Intentionally teaching with my non-negotiables

As I tackle planning for a new school year, in a new grade level, I'm so much more intentional about how I will begin my year with my "non-negotiable" concept of class community building. Using my community building plan, and the activities posted by fellow SCB2ers, I feel very prepared to begin the year off on a very positive note that will set the tone for a successful year! I also took into consideration the physical layout and how it met the needs of the various learners I have in my class. Knowing my students ahead of time was a huge benefit as I know there are some who need to be in a row, some who need a small group setting and some who need the chance to get out of their desk, move around and work in a different "setting" within the classroom. To meet these needs I set my desks up in rows and groups and provided my students with places like a book corner with comfortable seating, a few scattered singles desks for individual work areas and a small table in the corner for group work. 

The concept of teaching with the end in mind, while guiding them to make connections and broad understandings, has also really impacted me as a teacher. I've shared MANY of these ideas with my new teammates (who have all been teaching for 15-20+ years) and they are very excited about this new "wealth of knowledge on the team." :) 

You can't make me give them up! My classroom non-negotiables...

There are things in life you simply can’t live without. Family, a beautiful sunny day every now and then…chocolate J When it comes to my teaching philosophies and my classroom practices there are also some non-negotiables I’ve developed over the past 4 years as a teacher and year as an SMU learner.  To organize my thoughts (and keep my list concise!) I’d like to present these non-negotiables using the IDEAL acronym: Instruction, Discipline, Environment, Assessment, and Leadership.

Instruction: One thing teachers are always lacking is time. Each day, week, month, we wish we had just a few more minutes or just one more day to “fit it all in.” However, through the St. Mary’s program I’ve been exposed to many practices that help me to hone in on the big ideas and understandings that truly matter. One concept I’ll continue to use in my classroom is the idea of planning my year around Backwards Design Units. In doing this, I am forced to focus on the standards and select activities and lessons that will guide the student to true mastery and application of that standard and make continuous connections to other standards throughout the school year.

Discipline: How I teach has also been greatly affected throughout this past year. Not only have I come to see the importance of teaching using high-yield strategies (such as movement and the use of compare and contrast) but, through my prior action research, I’ve seen the strong gains that can be made when students are having FUN and are engaged in what they are doing! As I enter into a new school year with my same students, I’m sure I’ll be forced to continue using such strategies as Reader’s Theater and poetry when working on our fluency. They won’t let me forget them if I tried! Also, through my elective course on Cooperative Learning, I’m also very adamant about incorporating more group-work opportunities and movement while we learn.

Environment: In the area of classroom environment the non-negotiables for me consist of community and classroom relationship building and using a more constructivist, student-centered approach. I’ve always seen the importance and necessity of building relationships in a classroom and this concept has been reiterated through my most recent research on best practices of writing. Much of the reason for a student’s success can be linked to them feeling safe and supported in their learning environment. Knowing this, and the fact that my students have already spent a year getting to know each other, I feel that the type of community building we’ll be doing this year will be more centered around getting to know and support each other as learners.

Assessment- Following a constructivist approach, one thing I will be doing more of this year is allowing the students to guide my instruction through formative assessment.  I feel this will help to focus in on exactly what they already know and where any misconceptions lie. I also see the strong need to vary the forms of assessment I plan to use. With the variety of learning styles that occur amongst my students comes a variety of ways in which they are able to best show what they know. By varying the assessment formats, I feel I will provide all my students with an opportunity to succeed in showing me their understanding.

Leadership-While it’s okay to be the “lone nut” dancing up in front of a classroom, you’re truly not a leader if you have no followers! I will keep this concept in the forefront of my teaching this year as I now see the necessity of having followers if you want a “movement” to be successful. The more my students are buying into what we’re doing, and feel as though they have equal importance in what we’re doing, the more likely we are to have a successful year. 

Real kids. Real writing. Real teaching.

Best Practices in Writing Main Ideas

·         Writing should be “just another piece” of the puzzle in a very integrated day.

o   The example given in the text describes how a third grade teacher turned a literacy study on the fairy tale Cinderella into an entire unit by incorporating geography, vocabulary and writing.

§  I feel this is a very important aspect of writing as students are given more exposure and knowledge around the topic they are to write about. When provided with word walls full of connected vocabulary and maps with starred locations their pool of knowledge is large enabling them to write more easily.

o   I like the idea of having an interchangeable word wall containing important vocabulary words pertaining to the current area of study. By placing this in the writing “center” students are able to easily access these words and are more likely to use them in their writing.

·         It’s important to “prime the pump” (build their enthusiasm) around the topic of writing.

o   Because I haven’t always felt like the most successful writer growing up I feel that I may not always come across as enthusiastic about writing…this definitely reflects on my students! This next year I want to be more intentional about showing excitement and enthusiasm about my writing! If the students see I’m excited, they’re more likely to become excited about writing too!

·         Students should be given extensive prewriting experience via mini-lessons and modeling

o   The authors give multiple ways to provide writers with prewriting experiences. What stuck with me was the idea about having brainstormed lists and questions readily available in student’s writing folders and on easily accessible chart. This strategy allows for students to be more independent and access their own ideas freely.

o   Some other ideas include:

§  Modeling on an overhead

§  Exposing students to good strategies in read that the class is doing

§  Having students brainstorm solutions to a particular problem in a sample piece

·         Students should be” given plenty of room for originality” and choice.

o   I believe the students will take more ownership when they’re able to choose what it is they’re writing about. Although they will need guidance, less structure may actually produce better, more creative, writing. As the authors state, “When the topic matters, children work hard and invest time and effort in crafting their work.”  This philosophy also supports a constructivist’s view of a classroom as the students would be guiding their learning more than I would.

o   Hyde and Daniels also explain “arbitrarily assigned topics with no opportunity for choice deprive students of practice in a most crucial step of writing-making the first decision about what to write.

§  I think this is a fault of mine. I find myself guiding too much because I’m afraid that my students can’t handle too much freedom. However, I need to keep in mind that guidance can come without complete control. 

7 Areas to Increase Best Practice

As I continued my research on current classroom best practices utilizing chapter 8 of Zemelman, Daniels, and Hyde's Best Practice book Seven Structures of Best Practice teaching, I was able to gain strategies from each of the seven areas. Below each are strategies that could be used in my future Action Research and classroom activities.

Small-Group Activities-“Students of all grade levels show significant achievement gains across the curriculum when they are organized into collaborative groupings and projects. It works.”

• Partner/Buddy Reading-this is a strategy I used during my current action research as my students practiced their script parts. After listening to their partner each student was expected to provide verbal and written feedback.
• Literature Circles/Book Clubs-this is an area I’d like to expand on next year with my 3^rd graders. After explicitly modeling what a book group looks like, and each role within that group, I’d like my students to be able to choose their own book and lead the group without my monitoring.

Reading as Thinking

• Into-I feel as though I was intentional in preparing my students before reading during my action research cycle. I’d model and define what fluency strategy they were to practice and then check to be sure they were utilizing this through their reading as well. However, next year I want to be more intentional about doing this for all students, all the time.
• Through-to encourage thinking into, through, and beyond reading I plan to have a “readers are thinkers” bulletin board. Each time a new “reading as thinking” strategy (such as inferring or questioning) is introduced create a visual and definition and add it to the board.\
•  I’d also like to devote a section of this board to “’Insert’ Text codes” which will model how to take notes as they read.
• Beyond-to ensure that I’m encouraging thinking beyond the text I’d like to use a wider variety of KWL’s which will all my students to come back to their original thinking as they answer questions they had and add any new learning.

Representing-to-Learn-“Drawing, sketching, jotting, mapping,…are equally valuable-and when combined with words, in strategies like clustering, sematic mapping, or cartooning, they can powerfully leverage students’ thinking about the curriculum.”

• I love the idea of having students keep a log simply for their thoughts and responses. These logs can be utilized cross-curriculum and, with the use of prompts, it allows the student to take ownership and have choice over what they’re writing. Also, because it’s not graded they worry less about conventions of their writing can more easily represent their thoughts and learning. They’re also more likely to share their thoughts than if it were in a group discussion.
• I could easily see using this concept in my action research next year as I’m hoping to connect reading fluency to writing fluency.

Classroom Workshop-“Probably the single most important strategy in literacy education is the reading-writing workshop…It recognizes that kids need less telling and more showing, that they need more time doing literacy and less time hearing what reading and writing might be life if you ever did them.” 

• Individual conferences-I’d like to strive to include more one-on-one conference time next year. Many teachers says that a one-minute conversation with a student that is solely directed around their individual needs is much more powerful than hours of heterogeneous whole-group lessons.

Authentic Experiences-“To begin with, school itself isn’t ‘real,’ in the sent that schools are purposely separated from the rest of life…If we want to make education “real,” we have to somehow overcome that segregation, either by bringing bits of the world into schools or bringing the kids out into the world.”

• The text provides an example in which a unit of study about the habitat of earthworms is derived from the teacher’s observation of her student’s interest in them. This is something I’d love to be able to do next year. It is a 3^rd grade standard that the students understand the cycle of life, both for plants and animals. Typically 3^rd graders at Talahi get a crawfish to study and learn about. However, I’d like to gather some information about what the students are interested in and then try and create a unit of study around that plant or animal…it make be a stretch, but I feel it’d make their learning more motivated.

Reflective Assessment

• In conjunction with the one-to-one conferences as noted above, I’d like to become more of a “kid-watcher.” In the past, I’ve kept anecdotal records of what my students were doing and saying during Daily 5 read-to-self time. However, I’d like to come up a with system to do this more intentionally during various times throughout the day. I think these notes would speak volumes about my student’s academic, and social, abilities and would be a great support to a rubric grade.
•  I began dabbling in having my students reflect on their own work and progress during my action research project. I was very impressed with how seriously they took it and how it helped with their growth as they reflected on strengths and weaknesses. This is an area I’d like to continue to improve in next year.

Integrative Units

•  I’d be very interested in including more thematic units into my teaching next year. I see the many benefits in having the cohesion from one content area to the next but am also a little apprehensive as it seems very time-consuming to recreate entire units in multiple content areas. I think it’d be helpful to gather a team of teachers who work on the thematic unit together, making it seem less daunting.

Overall, it was clear to me that each of these structures has some commonalities: student choice, authenticity, accountability and leadership. All of these qualities represent that of a constructivist classroom in which the students are “taking control” of their own learning. I believe each of these best practices has a spot in my future teaching and I look forward to implementing them, in baby steps, this next school year! 

The Power of Attention

There were many things that grabbed my attention when reading chapter 2 of Houston and Sokolow’s Spritual Dimension of Leadership about The Principle of Attention.

·         “If you want something to thrive and grow, pay attention to it. On the other hand, if you want something to wither and diminish, don’t pay attention to it; intentionally ignore it.”

o   I feel as though I preach this, or a version of it, to my students…and myself…on a daily basis! I’m constantly reminding them to focus on what’s important, ignore what’s not. Is it a little problem or a big one? Little? Let it go. I, however, need to be sure to take my own advice. There are so many things that can grab hold, and keep hold, of our attention every minute of every day so I need to decipher what’s important enough to have your attention. What do I want to work on growing? What would be okay to let wither and diminish?

·         “When leaders pay attention to a person, a situation, or an issue, others start to pay attention to the same things, whether you want them to or not-therefore, you need to be mindful about what you pay attention to.”

o   I made a connection to this quote and certain behaviors in my classroom. My first year of teaching I felt the need to give my attention to every little behavior that was happening. I felt that if I let the little things go they’d ALWAYS turn into a major issue or distraction. However, every time I stopped teaching to give my attention to those behaviors, my students stopped thinking and turned their attention to the behavior as well. One thing ENVoY brought to my attention was the concept of addressing a behavior or distraction without giving much attention to it. This notion, a simple palm-faced-down towards the behavior occurring while still continuing to teach, has helped tremendously! I found that if I “ignored” the behavior, many of my students didn’t even realize it was occurring and it simply went away.

·         “Attention is the grounding. It’s a grounding in the now: being in a place and space in a coterminous way so that you are in the moment and therefore getting what each moment has to offer. Otherwise you have all these wonderful thoughts in your head but you’re mentally somewhere else; you’re not grounded.”

o   I need to make a conscious effort to improve on this. I constantly find my thoughts wandering when I should be engaged in a conversation with someone. I don’t do it to be rude but I feel as though I have so much going on it’s hard to curb those thoughts for later. However, the idea that I’m missing out on so many wonderful moments by not grounding myself in that situation is reason enough to push other thoughts aside and focus on the importance of the situation I’m in at that time.

·         “If you get caught up in the rat race, the rats win because you just don’t go anywhere with anything.” and later in the article they state “You don’t want to work harder, you want to work smarter.”

o   I feel these two quotes go hand in hand because I am absolutely one of those people who feels like a little rat on a wheel. I’m always working so hard to better my lessons and meet the needs of every student that I find myself spread way too thin and never really feeling like I’m making a huge impact. If I’m more intentional about a few areas to focus on I feel that I’ll get much further than if I try to better many little things. The concept of working smarter, not harder is one that my last year’s principal constantly reminded us of and, even though she’s not in our building anymore, it’s a concept I must continue to fall back on at work and in my graduate work this summer.

·         “The urgent tends to push out the important…there’s a real pinch between those two things because what’s urgent is not necessarily what’s important.”

o   I’d like to end on this quote as my goal this summer is to refocus on what’s important, not necessarily what’s urgent. Each day teachers are faced with many things that seem urgent and must be dealt with in the here in now. This is what causes some of our students to become “Cliffs or Cliffettes…” the urgent students overpower them. As I’m able to slow down a bit this summer I want to be sure that I’m giving more of my attention to the things that are truly important in my life…my “Cliffs” that have been void of my attention…that urgent stuff can wait. 

Praxis

While further researching why fluency was so important in a strong reader Dr. Timothy Rasinksi provided me with much clarification on this question. His article, “CreatingFluent Readers” discusses the 3 Dimensions of Reading Fluency:

• Accuracy-being able to sound out words within a text with minimal areas
• Automatic processing-using little effort to decode so that they are able to use their cognitive       abilities to make meaning
•  Prosody-utilizing punctuation and expression to make meaning of the text

He then emphasized how fluency feeds into comprehension and comprehension is our “final goal” as we read. It was this notion that guided me in my action research. I knew I needed to teach my students what these three facets of fluency meant, what they looked like and how to achieve them as readers. If I could do this I hoped to increase their comprehension as well.

Another article that sparked some change in my classroom research was Lara Beth Clementi’s  “Readers Theater: A Motivating Method toImprove Reading Fluency.” In this article she discusses the importance of motivation in creating fluent readers and how using Reader’s Theater can enhance that level of motivation. At the time I was already “dabbling” in some action research and could see that my students were getting a little bored with the repeated reading aspect of improving their fluency. Other than being able to record themselves, they really had no reason to reread the passage or book multiple times to become fluent. When I introduced the concept of reader’s theater to my students and the fact that they’d get to PERFORM to their classmates they were ecstatic!  They immediately grew excited about the “play” we were reading and were even willing to practice every part, multiple times without being asked, because they weren’t aware what part they’d be given. Their expression improved as they listened to each other and themselves and on the day of their performances they took it very seriously. When my other groups saw how much fun this group was having with reader’s theater they practically begged to do it as well! This article definitely opened my eyes to a fun and effective way to teach multiple facets of fluency!

Overall these articles had a huge impact on my action research “path” and on the students in my classroom. Due to the information I gathered and implemented in my classroom I was very pleased to see the growth of fluency amongst all students, not just my selected group. I will absolutely take this new knowledge and these strategies with me as I continue with them in 3^rd grade! 

Adaption

Last week I began to reflect on the Lasallianconcept of Adaption and how I am currently and striving to apply it in my ownclassroom. In this post I’d like to target specific areas in which various routines and strategies can be applied regarding Adaption.  

Instruction (HOW I teach)

As I mentioned in my previous post, my understanding of adaption in a classroom is giving students more control and encouraging problem-solving towards an understanding versus giving them the “right answer.” Most recently I’ve been very intentional about starting my lessons with a question of some sort (essential question or a question referring back to prior knowledge) to allow my students to make a connection to what we are about to learn. I’ve noticed this has encouraged more participation as my students are able to develop their own understanding and meaning as we go along. I’ve also become more aware of how much talking and “guiding” I’m doing while teaching. The less I talk and guide, typically the more they talk and discover.

Discipline (WHAT I teach)

Adaption also plays a role in what I teach as I’ve become more aware of what big ideas and understandings are truly crucial for my students to know. If I’m not able to see why the concept is important or how they can apply it to a real-life situation, how can I expect my students to see that? When beginning lessons or units with the adaption in mind I’m teaching with a purpose to make a lasting connection with and purpose for the content. My hope is that this will make the learning more authentic and applicable.

Environment

The concept of adaption has many connections to that of a constructivist classroom in which the students have equal control and ownership of their learning, the way they learn it, and the environment in which they learn it in. I’ve always been very conscious to refer to the classroom as our room (versus MY room) because I feel students take more pride in a space they feel they are a part of. The physical layout plays a large role as well as it’s important to have a space conducive to collaboration amongst students while also offering calm, comforting spaces for learning and exploring. This is an area I will continue to work on and hopefully improve in!

Assessment

This school year I was more intentional about using formative assessments to guide my instruction and best meet the needs of my students. I think this is a key idea when it comes to the concept of adaption as my students are truly the ones guiding what we learn and how we learn it.  Their understanding, or lack thereof, is shown through these valuable assessments and it has allowed me to easily adapt and adjust where needed to ensure that they are developing a deeper level of understanding. This is an area that I know I’ll continue to grow within as there are many forms of assessment that can be used and even more ways to use the information they provide you with!