Starting the Year Strong

As educators, starting the new year on a strong note can set the tone for a successful academic journey. Here are some ways to begin the year with enthusiasm and purpose:

1. Enjoy the last few moments before school begins. Enjoying your coffee or a last minute vacation. A bright sunny day or a new book. Each of these small moments can help energize us for the time ahead.
2. Reflect on the previous year: Take some time to look back at the experiences and lessons learned from the previous year. Acknowledge your accomplishments, identify areas for improvement, and set goals for the new year.
3. Plan and organize: Start by reviewing your curriculum, syllabi, and lesson plans. Ensure they are up-to-date and aligned with your students’ needs and any changes in educational standards. Organize your classroom materials, resources, and digital tools to create an efficient and conducive learning environment.
4. Build relationships with students: Take time to think about how you will build positive relationships with your students. Get to know them individually, learn about their interests, and demonstrate genuine care and support. This will create a sense of belonging, trust, and engagement in the classroom.
5. Foster a growth mindset: Encourage a growth mindset not only in your students but also within yourself. Emphasize the importance of embracing challenges, learning from failures, and persevering. Model a positive attitude towards learning and inspire your students to do the same.
6. Prioritize self-care: Remember to prioritize your own well-being. Teaching can be demanding, so make sure to take care of yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally. Set aside time for hobbies, relaxation, and spending time with loved ones. Taking care of yourself will enable you to be a more effective and compassionate teacher.

Remember, each new year brings opportunities for growth, learning, and making a positive impact on your students’ lives. Embrace the fresh start and make it a memorable and successful year in the classroom. Keep in mind that success isn’t something that is achieved all at once, but by the daily choices we make.

Time the Great Equalizer

Time in every classroom is precious. Every teacher should be thinking about how they use it. This consideration is especially important for EL students. One thing related to time that I want to talk about today is wait time. At the end of the post I will teach you the QPS strategy that you can use tomorrow in your classroom.

Stop and think

Wait time is the practice of pausing during instruction to allow students think. Sometime it may seem natural to ask a question and quickly call on an eager student willing to share. However, that isn’t best practice especially if you have EL students in your class.

This is for a couple of reasons. The first being processing time and the second being student confidence.

If a student is not a native English speaker, the student may have to process the question in another language first. This puts them at a disadvantage if they would like to answer the question, but aren’t given the opportunity to. Since the call and response is so quick an EL student is always playing catch up in the conversation.

The second reason is related to the first but slightly different. Since an EL student may take longer to gather their thoughts, they may be less likely to respond in front of peers for fear of making mistakes. So how do we more students the time they need to think?

Use QPS.

• Question
• Pause
• Scan

When using this strategy ask the question. Pause for at least 5-10 seconds and possibly longer. While waiting for volunteers scan the room inviting students to think and share.

Hopefully this strategy will help more students think and interact in tor classrooms.

What the Grade?

Giving students a simple A, B, or C letter grades, percentage points, or even a completion check. Has been proven to be the least effective way to help students learn. The most effective way is providing feedback for students to improve. The purpose of assessment should be on what skills students have learned or showed proficiency in. This is good for the teacher teaching the student and the students themselves. Also other specialists that work with the student. If everyone is able to see what that student can do in a class, it makes it easier to diagnose where problems could arise with student work.

One recent example of this is I had a conversation with a math teacher about a student who seemed to be struggling in the class. When I went to meet with the teacher, I asked probing questions i.g., what is the student struggling with, can the student solve the problem, etc. The problem wasn’t the teacher, but the system which gives an artificial corresponding letter grade with a subjective point total. Ultimately that point total can magically be put into a 0-100 scale. Of course most teachers and students grow up in an archaic grading system such as this but we can do better.

This situation pushed me to try and figure out a way to improve my teaching and ultimately student learning. A few weeks ago I came across this post by Caitlin Tucker.

I am personally trying to move away from this system to a performance based grading system where the students will have to self assess their work and provide evidence for their learning based on certain skills and standards for that unit. This will give me the opportunity to provide feedback individually and the students will be able to see where the are improving or what specifically needs to be improved.

This has been a messy process of me analyzing prioritized standards that my district has created for 6-8 ELA. Then trying to break down each of those standards into smaller chunks that my students and I will be able to measure based on different assessments. For some of the skills I will incorporate language that is commonly used in WIDA language rubrics. These rubrics and assessments are used to assess EL students language development.

As of right now I am still in the process of figuring out what will show understanding for each skill or standard. I am open to allow students to create their own assessment, but I think some more traditional options through or a google form could be used. As I continue through the process this will continue to change.

Another area that I am working on is deciding on what rubric should be used to show growth. I have thought about a more traditional three or four point rubric. However, I recently saw a one point rubric which really made an impression on me for its simplicity.

I think it’s time for for educators, parents and, students to shift their mindset on the issue of grades. I think it has the ability to enhance the learning experience for teachers and students.

Stealing the struggle

A few weeks ago my family decided to go fishing at a local park. At the park there is a little sick where you can go fishing. However there is really only about three feet where you can fish with out getting all tangled in the weeds.

So as we were walking up to the dock I could see that there was an older gentleman with two grandkids. I knew right away that they were in that three foot space. Needless to say I wasn’t happy. I was ready to just not even try to go fishing but just go to the playground.

Fortunately, my wife was there and she advised me against just giving up. She told me it wasn’t about catching fish. It was more about him just fishing.

She couldn’t have been more correct. We had a blast. He caught his first fish all on his own. He even held on to it and put it in he water all on his own. The experience was amazing. When I got home though, I couldn’t stop thinking about how this experience relates to the classroom.

One thing in particular came to my mind that is stealing the struggle from students. As educators we all know what this means solving students problems for them.

Not allowing students to struggle and learn from their mistakes and he process hinders the child’s ability to grow.

Of course we should be there guiding our students, but we should control the process. Kids need to be able to take risks without the possibility of adults swooping in to save the days or avoid things all together.

I am so glad I went fishing that day.

Purpose of school? Career vs character?

The question of what is the purpose of school has been floating around recently and receiving a lot of attention in the field of education. I have been exploring this question in my own mind. 

Currently, I have been reading The road to Character. This book looks at peoples lives that have led fulfilling lives. David Brooks highlights two types of ways people can live their lives. The first being someone who is prone to achievements, needs to accomplish things in order to be happy. This person is career oriented. The second is a person who finds a higher calling or purpose in life. This person is on a journey to create a “wise heart”. However, to do that you have to confront your weaknesses to “cultivate strong character”.

When I think about this question I think of  John F. Kennedy’s famous quote from his inaugural address.  “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” This statement defines the meaning of strong character in person 2. Putting others first. Serving a higher purpose  for a collective good. 

 Today we live in a ME culture. Meaning everyone thinks they are important, special, need to be popular, or an instagram celebrity. They look to success through their career, and not to the higher character which Kennedy eludes to in his speech about sacrifice. 

The question I pose for you is: what do you teach in your district, school, classroom, and life? Do you focus more on your external self (career); or do you focus on your internal self (strong character)

I challenge you to find examples of people no matter what content area or grade level to find examples of high character and infuse those examples into your teaching. Children can not be of strong character if they are never give an example. Be that person. 

 



Hacking Writing

For those of you not familiar with the term “hacking” in education it is a term used to rethink, examine, and challenge the status quo in education. There are a few books that fit this type of thinking (e.g., Hacking Assessment, Hacking Writing, and Teach Like a Pirate).

The picture above is from a popular game called Clash of Clans (CoC). I am sure a few of you have seen some of your students playing this game during class or in the halls ways, right? Well, why not use this powerful game to your advantage. I see multiple ways that students could translate this game to meaningful learning. Let’s look at a few of them.

Maybe the most obvious way is the application to social studies. What about comparing a battle on CoC to the Battle of Gettysburg or or Stalingrad. Students could research the battle then compare the forces used in both. What type of weaponry and military tactics would be different on CoC? Of course there are a plethora of ways to enrich learning. Just think of the worst ideas. Often times they are the best ideas.

Another way to use this is for math and ratios, calculating and saving (a life skill that many adults need). For example, I have three gold mine producing 3500 units of gold per hour. I need 103,000 more units of gold to upgrade my defenses. How long will it take me to earn this gold? Students would have to prioritize what is more important in the game and blog about it. They could defend their reasoning by talking or blogging to comments from other students. So many ways to inspire students to learn these critical skills.

I have lots of other ideas about how to use games and gamification in the classroom. If you have and interest or comment, please let me know.

Happy Fourth of July.

Passion Projects

The past three Fridays, students in my classroom have been working on passion projects. After hearing about so much about these, I decided to try and lead my EL class through these. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy and that I was going to make plenty of mistakes along the way, which I have. I thought now would be a good time to reflect on the process three weeks into it.

My curiosity with passion projects started when I began hearing and reading things online about them. Then at another school where I teach at they tried to have students create these projects during an advisory time. I thought this was amazing. Students could create and do almost anything they wanted to learn or share. One person that helped guide me through this process was @ajjuliani.  I thought this was pretty powerful stuff. Fast forward to this past Christmas break.

I was sitting around thinking: How could I incorporate this into my classroom? I thought to myself. You could do it on Fridays. Then the next question came up. How long will you do it? I decided for two period, because my class is a two period block. Another reason I decided on the two hour block is because technology is not always available. This is not a 1:1 school. I concluded that if they needed to research that they would probably need more time. One period would not be enough for this. So how did I begin.

I introduced the idea to my students by showing some videos from YouTube of what other kids had done with this project. I thought in my head that they would be amazed at some of the projects other kids their age were doing. NOPE! They were lethargic. When I asked them what they thought of the videos, no one responded. I thought to myself: Is this a bad idea? Do they want to do this? Am I missing something? I decided to forge ahead.

My next step was to introduce the guidelines for the project. They will have every Friday until March 4 to complete their project and be ready to present it. No other class will be given to the project. If they needed anything specific, they would have to find the materials and I could help as best as I could, but I wanted to leave it in their hands. Oh yeah. This isn’t graded either. This was the biggest shocker to all of my students.  I know what you are thinking. How will you monitor their work. Their progress. Their learning. I am having them record their progress on a Google doc that I manage through Google classroom. I adapted it from one given to me from @LauraGWillis.

After adapting the document to fit my learners needs, I came up with a few main questions that I want them to focus on:

1. What do you want to learn from this project?
2. What questions do you want to explore or learn about?
3. Were you able to answer the questions you had?
4. Did you learn something different than what you first thought?
5. What will you create to share your project with the rest of the class?
6. What was the most difficult part of this process?
7. What was the most enjoyable part of this process?

While this is still a work in progress my students are at different stages of their projects. Some of my students are still researching. Others are trying to figure out logistically how they are going to complete their projects with lack of internet at home. One group of students is complete and in the reflection stage.

Overall the process has been an amazing experience for me and the students. They have been empowered to take charge of their learning. It has given them a voice inside the classroom and all of them have committed time outside of my class to work on it. Even though they receive no grade.  Sounds beautiful to me.

 

Collaboration

Recently I attended the  2015 TIES Education Technology Conference in Minneapolis. This conference focused on using technology to transform pedagogy. My “aha” moment at this conference was using technology to collaborate with experts, educators, and families. This was inspired by Andy Leiser during his Google Hangouts presentation.

After attending the session about using Google Hangouts, I collaborated with the instructional coach and co-teacher at my school. They are superb. We all thought this would be a great idea. Within minutes of reaching out for experts I the geology field, we got a response.

It was  an absolutely amazing opportunity to connect with a Dan Peppe from Baylor University. This opportunity was an eye opening experience for the students and myself. The students were able to learn more about fossils and how geology relates to life outside of the classroom. This amazing opportunity would never had been made possible without collaboration and use the use of social media to help find an expert to connect with.

Since this was such a success, we will be trying to connect a couple of more times throughout the year.