Inside Bell's Brain

Welcome back to Inside Bell's Brain!  This week's back-to-school linky is about classroom decor, so not only do you get the glimpse "inside Bell's brain," but you also get a glimpse inside Bell's room this week!  Keep in mind that I'm still frantically working to get my room ready for back to school this year, so there are a lot of projects in progress!  I hope to revisit this post with a few more pictures in the days to come, but here's what I have so far!  (I will be returning to this post tonight to add some additional photos after I visit my classroom today, so please come back again tomorrow to check out the updates.) My Welcome Board There is a bulletin board just outside my classroom that I use as a welcome board.  Leadership is a strong value at the school where I teach, so my catchphrase is "'Owl' grow up to be a leader!"  I originally had the idea from a similar tree I saw on Pinteres...

Good.  It's such a simple word...one that we probably use 100 times in a single day.  "Be a good girl."  "You're a good boy."  "Do a good job."  "Did you have a good day?"  "This food is good."  When there are seemingly an infinite number of adjectives we could choose, we stick with the word "good."  It's a word I've been trying to eliminate from my vocabulary for quite some time, but probably not for the reason that you think.   I see so many signs, products, and instructional tools that talk about "good" readers and writers.  I think so many of them are wonderful products and great resources for our classes, so I don't want my message to be misconstrued.  But if we tell students that there are "good" readers and writers, what is the implication?  That there are also BAD readers and writers.  That's what concerns me the most.   Some students, and some teachers alike, struggle w...

Whew!  This week has flown by, and I missed the opportunity to post and link up this morning!  But I'm here now to share my thoughts with you on considerations for assessment, specifically when working with English learners.  (Please forgive me for my lack of graphics this week!  I'm trying to post and link up as quickly as possible!)  1. Change your lenses!  Before ever giving a formal assessment, you should view that assessment through the eyes of your EL students.  Ask yourself the following questions to gain some insight into your assessments. Are there complex syntactical structures that will confuse language learners?   Think of how much we overthink those true/false questions that have a negative word in them.  "If I say true, am I agreeing that it's true or not true?  But it has the word not, or never, or none!"  Those same questions can be very misleading for ELs because they're hyperfocused on the language and struct...

I'm really excited to participate in the Back to School Linky with Miss V's Busy Bees and Mrs. D's Corner.  This week's posts are focused on behavior management. Let's start with my philosophy on behavior management...I believe behavior management is strongly rooted in classroom procedures.  When there are clear expectations and those expectations are clearly articulated to your students, behavior management takes care of itself. A friend and co-teacher of mine has taken me on as her mentor project, so to speak.  She lent me some of her materials from Harry Wong, THE behavior and classroom management guru.  One of those items she lent me was an audio book .  One of the comments that Mr. Wong made in that audio really made me rethink my entire behavior plan in my classroom.  He clearly explained the difference between rules and procedures .  We shouldn't be overly focused on rules, per se, and we should only have 5 real rules at the most.  ...