The Mathematics Behind a Bathroom Break

As a classroom teacher, I never took whole class bathroom breaks.  I never had time! Whenever I heard other teachers talking about how they stopped at the bathroom on the way to or from lunch or specials, I thought, "How do you have time for that?" I would actually look at my schedule and what I would be doing while the other class was at the bathroom. I couldn't possibly miss (insert important activity here) to go sit outside of the  bathroom!  I asked, "How are they doing it?" But perhaps more importantly, I have to ask, "Why are they doing it?"
Most people, by the time they reach the age of three or four, know when they have to go to the bathroom.  Therefore, by the time a child reaches kindergarten, they should know if they have to go. I know there are a few exceptions to this but not many.  Keep in mind I taught kindergarten for four years (without full-class bathroom breaks!) So, when I see classes in other grade-levels taking bathroom breaks, it makes me ask the following questions:
What are the other students doing while everyone else is going to the restroom?
What could the whole class be doing instead of sitting outside of the restroom?
How much instructional time is being missed because students are sitting outside of a bathroom?

The answer to the first question is usually nothing.  Nothing. They are usually just sitting there.  Sometimes teachers let them take books or they quiz them on materials they have recently learned in class.  But most of the time the teacher is trying to manage whose turn it is and what the other students are doing (a.k.a. no talking in the hallway!) and so he or she doesn't get to spend a lot of time giving said quizzes. This leaves about 20 kids sitting in the hall while someone else is using the facilities.

What could they be doing instead?  Lots of things! We always say we never have enough time to cover everything, to squeeze all the materials in.  We could recover that time and use it for an extra station rotation, another guided reading group, more time to work on a project or to read a story.  There are infinite ways that we could better spend our time rather than sitting or standing in the hallway outside of a bathroom.

How much time does it actually take for a whole class bathroom break? Well, let's say for our purposes it takes 10 minutes.  That is probably conservative, but let's go with it. Most classes that take whole class bathroom breaks do it twice a day.  So we'll say it's just 20 minutes a day.  If we factored in transitions and all of those things, it's probably more, but we'll say 20 minutes. So, in a week, that's 100 minutes, or over an hour-and-a-half.  In a month, that's 6 hours.  In a nine month long school year, that's about 54 hours of time our students have spent waiting to use the bathroom.  That's over 7 days of instruction.  And remember, this was our conservative estimate of time. If we take that number up to 15 minutes per bathroom break, or 30 minutes a day, that's two and-a-half hours per week, 10 hours per month, 90 hours per year, or almost 13 instructional days.

I know I will ruffle some feathers with this post, but I'm willing to do so to make my point.  Can we afford to spend from 7 to 13 days standing outside of a bathroom? The students in my homeroom classes certainly couldn't.  I needed every minute I could find to teach them everything they needed to know.

So, what could we do instead?  A lot of kindergarten and first grade classrooms have bathrooms in the room.  Even if you don't have a bathroom attached to your classroom, you still have an alternative to whole class bathroom breaks.  When I was in the classroom, my class had two times a day when we rotated through bathroom breaks.  One was earlier in the morning during Daily 5 and one was in the afternoon during math stations.  The children had an order that they would always go in while everyone else continued to work in their stations. When a child returned from the restroom, they told the next student it was there turn to go.  If that student didn't need to go, they told the next person. I encouraged them to always try but I didn't make them go.  If someone needed to go at a different time, they could ask permission to do so. Our bathroom rotation time was before specials so the students weren't asking to go during PE or music.  Rarely did I have a student ask to go at a different time and even more rarely was there a break down in the rotation where someone forgot to tell the next person.  Even with five-year-olds, this works.

If your class is taking whole group bathroom breaks, ask yourself why.  Is it something you have to do?  Could you change it?  Why did you start doing it in the first place? I know a lot of fabulous teachers who still give whole group bathroom breaks and I just have to wonder if they've considered doing it differently or if they just do it because that's the way they were told to do it and they never thought about doing it differently.  It is something to consider. . . . Thoughts?

Enough

As classroom teachers, we often ask ourselves, "Have I done enough?"
Do my students know enough to . . . .
Be successful on end-of-year assessments?
Explain what we have learned this year in each subject?
Retain informaiton over the summer?
Read any on-grade level text?
Walk into the classroom next fall knowing they will be successful?

For me,  it wasn't just about my students knowing "enough."  I wanted to get them so far ahead of where they needed to be that they could not possibly fail this year--or next year. This didn't happen for every single student every year, but it happened for the vast majority of them. I always told parents, "I don't teach kindergarten (or first grade or third grade) I teach students. I will teach your child as much as I possibly can this year. If your child already knows the entire curriculum by February, then I will extend his or her learning." I didn't usually use a pacing guide because my students were the pacing guide.  If they had mastered the curriculum, we moved on.  If we needed more time, we used it.  Most of the time, all but a few of my students were reading well into the next grade-level or beyond because I continued to push them and challenge them.  The few that lagged behind got extra time with me and we worked until they learned everything they could in one year.

My point in saying this is, don't settle for "enough."  Keep pushing forward.  You have children in your classroom that need to be challenged and you have some time left this year to teach them something more.  We know that the sand in the glass is about to run out.  Most of them (in elementary!) do not.  Keep teaching, keep fighting, keep inspiring, keep challenging.  Enough just isn't enough.

Do You Hiaku?

I started working with a 1st grade extension group a couple of weeks ago.  (We call them an extension group because they have mastered the curriculum their teacher is currently teaching to the other studnents and their learning needs to be expanded upon!) We just completed a project about animal senses.  We read a book that discussed various unique or unusual senses from several animal species.  The students did additional research on their animals.  They each asked three questions pertaining to the information they had already gathered and then looked on-line to find the answers.  They used an iPad app called Haiku Deck to organize their information and present it to each other and the rest of their class.  This project was relatively quick, informative, and a lot of fun.  It gave the students the opportunity to work fairly independently but still collaborate with each other and with me when they needed assistance.  It also allowed them to integrate technology into their research project.
I think my favorite part about the entire project was when I utilized students from our 1st grade technology class to instruct the students in my group on how to use Haiku Deck.  My campus is lucky enough to have a 1st grade class that has been using iPads at a 1:1 ration all year.  These students are technology experts!  I asked their teacher, Mrs. Russell, if I could borrow four of her digital natives to explain the app to my students and help them set up their Haiku Deck. It literally took less than 15 minutes before I started hearing, "We're done!"  Of course, we had some editing to do (and that still did not get perfected, but it is 1st grade, so what are you gonna do!) and some revisions but they were actually done very quickly. The end result looks pretty amazing, too, as you can see for yourself if you follow the links below!
What are your favorit apps for presentations?

Fish Facts Haiku Deck

Celine and Cade's Fish Facts
Emma and Sienna's Animal Sensors
Karlee and Leah's Chameleon's
Izaiah and Jolee's Ibis

Tips for Engaging Your Students

A few years ago I was lucky enough to spend two staff development days at trainings by Eric Jensen.  If you ever have the opportunity to listen to Jensen speak, I highly suggest you go.  I know you can gather a lot from reading his books and from his website but actually listening to him present is even more powerful.  He radiates positive energy, keeps his audience engaged, and incorporates so many of his strategies into his presentation that you leave feeling  you can totally rock student engagement.

Much of Jensen's work has to do with brain research and states of mind

With two full days of slides and notes, it would be impossible for me to incorporate every single thing he covered into one post but I hope to incorporate some of the strategies I learned from Jensen into future posts.  Today, I want to talk specifically about ways teachers can help students to feel that they are in a safe environment in the classroom and to, therefore, feel more engaged and likely to participate. Jensen gives some very simple examples of the types of questions to ask and the way to respond when students answer questions, even if the answers are incorrect, that leaves students feeling positive and motivated to continue learning.
Through out Jensen's presentations, he uses prompts to keep the audience engaged and involved in what's going on. There are lots of partner and group activities.  He had us saying things like, "You're my partner!" and pointing at people and then thanking them for being our partner.  Or proclaiming, "Let's do it!" before we started a task. Little things like this keep people in a good mood, force you to pay attention, and make activities more fun.  We were patting our heads or putting our fingers on our noses to show we agreed or understood. I still find myself asking kids to signal their understanding in some goofy way because it's just more fun than the usual "nod your head" or "thumbs up/thumbs down." I also ask them to repeat things or say, "That's me!" or "I got mine!" They really like it and it's more fun that way!
Most of Jensen's research has to do with how the brain works and different ways we can capture students' attention.  He talks a lot about changing the students' state before we can activate their learning. Again, that's way too much to go into in this particular post but it really is fascinating information and it's very important for teachers to know as well. It's much more difficult to teach a student when their brain is in a state resistant to learning than it is when they are ready to learn.
Here are 5 quick strategies for encouraging participation you can begin using in your classroom today.
1) "Nudge" students for engagement.  Have your students repeat a phrase, such as, "Let's do it!"  or tell their partner, "Great job!" If you are lecturing, say things like, "Write this down, even if it's the only thing you write down all day."
2) Use social prompts. Ask your students to identify members of the group that they feel fit certain descriptions, such as "identify the one who has laughed the most" or is "the tallest."  This promotes team building and good will between group members, assuming the prompts are all nice and polite.
3) Allow students to use the phrase, "I don't know, but I'd like to know" if you ask them a question and they aren't sure what the answer is. Also allow them to guess if they're not sure and respond with, "I appreciate you jumping in," or "thank you for participating" instead of telling them they are wrong. Let them know it's okay to be wrong or not to know the answer so they won't be afraid to try.
4) Provide opportunities for movement.  Allowing students to move actually starts a chemical change in the brain and will lead to a more engaged state.  One idea you can use to easily incorporate this into your classroom is to simply form two lines and have the students walk around while listing, naming, or discussing items from a particular topic.  You can also just take brain breaks and have them do some cross-over movements, where they are touching parts of their bodies across their lateral points (left hand right knee, etc.)  Another great idea is to simply say, "Touch two circles and then find a partner and answer this question."  Simple, fun, easy, great for the brain.
5) Use compelling questions. The more interesting your questions are, the more likely your students are to want to answer them.  For example, instead of asking students to list facts explaining why Lincoln was a good president, ask them, "Why do we continue to talk about Lincoln's presidency 150 years after his death?" You will get the same information but the second question is more engaging. It's not a boring list, it's a conversation starter.
Above all else, always be positive. Continue to use phrases such as, "Love the effort,"  "Thanks for giving it a try,"  "Use a lifeline," all of these statements encourage students to stay involved.
For more information about Eric Jensen, please click here.
What other ideas do you have for making the classroom more fun and engaging?

The Sheriff's In Town: An Idea for Managing Kids in Large Groups

One of my daily duties is supervising lunch for one of our grade-levels.  Earlier in the year, I must admit, I was at my wits-end trying to figure out how to turn what could potentially be a fairly chaotic, unstructured time into an organized, pleasurable, relaxing time with friends.  There are two or three other staff members who have this duty at the same time that I do and we have tried several things to take it down a notch and make it as structured as lunch time can be without taking all of the fun out of it.  One thing that we implemented recently that seems to be working is The Sheriff.
For several months, I found myself trying to control about 120 little bodies when it was time to leave the cafeteria. Many of them could handle this just fine but there were enough runners, screamers, chasers, and ninjas that it took a lot of effort on my part to keep everyone in a line without anyone slipping and falling or playing too rough and hurting someone else.  It occurred to me one day that I was doing more work than I should be.  There were enough students in that line who could model good behavior, I didn't need to be doing all of the work myself.  I remembered I had cut out some golden, glittery stars for a project earlier in the year and I decided to put them to good use.  I chose a Sheriff from each class and asked them to patrol their line.  If a  student is talking, they get a warning, and then The Sheriff tells me and the rule-breaker gets a consequence.  Though it isn't perfect, it's been working and I'm hoping we can keep using it for the rest of the school year.
There are a couple of reasons why I think it works.  First of all, the consequence is a whopper.  Most of the time, it's lunch by yourself the next day, something I call Lonely Lunch.  If you earn Lonely Lunch, you're still in the cafeteria, you just have to sit at a table where the students are more spread out and they aren't allowed to talk. I know it might sound mean but it is a deterrent.  Secondly, kids know if they are quiet, they might get to be The Sheriff the next day.  Everyone wants to be The Sheriff.  Who doesn't want to be the one left in charge while the teacher is away? Most students will work to earn a reward that involves authority, recognition, and tattling.
But that has also created a little bit of a problem. I've had to be careful of the tattling. One has to know the students well enough to know if a Sheriff is just naming students they aren't particularly fond of.  I also have to be leery of Sheriff's who ignore their friends when they are breaking the rules.
Kids like novelty, they like props, and they like being in charge.  So far, this is working. Hopefully, it won't wear off and we'll be able to see it through the end of the year.  What ideas do you have for managing students in large numbers?

I bought a sheet of pre-glittered gold paper at Michael's for about $2 and cut the stars out from that. Pretty simple!

Light it Up Blue!

Today is National Autism Awareness Day and April is Autism Awareness month.  In support of everyone on the spectrum, please show your support by wearing blue or doing something "blue" with your family.  For example, frost blue cupcakes, pick some blue flowers, put a blue light bulb in your porch light and leave it on this evening.  Your support is much appreciated by everyone with Autism Spectrum Disorder and the family, friends, teachers, and others who love some one with autism.

From the time my oldest daughter was 2, it was suspected that she might have autism.  We have walked the path of therapy, research, anxiety, blame, despair, evaluation after evaluation, so I know quite well how other parents with children who have special needs feel.  After a full individual evaluation, it was determined that Imma does not meet the criteria for an autism diagnosis at this time and in fact, she is doing tremendously well now and most likely never will fit that criteria. Nevertheless, she is a special needs child and I can certainly identify with parents who are in the process of having their child evaluated or who have received a diagnosis of autism.  It is not an easy journey by any means and these parents, like the parents of all children with special needs, sincerely need the support of the entire community. If you know a family with a special needs child, please consider finding a way to assist that family. Even if it's just bringing by a pizza or some groceries, taking the time to stay with the child while the parents go out, or bringing by something you know the child likes, your small act of kindness will mean so much.

My daughter at 2 1/2, just as we were beginning the journey toward evaluation

I have a personal blog where I've talked at great lengths about our journey.  You can find that blog here if you'd like to read more. I have spoken to many parents, teachers, grandparents, and family friends who have concerns about children and they are not sure what to do.  My best advice is to encourage parents to speak to their pediatricians if you suspect there may be some symptoms of autism present.  If you are a parent and you are having some concerns about your own child, a simple visit to the doctor can either relieve your fears or put you on a path toward diagnosis and treatment. Early detection is so critically important.  Trust me, ignoring symptoms or explaining them away will not help your child.  Only the experts can do that.
Early signs of autism can include, but are not limited to:
speech delays
regression in speech
lack of social awareness
repetitive movements, such as rocking, spinning or arm flapping
repetitive activities, such as sorting toys or lining them up
lack of eye contact
For my family, it was a regression in speech coupled with changes in social behavior and a lack of awareness that caused us to speak to our pediatrician.  Imma received therapy through Early Childhood Intervention and attended two years of the Preschool Program for Children with Disabilities before starting kindergarten this year.  She also received outside speech and occupational therapy.  She continues to have speech services through our school district as well as support from a special education teacher.  Imma is extremely intelligent but struggles with language processing and some sensory integration.  Though we do not believe she has autism, these disorders can look very similar to autism and only trained experts can determine exactly what is causing the differences.  This is why it is critical to speak to a pediatrician as soon as one notices early signs of  developmental differences.
There are many sources of information about autism online but my favorite website is Autism Speaks.  It is extremely user friendly and straightforward. If you have questions or need resources, I strongly suggest you visit this website.
1 in 88 children is now diagnosed with autism.  Chances are, if you're an educator, you know several children on the autism spectrum.  If you haven't done so, please take some time to get to know these amazing children.  Thank their teachers.  Encourage their parents.  Awareness means doing what we can to make a difference and today is the day to do just that. Light it up blue!

Reading A-Z is an Awesome Resource

It's late in the school year and you may have already used the majority of your guided reading books. I recommend you look into Reading A-Z.  They have a huge selection of leveled readers and other resources and a year's subscription is only about $80.  Some schools can even reimburse you, or you could post a listing on Donor's Choose. I love using Reading A-Z books because there is so much to choose from and the topics are interesting to students.
Today, I had a group of second graders reading the book pictured below, "Gaggle, Herd and Murder."  I used it to work on fluency, decoding, and comprehension.  We reviewed --er, --ir, and --ur, as well as talking about vocabulary and multiple meaning words, like the word "murder."  The kids loved it because it had neat vocabulary, like "murder" and "smack" and it also talked about animals. It was a great way to work on the skills we really need to focus on and touch on a lot of other skills as well.

Leveled readers from Reading A-Z

I do have to share a couple of incidents that were quite humorous.  One of my students kept misreading "crows" as "cows."  "Cows travel in a group called a murder."  I could just see the Chick-fil-a cows dressed lika a band of marauders.  Another student said, "Wouldn't it be funny if those were cows in the tree instead of crows?"  Too cute!
Also, another student consistently misread the word "wolves" as "werewolves."  He did not understand that one was an actual animal and the other was a fictional creature.  This is why I love teaching! The kids are so much fun!
What are your favorite resources for great leveled readers?