When a plan comes together...

I love the gallery walk strategy. It is a simple way to get students up and out of their seats. It can be used to have students examine various documents or have them participate in peer assessment and feedback. I've used it for years.

But I have a secret.

I've always been more willing to use it with my honors students than my on grade level students.

My honors students are typically still in the teacher-pleasing mode. I can scare them into behaving. They also see the value in participating in peer assessment. They work well together. When the noise level gets to be too much, I can threaten them with the loss of a letter grade and nothing more needs to be said.

My on grade level students? Not so much. They don't fear authority figures. They will only respect me if I respect them. They will only listen to me if I listen to them. Many of them carry their parents' failures in school with them as heavy luggage. That makes fear tactics useless. I'm reluctant to let them up and out of their seats because I immediately relinquish control.

And I am nothing if not a control freak.

But I try the gallery walk every year. I give the new batch the benefit of the doubt. I'll try it a few times before putting it away for the rest of the year.

And, sometimes, my babies surprise me.

In this particular case, students were examining a variety of genres. We were preparing to read Nothing but the Truth by Avi, and Janet Allen suggests having students examine the characteristics, the supports, and the challenges of each genre, as well as strategies that the reader employs when examining the genre. There are many ways to accomplish this, but I chose the gallery walk strategy. Students were allowed to pair up. They were given a chart with the genres listed, as well as the things they were looking for. (A chart is a great format for this!)

There was a great deal of frontloading. I defined each category of the chart. We talked about what it meant to "think about your thinking." We talked about various strategies that readers use (and the phrase "struggling readers" was never used--but that's for another day). Then I turned them loose.

And something beautiful happened. The plan came together. As I moved around the room to monitor, students were working. They were interacting with the text. Did they know everything? Of course not! But they asked some great questions. Their questions indicated that their level of learning and engagement was something special. Something unique.

I'll be incorporating the gallery walk again with this special little group of students. I hope that I can teach them lessons as valuable as they are teaching me.

When a Plan Comes Together

Sometimes a plan comes together...an instructional plan, that is.

Sometimes your kids do what you want them to do, what you had in mind when you planned this lesson.

For me, today was that day.

We are getting ready to start our new novel, Nothing But the Truth by Avi. It is a great multigenre novel that explores point of view and our natural biased tendencies.  A great anticipatory set is a multigenre gallery walk. This is a chance for students to get out of their seats and move about the room and examine the various genres that they encounter on a day to day basis. I post several genres about the room, and students complete a graphic organizer examining the purpose, the characteristics, the supports, the challenges, and the strategies students employ when encountering this type of text.

A gallery walk involves students of their seats. There is definitely some collaboration involved. Collaboration leads to talking...talking can lead to the edge of a cliff where there is no point of return.  Especially with my overly active class of on-grade-level students.

But today, a plan came together. Conversations were on topic, to say the least. Students were really having conversations with one another about the various characteristics about the variety of text they were being faced with. Students were generally thinking about the strategies they employ when faced with challenging text. Students were moving from text to text examining the words, the structures, and the characteristics, and having genuine conversations about their learning.

Sometimes, a plan comes together perfectly.

Mindfulness in Education

Stressed. Spelled backwards, it's desserts. Stress, for me, though, has nothing sweet about it. It is something that can take over my life. I hear the things that come out of my mouth when I'm stressed out and I immediately cringe. That's not me! That's the stress talking. 

Did you know 46% of teachers leave the profession in the first five years? Stressed, anyone?

By increasing mindfulness, teachers can control their reactions to situations that are out of their control. I sat through a seminar this morning at the CERRA fall renewal conference and practiced a little bit of mindfulness. After just five minutes, I feel more relaxed and more comfortable than I have all week. I can accept that I am three and a half hours from the work that is on my desk and it will be there waiting on me tomorrow when I go back. And tomorrow is fine. 

For more information on mindfulness, I highly recommend checking out information from Todd Scholl at CERRA. You can visit his website at theinnerpiece.weebly.com. Visit it. Get relaxed. Control your mind. Your kids will appreciate you for it. 

Formative Assessment in Room 201

Ongoing formative assessment is vital in any classroom, as it provides opportunities for monitoring and adjusting, provides feedback to the instructor, and helps to guide and customize the learning process throughout the unit of study for all students (Chapman and King, 2012). I use a variety of formative assessment strategies in my room to help me gauge where my students fall on the road to mastery.

The simplest thing that teachers can do during a lesson or unit is to circulate. During a guided practice session, teachers should start by modeling the expected outcome and then closely examining students during practice (Schmoker, 2011). Just by roaming the classroom, I can ensure that my students are on task and that they have a good understanding of what is being expected of them. I keep anecdotal notes on students as they work so that I have a running record of their progress during a unit. By repeating this cycle of guided practice and checking for understanding multiple times throughout the unit, I can move students towards a gradual release of responsibility and make them more independent learners (Schmoker, 2011).

Another way to assess students where they are is to allow time for student talk. Talking has been proved as one of the best ways to digest information (Schmoker, 2011). Allowing students to turn to their neighbor and share what they have learned will help them teach each other, as well as clarify their own thinking in a safe environment. It also gives me, the teacher, the chance to monitor conversations and correct thinking. I seat my students in pods of four—students are not grouped together, but are seated very close and are aware of who is in their pod. Pods are strategically planned. Students are heterogeneously grouped by fall Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) scores, so that they will be able to help one another through difficult learning tasks. I have seen that talking to one another, and sometimes teaching one another, help increase student ownership over our lessons.

A third simple type of formative assessment that I use in my classroom and that is research-proved is writing to learn activities. Writing helps students to formulate and articulate their thoughts before they share out with groups or the class (Schmoker, 2011). Students are able think through their own confusion in writing, and therefore remove some of the insecurity when sharing with others. Research shows that the act of writing extends knowledge and helps create new thinking (Gallagher, 2006). I use several types of write to learn activities, including free writes (which I call brain drains) and written conversation. During free writes, students are given a prompt and told to write nonstop for a predetermined amount of time. If they do not know what to write, they are to write “I don’t know what to write” until something comes to them. The stubborn few will fill their paper with this sentence, but after a while, that loses its magic and they begin to truly process their thinking. During a written conversation, students write to a topic or answer a question, pass their paper to a neighbor, and respond. With my students in pods, we can pass around the pod very easily.

Students need interaction in their classroom in order to succeed (Schmoker, 2011). Teachers often assume that students are lazy or cannot read, but when we allow opportunities to demonstrate understanding, we see otherwise. Schmoker states, “Interactive lecture and the simplest versions of formative assessment work for anyone” (p. 70). Teaching in this manner can seem slow for teachers, but account for as much as six to nine months of learning growth each year (Schmoker, 2011). Formative assessments are small ways to interact students in the art of teaching and learning.  By checking for understanding, teachers are able to gather and examine ongoing student data in order to make sound curricular decisions in the moment that they need to be made.

Chapman, C. and King, R. (2012). Differentiated assessment strategies: One tool doesn’t fit all. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Gallagher, K. (2006). Teaching adolescent writers. Portland, Maine: Stenhouse Publishers.

Schmoker, M. (2011). Focus: Elevating the essentials to radically improve student learning. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

So what IS the purpose of public schooling?

Traditional education, as defined by Ira Shor in The Art of Critical Pedagogy (2008) suppresses student skills and intellectual interests, while a more critical approach develops these skills and interests. Traditional education puts the students in positions of powerlessness and the teacher in a position of authority. This approach hampers the student’s development as a critical thinker. Above all else, the role of the public school is to help the next generation of voters to approach media and information as critical thinkers.

Paulo Freire advocated for developing the capacity in students to confront real-world problems related to them and their community. At the core of his critical pedagogy was the concept of praxis, which is not unlike the more recent concept of problem-based learning. This approach leads teachers and students to action and reflection upon that action. Through this approach, students (1) identify a problem, (2) analyze the problem, (3) create a plan of action, (4) implement the plan, and (5) analyze and evaluate the action. By addressing real-world, community-based problems, students are able to become their own change agents, which prepares for an active civic adulthood.

The public school system plays the most integral role in developing the next generation of citizens, and this is not accomplished through traditional approaches of filling empty receptacles. This is accomplished by fostering dialogue, inquiry, critical reading/viewing of the world, and a partnership and exchange of ideas between students and teachers.

Duncan-Andrade, J. M. R., & Morrell, E. (2008). The art of critical pedagogy, possibilities for moving from theory to practice in urban schools. New York, NY: Peter Lang Pub Inc.

Hate: A Title Character in Society Today

I'm spending some time this morning reflecting on the senseless death of Trayvon Martin and the subsequent not guilty verdict of George Zimmerman (whose life is also ruined now, no doubt). Many want to claim that race plays no role in this verdict. Even the prosecutor wants to claim that race is not an issue.  How is it not?

If Trayvon had been named Danny and had his hoodie over his blonde hair and blue eyes, would the news be splitting time between the Zimmerman verdict and the death of Corey Monteith? I claim no. Had it been a blonde-haired Danny, he would have been observed as he went along his way, but ultimately left alone. Zimmerman's actions were racial profiling, plain and simple.

If George Zimmerman had been black, would we be having such outrage at the verdict? Would there have even been a trial? Most claim that there would not have been. Another black-on-black shooting would have been chalked up as typical. Sad, but typical.

If Marissa Alexander of Jacksonville had been a white woman, would she be preparing to spend the next 20 years behind bars for defending herself against an abusive spouse who had a restraining order against him or would the stand your ground defense work for her as well?

These recent events only demonstrate the role racism plays in our society. There are many types of hate rearing in our society today. In fact, hate is becoming a major player in our world. As people fight for the rights to love and marry someone of their own choosing, they are met with so-called Christians who claim that if you love differently, you don't have the same rights as others. And women in Texas are face a hate crime against their own choices as Texas recently voted to pass one of the most restrictive abortion bills in the nation.

I don't have children. I am white. I am Christian and I am heterosexual. But I still remain appalled at the role that hate plays in our society. My heart aches for the victims of senseless violence. I will not even pretend to know that Trayvon's motives were purely innocent. But we'll never know, will we? George Zimmerman played arresting officer, judge, and jury when he followed a young, black teenaged male on a Florida evening.

Presenting New Knowledge to New Teachers

I'm currently working on a presentation for the CERRA Induction Symposium--a conference for teachers who have just finished their first or second year in education. I signed up to present on strategies for keeping students engaged. At this point, I'm wondering what was I thinking?!?!

So I have been reflecting on the most engaging lessons from my classroom this past year. What is engaging instruction rooted in?

Let's start with anticipatory sets. Getting students to anticipate the lesson helps them to get excited about their learning. Before dealing with Romeo and Juliet, students can examine value statements that deal with the major themes from the play and decide if they agree or disagree with the statements. Once they realize how much they can relate the major themes of the play with their actual lives, the classic piece of literature becomes much more attainable. Teachers can also use questioning strategies, word webs, songs, and videos to get students engaged in the lesson before it starts.

Once the lesson begins, strategic instruction is a powerful, student-centered approach to learning. Using strategies help students access the tools that adept learners are able to readily access. One great strategy for teaching new concepts is the concept map. This graphic helps the learner to understand relationships between the concept and other thoughts/ideas. I have used this to entrench knowledge of figurative language. A history teacher has used the mapping process to further explain the amendments to the Constitution. Strategies can be extremely engaging for learners, and they help students tap into the cognitive strategies that will help them as they encounter new knowledge.

Mixing in music and video to lessons also helps increase student engagement. Keeping clips short and relevant is all students need get that technology fix that this generation seems to need. A US History teacher working with the Jim Crow South could introduce "Strange Fruit" by Billie Holiday and "The Flowers" by Alice Walker. This incorporation of both music and a short literary piece will help fire up the dendrites to increase student learning and comprehension.

Engaging instruction is vital in teaching today's youth. There are many options teachers can tap into to help create connections to enhance learning. I only hope that I can come up with a few new ideas to help new teachers this week.