I don't know about you but every time I'm evaluated-I'm asked to reflect on my lesson and practice. Trust me, all I want to do right NOW with 10 days left is think about the beach. But as the school year draws to a close, it is an important time to stop and reflect on this past year, a year filled with a range of both expected and unexpected challenges and opportunities for many students, families, teachers, and administrators. Is just as important now as it is during the year. It’s also an opportunity to take a deep breath and think about how to best direct your energies in the coming year.

Self-reflection by teachers at the end of each school year is a vitally important part of their ongoing
professional development.  It is a way it will to improvement teaching and learning.  It allows us to fine-tune our craft by improving or eliminating what doesn't work in our teaching.  It gives us a chance to start over at the beginning of each new school year. I should point out, we can do meaningful self-reflection at any time of the school year in order to improve the teaching and learning experience.  A thorough analysis of what worked, what failed, and why, in both cases, conduces to future success.

Reflect on what every student should know and be able to do. Curriculum and instruction decisions are built around the question “What should every student know and be able to do?” Standards are designed to support student understanding. As teachers, we may focus on activities rather than teaching for understanding. This type of reflection should be ongoing throughout the school year. Traditional planning focuses on what we know and be able to do with each group of students. Through conversations with coworkers, teachers will develop an intentional focus on desired learning outcomes and student engagement.

Reflect on the learning space. One thing that is often overlooked in education is the learning space. Learning space is determined by adults in most schools. The way learning space is organized highlights what the adults in the school value. If we take the time to reflect on the importance of design, purpose, and space, we may find that the old structure is a barrier to student achievement. As I design my space in the beginning of the year I ask myself but I review this question as the year moves on: “Does this learning space support the type of learning opportunities we are designing for students?” All students deserve a learning space, not just a classroom.

Reflect on student voice, choice, and contribution. When I reflect on student understanding, I often reflect on student achievement or test scores, student growth, student engagement, or gaps in student understanding. This is a list that focuses on the right things. However, a focus on student understanding and student growth may not tell us if student voice, choice, and contribution were present throughout the unit. For me this is huge as voice and choice are BIG parts of my Teacher Rubric. Reflecting back on what skills to determine whether or not a recent lesson or unit helped students acquire or improve one or more of the skills. It’s easy to look at data points from tests, it’s harder and more important to begin reflecting on whether students had the opportunity for student voice, choice, and contribution!

Reflect on the understood curriculum. The danger in never-ending planning, using the all important of curriculum maps, units, vertical alignment, course blueprints, pacing guides, and support documents. But not reflecting on the understood curriculum can result in prematurely moving to the next topic because a certain unit needs to be finished by the end of the month. Without this how can we ensure that the learned curriculum is maximized?

Reflect on the whole child. In my Resource Room practice, I make decisions based on the whole child. Always reflecting on the data and asking “What does the whole child need to be successful, access, or be independent in the classroom?” “How can I support the whole child?” Ask most classroom teachers if they have a “whole child” classroom and they struggle to intentionally plan to support the whole child.

Reflection is critically important, yet it is so difficult to squeeze into our weekly schedule. It really wasn’t until I work to achieve National Boards I found a true purpose for reflecting on my practice. It’s hard. It’s hard to be honest with yourself, your practice or your team about what needs to change or what went will. But to grow as a teacher--you have to find the three minutes to look back on the lesson, the IEP meeting, or your class set-up to be better tomorrow. It's not uncommon for the lesson I did three days ago to circle back in my mind while in the shower or buying milk. I have learned I’m a processor. I give myself that time to reflect back on how things went. My end of the year reflecting will most likely happen closer to the 4th of July than the last day of school.

Take your time reflecting on your year. Process and reflect using my Free End of Year Teacher Reflection Workbook. Until next time,

• Tea
• Chocolate
• Protein boost (nuts, granola bar)
• Healthy snacks
• Stress ball

Got a few minutes-- two-minute strategies:

• Do a few yoga poses or stretches to get your blood moving
• Get out of the building for some fresh air and a change of scenery
• Take a mindful moment and pay attention to your breathing to center yourself

After a tough day.

• Knit
• Quilt
• Draw
• Play air guitar
• Bake cookies
• Sing

• Share projects with fellow teachers
• Make positive phone calls to parents
• Spend time with loved ones
• Spend time with animals
• Give back to your community by volunteering

• Keep a folder of kind notes or feedback from students and families
• Keep a notebook of inspirational quotes
• Record something positive each day in your journal

• Watch a mindless TV show
• Take a hot bath
• Read
• Listen to music
• Meditate
• Take the scenic route home
• Eat chocolate

• Run
• Dance
• Yoga
• Crossfit
• Go for a walk

Preschooler, experiencing the world through play as they explore and learn with great enthusiasm. Giving preschoolers a solid foundation in early math literacy is critical to their future academic success, not to mention how important it is to their day-to-day functioning.

How preschoolers learn the many aspects of math

Most preschoolers, even without guidance from adults, are naturally interested in math as it exists in the world around them. They learn math best by engaging in dynamic, hands-on games and projects. Preschoolers love to ask questions and play games that involve the many aspects of math. The table below lists the key aspects of preschool math, along with simple games and activities you can use to help your child learn them.

Math Games and Activities

• Count food items at snack time (e.g., 5 crackers, 20 raisins, 10 baby carrots)
• Use a calendar to count down the days to a birthday or special holiday. Help your child see the connection between a numeral like "5," the word "five," and five days on the calendar.
• Practice simple addition and subtraction using small toys and blocks.
• Play simple board games where your child moves a game piece from one position to the next.
• Have your child name the shapes of cookie cutters or blocks.
• Arrange cookie cutters in patterns on a cookie sheet or placemat. A simple pattern might be: star-circle-star-circle.
• Let your child help you measure ingredients for a simple recipe - preferably a favorite!
• Measure your child's height every month or so, showing how you use a yardstick or tape measure. Mark his or her height on a "growth chart" or a mark on a door frame. Do the same with any siblings. Help your child compare his or her own height to previous months and also to their siblings' heights.
• Talk through games and daily activities that involve math concepts.
• Have your child name numbers and shapes.
• Help them understand and express comparisons like more than/less than, bigger/smaller, and near/far.
• Play games where you direct your child to jump forward and back, to run far from you or stay nearby.
• Use songs with corresponding movements to teach concepts like in and out, up and down, and round and round.

Website Ideas

The Early Math Learning website (www. earlymathlearning.com) includes free downloads of PDF files of this Early Learning Math at Home booklet as well as individual chapters. Additional articles and resources for families will be added regularly.

The California Mathematics Council maintains a For Families section at its website (www.cmc-math.org/family/main.html). Here you will find articles on mathematics education issues of interest to parents, hands-on activities to do at home and information on how to host your own Family Math event at your preschool or education center.

The Math Forum (www.mathforum.org) is a web portal to everything “mathematics.” Here you can ask Dr. Math questions and get answers! You will also find weekly and monthly math challenges, Internet math hunts, and math resources organized by grade level.

Head Start–Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center (www.eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/hslc) is linked to the federal Head Start Program. Here you will find information about government programs for early learning, including resources that are available to families.

Thinkfinity (www.thinkfinity.org) is a project of the Verizon Foundation. This website has more than 55,000 resources—including many that focus on math—that have been screened by educators to ensure that content is accurate, up-to-date, unbiased, and appropriate for students. The resources on this website are grouped by grade level and subject area.

PBS Parents, the early education website of the Public Broadcasting Service (www.pbs.org/parents/education/math/activities), offers numerous resources, including the stages of mathematics learning listed for babies through second grade children. It is also a rich source of math activities to do at home

Math at Play (www.mathatplay.org) offers multimedia resources for anyone who works with children from birth to age five. Here you can explore early mathematical development and the important ways that caregivers nurture children’s understanding of math concepts through social-emotional relationships, language, everyday play experiences, materials, and teaching.

Let’s Read Math (www.letsreadmath.com/math-and-childrens-literature/ preschool/) wants to make parents and families aware of the growing body of children’s literature with themes related to mathematics. Here you will find a long annotated list of live links to preschool children’s books with math themes, listed by title, author, and mathematics topic.

Response to Intervention-Tier 2 Interventions are classroom based and a challenge to do consistently. I have depending on my case load, helped with Tier 2 interventions. Students who join me are either those the RTI team is wanting to move forward with formal testing and need more data or they are students who only need a quick push to get back to core instruction. But it all moves around the data and how classroom-based interventions are pulled together. This is not easy!

As a classroom teacher, you are using a variety of differentiated instructional and assessment strategies. Universal screening and progress monitoring tools are in place. You are using the resulting data to guide your instruction and to determine which students need Tier 2 interventions. You know that in order to be effective, those interventions must not be “more of the same,” since the strategies you used in your Tier 1 classroom did not work for these students. Your challenge is to meet the needs of each Tier 2 student while maintaining the instructional integrity of your general education classroom.

To do this, consider the following two questions:

*How can I design effective Tier 2 interventions?
*How can I differentiate targeted interventions to meet the needs of each of my Tier 2 students?

How can I design effective Tier 2 interventions?

Tier 2 evidence-based interventions use systematic, explicit methods to change student performance and/or behavior. In systematic methods, skills and concepts begin with the most simple, moving to the most complex. Student objectives are clear, concise, and driven by ongoing assessment results.

Additionally, students are provided with appropriate practice opportunities which directly reflect systematic instruction. Explicit methods typically include teacher modeling, student guided practice, and student independent practice, sometimes referred to as “I do, We do, You do.”

Tier 2 Intervention Design Example:

I do
1.Teacher models and explains

We do
2.Students practice (with teacher’s guidance) what the teacher modeled
3.Teacher provides prompts/feedback
4.Students apply skill as teacher scaffolds instruction

You do
5.Students practice independently (either in-class or as homework)
6.Teacher provides feedback

As you design interventions that are systematic and explicit, make sure you spend plenty of time on the “We do” stage. That is your best opportunity to catch mistakes and clarify misconceptions.


How can I differentiate targeted interventions to meet the needs of each of my Tier 2 students?

To design effective differentiated interventions, you must know what your students' needs are. Consistent data collection is key for both moving on to Tier 3 and Special Education and moving students back to the core curriculum. (If you have not checked out my Plug & Play Data Collection Spreadsheets--you can here). 

Are your students visual, auditory, or tactile/kinesthetic? Many Tier 2 learners are primarily visual and tactile/kinesthetic. They need concrete examples such as pictures and graphic organizers, as well as hands-on experiences.

Students who are poor readers typically exhibit strengths in the visual/spatial intelligence. They “think in pictures” rather than in words. Because these students are often able to put details into their pictures that others may not discern, encourage them to sketch what they are reading or hearing. Next, guide them as they first explain and then write about their pictures.

Tier 2 Intervention Example

In my school, one 4th grade teacher during a unit in the core reading program devoted to poetry had students learning how to write haikus, something not included in the core reading program but clearly aligned to the reading standards for that grade. Another 2nd grade teacher chose to use reader's theater, a well-known intervention program in which students "rehearse" the presentation of reading material to their classmates in a play or dialogue format, to increase the development of fluency.

By dividing the entire grade into tiered instruction, the model provides to students who are already achieving at benchmark levels opportunities for enrichment that go beyond the core instructional program. Our school schedule built in a time each week to collect the progress-monitoring data would be collected on students in Tiers 2 and 3.

Suggested Timeline for RTI Implementation

Phase 1            

• Establish a Professional Learning Community
• Differentiate instruction in Tier 1
• Conduct professional development on RTI
• Begin an Action Plan
• Set up RTI teams
• Select an RTI model
• Choose or design universal screening and begin using

 Phase 2

• Hold discussions on decision rules, fidelity of implementation, and documentation procedures
• In Tier 1, regularly use data from assessments to make instructional decisions
• Make decisions about when and how Tiers 2 & 3 interventions will be conducted
• Choose or design progress monitoring and begin using
• Begin differentiating interventions in Tiers 2 and 3
• Finish Action Plan

Phase 3

• In all tiers, use data to make most instruction and intervention decisions
• Differentiate instruction and interventions consistently
• Evaluate practicality and usefulness of  universal screening and progress monitoring