The Sparkly Notebook

Back to School

It’s No Accident – A Shift In Mindset

It’s the start of the year, and you have just received your roster. You look on there, and… there. It. is. That one student. The one whose name you heard all last year. The one who was in the office all the time. The one the teachers warned you about. Ugh. 

…

This is the mindset that sets you up from the start – this is the mindset that has already predetermined how your year with this one student will go and all the others.

Let me challenge you to shift this mindset. 

Think about this – 

The kids in your class are no accident. You are in their life for a reason and a divine purpose. You are the difference! YOU!

This is the Remind message that our school principal, Mrs. Clark, sent out to our staff at the start of the year before the teachers got their rosters, and I don’t think there is a stronger message she could have sent to the teachers.

It is so easy for us to get bogged down in the negative mindset that can sometimes come with a new roster. We often look at it in a “Here we go” way, but the teacher can make all the difference in the world for a student. We have the power to have a positive impact on all our students, including that one… 

When you look at your new roster this year, I challenge you to think about the fact that it is no accident that each of those students ended up in your class. There is a reason they ended up with you. Think about the difference you can make with each of them as you learn their needs and work with them. Think about the positive role model you can be. Even the challenging students deserve to not be given up on before the year even gets started. We can make a lasting impact on their lives. However, if we let our preconceived notions about a student or group of students set the tone, we will lessen our impact. 

Think of the new year as a clean slate for each of your students – no matter how many times you saw them in trouble last year or how many negative things you heard about them from the previous teachers. A new year means a new opportunity to be loved, and it’s our job to show students they matter. 

Have a great year and remember to smile through the hardships. 

5 Fun Back to School Activities to Start the Year

As we hit the Back to School season, it’s time to start planning for that first week. It is important for the first week to engaging, content-related, and provide an opportunity to practice setting classroom routines. 

You want the year to start in an engaging way because you want the students to look forward to learning with you, but you also want to start with something content-related because you want the students to know your class will always be focused on the standards and curriculum. 

A few fun Back to School Ideas:

  1. Digital Back to School Escape Room
    A Digital Escape Room is a fun way to get students to collaborate and enjoy the first day while still focusing on ELA content. This will also allow you to practice routines with groups, using computers/Chromebooks/devices in the classroom, and following directions.

Some Back to School Escape Rooms I have:

  1. Creative Writing Activity
    One great way to start the year is with a creative writing activity. This gives the students an opportunity to get creative on Day 1, gives you an idea of where they are as writers, and allows for the implementation of multiple standards being introduced at the start of the year. A few of my favorite creative writing activities are personal narratives, having students write from a different perspective, and creative poetry writing. 

A Few Creative Writing Activities I have:

  1. Digital Sort Activities
    Digital sort activities are super easy to prep, provide an engaging activity for students, and allows you to determine the students’ understanding of concepts. They make perfect formative assessments that are still highly engaging.

A Few Fun Digital Sort Activities I have:

  1. Character Building Activities
    Starting the year with a character-building activity is a great way to establish the culture you want from the beginning. I am a big believer that you cannot hold students to an expectation or behavior that you have not taught or modeled. By starting the year with a character building activity, you are modeling and teaching the students the expectation. 

A Few Fun Character Building Activities I have:

As you decide on how to start the school year, I hope you remember to have fun. The start of the school year can be highly stressful, but we don’t want to let that take away the fun it can also be. It’s when we get to meet our new darlings for the year, and we want to make sure they look forward to coming to school each day. 

Happy First Week of School Planning!

PS – If you’re looking for some fun Back to School ideas for teachers, check out this blog post! 

5 Tips for Setting Clear Expectations for Back to School

As the new year approaches and you start planning your year, be sure to keep setting up your classroom procedures and expectations at the top of your list. There are so many ELA standards to cover throughout the year, and every minute of class time is so important. By setting clear routines, procedures, and expectations at the start of the year, you are creating a classroom environment that will flow smoothly and help with time management. This way you can soak up every second of every class period.

5 Tips for Setting Procedures and Clear Expectations:

  1. Plan out how you imagine everything in your class rolling out and how you will teach the procedures you want to have in place on a daily basis. While planning, think about even the small things and plan for them. The small things don’t have to be introduced at the start of the year, but you will have a plan already made for when they do come up (trust me – they will come up). I have a free checklist of things to think about when setting up your expectations – Click HERE to access it for FREE.
  2. Practice – Practice – Practice! It is so easy to get in the mindset of saying something once and expecting it to stick, but, ummm hello, we teach middle schoolers. Think about the curriculum. Can you teach a new concept once and expect them to be able to ace a test over it? Nope. Teaching expectations works the same way. You have to reiterate the procedures and expectations until they learn it. The more you practice, the more they will do with them. 
  3. Consistency is KEY! When teaching your expectations, you have to always be consistent. If you want students to always sharpen their pencils at the start of class, this expectation needs to be consistently followed. Also make sure you are being consistent among students – if you have an expectation, make sure you are having all students follow it. Inconsistency among students is something that will be quickly noticed and hard to forget – students recognize this and will immediately lose respect for you.
  4. Don’t assume students “just know” proper etiquette or what they should do in given situations. It’s so easy to think students “should know better”, but this is not always the case. If every teacher assumed that students knew the expectations, the students would never be taught them. We also know not every student is taught proper etiquette at home either, and that’s no fault of their own. If we are going to expect a certain behavior or procedure of our students, we need to make sure we are teaching it explicitly to them. That way we can 100% know the students “should know” what to do. 
  5. Smile. I’m a firm believer that no one should follow the “don’t smile until after Christmas” myth. Building a strong rapport and mutual respect with the students has to start at the beginning of the year and grow from there. Focus on building those relationships with the students upfront. Smile and love what you do! Smiles and an enjoyment of the classroom are contagious to the students. They will react in a similar way. This will make teaching procedures and expectations much easier. As a matter of fact, it will make teaching ELA in general much easier. You will have the students’ buy-in.

Don’t let yourself get bogged down in having the perfect class because there will be times you want to pull your hair out. However, by being prepared and having a plan ahead of time, you are going to help minimize those instances. Your students will know the expectations and, therefore, be more prepared for all the AWESOME content you will be sharing with them. 

Don’t forget to get your FREE printable copy of the checklist below here.

Our Back to School Procedures to Combat COVID19

What a crazy year to be in education! In years past, I know we have said there is no tired like back to school teacher tired. However, this year’s back to school season puts any previous ones to shame in my book. We have had to think about every possible scenario, come up with a plan, think of all scenarios with that plan, then make edits to our plans, and the cycle continues.

When a year adds as many new buzzwords as this year has, then you know it can go in the books as a stressful year.

Click on the image to get your copy of BUZZWORD BINGO!

Welcome to Administration, Crystal

I picked one heck of a year to move into administration as we take on all the challenges of COVID at school. I have found myself constantly thinking about things we have not thought about or changes we may need to make in order to keep our students and staff safe this year. 

I think we have done a pretty good job as an admin team and school in coming up with some procedures for the different parts of the school day to ensure everyone is safe and socially distanced throughout the day.

I want to take some time to break down some of the things we are doing this year in case it can help other schools as they plan or replan some of their procedures for the year.

Our School PBIS

One of the first things I wanted to think about as we prepared for the new school year was the procedures and expectations we have for our students. We have PBIS matrixes spread throughout our school and have created lesson plans and PBIS videos that we use with our students each year. This year, those plans look a little different as we have changed our procedures for, well, practically everything.

We have broken down our PBIS plan by three key goals for students: Be Positive, Be Respectful, & Be Responsible. In our matrixes, we have broken down what these look like in the different parts of the school. This year, we have added more guidelines for keeping hands to selves, washing hands, using hand sanitizer, space between students and peers at all times, respecting other’s personal space, and respecting those who choose to wear masks and/or shields. 

If you are interested in purchasing the PBIS matrixes already made for each area of the school, you can find those here. 

Schoolwide Seating Chart

Contact tracing can be a nightmare with a school full of children, so we came up with a plan for a schoolwide seating chart. With our seating chart, the students sit beside the same two students in every class, every room they enter, every line they walk in, and all the in-between. By having this set up, we automatically know the students who could be possible direct contacts and need to quarantine in the case of a positive test result. We have done our best to implement social distancing procedures throughout the school to avoid having direct contacts; however, this helps us err on the side of caution with contact tracing.

We also have all classrooms mirroring each other with the exact same set-up. This helps ensure the students are sitting beside the same students in all directions for each class.

Cafeteria Procedures

In order to keep students socially distanced in the cafeteria, we have placed smiley faces on every other seat. When students enter the cafeteria at any point in the day, they are to sit on a smiley face. We have arranged it so that there are smaller numbers of classes in the cafeteria at a time to allow for fewer students to be able to sit in every other seat. We do have some cases where students have to sit beside one another, but we try to make it to where it’s siblings who are seated right beside each other if necessary.

We also have students seated in their seating charts at lunch to be beside the same students they are beside all day. Again, this is to help with contact tracing as needed.

Media Center

We have set it up to where teachers can send two students to the media center at a time throughout the day. So far, this has not presented an issue for too many students being in the media center at a time, but we do have a plan to change it to one student at a time if it becomes necessary.

When students return their books, we have a “Quarantine Cart” for the books to sit for 48 hours before being placed back on the shelves for checkout. Research has shown that 48 hours plus some wiping down is enough time, so we are going with that. We have three different carts that we switch out each day for new books then the books on the cart can be put away after the 48 hours are up.

Recess

We have separated our playground into 5 sections, and each day a class goes to a different section. They rotate sections each day so the students get to play on the different equipment. This helps avoid classes intermingling with each other and, once again, helps us in the case of contract tracing.

Recess is one of the only areas in the school where social distancing is not 100% enforced. We’ve told students to be mindful of their space and to try to stay 6 feet from one another, but the students are not out there longer than 15 minutes and are not up close during this time. 

Bathrooms

We have very, and I mean very, set bathroom times for each class. The teachers have to go at their designated times because we have a set cleaning schedule for our custodians to get in and clean the bathrooms between the breaks. It. Is. A. Lot! Oddly enough, this was probably the hardest part of our day to figure out. In addition to the set bathroom schedule, teachers are also only allowing three students in the restrooms at a time to help with social distancing.

We have also set up a hand sanitizing station outside of the restrooms, and it’s a part of our PBIS for students to sanitize before entering the restroom, to wash their hands before exiting, and then for them to sanitize again once out the restroom. This seems like a lot, but we cannot clean between each student entering and exiting and want to be sure to have it left as clean as possible.

We also closed down all of our water fountains and got a touchless bottle filling station for students to use during the day. We have gotten donated water bottles in order to provide each student with a water bottle.

While in the hall, students are to stand two to three tiles apart whenever possible. We have tried to make the halls clear in order to allow classes to be spaced out; however, we all know this is not feasible at all times.

Car Rider Bell

Instead of the bell ringing and all car riders being dismissed, we have started dismissing car riders by grade level. We do not have an abundance of car riders at our school, so you may want to dismiss by team if you are a larger school with a lot of car riders. Each grade level has a set location where they sit and wait (on smiley faces spread apart), and we have staff out at the car pickup with radios to call for students to come out. Once called, the students quickly make their way out to their car. Once again, we are a smaller school with a low amount of car riders, so this procedure works for us. It would be more difficult at a larger school.

Bus Dismissal

Bus dismissal was another trial and error procedure for us. We tried a few different protocols before finding the one that works best for us. I will tell you the two top procedures for us in case the best one for us isn’t feasible for your school.

One procedure we tried was calling one bus at a time. This helped keep the numbers of students exiting the rooms at one time minimal; however, we had students miss their bus being called on several occasions. Having a bus come back to pick up a student is quite the ordeal and can put us way behind schedule getting dismissed. Because of this, we switched over to calling one classroom at a time to come to buses. We call classrooms on both sides of the hall together, so it is two classes dismissing at a time. Once called, the teachers line the students up, wait for it, in their assigned order and walk them to buses. This keeps students from intermingling and is still a smaller number of students in the hall at a time. 

We’ve Got This!

We are all in this together! I hope this breakdown of some of the strategies we are implementing is helpful as you plan and replan procedures for this year. Know that there is going to be a lot of trial and error as we go through this year. If there was ever a time to extend grace, it’s now.

Our school focus this year is to continually give grace. Parents need grace as they make decisions for their children and families on whether virtual learning or traditional school is the best choice. Students need grace as they try to cope with all of the new and scary that we are facing and try to be a good student in school when that may not be their main focus. Other teachers and staff need grace as they deal with the stress, extra pressure, and the scariness of COVID themselves. School leaders need grace as they make decisions for the schools that have a high impact on everyone and will never please everyone. YOU need grace as you go through this yourself: the new, the stress, the anxiety, and the extra workload. Whatever you do, please do not be too hard on yourself as you tread this new territory.

We Can Do This!!

Please reach out to me if there is ever anything I can do to help! ❤️

stay healthy helpful and calm
↑ Top of Page