Monday Made It {June 2}

I love the idea of keeping myself accountable through out the summer. I know that if I don't have a list, I tend to just veg and then wonder where all my time went! That's also part of why I started this blog. I'm really good at starting projects and then not completing them for various reasons. I've technically been out of school for almost 1 1/2 weeks, but I had a week long training so I consider this my first real week of summer!

My training was in Kagan cooperative learning. It was great! I had heard a lot about Kagan and it actually worked very well with the GLAD training I've previously had. The main thing about setting up Kagan structures in your classroom is having your students grouped in heterogeneous groups. That means looking at all of you kiddos and organizing them by their academic scores and then arranging them into groups, keeping in mind your "difficult clients." I was a little overwhelmed at the idea of needing to do that with all my kids, as we switch for reading, math and science/social studies. That just seemed like a lot of work that I would have to continuously be doing. I'm not a fan of work that continually needs redone (dishes and laundry are going to be the death of me for this reason!), but decided to just accept it and go forward 100%. If you don't give it your all, then you'll never know if it really works. In this case, I'm really excited about the possibilities that the Kagan structures may allow to happen in my room!

So with that… I luckily already have my class list for next year for my homeroom, reading and math classes. I decided why not make my card early and have my first groups already formed! I know that I'll have some students end up not coming and new students that do come, but the bulk of the work is done! It's not a very exciting "made it" but it's something that I won't need to do in the fall when I have a lot more to do.

This is the suggested way to create student info cards. I decided to use the colored index cards for a couple of reasons. I can color code by class. Pink is students in my reading class, and orange is students in my math class. Also, I already had them, so it was free! Best kind of project!

I filled out their SBA (state test) scores from 4th grade and their 4th grade Spring MAP (Measures of Academic Progress) scores for that subject. I also left room for their 5th grade MAP scores. Students may change colors throughout the year but I wanted to be able to quickly see if that happens by looking at their card. Each kid is also assigned a color based on where they fall within the class. 

Blue = High

Green = Medium High

Yellow = Medium Low

Red = Low

I will have the intervention reading class, but whoever my top kids are, are colored blue. I like that. I'm excited to have this done and in my brain. This will really help me when I'm thinking/planning over the summer.

Thanks for stopping by and hopefully I can include some home made its! 

*Steph*