At first glance my assessment notebook might appear to be just a glorified gradebook.  The first few pages are actually gradebook types of forms with students’ names listed down the left column and assignments and dates across the top.  But if you page past this section, you will find sections labeled “Reading Conferences”, “Status of the Class”, “Writing Conferences”, and “Spelling Workshop”.  It is in these sections that I record important information about my students’ progress in the form of observations, anecdotal notes, and rubrics.  Each section contains a separate form for each student which I add to throughout the year.  I have my assessment notebook by my side whenever I conduct an individual reading or writing conference, read from a student’s writer’s notebook, evaluate a reading response log, listen to a student-led book chat, etc., etc.  In short, my assessment notebook is a collection of authentic assessments where I assess my students using the methods I use to teach them.

Download Writing Evaluation Form

Download Spelling Assessment Form

Download Status of the Class Form

I am currently reading the newly published Units of Study for Teaching Reading by Lucy Calkins. Her words and the current research she cites all support this.  As you begin this new school year, I encourage you to think about your own literacy history.  Let me quote some of Lucy’s words to get you started:

“Think for just a minute about the times in your life when reading was the pits, and then think about times when reading was the best thing in the world.  What were the conditions that made reading so bad; what made it so good?  I’m pretty sure that you are saying that reading worked for you when you could choose books that mattered to you, when you had lots of time to actually eyes-on-print read, and when you could finish one chapter, and instead of answering twenty questions, read the next chapter.  If you’ve had the exquisite pleasure of sharing reading—in a book club, a Bible study group, a woman’s group, a writing group, or in a friendship that includes books—then the social fabric of reading will be part of what made reading work for you.  And I’m pretty sure that when reading was the pits for you, someone else told you what to read, what to think about, and what to do when you finished reading.  You probably felt as if your every move was monitored and judged, making reading a performance for someone else.”

As you reflect, think about both positive and negative experiences.  Was there a special person who turned you on to reading?  Are there any books that were turning points for you as a reader?  Conversely, what turned you off about reading?  Before I wrote my my mini-memoir, I started with a timeline that looks like this:

I encourage you to jot your ideas down in some fashion.  You can take that a step further by sharing your literacy history with your students and asking them to do the same.  You could also have your entire staff do this exercise at a staff meeting and then discuss.  Be sure to be reflective and ask, “Do our teaching practices match our beliefs about the teaching of reading?  Are we creating an atmosphere that promotes a love of reading?” 

This is a booklet that we compile throughout the entire year.  At the beginning of the school year the students receive the front cover and they complete a handwriting sample and draw a self-portrait.  These pages are stapled together and put into their portfolios.

Click to enlarge.

Each month we add one new page to the booklet. Topics include: 

• hobbies and interests
• likes and dislikes
• favorites
• my family
• my friends
• my school
• my future
• summer plans

I originally got this idea from Linda Schwartz’s book The Month to Month Me.  I used her version for my 3rd through 5th grade students, but found that I needed to adapt it for use with my younger students.  Hers can be purchased at Amazon.  You can download my adaptation below:

1. Draw a box on the chalkboard and label one column “teacher” and one column “class”.

TEACHER	CLASS

2. When the entire class cooperates, follows directions, receives a compliment from another staff member, etc. reward them with a class point by drawing a tally mark in their box. When the entire class misbehaves, doesn’t follow directions, gets a bad report, etc., award yourself a point.
3. At the end of the day, if the class “beats the teacher”, an object is removed from an incentive bulletin board. If the teacher has more points, an object is added to the bulletin board. For a tie, objects are neither added nor removed.
4. When all of the items are removed, the class earns a special reward such as extra recess, a popcorn party, etc.

The following bulletin board works well at the beginning of the year: Create a bulletin board displaying an apple tree with green leaves and apples attached. At the beginning of the school year the class works to remove all of the apples from the tree.

For the next class reward they work to change all of the green leaves to fall colored leaves.

For the third reward the fall leaves are removed from the tree.

Other ideas: feathers on a turkey, presents under a tree, build a snowman.

The self-reflection of my literacy practices began during my first year of teaching when I realized that what I was doing wasn’t working.  I began by thinking about how I became a reader (my own personal literacy history) and how I could help my students do the same.   More recently,I wrote these experiences into a mini-memoir piece that I would like to share with you below. 

Breaking the Cycle

When you go to school you learn to read. That’s what I always thought. I couldn’t wait to start school so that I could begin to unlock the mysteries on the pages of books. I didn’t attend kindergarten, so I had to wait until I was in first grade, 6 ½ long years to begin my formal literacy journey. I don’t remember much about my first day of school except what happened after I arrived home. I rode the bus home trying to hold in the tears, only allowing them to spill down my cheeks as I ran up the driveway. My mom was sweeping the garage as she anxiously waited to hear about her firstborn’s adventure. She quickly put down her broom when she noticed the distress on my face. “What’s the matter, honey?”

“I didn’t learn to read today,” I sobbed. “You said I would learn to read when I went to school.” She consoled me with some homemade cookies as she broke the news that learning to read is a long process. Not the news I wanted to hear, but news I learned to accept.

I was still so naïve, though. There was so much to do before we could read. We started in the “blue workbook”. The alphabet letters were lined up above the chalkboard, but the pictures were masked.  My teacher would uncover just one letter at a time, a process that would take weeks. First came the letter “m”.  She ceremoniously revealed the picture of an ice cream cone beneath the letter “m”. Of course. Ice cream cone because you say “mmm” when you lick one. It made sense at the time. I dutifully drew rows of “m’s” in my workbook and the first day’s reading lesson was finished. Next came the letter “s”. Tire stood for “s”. The sound of air escaping a pierced tire. Intuitive, I suppose. Next came the first vowel, the letter “e”, and now I could read and write the words “me” and “see”. I found it all very exciting, but it still wasn’t what I expected. I still couldn’t decipher the words in my books at home. We had to complete all of the blue workbook and then the gold one before we were handed our first readers, and it would be months before that would happen.

I somehow learned to read (and like it) in spite of the disappointing start. Fast forward two years. My third grade teacher introduced me to Scholastic book orders, and a whole new world opened up to me. I still own my first two book purchases: A Pony for the Winter and a biography of Helen Keller.     I clearly remember the day I sat in class deeply entrenched in Helen Keller, not realizing that the teacher had begun teaching the math lesson. That is the day I remember becoming a reader. From that point on I would never be without a book. I traveled to faraway places, met interesting people, and lived vicariously through the characters in my books. Even though money was tight, my mom allowed me to purchase two new paperbacks from the book orders every month. My older cousins began giving me the books they had finished. Soon my dad had to build me a special bookshelf to hold all of my prized possessions.

I became a reader, but there was something I could never understand. If I liked to read so much, why did I so dread reading class at school? I was a product of the three reading group/round robin reading/workbook era. Each day was exactly the same—take turns reading the story aloud, answer the comprehension questions, complete the appropriate workbook pages, and if you finish early, begin your SRA cards. This cycle continued throughout elementary school.

Fast forward again. I was now 22 years old in a classroom of my own. My first class consisted of 23 second-graders in an urban school district. This school grouped classes homogeneously, so being the new teacher, I received the low class—23 second-graders on kindergarten and first grade reading levels. My charge was to get them up to grade level using only basal readers and workbooks, to follow the prescribed order of the books, and to be on the correct page each month when the reading specialist came to check on my progress. In addition, I was to do all of this while every 15 minutes a new group of students was pulled out for Title I math and reading services and speech therapy. I knew I was the new kid on the block, but something about this did not seem right. How could I subject my students to the same drudgery that I endured in elementary school? More importantly, how could I find a way to instill in my students the joy of reading that I had known? These children didn’t have cousins giving them boxes of books, moms providing a book allowance each month, or dads building them bookshelves. If these children were going to become readers, it would be mostly up to me.

Cousin Justain proceeded to tell me about the previous owner of the farmhouse, an old schoolteacher name Mabel Martin.  The mention of a schoolteacher piqued my interest, but I became even more interested when he said, “Yeah, and all of her old files are still in the barn.”  I knew that I couldn’t leave until I got a peek at those files.  So he led me into the barn, up this ladder…

into the attic…

and over to these shelves of treasures where I parked myself for a little while.

The files were extremely dusty but surprisingly well-preserved, considering that they are 60-70 years old according to the 1940’s to early 1950’s dates on them.  My family was impatient to leave the hot, dusty barn, so I didn’t have as much time as I would have liked to glimpse into a past teaching era.  But I did grab a few artifacts on my way out.  One was this handbook from a professional development seminar on classroom discipline:

As I thumbed through it I found sections on topics like “Creating a Favorable Classroom Climate” and “Establishing a Good Routine”.  Then my eyes landed on a section called “Unstable Children”.  What?  According to this guide, these are the unstable children who may need remedial discipline:

• the too perfect child
• those who get picked on
• those the others tease or call names
• those the others make fun of
• the fat one
• the skinny one
• the brain
• the fellow whose interest is in the stars (heavenly kind) when classmates are following the Hollywood variety
• the child who leaves you “cold”
• the failures
• those with poor academic records
• those people say do not act their age
• those everyone knows and not favorably either

So I’m wondering, what child does NOT fit into one of these categories?  And just because they do, does that mean they are “unstable”?  I thought the wording was actually quite humorous and we did get a big chuckle out of it.  It did get me thinking, however, about the labels we put on our students, intentionally and unintentionally.  Some of you have already met your new students and some will be meeting them within the next two weeks.  How are you going to view these children?  As problem children?  Or as unique individuals with their own special talents, needs, interests, and yes, even quirks?

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Here is how it works:

1. Cut blue construction paper into 2” x 6” strips. You may want to put a special stamp on them so that students can’t “counterfeit” them.
2. Distribute blue strips as rewards for good behavior, good thinking, acts of kindness, etc.  (I always keep a handy supply in my teacher apron).
3. Students save the blue strips in a Ziploc bag and redeem them for rewards.

I have a few rules regarding blue strips:

• Students can never ask for a blue strip or hint that they deserve one. 
• If I see students counting strips or playing with them throughout the day, I take all of them and they have to start over.  It usually only happens once each year.
• Blue strips are turned in only at the pre-determined times (end of the day or one day/week).
• If students plan to turn in a Friday donut pass, they must tell me on Thursday so that I can buy the donuts.
• I schedule one “lunch with the teacher” date each month.  If students have enough strips, they may join the lunch.  If not, they have to wait until the next month.

This is such a simple, inexpensive technique, but students of all ages love it.  I think one reason for its success is that I have trained myself to make sure that I look the child in the eye and give specific positive feedback each time I award a blue strip.  That means more to most students than the tangible rewards. Some of them just like to collect the blue strips and never even turn them in.  (I haven’t figured that one out yet). 

After dealing with this problem for a couple of years, I finally came up with a solution that is quite simple but did wonders for my stress level when new students arrived.  Since many of you have just started school or will be starting shortly, I thought I would pass on my solution.  I call them “new student packets.”  Here is how they work:  At the beginning of the year when you are making nametags, distributing folders, important papers, books, etc., take a few extra minutes to make several extra sets. Place each set of extras in a Ziploc bag or large envelope and file them away. When you get a new student in the middle of the year, you simply pull out one of your “new student packets” and you’re ready to roll. These are the contents of my packets: safe folder, Take-Home-Tuesday folder, reading folder, writing folder, math folder, poetry notebook, classroom handbook, daily planner, reading response log, paper plate, locker nametag, attendance chart name card, apron name card, sub kit nametag, parent volunteer letter, homework contract, writing topics parent letter and form, personality of the week letter, Month-to-Month Me booklet, birthday card, portfolio.

That’s quite a list of items!  No wonder it stressed me out trying to gather all of them each time a new student arrived.  Once I developed this system, not only did my stress level decrease, but my attitude improved.  It was so much easier for me to truly welcome each new child into my community of learners.

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The Monday before the student’s special week I send home a parent explanation letter and a piece of stationery.  As a parent, I find that when my own children’s teachers send the Student of the Week letter home the Friday before, we often don’t have time over the weekend to get the pictures printed, the poster made, etc.  By sending it home the Monday before, the families have a full week to prepare.  I also don’t require that a poster be made—just send in the pictures!  Instead I ask the family to spend time writing a personal note to the child.  All family members are encouraged to participate.

(click to enlarge)

Download Personality of the Week Parent Letter
Download Personality of the Week Family Stationery

The following describes the weekly procedures:

Monday

The Personality of the Week sits in a special chair while we interview him.  The information is recorded on a special poster.

The completed poster is hung on the Personality of the Week bulletin board. Notice the paperclips on each piece of laminated red construction paper?  This allows me to easily hang the photos without damaging them.

Tuesday

The student shares pictures from home which are then hung on the bulletin board.

Wednesday

Read aloud Message from Home to the class.  Hang on the bulletin board.  At the end of the week, save the letter to put in the child’s portfolio.  This will be a special memento for the child to save.  A word of warning: Be sure to silently read the letters from home before reading them aloud to the class—they are often tearjerkers and reading ahead of time will help you stay composed!  This is my favorite part of the week.

Thursday

Classmates write personal notes to the student on special stationery. Staple notes into a booklet and send home.

Download Personality of the Week Student Stationery

Friday

I write a “note from the teacher” and send it through the school mail to the child’s home on Thursday so that the child receives it on Friday or Saturday.  Kids love getting mail!