L was out on Friday, so we couldn't finish preparations for leveling*... so much for starting the new classroom with the new week. Ah well. It'll probably happen by Tuesday... and it'll give me that last day to finish my DRAs. I forgot when I was doing them that the "high" kids are just as important as the "low" kids... I may have to trade one boy back from L and give her a girl, because she's probably too high to be in my class. He's borderline (I/J reading level) but given the involvement of her mother and her mother's insistence that her daughter loves to read and went to the library frequently, I'm betting she's at least a K by now.
This is all massively frustrating. There are lots of things (introducing the job chart, organizing guided reading groups, putting name tags on the desks) that I don't want to really get into until I have a moderately stabilized classroom... and as I said last time or so, I'm sort of feeling like I wasted the first week of getting routines underway and getting the kids settled since we're going right back into upheaval. I guess I could think of it as an opportunity to try it again and see if I can do it better... but the problem is that the core curriculum goes into full force this week, and I don't have the extra time in the mornings anymore.
I was about right about numbers, though. I'm losing two Cs and two Ds off the bottom, and two Js off the top, and gaining six Is and six E-Fs. This will give me, according to my current plan, four teams of five and one team of six (this makes more sense than four teams of four and two teams of five for space reasons, much as I like smaller groups) with two desks left over. I will have to give up on my plan to have morning circle until I can get more rug pieces, because currently my rug is just too small. (What I will probably have to do is move the rug out from the wall a bit, and have them sitting on carpet squares all around its perimeter. They'll actually sit on the rug when they're in rows for lesson introduction or read aloud.)
We'll have to see how it goes... providing it ever actually fstarking happens. Bureaucracy can bite me.
*I never fully explained what this was, did I... It's got a couple of meanings. On the one hand, they're trying to keep the kids organized by reading level, so that no one has to cope with TOO much differentiation in the classroom. O will have the lowest kids (B-D, K-early 1 level), I'll have the mid-range kids (E-I/J, mid-to-late 1) and L will have the highs (J-P, 2nd-early 4th grade level). To answer Naomi, who asked me this a week ago by now, this differs from tracking in that the kids are re-evaluated and placed every year, so if they improve they'll be in a different class for third grade).
It also just means leveling the numbers. I have yet to have more than 20 kids in my classroom, despite the fact that my roll sheet says 25. L has had 28, with a roll sheet of 30, and O has actually had 30. So by the time we're done, L and I will have 26, and O will have 25. (some kids on the roll sheet don't actually go here anymore.)
So that's that.
About Me
- Sarah Kendall
- Let me teach like a Steinway, spinning slowly in April air, so almost-falling, so hinderingly dangling from the neck of the movers' crane. So on the edge of losing everything. Let me teach like the first snow, falling. -Taylor Mali
6 comments:
Hi Sarah, do I know you in first life (i.e. in person)? Thanks for following UGLiBlog! I'm adding The Hanging Piano to my rss reader.
-Katie
Yep, it's Obie-Sarah, who got to UGLi from Facebook. :) Hope you enjoy my (somewhat less hilarious) rantings too. :)
Hey, no worries about comment-response time. Aside from the fact that I know you're busy, I was either away at a meeting or effectively away (frantically preparing for it) for the last week.
And that does sound like a more useful version of tracking, especially if they'd do all the testing first thing.
We did it as quickly as we could, but due to a lot of upheaval at the end of last year, they couldn't get us the kits until Monday, which was the third day of school. I'm hoping that next year we'll be able to do it straight from day 1... it would be nice to just have two straight days of testing (especially if they are a Thursday and Friday, like they were this year) and then do all the shuffling, and have the "first day of school" be Monday.
how long before the A-D kids realize they're "not as good" as the j-whatever? is that going to be a problem? 2nd grade was my last year before non-GT kids started fussing at me for "thinking i was too good for them."
A-D is a kindergarten level. "I have a cat. I have a dog. I have a hat. I have a book." Honestly, they probably already know that they're way behind. And yes, it can cause behavior problems ("I don't know how to do the work, so let me scribble on the kid next to me's paper") but in my classroom at least it's a personal thing, not interpersonal. I don't know how the way-high and the way-low interact on the playground, since I'm not out there (we have aides for that, which is a mixed blessing), but at least in my class, the differences aren't so great as to cause undue friction. A few of them at least seem to think of it as something of a challenge. "He reads better than me?! We'll just see about that." Which is, of course, the ideal reaction.
Truth be told, though, even in L's (high) class, I don't think any of them are on the level we were on.
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