APTT & The *@!%$ Shutdown

Hey, y'all!  I hope you're as jazzed as I am that fall has finally come.  Here in DC today was the first cool, rainy fall day.  It really made me want to drink tea and spend the day curled on the couch ready.  That's pretty mutually exclusive with actual teaching, though.  =)

I wanted to share a few ideas with you, and promise you that I'm still chugging way on items for my TpT store.  The first thing I wanted to tell you about is APTT.  Say whaaat?!  APTT stands for Academic Parent Teacher Teams, and it's a really data driven version of parent teacher conferences.  (You can read an interview with the creator of this model here.  It's less lame than I just made it sound.)  It was created to be more meaningful in schools with high populations of low(er) income families to share data in a meaningful way, despite the education level of the parents involved.  If we're being 100% honest the first year I did APTT I HATED it.  (In retrospect, I think that's because I was putting a TON of time into the conferences, but not getting the return back.)  However, I'm now in my third year of using this conference model, and I absolutely L-O-V-E it.  Now, I want to be honest with you, it's the same amount of work as it was the first year, but now I'm working with other teachers to put on the meeting, so it's divided among a team, AND the turn out is so much better.  Let me tell you a few reasons I love APTT.  First, it only focuses on academic data.  (I know what you're thinking, but honestly, I find conferences to be so much more positive when we don't discuss behavior.) The basic gist of APTT is that as a teacher, you select one long term goal for the year in reading and one in math and then basically you measure each student's progress toward that goal every 60 days throughout the year.  The other thing that I really like about APTT is that these are group conferences and we share all the kids' data, with all the parents, but we share the data anonymously.  It's really powerful, because it give parents a clear idea of a) exactly where their kids are, b) where all the other kids in the class/grade are performing, and c) what the current expectation is, and if their child is above or below it.  One last thing--APTT was originally created to share data with parents in lower income schools/districts, but I don't think that's the only environment in which this model would be successful.  That's basically the quick and dirty version of APTT.  If you have any questions I'm happy to answer them.

In other news I have to take about 45 seconds of your time to rage about this stupid federal shutdown.  It's so crazy; I mean, really I can't even talk about it.  I mean, it's so ridiculous that yesterday our principal had to send an email out that we can't order any more supplies/materials until the shutdown ends/budget is passed, so we all have ONE PACK of copy paper until whenever it is that the shutdown ends. Whether that's 2 days or 2 weeks.  Also, after next Friday schools will (likely) have to shut down because DC's rainy day fund will be dry and there won't be money to run the physical buildings.  The whole thing is such a mess.  Not to mention that federal employees (like the hubs) aren't getting paid at all right now.  Okay.  I have to move on.

Last, I'm hoping to glean some knowledge from y'all.  So I have a group of about 7 boys this year who are really struggling to get on the classroom community train.  They're just garnering a lot of negative attention, and slowing down the learning of the entire class.  Two of them are currently on a behavior plan that, honestly, seems at times to be extremely helpful and at times a huge time suck.  I think I'm going to launch table points on Tuesday, but does anyone else have (relatively easy) any ideas to help them settle/simmer and successfully participate in the class?

That's it.  Thanks so much for sticking with me!

Inverted Workshop Resources

Good morning, friends!  This week has been so bizarre-o and crazy.  I don't know how it happened, but somehow I've been acting like I'm in college again; staying up until 12:30 or 1:00am and then sleeping late.  It is not my most favorite schedule, but I'm having a very hard time breaking the cycle.

You're probably thinking by now that the only thing I know anything about is math.  That's only part true.  ;)  Before I wrap up this series on the inverted workshop model in case you were interested in learning more about it.  I'll recommend 3 books to you that I've found helpful while implementing this in my own classroom.                                                    
This book is excellent!  What I really like about this book is that it's divided by topic, so if you're looking for a good question to ask about measurement, for example, you can go to the measurement section and then within that section they'll have grade-level band questions AND they even tell you what to look for in student responses.  That was extremely helpful to me when I was first getting started and I wasn't totally sure what to be looking for.  This book is also really user friendly.  It's incredibly simple to just turn to the page you need, type the question up, and use it with your kids.
                                              
This book is much more dense, and I really like it, but I have to be honest--I use this book more in kind of a consultative way.  It's hardly ever the book I turn to first because there's just more information in it and sometimes all you want is an idea for your next math workshop.  =)  But when I do take the time to read an entire chapter at a time I also find this book really useful and generally come away with at least one new idea that I'm ready to try out.
                                                  
This book is super interesting; I actually got it at a math workshop that I attended this summer, so I haven't read the entire thing yet, but it's a really easy read and I find it really interesting.  This book actually focuses more on the Standards for Mathematical Practice (SMP) that come at the beginning of the Common Core and how to implement the SMP in your own classroom.  Even thought it's not directly about the inverted workshop there's a clear connection between the two.  Focusing on the SMP at the beginning of the year can help you implement a strong community of learners that will really embrace the inverted workshop.

That's it for me today, friends.  I am really starting to feel very nervous about back to school!  Here in DC teachers go back on August 19th and kids start on August 26th.  I feel like August 26th is going to be upon me in about 2 seconds I have SO MUCH to do before then, so I'm going to get to it.  Enjoy your day!  I'll be back tomorrow or Friday with some more ideas to share.  =)