When you teach...sheet happens.

Some teachers prefer having a spiral bound grade-book.  At the beginning of the year you write all your classes at the top of the pages.  You use your best handwriting to list your students in alphabetical order.  Some grade-books are color coded using different colored pens, colored pencils and riddled with post it note tabs. Towards the end of the year pages are folded over, Names are crossed out for a student who left and new names were added to the bottom of the list (new students who threw off the alphabetical order you used to have). The is a coffee stain from a late night of grading that has permanently warped the pages for periods 3-5.  Good intentions- now a mess.
So here is a solution- Sheets.  I would know. Some people call me the queen of excel sheets.  To be honest, I am not.  I use Google sheets as a glorified chart.  But there are a few tricks I have used and the organization is always clean, neat, and yes, color coded. Now as an intervention specialist, in my situation I don't have a grade-book per say, but I do have a lot of data and the organization is similar to what a teacher with a grade-book likes to have.  Without further ado- here is a sample of my top priority saved sheet.  Of course, names and information has been changed.  I'll show a sample of each tab and have some nifty directions too!

Tab 1- Goals and Accommodations

In my first tab I have some basic information about my IEP students, what intervention specialist I should contact, what lab they belong to (or homeroom teacher would be appropriate), a list of their accommodations and IEP goals, plus testing information. This sheet is shared with other teachers and is a great go to reference for teachers that don't like to comb through multi-page documents to find out accommodations.

Tab 2- Advisory Check-in

So this one is a great one for a traditional teacher grade-book. I use it to track my weekly conferences with students but the "check in" dates could easily be changed to assignments. Reasons to use sheets instead of tabs?  When students leave a classroom or new students are added, rows can be deleted or added to keep the alphabetical organization. You can see I have changed the months to different colors.  I really like this feature and could work for assignments by having each unit a different color.

If you hover over the top row where the cells are labeled A, B, ... you can click on the downward arrow for additional options. The choices I use the most are sorting and hiding. If I wanted to sort my sheet alphabetically by first name I would select column B and choose sort sheet A-Z.  If I wanted the sheet sorted by student ID, I would select column A and sort sheet A-Z.  If I thought I had too much information on the screen and I didn't need to always see the student ID the first name and the Lab (homeroom) I could select these columns and choose hide.  The information is still there but will not appear until I select unhide.  Nifty, right?

Want another tip? Freeze. So the information usually at the top and along the left side is usually important- you want to see it all the time. If you highlight a row or column (or even multiple rows or multiple columns) you can click on VIEW, FREEZE and then select which rows or columns you want to freeze.  These freezes cannot occur in the middle of a page but you can select as many rows/columns you want frozen starting from the top (like rows 1-3) or the left side (like columns A-D). This is a nice tip when you want to always see student names on the side or assignment names up top.

Tab 3- Due Dates

Alright, so my next tab is Due Dates.  As an intervention specialist I have lots of due dates that I need to keep track of. So far, everything I have shown in this post are my "glorified" chart tricks. One of the things that I like to use is automatic color changing codes. When I enter a date (or you can use grade values too) I can set the cell to change colors if the date is next month, this month, or past due.  The values can be set for different ranges so if a teacher wanted all grades below 60% to turn red- sheets can make it happen.  Click here to change cell color based on date proximity- great website!

My sheets are organized, quick to change from tab to tab (as opposed to flipping pages), easy to copy and paste information from one tab to another (like student names rather than rewriting them), and since I use Google Sheets, I can access the information anywhere at anytime.  This can be great when teachers want to work from home (happens all too often, am I right?), or even on my phone during fire drills.

I have other sheets that I am sure will appear in future posts but I'll let you process this for now. ;)

Feel free to comment with any sheet tips or if there is something you want us to detail in a future post!

#nextgenHS
@MrsBKelley1

Intervention in Open Space Learning Environment

Intervention is all about the individualization.  As an intervention specialist, when I would interview for positions, the people interviewing always get to the end and ask the open question, "Do you have any questions for us?"  

"Yes! What does it look like to be an intervention specialist at this school?"  

Sometimes intervention is collaborative teaching; sometimes intervention is set in a resource room.  So at the beginning of the school year when I looked at my teacher schedule, I discovered what my role as the intervention specialist would be at Delaware Area Career Center South Campus. One period of planning, one period of lunch, and all other periods: academic support.  Crystal clear, right?

So here is what I knew about my new job.  There is a large open space (couches, booths, high top seating- some call it the "Starbucks area").  In this space there is a teacher for each content area (Math, Science, Social Studies, and English) plus myself- the intervention specialist.  The school is making a google movement so each teacher made google classrooms. Well there is a start!  Sign me up as co teacher for all classes. As a team, we have about 50 seniors in the morning, and 50 juniors in the afternoon. At the beginning of the year about 10 seniors and 10 juniors were on IEPs. Next step: make google sheet organizing IEP information- due dates, vocational lab assignments, home school information (since the students come from several districts to enroll in our lab opportunities), IEP needs, accommodations, and whatever else might be useful in one spot (I'll give more specifics on this wonderful sheet in another post). On a typical day, the students will enter the large space, grab a chromebook, listen for announcements from teachers if there are any group sessions for the day that they need to schedule, and then look at their google classrooms for assignments to complete.  The assignments, for the most part, are available online. This gives teachers the unique opportunity to really pin-point what information is delivered through other methods- traditional classroom style (in an classroom down the hall), small group sessions based on ability (tiered learning), sessions based on student need (ex: a topic some students assessed poorly), individual instruction (walking around the room to monitor, help, or develop group discussions related to class topics), group and individual advisory of student progress and grades - to name a few. 

So here was my problem: guess what intervention- the job of an intervention specialist- looks like in most schools?  Small group based on ability, small group based on need, individual instruction, and advising students of their progress and grades. How perfect of a gig to be an intervention specialist where the intervention is already worked through the teachers!?!  As you can imagine, the intervention on my part needs to be a little more creative- plus I craved a little more structure in the open setting, with my open schedule, and my open responsibilities. Here is a little step by step of what I do:

Beginning of the year:

• Create my spreadsheet of important dates
• Schedule all annual IEP meetings and any ETRs for the year (must coordinate with home-school district representative)
• Create spreadsheet for a growing log of communication with students (grades, missing assignments, progress on goals, any other information I need to track over a period of time)
• Find any needed assessments (reading, writing, vocabulary, math) that students need to assess IEP goals ( I arrange these in a folder separated by month tabs so I know exactly what assessments to do each month)
• Find transitional assessments to complete with all IEP students every other month (also in binder)

Annually:

• Write and host IEP meetings or ETR meetings scheduled for the year. 

Monthly:

• Assess students who need data logged for reading, writing, math
• Give any transition assessments (helpful information for section 4 and 5 of IEP!) to all IEP students.  I have used interest surveys, career cluster inventories, value interest questionnaires, presentations of ACT/ FAFSA information, etc.

Weekly:

• Meet with each of my kiddos in a individual conference.  
• During this time we will pull up the online grade-book information and see if there are any assignments missing or poor grades that could have assignments corrected and resubmitted.  This is where accessing all work through google classroom to explain directions and review student submissions is a great asset! 
• Write a list for students of assignments that need to be completed and help students prioritize in what order the students should work on their list
• log interaction with students so I have a running record of how grades, missing assignments, or other concerns change over time
• Communicate with parents who need weekly progress updates of their child

Daily:

• Attend any teacher session where it may be useful that I understand how the students are taught certain topics (so that I can assist on explaining detail to students when they need help)
• Monitor large classroom space asking questions to kids on my IEP caseload as well as other students (VERY important so students don't feel identified as special needs)
• work with teachers to identify students who need one on one help with certain assignments (such as editing papers, working through a math module, proctoring a test, etc.)
• Provide any testing prep needed for students that need to pass standardized tests

So in a school environment where intervention is a natural privilege of the teacher, this is what I have defined my role as the intervention specialist.  This type of liberating and self driven classroom is fairly new to the whole team so I am interested in how our classes, roles, and style develop each semester!  We already have a few changes for next year- stay tuned!