Best Pencil Sharpener Ever

Best Pencil Sharpener Ever

by Colleen Guzman

          One of my friends told me that they had heard that Classroom Friendly Supplies was giving away sharpeners to bloggers to review, so I checked out the link, submitted a request and I was chosen to receive a free sharpener to use in my classroom and review. I even got to choose the color, so I chose the new purple sharpener because it looks really snazzy. Since I received the email indicating that I would receive a sharpener I have had nothing but an excellent experience,

          First of all I received the sharpener very quickly and without incident, and when I opened the box I was impressed to see that the sharpener was as amazing looking in person as it was on the internet. I had to try the sharpener as soon as I took it out of the box. In fact my husband tried it and my sons tried it and I sharpened another two pencils after they had their turn. We had so much fun and we were extremely impressed with the ease of use and sharpness of the pencil once it was complete. I thought it seemed great but I was skeptical about how it would survive use in my classroom. 

         

          I have had the sharpener in my classroom Since October and I am thrilled to say that the sharpener is still working wonderfully. My students love the sharpener and they ask for it every time they need to sharpener their pencil and in fact they prefer it to the electric sharpener. I thought it might lose it's luster and fun after a few weeks but it is still their favorite means of sharpening their pencils. In order to ensure that the sharpener lasts I do monitor the sharpener and keep it by my desk so I can make sure that the students are using it carefully so it will last. We did have one incident where we thought the sharpener was broken but when we looked it up on the website it indicated that there was probably lead stuck in the blades and it gave instructions on how to fix it, so we followed the directions and it was working again in no time. Since then it has been working fine and it is still providing us with extremely sharp pencils. 

           I do have a few issues with the sharpener that I haven't really looked into so the company may have resolutions for them that I am not aware of. I am still uncertain how to anchor the sharpener to the desk or too a table so it is not moving around when we are trying to use it. I also wish there was an arrow on the sharpener, near the handle to show the students which way to turn the handle because they always get confused about which way to turn the handle and then they think the sharpener is broken so I have to intervene. Aside from those two simple things, everything else has been great. I am very happy with my sharpener and I have recommended it to all of my teacher friends. With Christmas coming up these would make an excellent gift for any teacher you know and at $17.99 they are a great value. 

          

Silent Teacher Day

Silent Teacher Day

          There are times when I still have to give notes or go over vocabulary with my students, especially when the concept is very new to my students. When I have to give them facts to use I work diligently to capture their attention so they are really focusing on what they are doing and they aren't just going through the motions because I have asked them to. I have been wracking my brain lately trying to come up with something new and different, something I haven't done before and something that the students of today would understand. So I'm thinking and thinking and it dawns on me that the students of today have all seen those videos where the person sits in front of the camera and they simply flip the cards one by one while the audience reads them. I pondered and pondered wondering how I could use this same technique because I know my students are already familiar with it and trained to read and follow along. I came up with the following class exercise:

1) I print student copies of fill in the blank notes that students normally fill in as they follow along with me through a power point.

2) I print out the power point and tape the slides up around the room. I do not tape them up in order because that would be too easy. I do group a couple of slides that are relevant to one another, especially if they are in a paragraph together.

3) I write 12 questions about the notes that vary in DOK level. I tape the questions up around the room by the part of the notes that helps the students answer the questions.

4) I create some Google slides that will become my directions that the students will read as I silently flip through them. 

5) I write my objectives and "To Do" list on the white board.

When the students enter the room they already know that they are supposed to work on their warm-up so they work on it and we go over the answer together and then I stand in front of the room and I hold up my slides, flipping through them slowly as the class reads them, follows along and answer the questions asked on the slides. The students are shocked they cannot believe that I am not going to talk to them, that they are going to be responsible for their own learning and that they are going to get to work together to make it happen but once the initial shock wear off they are excited class has become like a game.

Here are the directions that I gave:

          When we had 10 minutes left of class I had everyone return to their seats and glue their notes into their science notebooks. We make a flap at the top and glue it so the notes can be flipped up to reveal with answers to the questions underneath. We then talk about how the activity went, the purpose of an activity like that and how they felt about doing the activity. Overall they all liked it, a few of them felt freaked out by the activity because they are no used to the teacher letting them be responsible for basically running the class together but they felt with some practice it would get better. We went over the notes and question answers the following day as well as questions that they had about word meanings or concepts.

          Overall I was very proud of this lesson. One of our administrators came in and observed, she really enjoyed it and said she thought one thing I could add next time was a slide asking if anyone had any questions. She liked the way I used facial expressions and allowed the students to help one another to answer the questions they asked without my prompting. She also liked the way I walked up to the students who did not appear to be paying attention and I held the papers out for them so they could read them and ensure they knew what was going on. 

I think I will definitely try "Silent Teacher Day" again. Let me know what you think in the comment section below.

Teacher Hoarding

Teacher Hoarding: You don't realize how much you have

by Colleen Guzman

          The school year had ended and it was time to come home for the summer. Most of my things I leave at school in my classroom but this year I changed rooms and I wasn't sure where I wanted to go with my new room and there are some things that I always bring home just because I don't want them to be broken or end up missing. I also have a whole room of school related items that I use throughout the year, or much of it I thinking I am going to use for one thing or another or I'm saving it for that one day when I switch from Middle School to Elementary school. The items I have at home are in shelves so those stay fairly organized but each summer I bring things home from my classroom I have to reorganize everything and make space for everything. This is not even counting what I will buy when back to school shopping begins.

          I'm not sure about you but once I am done with a school year I am exhausted, my brain, emotions and body are worn thin so adding more to my plate is the last thing I want to do. I can also admit though that every summer I know the cleaning and organizing are coming because to be completely honest, during the school year I only clean my house during Thanksgiving break, Christmas break, and Spring break so by summer there is major cleaning that needs to be done. Summer is when I move all the furniture and sweep and mop underneath them. I go through all of the closets and get rid of the old unused clothes. I venture into my son's rooms and do some massive cleaning in there. (Two of our three sons still live at home, they are currently 18 and 19 so their understanding of cleanliness is not the same as mine) So as you can see I have plenty of things to do over the summer so why am I dragging things home to add another chore for myself? I just have to have my classroom be organized because classroom chaos can lead to me being chaotic and I don't prefer that.

           I took pictures of the disaster that my house becomes when I drag all these things home and because I wanted to blog about this whole process and I'm not sure if it was the pictures, my fatigue, going back to college and having summer classes or what but this summer I was paralyzed by this disaster. You couldn't see my dining room table or my breakfast nook table or some of my counter space in the kitchen. Each time I walked past these disasters I felt a panic attack rising and so I began to turn a blind eye to all of it. Well since I was ignoring the disaster the men in my household decided that this was their cue to add to the insanity so my dining table became a dumping ground. Then I had to create a grass collection for my Master's program, add to my former tree collection and wildflower collection so there were grasses and foam boards and adhesive and tree leaves and wildlfowers all over the table along with the other mess. I had finally had enough so I began to clean and organize, starting with that that dining room table. Once the dining room table was clean I began to feel much better and I was able to move on to other rooms.

          I have found when organizing and working on my house that once I am moving along I am able to keep moving along but if I let the things pile up I feel more overwhelmed by them and then I drag my feet and struggle with getting going. Once I had the dining table cleaned I was able to work in the breakfast nook that my youngest son and I now call our office. Since everyone is older they no longer come eat breakfast in the morning before school and my husband and I use the dining room if we even eat at home so using the breakfast nook as an office seemed like a good idea. We left the table in there so we can work on it and then we added in shelving units, fabric drawers, plastic bins, etc. to keep things separated and organized. I am a huge reader on top of everything else so one full bookcase is mostly books. I have Ripley's Believe it of not books and cartoon books that I only bring to school during STAAR testing so the students have something new and interesting to read. The other books are more for use when I have an elementary class so they stay at home. I leave my science books and Middle School books like Goosebumps at school. I have another bookcase that I use for supplies like folders, colored paper, composition books, markers, classroom

decorations, etc. I have a box of classroom decorations that I leave at school too such as borders, pre-cut letters, small posters, basically things that I will use to make a bulletin board so for me it seemed smarter to keep those things at school. I also have a shelving unit where I keep my glue, paints, index cards, and crafting items. Plus my youngest son uses the space for his entomology so he is pinning bugs, researching bugs,making collections and planning things out. He has several large collections that he has taken to state but he likes to change the insects around in the collections. The collections stay on the table at all times, mainly because we don't have any more shelf space to use. I am thinking that this year I should take more things to school and use them all up before I buy new things, it is just so difficult to leave glue and markers and pencils behind when they are on sale or items that I think I may use some day. Since this blog post has gotten incredibly long I think those are things I am going to have to revisit once I go shopping for school supplies. I will keep everyone posted on how I do with my teacher hoarding.

 Hopefully for now this shows that I was able to bring in all the things I brought from my classroom and I was able to organize all of them into the space I already have. As you can see I have quite the teacher hoard going but I surely hope that It all ends up being things I truly use and that I can continue to keep it organized in the space I have. I never want to be in a place where I am getting a storage space for all of my things, and I never want to have so many things that I am not in a place where I can use them. Those are my goals, so let's see how I do with those.

Learning and Growing

Learning and Growing: How to face facts about yourself and set goals 

by Colleen Guzman

               So another year of teaching has come and gone and all that is left is an empty classroom. This has been my classroom for 3 years now and I have a fondness and even an attachment to it. I mean why wouldn't I, it is my room. So when we received the email with our content and classroom assignments I didn't even glance at it because I was confident that it was going to be BAU (business as usual). Not moments after the email was sent I receive a text message from a colleague shocked by the whole email, "Did you see where you will be next year?" In fact I hadn't because I figured I would be in good old K104 as usual so why check. I opened the email and sure enough I was being moved to an upstairs science room. You may be asking yourself, what's the difference.  Well all of the science rooms are fairly similar except mine. My science room is the smallest of all the rooms, it is the only one with no windows to the outside world and it is the only one that has doors on either side of the room so if child A is distracting you up front then child B can escape from your room from the back door. So now the paranoia sets in. "Why are they moving me?" "What have I done wrong?" I mean I can think of a million things I have done wrong because I am still human after all, this is only my 5th year teaching, I've never had a mentor teacher ever, etc. (see how I have all my excuses lined up) I spent the whole week moving my things to the new room trying to decide what I had done wrong to deserve this, and I even tried to convince the teacher I was swapping with that it was I who had done wrong and not her because I found out that she was feeling the same way. Every single doubt, fear, despair of not being good enough crept into my mind and took hold. By Wednesday afternoon I was having a panic attack in the prep closet in the back of my room, hyper-ventilating and weeping like a baby. I had to get a handle on this and get one quickly. 

      

                Friday was our work day and by noon the other teacher and I had exchanged keys and now it was time for us to organize things in our new rooms and get to know them better. I sat in my new room and I looked at the sun shining through the window in the room. The sun! It was beautiful and unbelievable and yet still felt like I had done something wrong. I sat for awhile and I thought about what all of this meant. I looked at each of the things I felt I had done wrong and the excuses for why those things had happened and I decided that instead of letting those things be these horrible clouds over me I was going to turn those things into goals that I set for myself. Now this is a hard transition for me because initially setting goals means that I am not good at what I am doing and therefore must be extremely horrible at it and I should just be removed immediately. It takes me some time to walk myself through those feelings and remind myself that every journey is about learning and growing and that setting goals can get you there. So I began to set goals. 

               I look at the first possibility. Perhaps I was moved upstairs because I am too friendly with the 8th grade students, I mother them entirely too much, I take them into my classroom when they have been kicked out of their classroom, etc. I have already talked to my principal about this recently and I know this is something that I need to work on. By moving me upstairs I am no longer near the 8th grade classrooms so it gives me a buffer so I can work on this goal. I think this is a good goal, it is nice for me to care about the students but I should not shield them from hardship because that does not prepare them for the real world. Okay, fine goal number one is set. Goal 1 is to show the children I care with a kind "Hello," "How are you," "How is your day going?" then I shall send them away promptly any time they try to enter my room.

           

   Now on to the next possibility. It is possible that they moved me from that room because students were leaving my classroom without permission on occasion. Sometimes I had a class of 30-34 students, I would be helping a group of students with something and 1 or 2 would slip away out of the door I was farthest from so I would have to call the office to get them rounded up. I really wanted to blame the students for this but I know that I play my own part in it. I am not stern enough, I give them too many chances to do the right thing before giving consequences, I trust too willingly, etc. In my new room the doors are both in the front of the classroom a mere 20ish feet apart and my desk and workstation are between them so this should no longer be a problem, however I felt I needed to set a personal goal to ensure that it does not. Goal 2 is to be stern, set consequences for every action and follow through with them even when you like the student or feel for them and want to go easy on them. Life is not going to go easy on these kids and neither should I, I am actually doing them a disservice rather than helping them out.

               Now that I have these goals in place I will add a third goal that is teaching centered. I am thinking goal number 3 is going to be to work on more inquiry based, student-centered activities but I am still working on that goal as I learn and research over the summer.

            

               Learning and growing is tough and often times it is painful to go through mentally, emotionally and even physically at times however without it you cannot move forward. I want to always move forward, to be the best teacher that I can be, to make the difference in lives that I know I can make. I may stumble and fall sometimes and I may even get things completely wrong but I know that I will get there, I will keep getting up, I will dust myself off and just like I want my students to do I will learn and grow. 

End of Year Project and Recycling

End of Year Project and Recycling

by Colleen Guzman

                So another year has come and almost gone (whew). This is my fifth year teaching, and possibly my toughest. It is my third year in a large public school after spending two years in a charter school. I hate to admit it but I am still adjusting to how different everything is from charter school to public school, but I am trucking along. To be clear I am not saying that one type of school is better than the other they are just very different, especially in size. One of the things that is very similar about them are the TEKS (Texas Standards). So after 5 years and no changes in the standards I have them down forward and backward. 

              One of the things I have noticed is that after five years I am still doing some of the same activities, although hopefully I am fixing these activities a little each year that I teach them. In a large school many of your activities are written by a curriculum writer, however you are allowed to personalize them so they work for you. At this time of year I personally like to have the students create an end of year project. This is not something that is called for in our curriculum but is something I feel is extremely important because it gives the students one final chance to think about the things they were supposed to have learned in seventh grade science. Also, in the state of Texas our 8th grade students have to take a state science test that has questions about concepts they learned in 6th, 7th and 8th grade so the end of year project is one way for the students to see the information and refresh it in their memories before they test the following year.

               For the end of year project I normally ask the students to create something non-electronic. One of the reasons I do this is because we have textbooks that are considered consumables. A consumable textbook is a heavy paper cover textbook with pages that are easy to tear out so the students can take portions home and work on those parts of the textbook, then at the end of the year we send them home with the students and normally they throw them away. In order to give the students one last chance to look through the textbook and practice using the index and the glossary I have them create a project using pictures and words from the textbook. The students are also allowed to use their science notebooks. I also like to have the students create a non-electronic project because I have read some articles about projects and muscle memory so I have them use muscles to cut, glue and write.

I begin the project by letting the students know what is expected. The students have to provide 2-3 pictures for each topic and they have to write 3-5 sentences about the topic. I have some topics together as a group because they lend themselves to one another such as cells and organelles. The students always ask me if they have to have the pictures and sentences for everything and I always tell them yes. I try to get them to work on the high end first and then if they struggle I let them come down a step or two from there but I never start anyone at a lower expectation whether they are Pre-AP, regular education or special education. I feel it is always easier to have them step down a little as needed rather than try to bring them higher once they think they have finished. 

            

              I write the expectations and the science topics on the board and I also provide the students with a typed page showing these parameters. I normally give them five class days to complete the project so everyone has plenty of time to get everything completed. I am there to help them, I know who needs extra chances to learn how to use the index, or who needs me to guide them a little bit towards the right pages, or who needs help organizing their project so they are not overwhelmed. I also created a project myself so some of my students are able to use it and follow along. I use this for some of my students who are emergent English language learners, for some of them that lack confidence as a starting point, or for some of my students who are special needs. I enjoyed this project this year, I got some really great projects and some students put in a lot of effort. I am already thinking of ways to tweak it for next year,so stay tuned. 

Here are some of the projects students were working on:

               

Adaptations using CER

 

 Adaptations using CER

I went to a seminar this past weekend and I got to meet Julie Jackson who is the author of The Science Toolkit. She does amazing interactive word walls and bulletin boards that students create or contribute to. You can see more of her work here: http://www.thesciencetoolkit.com/

I went to the first portion of her seminar and learned about interactive word walls that I will be working on implementing and I will post more later, then I stayed for the second part which was labeled CER. The "C" stands for Claim, the "E" stands for Evidence and the "R" stands for Reasoning. The CER technique has the students make a claim about something, then they provide evidence to support their claim and finally they give the reason why their claim is right based on that evidence. You can learn more about CER here: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/science-inquiry-claim-evidence-reasoning-eric-brunsell

I really loved the thought provoking nature of this technique so I decided I would attempt it when working on my next adaptation activity. 

Once we have completed our butterflies I have the students create an adaptation that shows a possible drastic change in the organism. Since this is the first time the students have been introduced to CER I modeled the whole process for them, so I created my own iguana, I wrote my own claim, I provided evidence and then I gave reasoning. (see picture above)

In order to keep the project from being too confusing or from getting out of hand I provided the students with only four options of environmental changes that I was sure they would understand the adaptations for. I also provided the students with a picture of an iguana and how it looks right now, I copied it on only one side of the paper so they could fold the paper over and trace the iguana, then they simply had to erase certain sections and add to them.

Once they had drawn their iguana I had them color the iguana to match their environment or to go with the adaptations they had chosen. I also had them label the adaptations they had chosen. I have one special education student who is unable to read no does he write well but he was able to draw his iguana and then he narrated to me what should be written for his adaptations. The students were very excited by this assignment and they had a lot of fun creating iguanas.

Once the students were finished with their drawings then they had to create the CER portion of the assignment. Since I had modeled this on the board I simply had them follow my format: 

I claim that my iguana is adapted to ____________ environment because they have (name specific adaptation here: gills, webbed feet, extra layer of fat, camouflage, etc.).  I know I am right because (provide reason why the evidence supports the claim: in order to live in water an animal needs gills, etc.).

 I had the students write their CER statements inside the paper so other students could see what they had to say and compare. Then they taped their iguana to the environment they were best adapted to and I hung them out in the hallway for all the middle school students to see. After this we will move on to Selective Breeding.

 

Animal Camouflage

Animal Camouflage

In Texas we teach animal adaptations to our 7th grade students. I normally begin the unit with reading passage worksheets from Super Teacher Worksheets that talk about camouflage, migration, and hibernation. The worksheets are on a 3-5 grade reading level and I use them to help remind them of concepts they should have learned in elementary school. Once we have a foundation we move on to our butterfly camouflage activity.

I provide the students with 2 blank butterflies. First the students are tasked with coloring a butterfly so that it can blend in with something in the classroom. The only rules are that the butterflies cannot be a single color and they cannot be hiding behind anything in the classroom. My room is covered in posters so they have a pretty easy time finding a spot that is more than one color. I have even had students put them on the ceiling tiles. Students are very creative. 

Once they have completed their butterfly I have them write a short description in their notebook of what their butterfly was camouflaged to in case their butterfly is lost or taken by another classmate. I tell them if it gets taken then it must not have been camouflaged well and a predator ate it so we learned that predators can find you if your camouflage is not good.

Once they have completed this portion of the assignment we watch a YouTube showing some amazing real life camouflage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJGtN-igCu8

After they have watched this video I then ask them to create a butterfly that is camouflaged to an actual environment. (I am sorry I did not take pictures of these) The students are asked to write a short description of what their butterfly camouflage is and what environment it would be able to live in. Then they glue their butterfly into their journal next to the description.

Finally they are asked to write a short paragraph explaining what would happen to their butterfly if their environment changed drastically. Then I normally show them the released STAAR question about the butterflies that adapted due to industrialization.

Once they are done we move to another type of adaptation. (See the blog post on CER)