Wow! I Need to Get Better at This!

Seriously, I am bad at blogging about my class adventures! The sad thing is this past year my class gave me so many wonderful things to write about. The good thing is I am looping with most of them, so they should give me much to write about.

Since I wrote nothing about them last school year, I thought I'd do a quick recap.

I had a total of 28 students this year, but not at the same time. I started with 25, 14 girls and 11 boys. One of the girls moved to Japan, yup Japan. We missed her and remained email pals throughout the year. Right after winter break I got a new student, a boy. That made our numbers 13 girls and 13 boys. I thought that was perfect! Then one week later we got another new student. He came from the Philippines and I freaked. He was a great boy, but I thought, "how am I going to teach this boy?" He made it easy though and soon he was an important part of the class. Then the powers that be decided he was in the wrong grade. They moved him back to 3rd. About two months before the school year ended we got another boy. So we ended the year with 26.

This past year I continued  the idea of students choosing their seats daily. Unlike the year before, this class moved around a lot. There were a few of them who picked the same area, or even the same desk often, but most moved around. We still had individual seats, pairs, and groups of four.

The cool thing about those seats were some of them were cushions on the floor with desks with the legs removed. Now I could have never sat like that all day, but they were the most popular seats in the room. We even had to come up with a plan, so they could be enjoyed by all who wanted them. We also had two stability balls. Those were the second most popular seats. The round table in the room became a seating option and finally I raised the legs of two desks as far as they would go and stools to go with them. Late in the year I saw something online and decided to try it. I get exercise bands and put them on the front legs of some of the desks. This gave them a quiet way to move their feet. Honestly, they were quiet with them.

I didn't realize how well these options helped my students until I had to take them all away to get ready for the End of Grade tests.They went from quiet students to talkative ones who were up and moving all the time! Seriously, it was like night and day. They were still great, don't get me wrong, but they became and active bunch. My own personal "research says" is that students do best with choice and movement.

Okay, I was going to write more, there still more, but it'll have to wait for another post.