Update on Our Behavior Tree

Right before school began we proudly presented to you our Behavior Tree (Behavior Tree Post). We wanted to update you on what has happened now that we've implemented the system because we know you've been just dying from curiosity ;).

First we'd like to report that the children were very excited about the system and that excitement has maintained even a few months into school. The system is clear and we are now to the point where we can tell a child to move their bird for themselves and they know what to do. We even have some children who are already on their fourth bird!!!

We've also had some parent push-back about the behavior bird system. There have been parent concerns that it's competitive, that the children are reporting at home that they are being "good" so why aren't their birds being moved, and that the children are unclear why their birds are moving up and down the tree. While parent push-back can always be a little scary, it's also served to help us clarify our purpose behind our system and improve the way we are using the system in the classroom. Here's where our thinking is at now:

Purpose
The purpose of the behavior tree/behavior birds is to provide a concrete visual for the children as they define, practice, and internalize the behaviors of successful learners and of caring community members.

Defining "Good" and "Excellent" Behavior - Moving from the Abstract to the Concrete
In order to help our children understand what it means to have "good" behavior in the classroom, we turned to old trusty - Pinterest. We found these lessons inspired by No, David!  (Peacemakers/Peacebreakers Lesson). After reading the books and discussing David's behaviors, the children defined appropriate and inappropriate behavior for the classroom. This behavior was added to either a "Peacemaker" or a "Peacebreaker" poster. We constantly reference these charts when we're discussing the children's behavior and choices with them.

Additionally, we take advantage of the fact that there are two of us to model and role play through behavior situations that arise in the classroom. We might model how we would work together and share materials, or how we would solve the problem of partner readers wanting to read two different books. We magically turn the students into teachers and ourselves into students. Then we have the students observe us while we work through a scenario. Finally, we call on the students to tell us what they observed us doing as we were role playing.

Weekly Behavior Goal Setting
We have been setting a weekly class behavior goal focused around the Character Counts pillars for the month. For the last month, the pillar has been Responsibility. On Monday, we choose an example of a behavior that responsible students engage in and we define it with the students. We have used the following goals:

1. Choosing a good spot on the rug during instruction
2. Choosing a good spot to work in the classroom during independent work time
3. Choosing a good partner

We spend time defining each of these goals on Mondays. We then reinforce them continuously throughout the week, reminding the children about the goals and having children move their birds up when they are showing the goal behavior. In order to help the parents stay on the same page, the children fill out a special paper on Mondays as part of their daily reflection journal in their H.A.W.K. binders that state the focus for the week and the weekly behavior goal.

Some of the benefits of this addition to our program is that we discuss a specific behavior and define it in the language of the children, we give the children one specific behavior to focus on and practice all week, and it provides the parents with a concrete behavior to discuss with their children. Eventually, we would like to have the children set their own weekly behavior goal and reflect on their progress throughout the week, but ... baby steps ... baby steps.

Providing Explicit Feedback
Every time we have a child move their bird up or down the behavior tree, we make a concerted effort to inform them of exactly why their bird moved. We stated the behavior and make a connection to why that behavior is important to engage it. This honors the child and also provides a teachable moment for the other children as they are able to connect an actual action or behavior to the movement of a bird.

In order to keep on top of the behaviors we're observing, we each carry a pack of post-its and a pencil both during lessons and independent work time. We don't like to interrupt lessons with a lot of bird moving so we record our observations and have the children move their birds at the closure of the lesson during the transition to the next lesson.

Teaching appropriate behavior is one of the most challenging parts of our job, in our opinion, because it's sort of an invisible curriculum and it seems to get parents' back up more than anything. We have really stuck to our guns with what we're doing though, while of course refining and improving where it makes sense and matches our objectives, because we firmly believe that appropriate behavior needs to be defined for children, practiced, and reinforced continously until it is internalized. This is not a quick or easy process. In our opinion taking short cuts in behavior instruction results in children who don't see themselves as active participants in their own education, who don't make the connections between their choices and the outcomes of their learning, and who need an adult to tell them what to do in every situation.

And now we will climb down from our soap box and slowly back away :).

P.S. The FLY AWAY is "teach appropriate behavior, y'all!"

P.P.S. We have been learning from some of our parents that their children have made their own behavior trees at home with a behavior bird for each member of their family. They then proceed to move their family members up and down the tree at their discretion. Hilarious!

From the limb,

Conference Week

We did 40 conferences ... 40 ... forty ... foooorrrrrty ... did you get that we did 40? In one week and 2 days, btw.

Now did we have to do 40? No. But, as with everything we do, we had some good reasons, okay!

1) We both are their teachers and we wanted to make a clear statement about that.
2) We both work with the children continuously throughout the day and we both had important things to share with the parents about their child and the growth they've made.
3) We wanted to meet and talk to all 80 of our parents since we haven't had the opportunity to have extended one-on-one conversations with most of them.

It actually wasn't as bad as it sounds. We split up the talking time and it was fun to do it together so the time went quickly. But don't get us wrong, we sure were happy to have a 3-day weekend. In fact, this is how we felt after our last conference on Friday:

Happy Veteran's Day! (P.S. Kristie judged me for color-coding this but doesn't it look more festive this way. So unpatriotic, tsk tsk!)

From the limb,

Lessons from the Limb #7: One of Us Had a Cold but We Survived!!!

Okay, it happened ... the dreaded moment ... one of us needed a sub. OH MY! Poor Ms. B held on for two days fighting a nasty cold before she succumbed to it and needed to stay home. Now getting a sub when you're sick is drama enough when you're teaching in a classroom by yourself. It's always a balance between needing the day to be productive but not wanting to leave too much essential instruction in case the day goes awry. You would think that having a collaborative classroom would negate that issue but it actually added another lay of complexity. On one hand since Ms. H was going to be there, we were able to continue our instruction without worrying about the way our lesson plans were interpreted or carried out. On the other hand, we are no longer running our classroom as a whole class for the majority of the day. In fact, we had just reached the point where our children were getting independent enough that we are able to pull small groups. We were so excited to get here, we were all planned, and then BAM!! Ms. B gets sick. Classic! We had to can all of our small group instructional plans and go back to whole group because it was too complex to hand over to a sub. It was interesting because Ms. H was able to run the classroom and keep the children on pace instructionally, but it felt like we were losing ground because we had started to tap how much differentiation could occur when the two of us are in the classroom.

Having this experience with a sub taught us a few lessons. The first FLY AWAY is that in a collaborative classroom when one teacher is absent, the day does NOT grind to a halt. Though you may not be able to carry out the day at the same level of rigor and productivity as you would when both teachers are present, even teaching in whole group all day is probably providing the children with more instruction than if the day fell entirely into the hands of a substitute teacher.

The second FLY AWAY has to do with the collaborative relationship. Ms. H got a first hand taste of how it feels to be thrown into a collaborative situation with someone with whom she had no prior relationship. Ms. H had to keep complete control of the day and tell the subs what to do all day (She was basically Ms. Bossypants - though Ms. B might argue that is her natural state :). There was no collaborative relationship, there was instead a hierarchy out of necessity. Of course, this was of no fault of the substitutes - they were both lovely, helpful, and flexible - but there is just no way to replicate the relationship and the synergy that we have through our relationship and the time we've invested in forming our classroom and our vision together. The FLY AWAY is that without the time, the trust, and the communication between two teachers trying to collaborate, the experience becomes completely different. In this case, all of the responsibility fell on Ms. H for the entire day and she became the "boss" of the classroom. Had the substitutes been different people, this could have manifested into a daylong power struggle with the two teachers. Thank goodness that it did not!! In order for collaborative teaching to really work, in our opinion, you need trust and communication, and the time to get on the same page in order to make your vision work. We're not saying that this is realistic in terms of having a sub, but the experience further emphasized the ingredients for successful collaboration for us.

The final FLY AWAY is that things always go wrong when you have a sub. What is up with that? In our case, on Wednesday, one of the students accidentally set off the fire extinguisher. WHY?!?!?!!?! It sent this powder all over the corner of one classroom. This caused Ms. H to run around like a crazy person trying to wrangle 41 overly-curious first graders and get them packed up for the day. Oh did Ms. H miss Ms. B in that moment. Bottom line is we all survived and Ms. B is feeling much better. And while Ms. H loved her dear teaching partner Ms. B before, her absence made the heart grow even fonder :)

From the limb,

Lessons from the Limb #6: Keeping Ourselves Organized

Hello there. So you survived the tome ... I mean post ... on how we organize our students and you've come back for seconds. WE LOVE YOU!!! Thanks for caring about our obsessive ways :) We would now like to share with you how we keep organized between ourselves. While teaching together has made our job easier in many ways, it has also presented us with new challenges like staying on the same page with each other without spending every waking moment together (even though people probably think we do ... but we don't ... we swear!). Just think about it, how many times have you cooked up a lesson plan while shampooing your hair or made a split second decision about your classroom while driving home from school. As teachers we keep so many ideas, task lists, and plans up in our heads all the time. BUT when you're collaborative teaching you can't just make that split second decision in your head on the way home from Target, you have to be on the same page as your teaching partner. Not only was this a challenge, but we also have opposite schedules and working schedule preferences. Both of us having different committments after school. Kristie prefers to work early in the mornings and Kristin ... well ... doesn't, she's a stay-later.

So what were we to do with these problems? Make a plan, of course! Shocking course of action for us to choose, I'm sure :)

First we recognized that it's not going to change that we are both thinking about, planning, and generating new ideas for our classroom on our own all the time; it's both an ingrained habit and a inherent part of being a teacher. Instead of trying to fight that, we acknowledged it and came up with some systems so that we could stay on the same page. We also realized that we couldn't do anything about our schedule differences so prioritized our time and made a schedule. Come along as we take you through the details of our plans:

Our Schedule

In our collaborative classroom, it is essential to us that we plan together so that we are both on the same page and we know exactly what we're doing in the classroom. Since we didn't want to compromise on this and split up the curriculum, we decided to set aside one day per week (it's Mondays, ok!) as "protected planning time" after school. While this is not 100% perfect because sometimes Kristin has meetings on that day, for the most part it provides us with a common, uninterrupted, extended planning time that we can use to plan our weekly curriculum.

We also feel very lucky that our children leave for a 45-minute pull-out every Monday through Thursday so that provides us with some common planning time. That 45-minutes is great and we're really grateful to have it but it gets eeked away very quickly for this reason or that reason so do NOT recommend relying on that time for your only common planning time every week. We feel that you really need a long uninterrupted time so that you can have important conversations about your curriculum and your pedagogical approach to the delivery of the content. One of the things we like the best about teaching together is collaborating on our plans, discussing the efficacy of different instructional strategies, pushing each other's thinking, and analyzing new ideas in teaching; all of this we feel helps us to become better teachers. But ... if you want to have time for those difficult but essentials conversations, you need the time to have them ...

So now you're probably thinking to yourself, they meet to plan every week but how do they get their stuff done ... Well, we'll tell ya!

Shared Email

So, um, yeah ... we have a shared email ... ummmmm ....

We chose to have a shared email for a number of reasons. First, we wanted to present a message to our parents that we are BOTH their child's teacher. The email goes to both of us AND we respond from both of us ... united front, baby! Second, we both wanted to see the correspondence from parents so we could know what's happening with our students, and we did NOT want to keep forwarding things back and forth ... ugh!

Kristie tries to check the email first thing in the morning when she gets in and Kristin checks it in the afternoon. We respond to things that don't need both of our attention on our own and save bigger emails for when we are both together ... like those prep periods. Any email that we read but didn't respond to we re-mark it as unread so that we know it hasn't been dealt with. This is Kristie's system. Kristin's system would involve an elaborate hierarchy of color-coded stars but collaborative teaching is all about compromise :)

Google Tasks

Since our district uses Gmail as the host for our email services, we are able to use a wonderful little tool called "Tasks" to keep ourselves organized. This is part of our shared email (see it's good to have :). It is an on-going task list ordered by due date that can pop-up as part of our email screen. This is how we get our prep done even though Kristie is working in the morning and Kristin is working in the afternoons. This is genius, so brace yourself ... you ready for this amazing-ness? Here it is: While we are planning, we always have our tasks list open so when we are writing our plans, we enter in everything that needs to be prepped and the date by which is needs to be done. Once all the tasks are in the list then it doesn't matter who is working when because we knock off tasks and then cross them off the list. Here's a picture of a piece of our current tasks list:

We live by this creed:

Not only is this immensely satisfying but it also helps us know that the prep has actually been completed, not just left off the list. Peace of mind!

Dropbox

We also use another technological bit of magicalness called Dropbox. Dropbox is a file-sharing website that allows users to share folders on their computer so they can share files. We have a Dropbox account that is always hooked up on our computers so that we can share files if we need to.

The folder we use the most is the "Things to Print" file. This is very helpful because often Kristin makes things on her computer at home and then Kristie prints/preps them in the morning. It allows us to easily pass documents back and forth without clogging up our email.

Our Magical Lesson Plan Books

Here's another shocker for you ... we do not like to use a pre-made lesson plan book. We like to customize our own (can you believe that we would do that?!?). We have two lesson plan binders that we use, one constantly and the other for reference.

First, we have a lesson plan binder for our weekly plans:

Our Magical Lesson Plan Book

No, your eyes do NOT deceive you ... that IS a legal size binder ... BAM! We use a template that we made on the computer for our weekly lesson plans (we just luv to customize!).

This is the lesson plan page that we work together every week to fill out. The pink highlight is a lesson that Ms. B is teaching solo and the purple highlighter is a lesson that Ms. H is teaching solo.

Now for some lessons, a more detailed lesson plan is appropriate. For example, many of our math lessons get a more detailed lesson plan from the basic outlined that we agreed upon during our common planning time. For example:

These lessons get stored in our other magical lesson plan binder (yes, it really is called that ... see):

This allows us to archive our lessons for reference and hopefully, for future use! (Fingers crossed!)

Handy Dandy Reference Binder

After school started, we realized we had all of these important papers and reference materials that we needed to have easily accessible but we didn't have a good place for them so the "Handy Dandy Reference Binder" was born:

Our Handy Dandy Reference Binder

In this binder we keep anything we need to refer to. For example, we have parent contact information, student birthdays, our pull-out schedule by house, class check-off lists, a list of our students by house and number, etc. We also keep our records of homework in this binder. It lives in one spot in the classroom and is available for reference whenever we need it without creating a huge pile of random papers to store and weed through.

Lesson Plan Totes

Can we start by saying that we heart our lesson plan totes. We saw this idea on pinterest and we LOVED it! We bought three lesson plan totes at Lakeshore Learning to keep us organized and mobile, two critical tenents of our classroom structure. In these totes we store all the instructional materials we need for the week from lesson plans to copies to materials that will physically fit. We have one tote for whole group instruction that we share. We also each have our own tote for small-group instruction. Each tote has a different color hanging folder for each day of the week. When we prep materials, we place them in the appropriate tote so they are available for us when we need them. This system has worked very well for us so far because it keeps our materials organized and gives us a place to deposite prepped materials for the week.

Ms. H's lesson plan tote

Our whole group lesson plan tote; you can see the files for each day

Communication Clipboards

Keeping on top of what's happening in the classroom does not just happen before and after school. We have to work to continuously be on the same page during the day as well. One thing that is really important for us is that our roles in the classroom are always fluid; either one of us could grab materials at any time and lead the planned lesson be it whole group or small group. This is a great ideal in theory, but in practice it takes organization and coordination. And thus, communcation clipboards were born. These clipboards hang, literally, off our file cabinet so they are easily accessible to both of us at any given time. Here are our clipboards:

Our clipboards are hanging on our file cabinet or resting on top of the binders

Mini-Lesson Planner

This clipboard is where we quickly jot ideas that we noticed most or all of the students would benefit from; ideas for whole-group mini-lessons in Reader's Workshop, Writer's Workshop, or Math Workshop. We use this to remind ourselves about what to work into the plans for the week.

Strategy Group Planner

This clipboard is super essential to us. We use it to write down areas where we see, either through observation or formative assessment, that certain children need a reteach or additional practice with a concept. Right now, we are still working towards our little firsties being independent enough to hold a small-group with targeted instruction. Until we get there, we are taking advantage of the whole-group nature of our Math Meeting time to have one teacher lead the meeting while the other pulls small groups or individual children for assessment or a mini-lesson. We can grab the clipboard and see who immediately needs some extra practice. When we have met with the children, we write notes about when we met, who participated, and what we did so that either one of us could pick up that group next and know exactly where to continue the instruction.

Formative Assessment Tracker

The final element of keeping on top of our students' progress is our Formative Assessment Tracker clipboard. This is where we note any children who did not demonstrate mastery over a certain skill on our last assessment (so far, we've been using this system in math). When we graded the children's first math assessments, we noted anyone who struggled with a certain skill on the Strategy Group Planner and then we listed them on the Formative Assessment Tracker as a reminder to check back in on that skill after they had participated in a reteach group. Once the child has participated in a reteach group they can be given a quick oral or written assessment around the concept and then either put back for more reteach or crossed off the tracker. This is just the beginning of this system we have created so we will provide an update blog in the future to let you know how it's going. We are really trying to make sure no students fall through the cracks and to use the fact that there's two of us to actually get some reteaching going. Fingers crossed!

Data Binders and Student Files

Doesn't the phrase "Data Binders" just get you excited? Come on, you can admit it ... we won't tell :) We like to keep our student data in binders and, of course, we had to organize them by house color! Did you expect anything less? (insert major eye roll from Kristie here!) This is where we store all of our students' assessment data throughout the year from benchmark data to formative assessment data gathered inbetween report cards. This system allows us to easily access our student's information and lends portability as the binders can easily be grabbed on the go. We use these binders to track students achievement, plan for small group instruction, and send home monthly progress reports (more about that amazing-ness in another post :).

For all other information relating to students that doesn't fall into the "academic data" category, we have students files, again organized by house, where we keep notes from parents and other odds and ends.

Each of these things we've told you about have a specific home in the classroom where they can always be found. That way we're not roaming in circles trying to locate them and wasting time. We both make a conscientious effort to put things back so as not to try the other one insane (aren't we considerate?).

So now we come to our FLY AWAY about teacher organization. Sit down and make of list of all the things that you need to effectively run your classroom. Then brainstorm how you can make common systems that will allow you to plan together and use your time efficiency without having to spend evey waking minute together getting on the same page. Think about fluid systems that can be picked up by either teacher at any given time. Once you've made your systems, stick to them! They won't work if you can't be sure that yourself or your colleague is following them; if you can't trust your systems then you're just wasting time. Stick to them until they are second nature :) And now your favorite OCD teachers will leave you with the following to consider:

Think about it!

From the limb,

Levity from the Limb #1

Have you ever had a time when something funny happens in your classroom that cracks you up and the kids all laugh too, even though they really have no idea why it's funny but they want to be included, and you wish someone was there to see or hear it also? Well, we had two moments like that today and since there were two of us, we had a good laugh about it. We will attempt to reenact for you here:

SITUATION ONE

Context
We have been trying to give specific feedback to children after each break-out session in our workshop block so that they understand why we are asking them to move their Behavior Birds up and to highlight expected behavior.

Reenactment

Ms H: Ms. B, would you like to share some specific behaviors that you noticed during the Word Work block.

Ms. B: Why yes I would. I have some specific behaviors for everyone in ... (pregnant pause) ... general ...

Ms. H: Um, what?

Ms. H & Ms. B look at each other: Bwahahahahahh!!! Specific feedback in general! Bwah-ha-ha!

Most children (even though they don't get it at all): Hahahahhahah!

A few (honest) children: Huh? I don't get it.

Ms. H: Well, general and specific are antonyms and when Ms. B used them together she created in essence an oxymoron ...

41 BLANK FACES

Ms. H's peters off: ... right ... well ... never mind ...

SITUATION TWO

Context

We use the whole-brain learning gestures as part of our classroom management repertoire (we can blog about that later if ya want :). One of the gestures is a cue for the children to follow a pair-share direction. This is how it goes:

Teacher: Students I want you to turn to a neighbor and teach them about x, y, z. 

Then the teacher claps their hands twice and hold them up in the air while saying: Teach!

The students respond by clapping their hands twice and holding them up in the air while saying: Ok!

Sometimes, though, we say "Talk" instead of "Teach".

Reenactment

Ms. B: Turn to a neighbor and talk about what you noticed about the pattern books we just read.

Ms. H & Ms. B, in perfect synchronization (clap, clap, hands up in the air): ........

SILENCE

Students are staring at us and we're staring at them.

Ms. H & Ms. B: Bwahahahahahh!!!

Ms. B: I thought you were going to say it!

Ms. H: I didn't want to say teach and you say talk!

Ms. B: Me, neither!

Ms. H & Ms. B & all the children: Bwahahahahhahahah!!!

Thanks for sharing our moment of levity with us. Keep laughing!

From the limb,

Lessons from the Limb #5 - Houses are in the ... um ... HOUSE!

The biggest lifesaver we have had this year is the organizational system we put in place to keep the students and their stuff organized. Most of the time it doesn't feel like we have that many more kids than normal, but when dealing with logistics 40 starts to really feel like 40 ... or 50 ... or 60 (they are pretty young, those firsties). We use "houses" and color-coding to keep our students organized. We would like to share with you how this manifests in our classroom.

We have a bird theme so we have four "bird houses" (Get it??? Heee heee!). Each bird house has a color: red, yellow, green, and blue (color-coding!!!). We use these two organizational tools in a myriad of ways. Come along and take a look ...

"Bird House" Home Table

Our double classroom is split into two sides. One side is primarily for whole group or larger group instruction. That's where we have our large rugs and our focus walls for Language Arts and Math. The other side of the classroom is set up for small-group instruction and independent work. Of course, nothing is set in stone; students can work independently on either side and small-group instruction can take place on either side, but we have organized the flow of our room in that manner. On the independent work side we have 6 rectangular tables where the children can choose to work. Four of those tables have a bird taped down to the middle of the table.

Red birds' table with their name tags and a turn-in bin

These tables serve as a "home base" for each house. The students pick up and drop off their name tags here. They put their H.A.W.K. binders here every morning. They are basically a quick way that we can have the students gather or leave materials organized by house.

Nametags

We expect our children to wear their nametags at all times in the classroom. This is not because we do not know their names :) or because we enjoy continuously asking them to stop fussing with their name tags (insert eye-roll here). We want them to wear their name tags because they are still learning each other's names, because some of them are still learning how to spell their own names, and because we are in the process of putting into place a partner system and an asking for help system (we will blog about this in the future - we know, we know ... the suspense is killer!) that require them to wear their name tags. Each child's name tag has their name, a bird in their house color, and their number.

These name tags are from Lakeshore Learning.

We use a number system to organize materials in our classroom as well. We decided instead of numbering the children from 1-40, we would number them by house. So there are four #1 students: red 1, yellow 1, green 1, and blue 1. This decision has a few advantages. For example, we can group them by number or by color. We can have them line up quickly in number order by house so we can check that they are all present during a field trip or an emergency drill.

Cubbies/Student Supplies

The children do not have their own desks to keep their supplies so we use our classroom cubbies as a place where the children will store the majority of their supplies. Each house has their own cubby and they are located on a certain side of the classroom. To reduce traffic flow, we put the green and blue houses' cubbies against the far wall of one classroom, and the red and yellow houses' cubbies against the wall of the other classroom. This helps keep the children from getting backed up or squished on top of each other as they try to reach their supplies. We are still teaching the children the systems and routines of the classroom and work times so their cubbies are not full yet. We will blog at a future date about the exact way we organize the students' instructional supplies, but right now we will give you one tidbit. We like to use the "camel model" (we made that up, can you tell?) with our students. That means that they have a Book Box where they keep their supplies for Reader's Workshop, a Math Box where they keep their supplies for Math Workshop, and a Writing Box where they keep their supplies for writing. The idea of the "camel model" (hee hee) is that the children's materials are in a constant "grab 'n go" state (oh wait, that's good too ... maybe we should call it the "grab 'n go model" ... hmmmm ... anyway ....). Since the children are working all over the classroom in flexible and ever-changing ways, we wanted to keep their supplies contained and easily mobile. Ok, we've disgressed a bit here. We will blog more about this in a future post, pinky promise!

Cubbies for the red and yellow birds' materials

Entering/Exiting

Since we have a double classroom with two doors, we decided to take advantage of that and assign each house to a door. Since the green and blue houses have their materials in one classroom, that classroom is their entrance/exit door. The red/yellow house enter and exit through the other classroom. This is particularly useful in high-traffic times, such as pick-up and drop-off as well as going to recess and lunch. It's an essential tenant of our classroom that the children feel as though they are one class at all times, but in these moments it makes much more sense to break into 20 just for logistical purposes. Each of us takes one door, and we switch it up constantly, so we are able to dismiss at drop-off or lead the line if we are going somewhere. When we are all walking together somewhere, one of us leads the first two houses out in a line and then the other links up behind the first line so that we are all walking together. 

Green and blue birds enter and exit through this side of the classroom

Red and yellow birds enter and exit through this side of the classroom

Turn-In Bin

Each house has their own turn-in bin. We do not have the children do that many things that requires a paper to be turned in, but when we do this is where the paper goes. Having the turn-in bin organized by house allows us to quickly sort through each house's papers to ensure that every children has completed an assignment. Let us tell you, it is much easier to sort through and organize 4 groups of 10 papers then try to organize 40 papers.

Turn-In Bins for each house

Class Check-Off List

We have our class check-off list organized by house so that we can easily see who is missing what and from which house. Again, as we stated above, organizing 4 groups of 10 is much easier than trying to negotiate 40.

As an aside, we have these really cool clipboards so you can slip a piece of paper inside and then use a whiteboard marker on them. That way you can reuse the paper time and time again. Cool, huh!

Work Completed Files

In order to keep our paperwork organized, we have a work completed file for each child where we file their work and then send it home in their H.A.W.K. binders on Mondays. We have two different crates with a drawer underneath that we use to file their papers. Each child has a hanging folder in their birdhouse color and they are organized in number order. Since our turn-in bin is already organized by house, we are able to quickly put the papers in number order (it's a breeze since there are only 10 per house), check the papers, and then either put them in the drawer to be filed later or file them directly into the child's folder.

Files for work completed and ready to go home 

House Walls/Response Cards

Our classroom has precious little wall space, particularly because we requested a huge gaping hole be cut into one of our longest uninterrupted wall spaces in order to combine our classrooms as fully as structurally possible. We wanted to have a place where student work could be displayed while being cognizant of the needs of wall space for instructional space and instructional support materials, and also cool decorations :). We came up with the idea of House Walls where each house would have their own space to display completed work. Next to their entrance/exit door, each house has their own bulletin board space delinated by paper in their house color. This is convenient for parents as well who can see their child's work as they are dropping them off or picking them up because they are right by the door. Right now there is wire hanging across each space where student work can be displayed. There are also Response Card posters, which we will blog about in the future, where the children respond to formative assessment questions on post-its and then stick them over their number on the poster. We will be adding buckets to each wall as we implement the Bucket Filler system we will be trying this year. We will also be adding a "brag board" where the children from each house can hang things they are proud of or trophies they have won as a house. All of these things are coming as we move farther into the year; can't add too much all at once!

The Yellow Birds' Wall

Response Cards with a space for each student to record an answer and place it over their number

Recess Buddies and Walking in Line

Since are students are so young and legion, we quickly realized that it was difficult to be sure that all of them made it back to line after recess and lunch. We also realized that is was inefficient to try to go down the roll list while out on the playground. Ms. B came up with the brilliant idea to assign each child a recess buddy within their house. Recess buddies have two jobs. They walk together in line, whether we are going to recess/lunch or an assembly. They also line up together after snack recess and lunch is over. This way we can quickly go down the line and see if someone is missing their buddy. This lets us know quickly if anyone is missing from the line. Having them walk with their recess buddy in line helps us keep our line from become longer than an Amtrak commuter train. Seriously, between 40 kids and the daydreamy-slow walkin' nature of first graders, it's like a train crossing if any other class has to wait for us to go by. Since we have them walk with their recess buddies, it makes our line half as long; we still get the day-dreamin' and the slow-walkin' but at least it's not stretching out over a quarter mile, for pete's sake!

Pull-Outs

We have been really lucky with our pull-out schedule this year because all of our students are at a pull-out at the same time on Monday through Thursday. For example, half the class is in Music on Mondays while the other half is at Motor Skills and then they switch on Tuesday. We decided to send the children to their pull-outs by house to keep it simple to divide up the students when we are lining up after lunch. Here is our pull-out schedule:

We made sure that the Monday/Tuesday pull-out houses are different than the Wednesday/Thursday pull-out houses. This means that on Monday/Tuesday red and yellow attend pull-outs together and so do green and blue. Then on Wednesday/Thursday, red and green attend pull-outs together while yellow and blue go together to their pull-outs. We are always trying to keep the houses mixed up so the children have as much time as possible with a mixture of their classmates.

The students don't always remember which pull-out they have when, but it's so simple to have them split up based on house because they all know their house color and to line up with their recess buddy. On Fridays only half of our class has Dance (the other half will have it during the second trimester) and we decided to use that time as sort-of split reading time so we divided the children up based on targeted reading needs. Fridays really bring home for us the ease of which our house system allows us to split them for pull-outs on every other day because on Fridays we have to individually split the children into two lines and invariably someone gets confused, is in the wrong line, or faithfully following their recess buddy into the wrong line. It takes twice as long to get the children organized to go to Dance then any other day.

House Points

We have an individual classroom management system in place with our behavior birds (Behavior Tree Blog Post), but we also wanted to have a system where the children were working together to earn something. We came up with House Points (and yes, we wish we were in Harry Potter sometimes, ok, we admit it!). Here are our House Point containers ...

We bought these at the Container Store. It's hard to see but they're little houses!!!

Right now our children earn House Points when they bring their H.A.W.K. binders back, when they remember to bring the snack and lunch bins back after recess, or when the entire house does something great. The kids are really focused on our individual system of the behavior birds right now so that's our primary focus, but we will be continuing to expand our house points system as the year continues. We want them to have the experience of working towards a common goal as a smaller group. In a few weeks, we will provide a list of rewards that they can "buy" with their house points and the entire house can enjoy. They will be non-material based rewards, such as lunch with the teachers or an extra 10 minutes of recess or free choice time. Since there are two of us, it is logistically possible that we could provide a reward of an extra recess while the other person continues on with the class.

Backpacks

Students hang their backpacks outside the classroom every morning and outside they stay! The reason we chose this approach is that we need to use the cubbies inside of our classroom to organize the students' curricular materials since they do not have desks where they can store individual supplies. There are hooks hanging on the outside of both of our classrooms. The green and blue houses hang their backpacks on the classroom wall of their entrance/exit door and the red and yellow houses hang their backpacks on the other classroom wall. This helps keep the backpack traffic flow organized and helps them find their backpack amidst the sea of 40 backpacks along our combined walls.

Red and yellow birds' backpacks in front of one classroom with their lunch bins

Snack/Lunch Bins

Each house has their own snack bin and their own lunch bin. The bins are marked by their color bird. Their snack bin is located on top of their house cubbies. The lunch bin sits outside in front of their backpack wall. Keeping it separate helps the students locate their snack or lunch more readily since they know immediately which bin to look in. That efficiency means more recess for them and more break time for us :)!!

Water bottle bin and snack bin for the green birds

Lunch bin for the red birds

Class Jobs

Class jobs are organized by house as well. There are four jobs that each house has every week. They are snack bins, lunch bins, librarian, and leader. Recess buddies share the responsibilities of snack bins, lunch bins, and librarian since it takes more than one student to carry the bins or wheel the library basket. We have not yet begun our leader job. We also have a plan to give each house an area of the classroom that they are responsible for keeping organized and clean every week. We have a "House Responsibilities" board where we will organize those tasks. We have not implemented that yet, but it is in the works for the future.

Each house has jobs for the students to do every week

Building a Smaller Community

A final component of the house system that we really like and are just beginning to capitalize on is that they create smaller, more manageable communities within the larger community of our classroom. For example, we do a Morning Meeting every morning and an important piece of Morning Meeting is the greeting of every student. We were initially doing this with all 40 children but it was taking FOR ... EV ... ER!!!! We decided to break into two smaller groups for the greeting part of the meeting (hey, that rhymed - it's the little things in life :) Each week we have two different houses together for the greeting. This allows the children to get to know each other and their classmates names instead of sticking to the comfort zone of the friends they know. We are still hoping to eventually do Morning Meeting greeting whole class, but until we get faster and more efficient at it, the two smaller groups are fitting the bill nicely.

Phew! As you can see from this novel of a post, our houses have been instrumental in keeping us organized. We don't have everything organized by house. For example, our supply caddies can be used by anyone or the children can work with anyone in the classroom or sit where they choose on the instructional rug, etc. With that said, the house/color-code/number system does provide a very important organizational tool for us and a system that we constantly fall back upon and build upon to keep our classroom running smoothly and efficiently.

The FLY AWAY of our lesson is that while we certainly are not saying that our system is the only way to do things, we also cannot overemphasize how critical a strong organizational system is to have in place from minute one in a combined classroom. There is nothing like logistics and transitions to make 40 children really feel like 100 children, particularly in the beginning of the year when they are young and still learning the expectations of the classroom. Being organized instills confidence in the parents, a sense of security and orderliness for the children, and provides efficiency and structure to the classroom that can be reaped all year long. So in conclusion ... give me an O - "Oh!" - give me an R ... just kidding :)


From the limb,

Lessons From the Limb #4: The Yellow P Bag and Going with the Flow

First of all, this is NOT an entry about bathrooms, no matter what you thought when you read the title. Get your head out of the gutter, people! We actually have a story and a lesson for you. First the story:

Ms. H (holding up a laminated bag of cards for Top-It): Boys and girls, Ms. B and I have spent a lot of time cutting, laminating, and organizing these cards for you to use. They are organized in a very special way so none of the cards will be lost.

Ms. H randomly reaches in the pile of 40 baggies and pulls out a baggie: For example, here is the Yellow P bag ...

PAUSE

... here is where Ms. H's internal dialogue begins to kick in ...

Ms. H's Internal Dialogue: Oh jeez, I just said "Yellow P Bag"! Did anyone notice? Do I keep going?!? Ok, I'm just going for it!

Ms. H's Actual Words: So please make sure you keep all of the Yellow P cards in the Yellow P bag.

Ms. H peers cautiously out at the class, expecting snickers and potty talk to begin rippling across the group of students ...

SILENCE

(20 innocent first grade faces staring at Ms. H)

Ms. H's Internal Dialogue: Phew! Crisis averted. Thank goodness for innocent firsties. I would have never gotten away with that in third grade. Yellow P Bags, indeed!

And now the lesson. Today was all about going with the flow. Being flexible and going with the flow is a part of every teacher's day, no matter how well laid their plans may have been, because things always arise in the classroom and with the children that are unexpected; anything from teachable moments, to conflicts amidst students, to realizing a better way to frame your lesson plan about 2 seconds into the delivery of said plan. When you're the only teacher in the classroom and a moment comes up, you just adjust your course and move forward, no problem. We've realized that with the two of us, when one of us acts impulsively, the other just has to go with the flow. That is exactly what happened to us today. We work really hard to stay on the same page and talk about things before we do them but sometimes things just come up.

For example, in the morning, Ms. H invented a responsibility behavior goal on the spot inspired by the morning announcements. Ms. B said, "Riiiiiight! Ok, then!"

Then later, Ms. B told the children, "And now we are going to check each of your math journals," as Ms. H was lining them up to put their math work away. Ms. H said, "Riiiiiight! I'll just go get a stamp, too."

Later Ms. B said, "I'm going to show you this on the number line." Then Ms. H said, "Riiiiiight! I'll just go get the number line." Even though these examples are rather silly, we had to laugh to ourselves because they kept happening all day long.

So, the FLY AWAY is take things in stride; go with the flow. As Ms. B says, "It's just like improv. You go with what your partner said and make your partner look good." Again, it's all about keeping your eyes on the larger picture and being more flexible with the details.

But, let's be honest, for anyone who knows us there's only so much flow that both of us obsessive-compulsive control freaks will tolerate. 

From the limb,

Benefits of Collaborative Teaching #1 - Built In Coaching

So, yesterday Kristie and I had a wonderful plan of using the two of us to model for the first graders how Making Words lessons work. Making Words is a component of our Word Work block that we are adding for the children next week. We wanted to take advantage of the fact that there are two of us to show the students exactly what the teacher and the student will do during the lesson. It was a beautiful plan ... until I botched it. Now, you have to know that I was teaching third grade before I moved down to first and I, by nature, tend to keep my teaching discourse at a high level no matter what grade I'm teaching; it's something I have to work on so that all of my students can access my instruction equally. I was acting as the teacher in our scenario and I did not keep my phrasing explicit enough to be appropriate for first grade. So, yeah ... there it is ... I botched it.

Now Kristie, being the kind and understanding teaching partner that she is, sat down across from me at recess and said in her most diplomatic voice: "So, can we talk about our Making Words lesson?". And I, after stifling down my initial instinctual feeling of defensiveness, replied, "Of course." Long story short, we talked it out and she outlined for me more explicitly what would have been more appropriate for a first grade Making Words lesson. And she was right.

Today we had modeling the Making Words process in our plans again so I was given another chance to practice my delivery. This time, I followed her directions and the lesson went much better. At recess today, I said: "So Coach Kristie, let's talk about our Making Words lesson. How did I do? Give me 2 stars and a wish." While I was being a bit facetious, the inherent benefits of what happened in this simple exchange over two days were not lost on me. Not only did I benefit from the embedded professional development that comes from having another teacher in the classroom, I was also able to adjust my curriculum delivery almost immediately to better fit the needs of my first graders. Would I have been able to calibrate my instructional delivery to fit my first graders needs on my own? Sure. But how long might it have taken me before I figured out a formula of delivery that was appropriate? How many frustrated lessons might we all have lived through before I got it right? Of course, we'll never know, but the benefit of having someone there, someone who has taught the grade before and knows the appropriate jumping off point, was invaluable for me this week and I know my students will directly benefit from it as well. So, thank you Kristie! Thanks for being a great teaching partner and a supportive coach!

Love,
Kristin

From the limb,

Just Saying

Our attempt at a Pinterest-inspired calm down jar, and can we just say....

Example                                        Ours

Don't be jealous of our glitter milk jar.  We WILL be trying this again.

From the limb,

First Day of School ... In Ten Words

We survived our first day of school! These ten words describe our experience and feelings:

1) excitement

2) thirty-nine

3) smiles

4) houses

5) teamwork

6) flexibility

7) squirmy

8) procedures

9) supported

10) tired

We hope everyone else had a wonderful first day of school as well. Now off to collapse in bed ... zzzzzz!

From the limb,

Just Saying ...

Kristie bought a drum ... that is all.

From the limb,