Looping

As a teacher, you answer hundreds of questions a day. You provide at least five lessons a day (either full lessons or mini-lessons). Stretch those numbers out to 180 days and you get somewhere in the range of 1,000 lessons a year. When looping, with the same class for two consecutive years...you could be talking about 2,000 lessons! Maya Angelou once said, 'I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.' As a teacher, I want students to remember how I made them feel, but with the nature of teaching...you kind of have to have them remember some of what you said to them. As it is school after all. That said, you are never sure what they will remember. When I was student teaching at Lima Elementary School in Providence, I would have a seminar class every Friday. In this class, the student teachers (from all over the state) would meet to discuss what they learned about teaching. I'll ...

  Middle of the Year (MOY) is one of the biggest data points of the year. In the world of assessments, there is one right after another for the students. It is a tough time of year as the hope is to get through all of the assessments by the end of January. We have iReady (which is our diagnostic for both Reading and Math) and ACCESS testing (for out multilingual learners). Plus we have end of module assessments, pre-module assessments, middle of the year assessments, etc. It is tough to be a student (or faculty) in school during the month of January. I usually spend most of January with post-it-notes all around my desk with assessments and names of missing students. I feel terrible about the students getting so bogged down with the assessments and they groan every time I mention a new one. That said, it is an opportunity for students to show what they know. Assessments, especially iReady are indicators of where students are at the halfway point and how close they are to being profi...