New Year, New Subject

   Confession time: I am horrible at posting. As you can tell, I only had one post from last school year. One! This year is hopefully going to be very different. I am on my 3rd year of teaching, and I get to teach 4th grade reading! I am so excited! I love to read and I love reading. My students don't know what to make of me. I am still a big nerd, when it comes to setting up my classroom, and talking about superheroes, and I am very open with them about that.
   This year as a school, we are implementing Kagan strategies, Leader In Me, ClassDojo, Formative Loop, and our principal bought all the teachers brand-new iPads! As I have mentioned, I'm excited about this year. I am working with an awesome team, and we are ready to get out of IR! Yes, we are in it again. We showed growth in all 3 areas, but not enough to make it out. This is our year!
   We have been working hard for 2 weeks, and my students are learning what it means to work together. We are gaining social skills, y'all! The other day, we did a strategy called "Jot Thoughts" and the students were working together to identify suffixes that they know. They loved it and were able to identify more suffixes than I thought they would! This next week, we are starting workstations in full force. They (the students) are ready.
   I went to a training this summer about this amazing strategy called "Tap and Think Reading." It is a great tool for students to use in all things reading. It starts with Universal Symbols and TRACKS.
   My students really get into the universal symbols. They understand that they get to customize them and they do not have to have the same symbols drawn as their partners/group. They are able to retell the story after reading it through just once, with pretty awesome accuracy! I know this year has great things in store.

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