The Spelling Bee Compromise

For the past few years, our school's PTA has felt important to add a line item in their budget to pay for the opprotunity for our students to participate in the County Spelling Bee every year. Over the past two years, only three students have taken advantage of that chance.
This year, wanting to see more students participate, I decided that I would try something to sweeten the pot and motivate kids to take part. After running the idea by my principal and getting approval, I was curious to see if a proposed compromise to students would peak their interest.

Unfortunately, the subject of Spelling in our building, and other elementary schools around the nation, has somewhat pushed aside for longer periods of Reading and Math, MTSS, etc, etc... This fact was one of the main reasons that "inspired" my compromise. So, what was the compromise?

With six weeks left in the third quarter of our school year, I proposed to my reading group that anyone who participated in the Spelling Bee was exempt from all Spelling tests and spelling activities for the rest of the quarter. The grade that they had at that point, was the grade they would finish with at the end of the quarter. Now, there were some details that had to be worked out in order for this to work.

1. Students had to sign a contract saying that they would participate, and in return, be allowed to forgo classroom Spelling for the rest of the quarter.
2. They were to study the Spelling Bee list on their own or when the rest of the class was testing or doing Spelling activities. They would be responsible for their own learning.
3. Students participating would be allowed to complete our weekly classroom Spelling Contracts using their Spelling Bee lists to raise their current grade if they weren't please with what they earned up to that point.
4. If a student did not participate in the competition after agreeing to do so, their previous missed Spelling scores would turn to "zeros" in the grade book until they made them up.
5. Their parent had to approve of their decision and sign off on their contract.

I knew that I was taking a risk because Spelling is the one subject that parents tend to feel the most passionately about for some reason. But to my surprise, there was overwhelming support and excitement on the part of the parents.

So, you might be asking (or maybe not), did my plan of a great compromise work? I had twelve of the twenty-three students from my reading group choose to participate. And amazingly enough, these students spent more time and effort in to learning that list of words, than they probably had from any other Spelling list up to this point in the year. Did I get the result I wanted? In short, yes. I felt proud for those who wanted the extra challenge and was excited for them to do well in the competition. Next year, I just might make it a mandatory requirement for those in my class.

Update!!!

Today was the Spelling Bee and the kids did great. I was so proud of them to have the courage to stand in front of a large audience and put themselves out there and be presented with a challenge. I was happy to see that all the students made it past the third round and even more exciting, two students finished in the top ten out of about sixty other students from our local area.

Making Parent/Teacher Conferences more Focused

Every time conferences come up, I always think of ways that I could improve and get more information to parents and from parents in regards to their child. There are times where it seems like I always end up saying the same thing over and over as the conferences go on and forget to "customize" my conference time for each student. It gets easy to get into a groove and just breeze through a conference. After I had finished my "presentation" and got all the information about progress reports, MTSS reports, pre/post testing, state assessments, important dates, interventions, etc, etc, etc. to parents that I thought was needed, the parents weren't left with much time to ask many questions before the next set of parents were waiting their turn. There always seemed to be more time needed and that I would ramble over seemingly trivial things and didn't have time for some of the more important aspects of the conference, the parent's concerns and questions about their child.

So, I tried to do somethings this time around that would hopefully help me stay more focused and give parents that information that they really want to know, "How is my child doing in class?"

I am a very reflective person and I feel that you can learn a lot by thinking back and giving yourself a little "self-assessment" of how things are going. (This blog is a case and point of that.) Having my students reflect on their year to date was a good way for me to see where students feel that they are at as far as classroom performance, work ethic, teamwork, etc. Usually students are harder on themselves than I would be, so for the most part, I can get an accurate representation of things from the student's perspective. I had them take a "self-assessment" of their own to help guide my thinking and discussions through the conference. The student filled out on side of the chart and I filled out the other. Any glaring differences are easy to spot and that's when a discussion can result of it. The results from this chart helped me pinpoint some areas of concern that I might have.

Student Self-Assessment

Next, I wanted a way that I could communicate with parents before the conference and get somewhat of a "preview" of any concerns, scenarios, questions, etc. that they might have beforehand. I told my students that their parents had the homework for the evening (and it was amazing how many kids sat and made sure that their parents did the work). The homework was a question and answer form that could highlight things that they, as parents, wanted to make sure was talked about during the conference. This was also a good way to get a "heads up" on any major concerns that a parent might have. There is nothing more uncomfortable than being bombarded by a frustrated parent about a scenario you knew nothing about. It was nice to have an idea as to what questions they might have so that, I make sure to have an answer for them.

Parent Pre-Conference Form

And finally, again being reflective, I just couldn't help myself. I created a form for parents to fill out during the conference that was an easy way to organize their thoughts. I created an "organizer" for parents to write down any celebrations they heard during the conference, any improvements that needed to be made, goals set, or things to work on, as well as important dates and other information. Well, to my surprise, parents loved this idea and I was glad to see parents writing vigorously things down to make sure to celebrate with their student and goals to keep track of.

Conference Notes

Overall, these subtle changes have given me a little more confidence heading into the conference session and gave the parents a lot more thorough and useful information so that their time wasn't totally wasted. These things helped me get past the explanation of things and give parents much needed and wanted information about their favorite thing in the whole world, their child.

On My Reading List

As part of our attempt to encourage reading in students, our teachers hang a sign outside their door letting kids know what books they are reading. This shows that even teachers still read and that reading is an important life-long skill.

I figured this blog would be a good place for me to set a goal for myself and read some books for enjoyment and gather knowledge from, rather than write an evaluation for or go to a staff development session about. 

Here is my list of books that I would like to read during the first quarter of 2012. If there is something else out there that would be good to get a hold of, please feel free to let me know.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
I have to read it one more time before the movie comes out in March.

The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller
What can I do to make my students appreciate reading?

Being Reflective

In our classroom, I expect my students to reflect on things that they are reading via a blog, so why shouldn't I do the same thing? My hopes for this blog is to post some reflections after some great lessons and some that maybe didn't go as planned. As I become better at being more reflective on a more consistent basis, this blog will be a place to share resources and ancedotes with my teaching collegues.