This Has Been A Year!

As we come up on our last few days of school I thought I would share what it was like for me this year.

I teach 1st Grade. As I assessed my students the first week of school I discovered that most of them were on a beginning Kindergarten level. 90% of my students could not identify letters and sounds much less read any words. So I knew my work would be cut out for me. I restructured my plans, created new workstations and used every second of the day to try to catch these kids up.

We did 45 minutes of intervention in the morning. I worked with them daily in small groups for reading and for math. By January I was still really worried that they wouldn't make the growth they needed to make. I even went to my administrators to ask for advice on what else I could do. I would spend about 2 hours a night and the whole day Saturday preparing lessons, intervention activities and recording progress monitoring. I had to document what I was doing and the assessment of 14 students every week. It was truly exhausting.

What really bothered me is the district still went through with the same district tests, the same standards knowing that because the previous year was hybrid, many students had gaps. It was very stressful to have to justify in meetings why students were not meeting benchmarks. Half my students missed over 20 days this year, 3 of those over 40 days. They were quarantining, etc.

In the end I was very proud of the progress they made. We did not give up. 14 out of 20 students passed their reading test to be promoted to 2nd. Most others could read at least half the words.

It was a lot of work but that work definitely paid off.

Here are our Beginning of the year reading scores:

And here are our final scores:

A lot of students came back with serious behavior problems-but from Day One we stressed SEL skills and had morning meetings to greet each other and share feelings. My class became a family. The hardest part is you spend 10 months together, 8 hours a day and then you have to say goodbye. It's going to be hard to leave this year. I truly need a break and to decompress, but I will miss them. 

How was your year?