Hey, Teacher! 👩‍🏫

By now, I think most schools are back in session and maybe you've had a few days to get to know your new class and you're getting back in the groove. For me, Monday will mark day 5 -- so we've had some time to get to know one another. I have a FABULOUS group of kids this year -- they are hilarious and hard working and polite...I may have hit the class jackpot (again) this year!

I just woke up from a horrible dream. It's currently 5:52 am on Sunday morning so this dream is fresh in my brain. I couldn't get my class to stop talking. I was trying to give directions and not a one of them would listen. I kept trying to tell them to stop talking using my classroom microphone and they just kept on ignoring me. Then-- it happened. I lost it and YELLED into the microphone like a banshee. Immediately I felt that terrible feeling you get when you lose your cool and the kids were just staring at me, mouths agape...it was awful.

I woke up wondering why in the world I didn't use our fun class callbacks that we came up with last week! Because those things work. And also my kids would never ignore me. 😉 It was a terrible dream, but you can see where my brain has already gone in the 4 days I've been with my kids. I am back in the game, guys!

I digress! Goodness.

I wanted to share with you something I created over the summer that we put to use this week to help us nail down exactly what 2nd grade skills our students are missing so that when we go to put together our small group lessons, we know exactly what to work on with each group.

In previous years, we were using an assessment that was a little confusing for us because some of the words were unnecessarily obscure and were outside of typical 3rd grade instructional exposure. The assessment also was incredibly long and took multiple days to complete.

So what we did was look at all of the 2nd grade skills that are necessary to master before moving on to our more rigorous 3rd grade concepts. (Specifically for spelling and ultimately morphology.) Then we put those skills into a 3-part assessment. We give the encoding (spelling) portion first, then depending upon how they do, we can decide to move to the syllable portion or the (verbal) phonics portion. This helps us to see what their biggest hurdles are and narrow it down to the specific skill. Then we can group our kids accordingly and focus on getting everyone what they need.

I especially love the little color dots so I can quickly see which section was the most challenging for each student.

While we would all love for our students to come to 3rd grade mastering all of those phonics skills, sometimes that just isn't possible. Time constraints, other priorities, testing...so many things can prevent us from being able to go back and reinforce those key skills. So we spend plenty of time during the first weeks of school sorting out pain points and tackling them right away.

We are fortunate at our school to have something called Knight Time (we're the Knights, so cute!). The whole school has their own set time for this block and it is a time for teachers to pull strategy groups. This year, our second and third grade teams are combining their Knight Times so we essentially have 10 teachers that can lead groups. So here relatively soon, some of my kids that still need some phonics work will go to 2nd grade teachers and some of their students will come to us for enrichment. It's going to be a beautiful thing. We have already grouped our kids and we will begin this Monday! (We grouped our kids by their MAP RIT Bands for now and will make adjustments as we go, but we wanted to get this going ASAP.)

I'm really hoping this assessment can help us solve the mystery of what to teach during small groups. I hate to admit it, but sometimes in my groups I looked a little like a deer in headlights trying to decide what in the world to do with them. But as I continue my 3rd grade journey, I am figuring it out -- one little thing at a time. 😉

In the coming weeks, I am going to share some ideas for small groups. I also tended to over-complicate the plans and it REALLY does not have to be anything fancy. A plan and some dry erase markers is all you need!

Thank you for being here! Hit reply and tell me how you decide what to teach in small groups -- I LOVE collaborating and I read every single reply I get! 🩷

Have a great week!