SIGblog

• The Highly Engaged Classroom by Robert Marzano,…
• Data teams : the big picture by Editors of Lead…
• Seven Strategies of Assessment for Learning (Assessment… by Jan Chappuis

This is what we do…PLCs (Powerful Learning Communities) building quality formative assessments matched up with high leverage instructional strategies. That’s how we’re going to make the seemingly impossible possible!

What have you done better this year??? Please comment!

The following thoughts are from an anonymous guest blogger…A prize will go out to the first person who can guess their identity!

I believe that relationships are a very important part to a productive learning environment. Without building positive relationships with students, everything you try to accomplish in your room will be a lot harder.

Just assuming that your students should respect you and do what you say just because you are their teacher — What does that actually mean to them? I know in the perfect world, or even across town, a teacher will only have to focus on teaching their student school subjects. One has to remember that our job is to shape the mind of young ones in order for them to become contributing members of society. At our school social skills and behavior are just as important as math and reading (I know the federal government feels differently and wants to see better scores). I understand that you are in a role of authority with students. Just remember some authority figures in their lives might not be positive, so some students learn early in life to not trust them. If a student has any inkling or a reason to believe that you don’t care about them, “GOOD LUCK” because it will be a long year.

A relationship starts when you, the teacher, begin to take a genuine interest in your students’ lives. A good starting point would be things they care about, (culture, food, family, sports, fashion, TV,) and things of that nature. Once you do that you can move on to trust. Trust is “a Firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something (Google dictionary).” I believe that this is the most important piece of the relationship puzzle. Once a student trusts you, they are more likely to do what you need them to do. Plus, if something is bothering them in their lives, they will tell you. If you can help in anyway it will only make that trust stronger. This is because they now know that you are there for them. To our kids this is one of the greatest feelings in the world. This relationship can be a great tool for motivation because the student will not want to let you down.
On to discipline, now that you have a trusting relationship. Your students will be less likely to argue your discipline decisions and use the words “why do I have to go to the safe seat?” or “this isn’t fair!” because they trust you to keep them safe and to do what is right.

I believe that once all these pieces are in place. This will allow you to have the structure where the most efficient learning can happen. These are just my thoughts.

Relationship
Trust
Discipline
Learning

The guest blogger and I agreed that this quote goes along nicely with the thoughts expressed today:

Caring teachers with high expectations helped me read my way out. They helped me push against the currents of the environment in which I lived. They did not limit their aspirations for me because my pants were too short. They did not lower their expectations for me because my lunch application told them I lived below the poverty line.

Instead, they required me to read the basal textbook, as well as the local newspaper, historical documents, poetry and literature. These teachers had Harvard dreams for students living in hellish conditions. I felt a kinship with them that helped me attend to their instruction.

Literacy was thrust upon me in rich and meaningful ways, not because I was a wonderful student, but because the teachers believed I deserved nothing less.” — Dr. Alfred W. Tatum

I heard someone use this analogy about a different subject but it fits so well with the way we should think about assessment, I’m going to apply it here.

The hour hand moves slowly, the minute hand a little more rapidly, and the second hand passes speedily by…but it requires all of them to tell the time.

What are your hour hand assessments? (summative)
What are your minute hand assessments? (common formative)
What are your second hand assessments? (embedded formative)

They’re all on a different schedule, but they’re all moving in the same direction and it requires all of them to tell us about how a student is learning.

Comments welcome…

I was listening in on a “Strategy Academy” a few weeks ago at Elliott. The topic of discussion for the session was fluency. One of the concepts that came up was that of Prosody. One of the definitions for prosody is “the patterns of stress and intonation in a language.”

I saw this video a few days later and thought it was a beautiful picture of what prosody really is.

Author and speaker Dr. Tim Rasinski is considered an authority on the topic of reading fluency. In this online article, he describes Prosody in Reading as a bridge between fluency and comprehension. We all know that fluency isn’t just about reading fast, but we’re stuck because reading rate is the closest measure we can come up with that will give us some data that we can track to indicate students are increasing this skill.

What would happen if students saw a clip like this before taking a fluency test? I believe it is possible that their words per minute rate might go down, but I wonder if comprehension would go up? I’m just thinking out loud here, but it seems that we sometimes assess fluency and comprehension separately. How much longer would it take to ask a few comprehension questions after a fluency check? I’m often struck by how literal our students are – if you want them to read fast, they’ll read fast. We have to connect these dots for them. Read with automaticity and with prosody so that you can make sense of the text. It’s a beautiful thing!

A list of classes starting in 2012 that will answer all of your technology questions!

“There isn’t a school on earth that can educate anybody. All a school can do is provide an atmosphere which will stimulate the mind to work and the heart to believe and the will to act.” –Noel Smith

This is a warning. Today, I abandon the tips and tricks and sharing of ideas and take a sharp turn into just plain meddling!

I’ve spent some time recently scouring youtube looking for great videos to use as thinking prompts. I realized that sometimes I stop the video after just a few seconds. This is all of the time it takes for me to evaluate the content of the entire video and decide if it is worth my time to continue watching it.

Here’s the meddling part…I wonder at what point in a lesson our students would stop the video or turn the channel if they could? If there was a remote control for your teaching, would students store that channel as one of their favorites? If you really did have your own TV program, would the station continue to produce your program or would you get canceled? Ouch! (I warned you)

We spend a lot of time considering “Author’s Purpose”, this is something that showed up on our teaching radar with the adoption of the State Standards. So, let’s think about our “Teacher’s Purpose” for a minute. Each lesson should have a purpose. It might even be a good idea to honor this with a spot on your lesson plan. It would differ a bit from your objective, it’s the part that is about the audience and what you want their reaction to be. Is this lesson supposed to entertain, persuade, inform or explain? If you think about it – depending on your purpose, your lesson design might change significantly.

I’m afraid that often we use entertain as a synonym for engage. Engagement is not about entertaining your students. Some of the more interesting synonyms I found are – pursue, engross, occupy, absorb.

You tell me…What do you do to “engage” your students? What do you do to “pursue” your students? What do you do to “engross” your students? What do you do to “occupy” your students? What do you do to “absorb” your students? Leave a comment – someone will probably love your idea and be a better teacher for it. Isn’t that exciting?

It’s no secret that I love to find little video clips that can be used as a spark to set up a terrific lesson. But, let’s be honest…Technology is not always our friend, and that whole login issue with youtube – ugh!

Here’s the fix – KeepVid

This is one of my favorite tools. I find videos at home (where I don’t have to worry about getting logged out of youtube). You simply paste the URL into the box on the site (or install it on your bookmark toolbar – drag button from the banner to your toolbar). Use the “download” button and it will do just that – download a copy to your computer!

No worries – your video will work. You won’t even have to wait for it to “buffer”.

Another slick trick – you can pull out the sound by itself to an mp3. That’s nice to have too!

If you haven’t already, please leave a comment about the Thinking Device video from my last blog. I should hear the Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy streaming through the hallways of Elliott!

Contest – best description of a lesson you could teach using this as a thinking prompt or “hook” wins a prize. You have to leave your idea in the comment section on the blog – no private entries! I know….it’s hard! (Limited to teachers at Elliott Elementary school – in the unlikely event that someone outside of the walls of Elliott actually read this blog)