SOL Day 3: Progress Reports

Well, it's that time again: progress reports. I am anticipating this being a short post today, as our progress reports are due in by midnight tonight and I am only about halfway done with them. But who knows, if I get on a roll with a thought I might just get carried away.

This is my 16th year teaching and in that time, progress reports have changed quite a lot. I'm not talking about the basic idea of progress reports, but just look at the fact that the name itself has evolved. We used to call them "grade cards" but now they are "progress reports". This is fitting for my district in particular, as we do not give actual traditional grades in the elementary school. The progress report lists the standards for each subject area at our grade level for the entire year. Then, for each marking period, we assign a number to the students' mastery of that standard for that marking period. There is a grading "key" included on the progress report so that the parents know what the number means. I won't go into any more detail other than to say that I'm sure that there are more than a handful of parents who would love to have the good old A-F grading scale back on their child's progress reports.

Another change that has occurred since I began teaching is that our progress reports are not only
completed online, but they are also accessed by the parents online. There are exceptions in which a parent does not have internet access, but in 2015 this is rare. In that case the progress reports are printed out and a physical copy is sent home with the student. In my class, I don't have a single family requiring a printed out copy of their child's progress report.

The most welcome change to progress reports is that I no longer have to spend long hours in my classroom completing the progress reports. I can sit from the comfort of my living room with my laptop on my lap and enter students' grades. Also, thanks to technology, I don't have to lug bags and bags of student journals, tests, and projects home to use as a reference for marking their progress reports. Everything I need is either in Evernote or Penultimate on my iPad.

So, as I suspected this post ended up being a bit longer than I anticipated. As I only have 5 1/2 hours until midnight, I need to finish up, find my 3 posts to comment on for the SOL challenge, and then get cracking on those progress reports. They sure won't write themselves!

SOL Day 2: The Lost Lost Tooth

My youngest son is 6-year-old Nicholas. Nick is a first grader this year, which is fun because that's also the grade that I teach. Nick is kind of a late bloomer when it comes to losing his teeth, at least compared to his two older brothers. He didn't lose his first tooth until the fall of this year. The other two lost their first tooth at the age of 4 and 5, respectively. 

However, Nick has a quality all his own when it comes to this childhood milestone. When he loses a tooth, he literally loses the tooth. He has lost 3 teeth this year and has either swallowed or lost all 3 of them. Each time he was in the middle of doing something and suddenly realized that the tooth was no longer there. That kid must have little to no gum sensitivity. The tooth he lost last night was one of the top front teeth. How do you miss when that one comes out? 

So, tonight we will be writing a letter to the tooth fairy explaining what happened. Hopefully, she will be understanding and will leave him a little something anyway. 

6-year-old Nick shows off his missing tooth

SOL Day 1: So Much Snow

This is the second year for my participation in the 30-Day Writing Challenge, Slice of Life, sponsored by Two Writing Teachers. I created a professional blog a few years ago but haven't really posted much. I participated in Slice of Life last year, but once that ended I didn't write a post again until last week when I wrote about my One Little Word. I'm hoping that this time around I might keep it going past the SOL challenge.

To me Slice of Life is all about what is in the forefront of our minds for a particular day or time period. Right now, the item commanding the most attention is the snow. I know that there are people out there who love the snow. They enjoy winter sports, they like building snowmen and going sledding, they look forward to the promise of school getting canceled due to snow. I am not one of those people. I can't stand the cold and only enjoy the snow when it falls on Christmas morning. I would be happy with one snowfall a year which then melts and disappears until the next Christmas. However, living in Ohio means many, many, many snowfalls and very cold temperatures. I dislike bundling up to go outside, I cringe when I have to drive through snow and ice, and the lack of sunshine is enough to make me want to hibernate until it is Spring. 

I'm hoping that now that it is March, we are seeing our last snowfalls. We have used up all of our calamity days at school and the students have gotten a terrible case of cabin fever. If you live in a climate that gets little or no snowfall, I envy you. To give you an idea of my current snow reality, here are a couple of pictures of the view from my living room right now.