Ms. M's Tales of a Teacher: My Personal Teacher Blog

 Today my blog comes from a personal place in my heart. As a special education teacher, differentiating instruction for my students with learning diversities has been something I've prided myself on for most of my career. I pride myself on the ability to differentiate the same homework assignment up to five different ways so all students have access. I spend a considerable amount of time reviewing assessments for the math curriculum to make sure it reflects exact skills taught from the lesson.  Then I sit back and think to myself, "what more can I do?" I know I am doing my best, and please believe me for all my new(er) teachers out there, learning how to differentiate and thinking creatively does not come quickly or easily. I myself am still learning how to improve this part of my craft and include new ideas and technologies to help. For me, the most common group I neglect are my above-level students.  As I shared before I do offer challenge level work to students who wou...

 Happy New Year fellow educators! I know what you must be thinking... here is another "inspirational fad blog post" to get me going for the new year that I'll skim through and see the same thing as I did in all the other blogs I visit.  Maybe for some of you, my blog might slip into that category, but I can promise that is not my intention. My goal here is to give you a few brief thinking points to bring with you in your "teacher bag" as the new year starts.  Technically, it is NOT a new year for us. Our academic year is about mid-way through, and for us, September is when we get our fresh start. So what to do with resolutions? Here are my thoughts; if you want to make one great! If not, guess what?!? That's OK TOO! As teachers we reflect daily on our practice, review data, and make informed decisions when it comes to instruction. Then we think creatively and put our ideas into action in order to achieve a certain goal, provide more support, and increase ove...

 Today I'm excited to chat about one of my favorite things... structured literacy is an area that I'm passionate about, and I'm always looking for an excuse to talk about it, so let's dive in!  One area of focus for me has been working with students to develop strong phonemic awareness/decoding skills. Since my first Comprehensive training (and since retaking the training this summer) with  IMSE  I've had opportunities to work with students and apply these strategies. One of my favorite activities is using the blending board with large sound cards in which students blend the sounds into words after they study the sound.  I've also attended some workshops through IDA and Learning Ally in which I heard Dr. David Kilpatrick share his research. These experiences completely renovated how I view and now explain the difficulty students experience being able to read words without having to sound them out. Dr. David Kilpatrick describes this process as  orthograph...

 Today I'd like to focus on sharing something that my co-teacher and I have been working on in our classroom for Writing Workshop with our class. I like to think of this as splitting time wisely. We often know that multitasking can either be useful or well, frankly, useless. We found that having different writing pieces for students to work on works well.  This past unit for narrative writing, we had the students engaged in two different writing pieces. I took the lead with their main narrative writing piece in which most students focused on a personal story they wanted to share. My co-teacher took the responsibility of introducing the students to pattern books using Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Eric Carle to show the students how to create a pattern book of their own.  Time was set aside for students to create a class book (shared writing) and then students work with a partner to create a pattern of their own. We rotated writing sessions so students had am...

 Greetings everyone! I am thrilled to share with you today some strategies I've been geeking out on in my car as I commute to work the past few weeks. I've been listening to podcasts from Heinemann , my go-to for all things teaching! Side-plug for Heinemann- I've used many books to supplement my training and and the materials that often come with it are amazing because the video libraries are great ways to see experts model strategies!  Getting back to literacy and math, I've been trying some new strategies during math lessons that connect with literacy to help my students through word problems. The podcasts were a big help hearing from Jennifer Serravallo and Marilyn Burns how they cross-connect literacy and math using what their students already know and modeling in similar ways across the subjects.  This year I've been trying out comparing the word problems to the stories we are reading in class and applying strategies from Reading Workshop to help solve them. Re...

 Today I want to focus on Teacher Leadership. It's a term that many use but I often get asked "what exactly is Teacher Leadership?" There are many definitions of teacher leadership, and my first suggestion would be to check out a great book as your first stop as a resource: The Power of Teacher Leaders . I have educator friends who have chapters published in this book, and it personally was my launchpad for understanding teacher leadership, and for my own journey as one.  To me, being a teacher-leader goes beyond the textbook definition of being a leader at your school or in your district. Although leading your team at school and working closely with administrators to create a positive culture is certainly a part of leadership, there is more to it to explore.  I've found for myself personally, that exercising my leadership skills (and continuing to grow as a leader) comes from other areas in education. Consider the different teacher organizations you belong to, and if...

 This weekend I had the pleasure of listening to two great presenters for the Teachonomy Teacher Summit. Dr. Chris Hobbs and  Joshua Stamper both had excellent sessions that I learned a lot from. It's fairly easy for me to find professional development in other areas such as reading intervention, special education, and anything that pertains to being a classroom teacher. When it comes to leadership, it hasn't been that easy.  I'm in the unique position that I'm not studying to be an administrator or serving in a quasi-administrative role. For those that know me best, they know that leadership in education is one of my passions, and I fulfill that role through Kappa Delta Pi. Serving as Associate Counselor has been a blessing the past 7 years, and I've learned many lessons in leadership because I was given the chance to serve.  That's why I was beyond grateful for the leadership sessions Teachonomy offered during the summit. They were a perfect fit for me, yet t...