Change

"Be the change you wish to see in the world." Mahatma Gandhi

I want to start this post with my FAVORITE QUOTE. I have this all over my classroom because I'm constantly preaching to my students about the goodness change can bring about. However, like the quote says, if I expect my kids (my "world" for 9 months) to change for the better...I have to be willing to change with them!

As I wrap up another year as a 2^nd grade teacher in St. Cloud I’m left to reflect on the past 9 months. Through changes in our building, in my personal and professional life and my experiences and development through the St. Mary’s Graduate program I feel I’ve bettered myself in many ways. I’d like to focus on a few specific areas:

Classroom Environment and Relationships

This is an area that I’ve always strived to make a top priority in my teaching. It’s very important to me that my students enter our room each day feeling cared for and safe.  Something I’ve always done is stand at my door (one foot in the room, one in the hallway) greeting every student as they come in. One change I made to this “procedure” this year was the expectation of eye-contact and a good morning or “hello” in return. I had never put much thought into it but mid-way through the year realized how many of my students would come through, elbow-bump me as I looked at them, smiled, and said good morning, and wouldn’t return the gesture. This change occurred through a simple conversation during a morning meeting where I explained that I wasn’t feeling respected in the way I want all members of our class to feel. The next day almost every student made that change and it continued every day for the rest of the year. I think, overall, that set the tone for each day together: one of respect, safety, and routine.

Instruction

I think this is an area where teachers should never cease to grow and I feel I experienced the most change within the area of how I teach. Through the ENVoY training I became very aware of the importance of appropriate pausing, voice levels, and how to deliver instruction and directions in a way that students were more likely to hear me. I noticed some BIG changes in my students and the amount of management needed once I began implementing these strategies. Also, through the introduction to Backwards Design, I became more intentional about presenting lesson goals and essential questions to my students at the beginning of each lesson.  I felt myself doing less teaching actually and allowing my students to do more exploring. I think this came from the idea of allowing for creativity and allowing our students more time to PLAY!

Discipline (what I teach)

Another change that occurred for me in this area was how intentional I became about what to teach. It’s hard not to get caught up in the cutesy lessons and activities found throughout various blogs and ALL OVER Pinterest (especially when you’re a primary teacher). However, when I began to analyze what big ideas and understanding was really important for my students to understand I was able to cut out some…fluff.

Assessment

Through various readings, ROL’s and AR’s, and blogs I’ve followed I’ve been exposed to many different ways to assess my students in a way that will help to guide my instruction. The biggest change in this area was I became more intentional about using formative assessment to guide each days instruction. In the past I knew I should be doing more to check for their understanding but didn’t feel I knew exactly how to obtain the data I wanted. It turns out you don’t need a fancy assessment, long-winded quiz, or time-consuming activity to know where your students are at. Through the use of the various assessment ideas I obtained (padlet.com, exit tickets, Socrative, Infuselearning.com, etc.) I was able to have a pretty clear picture at the end of each lesson (sometimes in the middle of one if necessary) to help form groups, make changes where needed, and guide my instruction. 

What big changes have you experienced most recently?

Another first: Backwards Design

I recently designed, utilized and wrapped up my first Backwards Design Unit on the 2nd grade standard of Balance and Motion. This video, led by the founder of Backwards Design, Grant Wiggins, provides some necessary background information if you're unfamiliar with the idea.

Planning with the standards at the forefront of the unit
While I've always made great effort to keep the standards as the center of each lesson or unit, this time around I was very intentional about dissecting this standard to completely understand each benchmark and the overall goal of this standard. I was able to utilize the different benchmarks to formulate the essential questions and each day's learning goals. My students became very familiar with the overall standard but also the individual understandings that the big idea was composed of.
Utilizing the Enduring Understandings and Essential Questions
Once I had determined what the enduring understandings and essential questions would be I typed them into each lesson's Smart Board slide. The enduring understandings and 3 essential questions remained the same throughout the entire unit so each day I would begin the lesson by addressing and asking the essential questions. By doing this the kids were able to see how they got closer to being able to understand and answer those questions in more depth as we uncovered by knowledge about motion.
Creating assessments prior to teaching the lesson
By creating the assessments before teaching the lessons I knew what our end goal was. I was more intentional with each day's learning goal and could adjust my teaching if I noticed we were veering too far off that path. I also feel that my student's overall understanding was deeper because of how intentional and focused we were. I included some sort of formative assessment after each day's lesson (journaling, Socrative or Infuse Learning quizzes, exit tickets, etc.) and used those assessments to guide the next day's lesson.
Teaching Balance and Motion using BD vs. prior years
This is the 4th year I've taught this unit and I can confidently say my students have a better understanding of the overall concept of motion more than they ever have. I think this can be attributed to my extra effort to dig deeper, ask more questions, discuss our findings and strive to reach a certain goal or answer specific essential questions. In the past I've simply used the provided FOSS kit and vocabulary terms. Usually I just post the vocabulary, we discuss them, and if my students are able to use them when experimenting with their various science tools I thought that was enough. However, the FOSS kit doesn't provide any type of "big idea," essential question or assessment so I always found myself still wondering if they truly "got it" at the end of the unit. When it came time to grade I only had my observations and the conversations we had had in whole group. Utilizing BD I ended this unit with a very clear picture of which students truly grasped the concept.

AGAPE Reflection: Adaptation

After rereading my January notes on Adaptation a few new concepts now made more sense to me: Constructivist, authentic , inquiry and discovery learning, and creative and critical thinking.

At the time, I thought I understood what this meant. However, after becoming more aware of what a constructivist classroom consists of, it’s easier to see how adaptation plays a huge role in the teacher I am striving to become.

To me, adaptation means allowing students to discover and make meaning of the content in a way they are able to connect to. It means giving them more control and allowing their imagination to drive their learning and problem-solve versus being spoon-fed the “right answer.” I am endeavoring to help my students authenticate their learning and think deeper using such high-level strategies as “The Application Strategy” talked about by Nikki here. In doing this, I will allow them to see WHY what we’re learning is so important and how they can and will continue to be able to use it. This concept it one that takes intentional practice and time but will highly benefit my students on their path to becoming higher-level thinkers and learners. 

A Sneak-Peak Into Next Year's Classroom: Best Practices in Reading

After reading the chapter “Best Practice in Reading” from Zemelman and Hyde’s Best Practice for Teaching and Learning in America’s Schools there are many practices I can’t wait to implement next year in 3^rd grade.

·         Researchers have compiled a list of skills that all readers should be aware of and know how to use when reading: Visualize, connect, question, infer, evaluate, analyze, recall and monitor

o   I think it’s critical that students know these terms and understand exactly what they look like in reading. My thought is to use the first 8 weeks to explicitly teach and model what each of these skills look like. As I teach each one I’d like to create a visual that the students come up with to help them remember what each means. These words and visuals will become part of a bulletin board that we can then refer back to all year long.

·         Hearing books read aloud is a key to learning to read-students need to hear and see a fluent, enthusiastic reader using “think-aloud” strategies on a daily basis.

o   Although I try and read aloud to my students on a daily basis, I want to become very intentional about this next year. I chose the end of this year to read aloud the chapter book Charlotte’s Web. Our library had multiple copies so my students were able to follow along with a partner as I read.

o   While reading I would frequently stop and “think-aloud” various things:

§  why I changed my voice when I did

§  what I could do if I didn’t know a certain word

§  how our character what probably feeling in that moment

§  connections I had to the characters in different situations

o   I’d really like to make it a point to read-aloud more chapter books with my students next year as it exposes them to higher-level text, thinking and vocabulary. It also teaches my students the importance of sticking with a book, which many have a hard time doing!

·         Reading is the best practice for learning to read-in order for students to become better readers, they need time to practice the skill of reading. This can happen at home, in a guided setting and during uninterrupted independent reading.

o   While I do this on a daily basis, I don’t feel that they get ENOUGH time to “just-read.”

o   I want to be sure to find a good balance of reading for a purpose (to complete a task that connects to our lesson, etc.) and reading for pure enjoyment. I’ve always worried that I wouldn’t be able to hold my students accountable if they didn’t turn something in to “prove” they were reading. However, as adults we don’t always enjoy reading something if we know we have an assignment. Often, our more enjoyable reading occurs when we chose the book and we can read for our own purpose. After modeling this idea (as it may be foreign to some) I want to be sure to give my students a chance to cozy up and just read for FUN!

·         Choice is an integral part of literate behavior-students should be encouraged to choose texts and ways in which they demonstrate what they know about that text.

o   While this ties into the above practice, I want to include more choice in our guided reading groups as well.

o   I could see easily doing this by selecting 2-3 books within that group’s level and then allowing the students to choose which one they’d like to practice a certain skill with.

o   Instead of forming book groups based on like abilities, I could form groups based on areas of need. They could then use their own choice book and I could instead teach a strategy to apply to their book.

·         Kids need easy books-studies show “young readers need much more of what adult readers sometimes call ‘beach books’-easy, predictable, enjoyable, quick reads.”

o   Typically I group my students based on their level of reading and often provide that group with texts that are at, or slightly above, their reading level. I thought this was appropriate as it exposed them to higher-level vocabulary and I was there to help when needed.

o   Next year I would like to provide them with more “beach books” to ensure that the reading is successful and fun, versus something they come to look upon as difficult and purely instructional.

·         Kids should have daily opportunities to talk about their reading-kids needs the opportunity to share about their reading via sharing time, book clubs, writing, dialogue journal partners, etc.

o   Next year I’d like to be more intentional about building in a dialogue time to share about their reading.

o   I’d like to have a variety of ways for students to do this as some need to talk about their reading, while others would flourish through written dialogue.

§  I’m thinking about starting book review journals where students converse with each other about different topics within the journal. I’d organize this journal into different sections so as to easily find and respond to discussions.

§  I’d also like to set up a 5 minute discussion time after each independent reading session. I’d like to keep this time open to any topic of book discussion so as not to control the dialogue. This, of course, would take some initial modeling and role-playing but could be very beneficial. 

Constructivism Stategy-Student Responses Driving my Instruction

This week I decided to be very intentional about my student responses driving my instruction. I've always tried to use some sort of formative assessment at the end of my lessons (albeit and exit ticket, post-it note, or more recently, a padlet post) to guide the following day's instruction. However, this week I wanted to touch base sooner in the lesson. While working on ballpark estimating this week I quickly realized the expansive difference in levels of understanding within my students. So, on the second day of whole group instruction I began with an open-ended question: When might knowing how to round and estimate help you? This allowed my students to take it where they wanted and show their understanding (or lack thereof). Using their responses I was able to pose some situations in which estimating can help us in real-life (the concept of application..double whammy!). After about a 10 minute mini-lesson on how-to estimate and round double-digit numbers to find a "ballpark" total I then presented them with 5-question quick using Infuse Learning. This helped me to see that I still had about 8 who still needed some help. For the rest of my students I provided a choice of 3 different activities they could choose from to show me their understanding. I then kept the 8 up front with me to work with base-10 blocks and hundreds charts as way to see what rounding was.

I feel that giving more power to the students (via using their responses to teach and then allowing them to choose their independent work) increased the level of engagement and connection to their "real world" lives. I also noticed that the level of understanding increased amongst the majority of my students!

Restating or Repeating

Having read my dear friend Courtney's post about the instructional strategy of Repeating it reminded me what a powerful strategy this is (especially this time of year!).  I decided I needed to be more intentional about having my students repeat my directions this week. What a little gem of strategy this is :)

As I'm wrapping up my backwards design unit this week in science I really wanted to be sure my students were grasping the idea of motion and all the important vocab used to describe it. Add in a little "mirror with gestures" to have them repeat and act out this strategy and they were right there with me! 

Before sending them off to discover with their science tools I would introduce or *reintroduce* a vocabulary concept. I'd start by reading the word and acting it out with a simple gesture. Then, we'd get to the fun part. Back in October, when I initially began using repeating and gestures, I modeled how to "turn their mirrors on." I'd put both hands up, palms out, framing my face and say "mirror with gestures." They'd repeat the gesture and say the same thing. This was their indicator that they needed to repeat each move I made and word I said. They would do this until I'd say "mirrors off" (KEY if you don't want your students to continue repeating...because they will!). 

Here's an example of one teacher using this strategy in her classroom: note the high level of engagement and understanding! 

Hopefully this is a strategy you can find yourself using in these last FEW days of school! Hang in there everyone :)

Constructivism

After reading the powerpoint summary of In Search of Understanding: The Case for Constructivist Classrooms I am gathering a deeper understanding of the theory of constructivism and what it looks like in a classroom setting. I was validated in the sense that there are many things I find myself doing in a "constructivist way" and many things that, with some fine tweaking, I know I could easily implement in my classroom. Since reading a variety of articles on constructivism I am more intentional about these implementations.

It is also reassuring that constructivism very easily connects to the Backwards Design approach, Marzano's quality instructional strategies and parts of my Action Research project. The most obvious connection is that of using essential questions and big ideas to "hook students" and allow for them to make personal connections to the concepts. The baseball analogy provided was a helpful example: instead of teaching students to repeat the rules of baseball, they should understand why you can run past first base but not second, etc. Another connection I noticed was the idea that student responses are what drive the lessons and shift strategies the teacher should use.

I feel that both of these connections are areas that I can be more intentional about and will help me to continue on the path to becoming a more constructivist classroom.