What a week- Week 2

I have seriously sat down to blog almost every night since school started. Just as my computer loads up, my eyes get heavy and I wake up the next morning wondering what in the world I blogged about... NOTHING! There is so much I want to share as I am SO excited about my classroom this year.

I seriously think I have the best group of kids EVER! We are still learning routines and procedures and there are definitely still those days where I wonder when we will ever get it down. But seriously, these kids are the best. Today I was reading through their first writing assignment where they wrote about their first day. One students' comment has stuck with me all day, "I love when my teacher 5miles or.. smiles-- I'll share more about the intervention we will have on this mix up later. ;)). This seriously made my day. My favorite part of my day is when my students SMILE. I know that there are those days where I try my best to make the lesson fun, engaging, and I wish they would feel like it's the best day in their lives. But, let's be honest as hard as I try I still stare into a crowd of mostly faces lacking their beautiful smiles... After a tough week where it was hard to put that smile on my face, I knew there were students who were counting on seeing my smile, and I was counting on theirs, and I am not going to lie that got me through this week!

I am very excited about my new tracking system for intervention. It's something I pinned this summer on Pinterest, and read nothing about but just replicated based on the picture... So here it goes:

I have a note card for each student, I have a folder for math data, reading data, and behavior data. At some point I will be adding writing data. For now I have just been putting the important data with my reading.

 Here is a sample of what I will write. Sometimes I record how they did on an exit ticket. If they turn it in blank, even though they have had 35 minutes, I think that is valuable information and it gets written down. If I work with them in a small group, I write the date and what we focused on (SG).  If I notice something that seems below grade level or a little "off" I record it and record what I did to try to fix it. For example, one of my students is flipping b's and d's and m's and w's so I wrote it on their notecard, and recorded how I worked to fixed it and when. In addition, I have a student who is writing without spacing. I recorded what activities she did this on and what  have done to intervene. I feel like this will be helpful throughout the year to show the student, the parents, and my administration what I have done to help the student improve. 

On a whole group note, I reflect at the end of every lesson, especially after grading exit tickets. I write down pointers on things that I need to address the next day before we move on and then I also write myself a list of students who I will want to work on during independent practice the following day.  

I have been using this religiously since day 1 and I can honestly say I feel confident in saying that my students know that it is not acceptable to "slip through the cracks". I also feel confident that the students do not go more than 24 hours without feeling like I haven't noticed that they did not master an objective. Literally the following day we begin interventions so they can improve their skills. 

Our district goal is to MAKE IT PERSONAL, and I strongly feel that by implementing this I am making it personal for each child. They know that I know exactly what they did well in and what they are struggling with.