20 minutes of cardio, would I have felt better to just stay in bed?

The main reason why I struggle with exercise, I think, is because of the mixed messages I got about exercise as a kid. On the one hand, there was my dad: super-fit, super-tough, made-of-steel man. He had an exercise wheel that he would use each night. I remember watching him do fifty or more reps with that wheel and he would go all the way down until he was grazing the floor with his entire chest, then rise back up. This summer I tried to use the exercise wheel at the gym and either a) flopped directly to the floor like a huge, flailing halibut or b) could wheel myself no more than a few inches out for fear of falling like the already mentioned halibut. He did 100 push-ups every night. Real push-ups, using the kitchen chairs and my brother and I as ballast. He was like a rock. He repeatedly broke his ribs by slamming into the hatchcombing and jumped right back up, cussing and screaming, but he kept working nevertheless. He never even went to the doctor to get them checked. No time. Work to be done. Luckily, he was in such good physical shape, he could somehow keep working, and I mean physically labor. You can't hurt steel, apparently.

And then there was my mom. How many fad diets did she start and quit? How many times did she start some crazy kind of exercise plan and never follow through with it? How many times did she yo-yo back and forth between a healthy weight and one that was likely to take years off her life?

With these two role models, it's no wonder I struggle.

Questions for my writer's group:

1. I would like to zoom in on just one important idea in this memoir, kind of like Sandra Cisneros did in “Eleven.” I feel like I am talking about too many things in this piece. There is the part about my dad. Then there's the part about my mom. Then there's the thing about me exercising. What part is most compelling to you as a reader?

2. Should I just drop the idea of exercise altogether and just make this piece about my mom or about my dad?

3. I feel like I need help with my conclusion. How can I work on that?

4. It's way over 150 words. (Sorry!) What can I cut/save for later? (Maybe 150 words is a cruel limit...should we expand it??)

Possibilities

For this month's book club:

Babylon by Bus: Or, the true story of two friends who gave up their valuable franchise selling YANKEES SUCK T-shirts at Fenway to find meaning and adventure in Iraq, Ray LeMoine and Jeff Neumann

The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier's Account of the War in Iraq John Crawford

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Mary Ann Shaffer

The Piano Teacher Janice Y. K. Lee

Brick Lane Monica Ali

Always Getting Ready

Notable within this text:

The "Pensieve":
"After sticky notes and clipboards"
"It's not your notebook, it's your Pensieve."

Section 1: Teacher Notes
Calendar
Keeping Track Form
Strategy Groups Form

Section 2: Dividers/Tabs for Each Child
CAFE menu
Reading Conference form
Writing Conference form

AND the Ready Reference Form!

Questionable within this text:
Does anyone really have that much time to teach reading and writing?  What about math?  Science?  And don't say "integrate."  That's a dirty word.

Summer Vacation

It is here and it is the best thing ever.  I've been working out each morning, cracking the whip and getting my kids to do chores (and I have been doing them too), reading, and knitting.  Most of all though, I HAVE NOT been working on National Board stuff or MEd stuff and am so happy I never will again.  (I hope.)

A CIA HEART

A=Assess background knowledge
C=Collaborate with colleagues
I=Involve students in their learning
A=Accommodations for student needs
H=Home-school connection
E=Equity, fairness, diversity
A=Appropriate assessments
R=Resources within the community
T=Technology

One More Wake Up

By this time tomorrow I will be finished with my work for National Board certification.  My test is at 11:30 tomorrow.  I feel ready, like I've run a marathon studying and now just have to run the last few blocks.  I've attempted to narrow down each assessment center exercise to some big ideas that I can apply to most any stimulus.

Today I've spent at least five hours studying, of course getting way off track as I did...reading articles about Sarah Palin, updating my Netflix queue, fixating on Pandora, reading random blogs that had nothing to do with anything, and putting books on hold at the library.  But, you gotta take a break sometime.  So now, my final (well, maybe) act of studying: summarizing here.

Exercise Eins: Reading Comprehension

• Metacognitive strategies
• Double Entry Journals
• Graphic Organizers
• Literal understanding
• Inference
• Think Alouds
• Mosaic of Thought
• Strategies that Work
• Reality Checks
• To Understand

Exercise Zwei: Oral Language Development for ELL

• Strength/Weakness...Goal...Strategy...Rationale
• Vocabulary...Use correct vocabulary related to specific context in discussions with teacher and classmates...Read aloud texts related to contexts, making picture cards afterward where student draws pictures and writes word...Drama...Field trips...BookFLIX
• Grammar (articles: a, an, the; pronouns: I, they, we; tenses: past, present, future)...Student will use __________ (specific articles, etc.) correctly in conversations...Reader's theater to hear the sounds and become familiar with the articles, shared reading, poems, chants, to see, hear, say examples of correct grammar...then engage in conversation to assess and practice correct use of grammar.
• Sentences and phrases vs. one word...Use complete sentences in conversation...teach child to use sentence stems...practice and assess in conversation.

Exercise Drei: Emergent Literacy

• Phonemic Awareness (ending sounds, beginning sounds, middle sounds)
• Spacing
• Sight Words
• ...Student will use _________ sounds correctly in writing...
• Students will use spaces between words consistently in writing
• Students will write and read the sight words _______ and _______ correctly.
• Shared writing to model thinking about the sounds and figuring them out (stretch it out like a rubber band), Elkonin boxes ("push the sounds up"), Making words, Starfall.com, Mentor texts, Shared reading, Word/picture sorts, Word Wall, Multi-sensory work (sand, sandpaper, shaving cream, act it out), cheers, chants, songs

Exercise Vier: Analyzing Reading

• Monitor comprehension
• Attend to visual cues/decode correctly
• Teacher modelling/Think alouds
• Double entry journals (reading-writing connection, self-evaluation, reflection, assessment tool)
• Teach cross checking (arms cross the body--"does it look right, sound right, make sense?")--involves learner, accomodates kinesthetic learners
• Word study to increase decoding ability

Exercise Funf: Visual Text

• Identify message and how use of graphics, text, literary devices communicates that message, identify target audience and how the text targets the audience.
• Literary devices: irony, humor, hyperbole/exaggeration, satire, theme, symbolism, analogy, mood, point of view, metaphor, allegory

Exercise Sechs: Writing Development:

• Strengths, Weaknesses, Goals, Strategies, Rationale
• 6-Traits
• Graphic organizers
• Mentor texts: contextualized grammar instruction, model
• Mini lessons
• Conferences: constant feedback, assessment, tailored instruction
• Small groups
• Teacher modelling
• Study-driven

Assessment Center Exercise 1: Reading Comprehension, Unpacked

Subject: Reading Comprehension
Stimulus: Analyze a student's comprehension of text
Prompts or Questions:

• identify one strength
• identify one weakness
• cite specific examples that are tightly connected and insightful
• identify a teaching strategy
• explain appropriate rationale with evidence from research or theory

Stimulus Examples (from Home Stretch):

• inferring
• main idea/details
• 7 comprehension strategies
• Beginning, middle, end
• Problem/solution
• Synthesis
• Use text features/structures

Study Resources:

• Strategies that Work
• Reading with Meaning
• Best Practices in Teaching Literacy (Gamell)
• Literacymatters.com
• Voices from the Middle
• Developmental Continuum (Campbell-Hill)
• Yardsticks
• Continuum of Literacy Learning (Founas & Pinnell)