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.