Reflect & Celebrate

Tomorrow is the last day of school for our students.....where did the time go?  Its my first year without a group of little ones to hug and send off....it feels pretty strange.  I have had many last days filled with the blues, excitement for summer and sometimes a THANK GOODNESS its over type of feeling.  This year I think I can sum it up as a WOOHOO!!
 As I reflect back to my first year as literacy coach,  I am so proud of what we accomplished as a PreK-5 team.  I look forward to improving in many areas as a coach.  It was a year of many challenges and I am thankful for all of the new relationships I have made with teachers at various grade levels.

The  highlights.....

• Our literacy kick-off in August....bringing the love and motivation back to reading
• Developing our H-D Literacy Beliefs  (the non-negotiables) focusing on The Big Five
• Working with the lit committee to find new literacy curriculum and traveling to Jordan Creek
• 1/2 day workshops for every team level once a month.....WOW....this was amazing!
• Piloting Making Meaning  
• Purchasing Making Meaning & Vocabulary and receiving the many new materials
• Purchasing the Fountas & Pinnell Benchmark Assessment System for every grade level and implementing the assessment this May (600 students)
• Fluency.....finding and sharing strategies to help build fluency  (book study this summer too!)
• Watching many teachers let go of their Basal and diving into a new workshop model in April-they are an amazing group of dedicated teachers
• Developing a Schoolwide Title I plan with the selected committee....hard work but we did it!
• Planning literacy blocks for all grade levels....YES!
• Developing a new appreciation for administration...seeing another side of our work place
• PHONICS and word study for K-3....big changes and again watching teachers dive in and watching their excitement to have common goals 
• Traveling to Chicago for my first experience with the International Reading Convention
• Ordering a book room for K-8 teachers....lots of work to do this summer!

THANK YOU to the teachers for encouraging me and making me feel confident in my new job.   I now know how important it is for teachers to have high expectations and to believe every student can be successful....I felt I was the student they believed in and it helped greatly.

THANK YOU to my principal...for encouraging me and allowing me to do what I felt was best in many situations and for listening.

THANK YOU to my curriculum coordinator.... for encouraging me and valuing my opinion, my beliefs & for the many talks to get me through stressful moments.

THANK YOU to my superintendent for finding the funds to purchase our new curriculum and for allowing the 1/2 day work days at every grade level.  It was this work time that allowed the teachers to make many changes together...we valued it greatly!

THANK YOU to my office mate....a new teacher in our district that was fun to be around and her attitude and dedication to education was so refreshing and her willingness to speak up and get involved was just what I needed on many days!  

THANK YOU to Dawn, Lisa, Shelly & Molly....letting me come to your classroom for part of the year as a co-teacher.  (even though I had to be gone many times!) 

What a year!

Happy Reading-Mrs. Speake

Technology

I had the pleasure of attending our district's technology meeting this afternoon.  Truthfully, I admit I was not looking forward to being gone.  My to-do list was much too long and I felt I needed to stay and intentionally plan a unit for another meeting I have on Friday afternoon with 5th grade not to mention the Kindergarteners I needed to finish assessing for reading levels.

 I have been on the tech meeting since I started with our district in 1993 (OM-has it been that long already??)  I was just thinking it was time to step down from the committee, but the meeting was MOTIVATING!  I love technology and I love learning new things with technology.   We had the pleasure of hearing the following teachers present.  These gals are providing great learning opportunities through technology for our H-D students.

*Mrs. Krull -Middle school tech teacher has done great things with keyboarding, researching, discovering and investigating many software programs and internet uses with her 400+ students!  Check out her fusion pages.  As a parent I loved seeing the resumes the 8th graders created-real life skills.

*Mrs. Johnson- a 6th grade math and reading teacher, check out her fusion pages-very impressive!

*Mrs. Hoegh- High School Consumer Science teacher began, The Bulldog Cafe, which is a wonderful business & learning opportunity for our students.  Check it out-she is doing wonderful things for our students.

*Mrs.  Aalbers- 1st grade teacher shared the many uses of Kidspiration- wonderful software for every elementary teacher to use in every content area!

*Leanne Tucker and Alicia Clark- Preschool teachers shared the sites Starfall and BookFlix.  Our students must be surrounded with technology.

My new learning via Mrs. Johnson:   What should I read next?   (Check out this website)

As literacy coach I hear this question from teachers, students and parents.  I am great at recommendations for young learners  but I struggle with older students as I have been a first grade teacher for the last 12 years.  This site allows you to enter the title of the last book read and it generates a list of ideas for your next read.  Check it out- AWESOME!  Can't wait to use it and share with my teachers I work with.

My personal wish for technology is to get an Ipad.  Oh the things I could do at school!!   The latest incentive is a new app coming out this spring- Fountas & Pinnell BAS Leveling Kit!  We could do all running records digitally- record, save and share teacher to teacher.   I guess I can wish- and maybe if Mr. Speake is reading this (as he is one of my four followers) he will know just what to buy me for my birthday. ;)

Thanks to all the teachers that regularly use technology-our students do not know a world without it!  Thanks to Mr. Morton, Mrs. Fridley and Mrs. Peterson our dedicated H-D tech team!

Happy Reading!  Mrs. Speake

Literacy Kick-Off

Today we launched our literacy kick-off for our Prep Kindergarten-5th grade!  Our school district is in the beginning stages of revising and renewing our balanced literacy programs and aligning this with the Iowa Core and making sure we are teaching 21st century skills.

Our first goal this academic year is to improve our independent reading piece, bringing back our own personal love of reading and sharing this love with our students.  We want to create students who CAN read, WANT to read and CHOOSE to read.  A second goal is reviewing all of the comprehension strategies and making sure these skills are explicitly taught and modeled.

A few highlights:

• Awakening our inner reader & helping our students find the joy in reading:   The Book Whisperer, Donalyn Miller  
• Leveling & organizing the classroom library (our summertime project) 
• Procedures and routines to help build reading stamina
• Scheduling time into the daily schedule-what can we give up
• What is the latest research regarding independent reading
• Fountas & Pinnell Assessment Benchmark Kits- how will we assess

Together we are going to take small steps (some might say giant leaps)

to strengthen and bring our literacy programs into the 21st century.  I know we will have many moments of great success and times of stress and frustration BUT what is so awesome about our group of teachers is that we are all ready to face this challenge together.  

Happy Reading!! Ronna