Life Skills Literacy

So I am probably the worst blogger ever seeing that I haven’t posted a thing since September. It has been crazy busy between getting my Masters of Ed from Johns Hopkins and teaching my kinder babies. It has also been a year of several lessons learned along the way.

My first year of teaching was far from easy but I wasn’t presented with half as many challenges in the classroom as I am now. I have learned more than ever that there is no “formula” to being an effective teacher. It is a continuous learning and growth experience that you have to be open to each step of the way. I have learned that just because some things may have worked last year it by no means is guaranteed to work with a new class. When given a completely different class, YOU need to mold to them and not expect them to fit in the perfectly Pinterest inspired box that you had set up and planned for. Yes that means they may not fall in love with the table names hung with burlap and rhinestoned clothes pins quite the way you did when you spent hours this summer…that’s real.

I feel that entering the second half of the year I am more excited than ever to continue to figure out my mold and how I can best support my scholars in their academic and social accomplishments. While our class has endured several social and emotional challenges throughout the year, I have developed a curriculum to teach these lagging skills through children’s literacy books, "Life Skills Literacy." I at first of course searched online for hours to find one, thinking that this HAD to have been done before, but I found nothing built out. So remembering those entrepreneurial skills learned from Eller, I decided to create my own. The list of skills are taken from J. Stuart Ablon's research surrounding the Collaborative Problem Solving Approach and then I aligned these skills to our KIPP IMPACT values (Inquire, Make it Better, Persist Toward Excellence, Appreciate and Care and Take a Risk).

Here is a TEDD Talk from J. Stuart Ablon on Challenging Behavior (AMAZING stuff!) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuoPZkFcLVs 

Check it out!

(Anchor chart aligned to The Rainbow Fish- sharing and problem solving)

(Picture of the Life Skills Literacy wall in our classroom) 

(Anchor chart example)

Email me if you would like the resources to implement this in your classroom! myles@email.arizona.edu

In addition to investing them in their personal growth with social and emotional lagging skills, I have begun to further invest them in the academic goals. I once heard an educator say “We know we’ve made it when you can do it without me.” This stuck with me and in turn I have design a system around this statement. I made an anchor chart for my scholars and we talk about being independent and what this means (of course…in 5 year old language… “I do it all by myself.”) We talk about each part of our day and why it’s important to be independent and what that will mean for growing our brains!

I have recently put the focus on “why” we come to my guided reading table. I aligned our STEP (literacy or reading) tracker to our classroom data tracker so that they are able to understand and be motivated at guided reading.

(Picture of our literacy/STEP tracker)

They are invested in their STEP data and they understand the meaning behind the green, red and blue dots (Red- reading below average, Green- reading on level, Blue- reading above level). They understand that if they pass a certain STEP level they will earn an item on our tracker and will be either below, on or above average reading levels. In the middle of quiet time one of my students came over to me and said “Can we do my STEP test now? I really want to see if I can pass STEP 3 so I can add more blue to our tracker for the class!” I melted knowing how invested he was in not only his personal growth but the growth for the class. 

My scholars from this year and last are teaching me more lessons each day than I could ever teach them. I can’t wait to see what this next half of the year has in store. J