I've been Professionally Developed...

It was a strange sort of day.... most of the building was a various meetings in the morning, but the first grade team randomly had no where we needed to go (this NEVER happens).  So we decided to set our own goal, sort of- Mrs. Principal was on board with it.  I'll try not to ramble, but I used up A LOT of brain power today.

As we've been traveling through the RTi maze and figuring out what will work for our school, we seem to add one thing and five more issues/challenges are presented.  I really think we are on the right track.  One portion that we are working on is the grade-level piece.  My old team in kindergarten used to trade students and had an elaborate system for targeting instruction for those who were struggling or came in at a deficit.  Other grades who have been together a while were similar.

As a newly formed first grade team, we are still finding our way.  I'm on our Student Support Team (helps teachers decide what interventions will help students as they move through the tiers or help decide if a special education referral is needed).  Nature Girl (teaching partner's alias- see old posts) is on our Navigation Team (researches ways to boost student learning and reviews whole-school data, looking for areas to improve upon).   Health Nut (my new pet name for my other teaching partner)  is on the School Improvement Team, which is in charge of a bunch of things that I cannot be trusted with- like the budget!  Between all three of us, we found ourselves with a large group of students who needed interventions (many of them multiple!).  We found that our students were "intervention hopping" because the adults in charge were panicking and switching them too fast (not waiting 10-12 weeks for the data to show growth or not).  We learned our lesson and worked even harder for them. 

Anyway, Nature Girl had the idea of making a flow chart for our first grade interventions.  I did some checking on blogs, cruised Pinterest, Googled it, checked Pinterest some more..... more Pinterest because I saw some cute things for the house....  I did eventually focus and find a model that we could start from and make our own.  We tend to take things and make them better (and usually more complicated and fancy).  Here is what we ended up with:

We started on the white board, but I like to fix and fancy.

I'm a visual learner, so the chart really helps me and I tend to put things in that form.  Here is what it ended up like when we were done (about 2 1/2 hours of discussion).

I don't have time to stitch photos together... maybe someday I'll fix it :)

Anyway, it's been a long day.... but I wanted to share.  Let me know if you have any questions! 

Have a pleasant evening, friends,

Tracking challenging behaviors without pulling out my nuetral dark brown hair:

Since the beginning of my career in education, the universe has sent me some children with quirky, and at times- very challenging behaviors.  I don't know what it is, but there seems to be a theme.  I've been in 5 classrooms in the last 4 years, so I know it's not the room- just me.  I've fallen in love with each of these little sweeties and am amazed at how they have grown over the years. 

However, one of the biggerst challenges in K-1 is that there are many cases where you are the "first-responder" when a child has learning challenges (outside of the normal range) or social issues that they need addressed more directly.  This requires an enormous amount of compassion and grace toward the child and the parents.  Our goal MUST be to support them through this journey and find the resources that the child needs.  As we know, you can't get anywhere without DATA, DATA, and more DATA.  Dtarting the first day of school, I start making anectdotal notes on my students (all of them) in order to get to know them and target any needs that emerge in the first few weeks.  One that I started the year with and can be used with multiple children.  I wish I knew who's blog I found it on.... I'll come back and edit if I figure it out :)

I've also been collecting MANY diffeent kinds of data for different reasons on many students over the years.  When I can't find exactly what I need, I end up making one to fit the child and the situation or modifying an existing one.  Here are some that I use often:

FREEBIE FOR YOU!

It may seem over the top, but in order to isolate specific challenge and make grow goals for the child, it's necessary.  Also, as I've learned by being part of a RTi school, it's just good teaching.  We need to know this much about our students :)

Giving children what they need...

I've been spending a lot of time this week thinking about "Giving a child what they need, when they need it."  Although it's been my personal philosophy for a few years, I was never bold enough to share it with parents (I mostly just said it in class).  I was inspired by a blog post that had an amazing story about a class lesson in different abilities and needs. (Please visit The Power of a Band-Aid for the complete lesson and impact.) 

I have children of all abilities (socially and academically) in my classroom.  This story came at the perfect time.  We had curriculum night this week and I could hear parents whispering about a few of my children with particular needs.  I decided that I needed to be BRAVE and BOLD.  I think sometimes, we can get worried about offending a parent, that we allow ourselves forget our primary role- educating and protecting the hearts of the children we serve.  I discussed Conscious Discipline as our method of management and explained the concept of interventions (altering the curriculum to meet the child at their current level in a small group).  I described the structure of the 1/2 hour block and that other students were working in pairs on reinforcement games and activities (again, differentiated).  A few parents made a face when I said that I wasn't directly teaching at all times.  I quickly assured them that their child will get exactly what they need when they need it, whether it be support or more of a challenge.  There was a collective sigh of relief.  I am working for THEIR child and figuring out what THEIR specific need is for that day.

Last year in kindergarten, we fully embraced the concept of "they are all our children".  We exchanged children to make small groups from all 4 classes during intervention block time.  I plan to carry it through in first grade.  It will be an adjustment with a new team.  We will have to learn to trust each other completely and that can take time.  Nothing happens over night.  Basically, we had four teachers, plus an academic support person all meeting with small groups, while the bulk of the classes were working at stations independently (pairs).  We kept careful notes on our groups and moved students in and out as needed.  It gave us plenty of documentation if we needed to bring the student further into the RTI process.  Here is an organizational chart that we used (names have been changed- don't worry).  I actually plugged in 1st grade standards in preparation for this year!  This only shows what the teachers were working on with students.  The academic support person had a separate schedule that only had her assigned students listed (the students changed by the week, as some goals needed less time).

Sample Intervention Block Schedule 

It may seem complicated, but once we were organized and prepared for the small groups, it worked wonders!  We shared students across the rooms (the students' home classrooms are not listed, but we did have it on there).  We were working smarter for our students and getting more interventions done by working together.