Hello, hello and welcome to episode
number 46 of Teachings with Inquiry Live.
Sometimes I can't even believe that we
are already at episode forty-- actually I think
it's 48 now. That just blows my mind;
thank you to everyone who has watched
this show and has hung around; I really
appreciate all of your support. Donna I
see that you've enjoyed me here;
I know that you watch the show often, so,
thanks so much for tuning in and
checking it out as well as everybody
else. Tonight we are going to talk
about why you don't need to freak out!
just because you have been assigned a split grade.
It's about time of year when we all
start learning what our assignment are
going to be for next year. I found out
what my assignment is going to be on the
previous Friday. No surprise; I'm not
gonna say exactly what I have just in
case there might be some parents or
students that might catch that. So, we do
have to keep it on the DL, but it is
going to be a split, and that should be
no surprise. That makes it my seventh
year in a row teaching a split. You
can probably say that I've had to maybe
get used to teaching that. If you know
what you're teaching in September drop
it in the comments right now, and let me
know what it is that you are going to be
teaching in September. Are you staying
the same? Do you have a split grade or are
you going for a total change? I've heard
a lot recently of teachers that are
flipping the script and doing something
totally different next year; maybe,
changing the visions, changing paths in terms
of their entire job title maybe leaving the
classroom. So, you know what you're
teaching; drop it in the comments and
share what it is that you are going to
be teaching in September if you know.
Again, I am going to be teaching a
split, I am Patti. Just in case this
is the very first time
you're catching this show. I am the
teacher blogger behind Madly Learning,
and I go live every single Monday night
at 9 p.m. and talking about using
inquiry-based teaching practices in my
classroom. I share tips and tricks
and strategies about how I use that in
my classroom every day hoping that
through the show you are going to be
able to learn a little bit more about
how using Inquiry in your classroom can be fun,
and engaging, and well with your time for
both you and your students. Like I
said I am going to be teaching a split,
and it's going to be my seventh year of
teaching a split combine grade
class come September and
If you are following along at all with
my journey you also know that in the
last seven years I have had three kids
so, I have three children; seven, four and
sixteen months. You could probably say
that my life is a little bit busy
because I also have this little thing on
the side, you know Madly learning, and the
Live show, and my TPT store. Life is a
little bit hectic every day. If I have a
split grade teaching, I cannot let it
overwhelm me and control me. Recently, I
was interviewed on a podcast by a group
of people that operate Bully Brave which
is a anti-bullying confidence boosting
program that go around to schools and
teach kids how to be a bully buster.
They interviewed me and they asked me a
host of questions about using Inquiry,
about split grade teaching, about
differentiated instruction. When they
asked what my main advice for teaching a
split was; my first piece of information
is "don't freak out". Most teachers I think
think of teaching as we got a whole
bunch of boxes. We have
things that we've got to get through;
units we've got a cover and it's like
unpacking a box
and delivering it to our students.
They automatically assume that teaching
a split would mean that you have double
the amount of boxes that you need to get
through. Well, that's the mindset shift
we should change. Yes, you
still have all of those boxes to get
your students, but you don't have doubled
boxes. You have the same number of boxes
but they might be a little bit bigger
and then it might be packed a little bit
more full. But, with some tips and
strategies and well-thought-out planning
you don't have to think of teaching a
split as doubling the amount of things
that you have to do; you do have to do
more, but you can do it in a way that
doesn't overwhelm you. You still don't
have to take double the amount of work
home, and you can definitely manage it.
I've been able to manage teaching a
split for seven years while raising
three little ones, and growing my blog
and TPT store in the process. So, if I as
a busy mom of three can do it, I'm sure
you can do it too. Tonight, I'm gonna
share those tips and tricks with you, so,
that you can get your mindset set and
kind of think through it because these
things need to be put in place and
things that you need to think of now
while schedules are being made. It's
a great time for you to advocate
yourself if you just found out what you're
teaching. If you don't already have your
schedule to maybe talk to some other
teachers before that's hammered down.
The first thing is, when you're teaching
a split grade, one of the important things is
that every minute counts. You do
have more to cover and it does take you
longer to do it. If you're teaching a
split you can get through things a
little bit faster. Most teachers
still struggle when they hit April, May
June to get through all of the things
that have kind of been pushed and
squeezed in to the end of the year. In
a split, that could happen even more so
because you might have too much stuff
left over. So, one of the things that I do
in order to make sure that I can get
through my teaching plan by the end of
the year is I stick to my schedule very
strictly. That means that starting in
September, every single thing I do is
tied to something that I have assessed.
Whether is leading to an assessment,
whether it is an assessment itself even
if it's an assessment of learning skills
or where they are diagnostic formative
or some; every single thing I do in the
classroom needs to lead to some type of
assessment. That means in September I
start day one period two. I give myself
one period or maybe the one block of a
hundred minutes to introduce myself, to
go over routines and, then, we get started.
Some of the times that we get
started is that preliminarily getting
set up in terms of what science looks
like, do a lot of conversations, I teach
them what a knowledge building circles, I
set up those strategies for success so
that they can implement those.
But, I definitely don't spend an entire
week of getting to new games because I
just don't have the time. The more time I
spend in September on things that are
just fun getting to know new games the
less time I have in June. And, I have to
be very, very careful about what I'll do.
That also means that every minute of
your instructional times-- for me that's
300 minutes a day of instructional time,
I need to have something recordable
happening every single minute that I
have. This is a time where it's
a great way to go talk to your
administration and talk to your prep covers
teachers to make sure that anytime that
they are not with you, that there is
going to be something reportable happening.
That prep coverage teachers
actually take some reporting off your
plate. Whether it's health as well as fitness,
you've got media be covered; drama,
visual arts, music, even a math, or in
science strand. It needs to be taken off
of your hands and it needs to be
reportable. Otherwise, you're then having
to fit that in a much smaller time frame.
This is something that may not make
you the most popular but remember you're
coming armed with the fact that you've
got to split; something that most
teachers don't like. If you've got a
great relationship with your admin,
asking them to make sure that-- and
negotiating prep coverage teachers that
all of the time that students are in
instructional time that 300 minutes is
accountable and reportable and bonus.
Most principals are probably right on
top of this, and actually do want all
of the time in their classes to
be reportable time. So, if you go and
advocate for that sometimes that will
work for you; if not you need to maybe do
more creative planning, but really to
push that all instructional time is
something reportable. With that being
said, it also helpful if you have a
tremendous amount of flexibility so that
you can push and pull different subjects
at different times depending on if your
students need more time with one subject,
and less time so you can kind of cross
pollinate and take from other; you teach
science during language, teach math during
science, Being able to have that
flexibility with your schedule to say, "My
students need more science, so, I can do that."
When you're restricted to say a
50-minute time period where you have to
get science cap in 50 minutes because
they move on and go to another teacher,
the more time you have different
teachers teaching different subjects, the
more difficult it actually does become
because you lose that flexibility which
is vital when you're trying to get
through all of the things that you need
to get covered without stressing
yourself out. Although it's really
tempting to get rid of your course
math, language, science, and social studies
curriculum standards to be covered in
science, science can be covered in
language especially some of those
building skills of research and
questioning and all of those things. That
that doesn't mean that you need to be
teaching both grades at once. Sometimes
science and social studies is difficult
to teach to two grades at one time. I use
a flip flop method; ideally it would be
much better if you had one grade. So, for
instance if you have one grade; the grade
fives and, then, your grade fours were off
in French, and then, you had your grade
fours where your grade fives are off in
French and you could somehow get
coverage that way. It may not always
happen because scheduling--
your principals hands probably going to
be tired with that, but it doesn't hurt
to have a conversation about how you
could maybe creatively schedule your
time so, that you could have one group
over the other. And you could even perhaps take
some of the students from perhaps
another split. If you've got multiple
splits in your school you can take some
of the students from those classes and
creatively schedule that. It's definitely
something to look into. I haven't
necessarily successfully had that happen,
because it hasn't worked out, but I
always try to approach it every year to
see if there is that flexibility in our
scheduling. I said the teaching a
split doesn't mean that you've got
double the boxes. It's not like we're
delivering two sets of content all
separately.You have to look at the big
picture, and you have to look at what the
big ideas are that need to be covered.
Sometimes you need to let a few things
go especially if the instruction is--
I know in the Ontario curriculum document
you have the expectation and, then, you
have the teacher prompts. Not every
single thing in the teacher prompt--
they're prompts not curriculum
expectations. So, you don't have to cover
all of the teacher prompts like they're
a checklist; give yourself a break
cover the big ideas and those can be
covered a little bit more creatively.
Find where the curriculum overlaps.
Our language curriculum in Ontario has
a tremendous overlap. There's a
few nuance things between the do
different grade levels that you might
have on your split where it could be
different. For instance, we're doing
reading responses using the Oreo open
response method in my classroom right now.
My students have been writing these
for a while, and I've just taken them
kind of formative assessment; I've given
them a formal assessment so that that
can guide them as they make further
opinion responses to the stories were are
reading. I gave my fours and my fives the
exact same reading that was
4.9 reading level; so it was right
in the middle of where they could be, and
all of my students read the same story
and they responded the same story same
format of response. However,
I expected just a little bit more out of
my Grade 5's than I did with my grade 4's. I was
looking for two well-developed reasons
with evidence from the text .While
grade 4's,
I was looking for one and a bit more but
they didn't necessarily need to be as
well developed as my 5's. I can
differentiate what I expect, but give the
same product. That's where I'm
looking at covering two things; two
different expectations with one task.
That makes it a lot easier for me,
because I really was just planning one
thing. My assessment was even rubric that
I used with even the same for both grades,
but I was looking for a little bit more
from the 5's than I was from the 4's.
That how I taught two things together
and looked it with the big picture was
was they had to respond and evaluate
text. That is number three; is looking
at the big picture. Number four,
is really trying to wrap your head
around how you can un-structure
the lesson and use more student on task
time. That involves you as the
teacher being less of just talking at
the front of the room and really
teaching a lot more through guided
instruction and conferencing. Through
my language program, it's very flexible
and open-ended. I will link in this
in the blog post in the show notes to
another episode where I talked
more in depth about my writing program,
and you see that at in action. But, my
students have the flexibility of writing
what they want to write about; why they
want to write about it. I conference
with them after a talk about what
their next step is in writing. This
is a full year process that students go
through, and they're writing a lot.
Everything goes down;during the publishing
stage, we often will stop at the
first revision and editing stage; just
preliminary, and they have lot of drafts.
In May and June we're going to
take those drafts, they're going to
choose their favorite pieces of writing,
and they'll take only those one into the
publishing. That is the full year
term, and, again, I will link in the
blog post and show notes for this page.
I will link to other
videos and to other products and
podcasts about that particular things.
I've talked a lot about that before.
Nicole just asked what do you do for math
where you are most likely teaching grade 1-6
in the same class? I think you might
be in my class Nicole. That is literally
what I have; the range that I have every
single year in my class. I use
differentiated math problems where
they're open-ended and there's
multiple entries. I did an episode;
I think episode 41 where I talked
specifically about differentiating in
math. But, I do two things; I do differentiated
math instructions where it's
open-ended questions where there's
multiple entry points, so, I can increase
or decrease the complexity of the math
students are doing so, that I can pick
those grade 1 students and the grades
ones that are working beyond a grade
level all with the same page roughly.
Sometimes you need a little bit more if
you're in a huge range, but generally I can go
down to you and up one with those pages
and they all have the same page. Again,
the prep is less for me and those are my
differentiated math page products.
They're available in my TPT store. I can
put a link in the post for that as well.
But I've also started experimenting
guided maths. This particular was
because if you teach grade 5 and they
have to start using a protractor, you
have probably learned that teaching
students how to use a protractor is one
of the most painful things
that you have to do. Erin Beatties, my
friend from Mrs Beatties classroom uses
guided math in her classroom. She
got amazing math products, but they don't
fit my students; they're not for older
grade. I decided to give guided math
a try and I did that for my 2D geometry
with triangles with my grade fives, and
it was fantastic. They just did their
test today, but I was able to see over
three weeks each group of students once
and I was able to group the students
based on skill and need so that I could
tailor what I was working with them when
they were
with me at the guided table, they had four
other activities including assessments
on tech, hands-on activities, and math on
their own. They did that in their
classroom or they had a classroom
where I had a guided group I could
physically help students use a
protractor and walk five students
step-by-step through using protractor.
It was probably-- I would repeat it
over and over again doing guided math
for using a protractor or specific
skills like it was really effective
because it helped me being able to teach
them. So, I use a lot of guided instruction
in both math and in language. In science
and social studies, because I do
flip-flop I use some conferencing where we're
into our more inquiry projects. But, I also
use a small group instruction when I'm
teaching either grade and I have them
with me and we're doing a lot of
conversations and conferencing. So, I am
more you know 8:1 depending on
the number of students that I have.
I have a pretty even group this year. So, I
do use guided and conferencing. I find
that in my cycle of assessment
and using that feedback piece really
pushes my students further, and it allows
me to differentiate and tailor my
instruction to those students more. You
have to get over the feeling that you're
not teaching sometimes. I don't do a lot
of talking at the front of the room
because I'm spending most of my time at
my guided reading table either in guided
instruction or conferencing.
Again, I have a lot of other
content on my blog and previous shows
where I've talked about that so, I will link
about that. I don't want to go all over
it same time again, but there's
definitely more information on that.
My fifth tip is staying on top of
assessment. This is-- I think it's one
in the area that we always have to work on.
I know for me this is something I
always have to work on staying a top of
assessment. Because when you have
a split you have so many things that
are happening tracking where they are and
kind of the status of the class; knowing
where they are to help you be able to
move forward,
slow down, speed out as they need it;
If you know where
your class is most of the time, then, it
allows you to-- no problem Nicole, I'm glad
that I answered your question.
If you have students where you can speed
up and slow down you get through things
a little bit quicker if you know that
they get it. This doesn't always need
to be formal assessments it can simply
just be a class list with a yellow green
and red code or three different symbols
a check, a plus, or a minus sign, and you
can just put the expectation at the top
of your grade page; you can use a
protractor. And you just kind of go down
your list as students come to you and
you just check off what they can do or
whatever "look for" that you're looking
for that day's. So, if you have a look for
of what you're doing in your lesson, then,
have that as the status of the class.
It doesn't necessarily need to be marks;
this is more of a formative assessment,
but you can simply track what they are.
Then, you can pull additional kids in for
more grouping later on. Again, those
can be multiple grades polls. I do most
of my teaching together in a split.
I don't teach a lot separately with the
exception of the content and science and
social studies, but sometimes they get
the content at the other grade and I'm
totally okay with that, if it means that
I'm able to get through the day.
Finally, my last tip and most important
tip is plan ahead. Spend your time to
create detailed long-range plans and try
as you can to stick to them as good as
you possibly can. If you use the time
on task you're using all of your
instructional time to do reportable and
on task type things which means you do
sometimes have to say "No" to some things
that might be happening around the
school. If you have long-range plans you
really need to stick with them.
I find the more detailed the plan the better.
If I have an idea of where I'm going to
be each month, what I planned on doing;
it's flexible, it can change, but I try to
change it up
at the end of the year. Try not to change
it too much on the fly. It's pretty much
my schedule in terms of my
planning down to what I do, when, and how
long things take. And you can use your
time to follow that and look at what you
can do so, dig in through your curriculum,
look at what the commonalities are, plan
those two units together, try to combine
as much as you possibly can. If you're
looking at maths there's some things
that are really important that you might
have to cycle back through a couple
times and there's other things that you
can really get through very quickly and
they won't take you nearly as much time.
Sometimes that comes with practice.
If this is your first time
teaching the current split that you might
have, it's a good idea to reach out to
other teachers that have taught at split
before, and ask them to see their plans,
and look at how they have structured it;
what worked, what didn't work, and really
have those conversations now as people
are starting to wind down this current
school year and, then, get ready for the
next school year. If you happen to teach in
Ontario and you have a 3/4, 4/5 or 5/6
plans, I do have my long-range plans
available to you for free on my blog.
You can get those at
www.madlylearning.com/long-range-plans
Again, www.madlylearning.com/long-range-plans
You can also access
that by just going straight to the home
page and it right there underneath my
Madly Learning header, and you can grab
those long range plans for free. You
can have a view at what I am following
along in my classroom, what I
tailored and tweaked and learned over
the last 6 years so far in a split grade
classroom getting ready for my seventh.
Those are my six tips for
what you can do now to get prepared and
ready split grade so that you don't have
to freak out. It's okay. It is a bit more
work than straight. I can't lie to you,
but it doesn't have to be double the
work. It's very manageable and you can
still have your free time when you go
home and be with your family and be able
to do other things, but when you're at
school you really have to be focused on
what you've got to get through and try
to double up and combine as much as you
possibly can because otherwise it is a
lot more work. It's definitely
something that you can be doing and it
is manageable. If you have any specific
questions feel free to drop them in the
comments, and I will do my best to
respond to them. If you've got specific
questions of teaching a split or you
have any other questions, if you want to
reach out you can email me at
patti@madlylearning.com. I'm more than
happy to help you. You may have to wait a
little bit for me to get back to you, but
I do get back to you eventually. So, thank
you very much for joining me. Next week
we are going to be starting our kick-off
for our May topic which is going to be
digital tools in the classroom. I'm
gonna be talking to you about the
hardware that I use in my classroom. So,
what kind of tech; not the software, but
what tech do I operate in my classroom
that helps me to engage my students
and use inquiry and I don't have
one-to-one. So, how I manage that tech as
well with my students will also be
covered in May. Thank you very much
for joining me today. Hopefully, I was
able to get you some tips that you can
use when preparing to teach a split
grades for September. I hope that
that puts your mind a little bit more at
ease and giving you some ideas of what
you can do now so that you're better
prepare in September. Thanks very much
for joining me, and I will see you next
week. Have a great one. Bye for now.
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