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High Tide, Low Tide: A Teacher’s Year

July 30, 2016 by Sarah Plum(itallo) 2 Comments

I spent this morning at the beach with my family. The sun low in the sky, its warmth just enough to remind you it’s summer. The salt in the air, carried by the sea’s breeze. The water just cold enough to awaken you, while still being warm enough to welcome you.

As I kept careful watch over my two boys – enthralled by the wonder of the crashing waves – my thoughts drifted to my students. Students I do not yet know, but worry over all the same. I began collecting shells, sea glass, and rocks, thinking of each of them as I plucked each treasure from the shore.

Each a treasure – no matter rough or smooth, broken or whole, big or small. Each a treasure.

Our students are not unlike these treasures. Some come to us whole, some broken. Some come to us rough around the edges, some smooth. Some come to us with big dreams, some with small hopes. But one thing is for certain – they are all treasures just the same.

This school year will not always be calm seas.

Just like high tide and low, we too will have moments when we feel ourselves drifting out to sea – overwhelmed by data, report cards, lesson planning, and so much more. It is in these times that we must look toward the beauty at our feet – the treasures revealed to us in our students by the receding waves of adversity.

I gathered one treasure for each of my precious students to come. I do not yet know their names, dreams, hopes, and fears. They, like these treasures, each unique in what they need from me and what they will teach me. I have in mind a place in my classroom to keep these treasures, a reminder of my students’ beauty and promise… So that I can look to them each day and in each season when the tide is low – I can remember why it is that I call myself teacher. A tangible reminder that will become theirs at the end of our voyage together this year.

Above all I know this to be true – that in high tides and low, there are treasures to be found. You need only look for them.

5 Reasons You Need The Reading Strategies Book

July 23, 2016 by Sarah Plum(itallo) 1 Comment

I’m excited to team up with my colleagues from the Teaching Mosaic to share with you what I’ve been reading this summer – please head over to Tamara’s blog to check out all of the other fantastic posts from my “peeps”!

Chances are, you’ve seen or heard about The Reading Strategies Book by Jennifer Serravallo. It might’ve been on a colleague’s book shelf, discussed in a staff meeting or PLC, or come across one of your social media feeds. If you’ve already bought it then you’re already in on what I feel is the single best professional resource for teachers, EVER. If you haven’t, then read on (and share with a friend) for the five reasons YOU need The Reading Strategies Book.

1. You teach readers.

This is the most obvious reason you need this text – you teach readers! If you (like me) teach readers – of any reading level – you need this text in your arsenal of resources. Veteran teacher, first year teacher… it matters not! This text has something for every teacher of readers in any school in any location. It doesn’t matter if you use a basal, balance literacy model, or anything else – this text is adaptable and compatible.

2. You differentiate (or want to).

Most professional texts help you differentiate reading instruction in theory. This professional text helps you differentiate in practice. In my humble opinion, there’s no more important of a subject to differentiate than reading. Reading is the key to success for our students, and if they do not receive what they need – not what the average of their classmates need – they will not experience the success they deserve.

Jennifer Serravallo has laid out this text so that you can easily target your students’ needs and differentiate in multiple settings. The text is laid out first by goal (such as fluency or identifying main idea in fictional texts), then by strategies specific to supporting that goal. The strategies are organized by a range of suggested reading levels to help you further select strategies that are just right for your students. You can also see whether a strategy is limited to a particular genre, or applicable to any genre. This organization allows you to differentiate not just within a students’ reading level, but with their strengths and weaknesses in comprehension or particular genres as well. With this text, having mixed strategy groups and the flexibility to move students frequently is a breeze.

3. You set reading goals with your readers.

Research tells us that goal-setting in reading is increasingly important. One of my personal goals as a teacher of readers is to improve my practice when it comes to supporting my readers. The way I’ve chosen to do that is focusing on setting specific reading goals with each of my readers — and following-up to refine and select new goals as appropriate.

Serravallo is a proponent of goal-setting, and makes it easy to use The Reading Strategies Book as your primer for your students’ goals. Her table of contents is setup by reading goals, which makes it easy to select an area of focus with your reader and follow-up with a teachable strategy. You can then track students’ progress toward their goal as they integrate each strategy into their own reading behaviors.

4. You love attractive, purposeful anchor charts.

Raise your hand if you’ve searched anchor charts on Pinterest or on Google in the recent past. Raise your hand if that past was this week. Or yesterday. Or today. My hand is held high! I am a total sucker for an attractive, purposeful anchor chart – the real key being purposeful. While I love my Mr. Sketch markers and anchor chart supplies something fierce, I love my students’ ability to repeatedly refer to an anchor chart to scaffold and support their learning even more.

The vast majority of strategy lessons that Serravallo includes in The Reading Strategies Book are accompanied by a sample anchor chart for you to co-construct with students. This text is literally like having a completely organized, research-based Pinterest for readers at your fingertips. Serravallo gives you great suggestions for how to make them your own, and how to adapt them for a variety of learners (including English Language Learners like the students I teach). These anchor charts have been some of the most powerful I’ve ever had in my classroom – and students do refer to them long after you’ve completed the mini-lesson.

5. You want explicit, easy-to-implement strategies.

I love professional reading. I own a lot of professional texts. I have not, however, read them all cover to cover. What I love most about Serravallo’s The Reading Strategies Book is that you don’t need to read it cover to cover (though I have because I just love it that much). This text is made for teachers, by a teacher, to be used daily as a tool. This is not just summer reading, this is everyday reading that you put into practice!

At our twice-a-week PLCs, my team (including our administrator), often pulled out The Reading Strategies Book and utilized it to drive our small-group and whole-group reading instruction. We talked about what worked and what didn’t, what students needed which strategies, and what we need to emphasize as a whole grade level. This is an incredible text to use as a team – and it gets results.

Ready to get started?

This text is easy-to-read – you will not fall asleep, I promise! It gets straight to the point, explains each strategy, offers teaching ideas, prompts you can use with your students, “hat tips” for further reading (I loved these), and often a visual to pair with the strategy. I can’t say enough about how easy this text is to use – and how much it is used. This will not take up real estate no your bookshelf – it will take up permanent residence in your teacher bag!

Buy The Reading Strategies Book (or ask your administrator to!) – I bought mine on Amazon for about $40. (This is not an affiliate link – I don’t receive any kickback for sharing about this awesome text, I just love it that much!)
There is a wonderful Facebook group for users of the text that you can join here.
You can follow Jennifer Serravallo on Twitter here.
You can download a FREE study guide for the text here.

In Times of Challenge and Controversy, We Must Speak.

July 7, 2016 by Sarah Plum(itallo) 2 Comments

Close your eyes. Picture someone you love. Think about everything that is good about them – everything that makes you smile, the lightens your heart and brightens your day. As I speak my heart in this post, everytime you are tempted to close the window because of complicated feelings – I want you to picture them. Picture their lives being reduced to a hashtag, R.I.P. meme, or 24 hour media coverage. Then take a breath, and just exist in the discomfort of our current reality. For it’s important we feel discomfort in these times.

As a white teacher, I am tasked with teaching the children that enter my classroom – not the children that reflect my racial makeup, my gender, my sexual orientation, my socioeconomic status, my religious affiliation – but the children that actually walk through my door. This means that I cannot afford to be blind to anything about who they are. Who their families are. Who their community is. What they are facing.

We cannot afford to be blind.

We cannot afford to lift the veil of privilege and be awoken only in times of tragedy, either. We must greet each day with eyes wide open – eyes that see race, that see gender, that see sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and religion. We must actively look and educate ourselves (and our fellow white colleagues) and take part in the conversation about all of those things.

But today, now, in this moment… In this moment we must actively engage ourselves in listening to our brothers and sister of color. We must understand that we cannot understand. We must welcome the discomfort of unpacking all the layers that exist when talking about the deaths of black Americans at the hands of law enforcement – racial bias, systemic racism, white privilege, socioeconomic privilege, a justice system that is flawed.

Black lives matter.

Add no qualifier to that statement. It doesn’t need one. Affirm that the lives of your friends, colleagues, students, and community members of color matter. They matter so much, indeed, that you need not add any “but” or “and” to that statement. You needn’t compare their lives to any others. They are loved. They have worth. They matter.

They matter not just today because they are in mourning, not just because they are fearful for their sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, friends and community… they matter not just because there’s a hashtag or a social media movement.

They matter everyday. Every moment. Every breath, every blink of an eye, every word.

We can do better. We must do better. We will do better.

If you affirm that we must do better – that even though we understand that we cannot understand we will not stop until the dying stops – there are things that you can do. That I can do. That we will do.

1. Listen.

As I wrote in a prior post on race, we must listen more than we speak – exponentially more. We must be willing to feel uncomfortable in that process… We must be willing to be exposed to thoughts, ideas, positions, and action that makes us feel discomfort. Are you thinking of that person you love? Think of them often as you listen. Allow that love you feel for them to open your heart to justice for the people that so many love that are dying in our streets.

2. Seek knowledge.

Do not wait for another tragedy to be informed. Read on issues of race. Follow teachers of color on social media. Engage in your community and find avenues to be an ally. Do all of this with the expectation that you are responsible for educating yourself – and then help to educate your colleagues. It is not up to people of color to educate us. We must do that ourselves.

My friend Tamara has an incredible list of people compiled to start informing yourself about social justice. Please take your time, read hand find those that you can listen to. She, herself, is one of those voices.

3. Amplify the voices of people of color.

Share their stories. Their message. Re-tweet, share on Facebook, repost on Instagram. Leverage your sphere of influence to support their voices being heard, because their voices should be the loudest. Their voices are the most important in this conversation. We must honor them, their feelings, their reality.

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, 1963

Stand with me, in this time of challenge and controversy. Stand with me and act so that we are better. We will do better for our friends, our family, our colleagues, our community, and most importantly – our students.

We will do better because their black lives matter.

The Top 3 Reasons I Don’t Need a Lightbox

July 6, 2016 by Sarah Plum(itallo) 15 Comments

If you have an Instagram account, Twitter account, or Facebook, you’ve seen it. THE lightbox. The “must-have” teacher accessory of the back-to-school season. If you’re anything like me, you might have been intrigued the first 36 times you saw it. You might have even scoped it out on an unrelated run to Michael’s or Jo-Ann’s. If you are me, you likely messaged with your teacher BFFs hoping they too would have the little voice in the back of their head saying – what in the world?!

Which leads me to…

#1. It is just one. more. thing. to manage.

I don’t know about you, but on more than one occasion my classroom calendar has been two months behind. Once it said December after Spring Break. If I’m being completely honest, there are times when my pile of papers to grade is taller than my three year-old. I would be the teacher that has “Welcome Back!” on my lightbox in February. Or I’d have the vocabulary words from three units ago displayed in lights during my formal observation. I know myself. This would be one more thing on an ever-growing list of things that I’d have to keep track of and well, I wouldn’t.

#2. It is just one. more. potential distraction.

Full-disclosure: my rising second-grader has autism. He is highly distractable. He is the kid that will ask you about the Cold War (no, really) in the middle of your read-aloud about Thanksgiving. He is the kid that will stare – incessantly – at your lightbox while you’re trying to direct his attention to everywhere (anywhere, please for the love of Ticonderoga, anywhere) else. Lightbox-related job? He’s all over it. In fact, he’ll probably obsess over it. My point is this: there are likely to be some kids – maybe even many – for whom the lightbox will be a complete distraction. Negative-value added. My kiddo is one of them. And I can think of several past kiddos in my own classroom for whom it would also be true. Which leads me to my third and final point…

#3. What does it have to do with student achievement, really?

Now I know you might be thinking – geez, Sarah, could you be anymore of a killjoy? Yeah, I probably could be. And I totally acknowledge that the above question sounds like I could write the “active monitoring” manual for any number of state tests. More and more, though, this is a question I’ve been asking myself when I’ve been making decisions about my classroom. Student achievement is absolutely not the only thing I care about – I care an awful lot about my kiddos as tiny people, too (I mean, I spend my free time making things to that effect). But the most important job I have is to make sure each of my kiddos can experience success. I’m just not sure how a lightbox does that, especially when I consider points #1 and #2 above. There are other ways for me to display quotes, vocabulary, or emojis. For me, the time I spend making accessories for or updating the lightbox could be better spent elsewhere… and the risk of distracting my most vulnerable students is too high of a cost to bear in my classroom.

My bottom line is…

None of this is to say YOU shouldn’t buy one. I’m all about the #doYOU spirit. But for my fellow fence-sitters out there – my friends that scroll past trends like this on Instagram and have not-a-cool teacher guilt (it’s a thing, people!) – you’re not alone. Whatever your reason for not buying a lightbox (or single-handedly clearing out the Dollar Spot), it’s okay. I’m with you.

#DoYOU: Just Say No to “One Size Fits All”

April 17, 2016 by Sarah Plum(itallo) 12 Comments

I’ve been an edublogger for almost four years now (although that term should be applied lightly as I’ve been more educator and less blogger as of late). I’ve noticed a trend: four years ago you’d see post after post about the goings-on of individual classrooms (with lots of authentic, unpolished images). Now the blogosphere and social media is filled with posts, images, and videos telling you (the reader and teacher) to do x, y, or z and why you should abandon a, b, and c.

As a teacher first and edublogger second, I have to say that I’m frustrated. I’m frustrated for new teachers, who may feel pulled in 1,000 different directions – and likely pit against the realities of their classrooms and the window dressing of social media (which the fantastic Jillian Starr talks about here). I’m frustrated for veteran teachers, who may feel like the many strategies and practices used during their successful teaching career are being called into question or labeled as “what not to do”. I’m frustrated for “in-between” teachers just hitting their stride in the profession, like myself, who now feel stuck between “what’s new” and “what’s working.”

After biting my tongue for months and scrolling on past image after image and post after post with the “you must do THIS” tone, it hit me like Monday morning on a full moon. We are, in many ways, doing to ourselves what we so ardently fight against legislators doing: making assumptions about classrooms other than our own and prescribing a one size fits all solution.

So this is my version of “you must do x, y, and z and NOT a, b, and c.”

Not every child will learn best sitting on the floor, a wobble chair, a rocker, a yoga ball, or while standing up. Some children will learn best at a desk.
Not every child will learn best with an iPad, or scanning a QR code, or making a video. Some children will learn best without a piece of technology in their hand.
Not every child will learn best by completing a craftivity, doing an interactive notebook, or finishing a recording sheet in a center. Some children will learn best with just a paper and pencil.
Not every child will learn best with a room filled from ceiling to floor with fluorescent anchor charts, laminated posters, or more bulletin board border than the teacher store. Some children will learn best with less stimulation.
Not every child’s behavior will be managed by classroom currency, a positive clip chart (yes, even mine!), brag tags, Class Dojo, or a positive note home. Some children will need a clip chart, color system, or “old-fashioned” phone call home.

Every child, however, will learn best with a teacher that considers their needs – not the needs of the child in a classroom clear across the country viewed through the lens of Periscope, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or a blog.

What’s one size fits all in education?

The need for a critically reflective, life-long learner in the role of teacher.

I believe fully that our community of educators in this digital space is a blessing. I have learned so much, and I have grown so much as an educator. I feel blessed to have shared my knowledge with other educators, too. But with an audience of this size, those of us that participate in these conversations about our practice have to acknowledge that we don’t know the reality of those on the other side of the connection – and must frame our opinions, strategies, and experiences accordingly.

If your students benefit from alternative seating? Rock on! If your students learn better by reading on an iPad? Do it! If your students are motivated by themed decorations and lots of color? Keep it!

At the end of the day, I don’t know what’s best for your classroom. I don’t know your students – or you! I can’t possibly give you better advice or insight than you can give yourself by making something your own. Do whatever is best for your students and leave the rest in your browser history.

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