All Things Preteen!

Middle school teachers, please remember...

2012-01-23T06:42:00.000-05:00

It is January, and in my school district, we are on snow day number 4. Teachers have a love/hate relationship with snow days. And when they come at the end of a marking period, when teachers have so many things to do, the feelings tend toward hate. The pressure to cover curriculum, to keep kids engaged in the doldrums of winter, especially when those classrooms are packed to the rafters these days and teachers feel the stress of managing what often feels like a herd of cats...well, it makes for frustration and headaches.

In the long, dark winter months, it is so important to remember that our middle school students are KIDS first. So I just want to give you TWO important reminders.

1. Reminder number ONE: Middle school students' bodies are undergoing changes at a rate surpassed only by the time they are babies. Their growing and changing bodies make it IMPERATIVE and NECESSARY for them to move. All. The. Time. We must find ways to allow for movement in the classroom. Use exercise balls instead of chairs. Put podiums around the room so that they can stand when they need to. (On a related note, are you aware of the latest research about the effects on ALL OF US of sitting for too long? Here is one article on the topic.) This is just ONE of the many characteristics teachers should know about young adolescents. I encourage you to read the rest here, and think about how you honor this developmental stage in your classroom.

2. Reminder number TWO: Fair does not mean equal. Students in your classrooms have a wide range of abilities and varying amounts of home support. A student who reads 50 words per minute is going to take MUCH LONGER to read a page from the text book and answer questions than a student who reads 150 words per minute. When a teacher expects the slower readers to do the same amount of work, in the same amount of time, that teacher setting that learner up for failure. And when the teacher rewards that "failure" with lunch detention or lowered grades, that student's desire and motivation for learning diminishes. Fair does not mean equal. You know your students. It is your job to give them what they need. Too many teachers worry that if they differentiate, students will rise up in protest. But in a caring classroom community, the teacher is not the only one who understands that fair does not mean equal.

Reflecting on your practice, and making changes to address the needs of young adolescents if needed, can make a huge difference in the happiness of both teacher and students in your classroom.

All conferences are not created equal...

2011-11-10T17:59:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I explained a little bit about the Student Led Conferences that my middle school has been doing for 14 years now. In that post, I mentioned that I would not be attending my own 6th grader's conference. Instead I emailed her teachers to make sure all was well. I know them all; my first daughter had them when she went through 6th grade. And my 6th grader is still an open book when it comes to letting her mama know what is going on at school.

I did decide, however, that I should attend conferences for my 9th grader. She's in a new building, I don't know many of the teachers (even though it is the high school I attended), and I am not sure I can count on her to tell me if there are any problems...that whole issue of growing up and not talking much to your parents anymore and all. Her conferences started today at 3:30. I had to be back at my building by 5:00 and I have about a 20 minute drive between the two.

I do not intend to offend anyone with the rest of this post. I know that the description that follows is just the way things have always been done. But I honestly believe that if schools want to get parents more involved, they need to seriously look at their conference procedures. When I arrived at the school, I picked up G's report card and went into the cafeteria. Where all the teachers were stationed. All of them. I had to find her teachers (I knew this would be a chore; that's why I made her come too.)

Once I located all G's teachers, I proceeded to wait in lines. I was in that cafeteria for almost an hour. The amount of time that I spoke with teachers: 5 minutes. Maybe. I will not attend parent teacher conferences again. The waiting was not the only thing that wasted my time. Even the 5 minutes of talk was wasted time. Why? Because all the teachers did was tell me her grade (which I could see on the report card) and give me a print-out that detailed how they arrived at their grades. Even the assignment names didn't give me any hints about what she learned.

I don't care much for grades, but if a teacher is going to give one, they ought to be able to tell me what the grade means. In one class, G received an A-. In going over the detailed report, this teacher told me, "Well it's pretty close to an A. There really isn't much she could do better." Then why the A-? is that I wanted to ask. But my real burning questions were: What is she learning? How are you assessing her learning? How are you teaching her to assess herself ? How are you making sure she maintains her curiosity and her desire for learning? What do you REALLY KNOW about my child?

Another teacher, after telling me his concern that she isn't challenged enough told G that if she needed to be challenged more, she should read more, and maybe some more challenging text. Really? I agree that she should look for ways to challenge herself. But if the class text isn't challenging enough, shouldn't there be some differentiation of instruction happening?

But the best comment of the night was from, well, I don't even want to say what subject in case people who know G and who know the teachers at this school read this...so let's just say, from one of her teachers: "I wish I could find something negative to say but I just can't." I hope this teacher has a dry sense of humor that went over my head. I hope this teacher was saying this tongue-in-cheek, but honestly, I couldn't read him well enough to tell. But I know there are some teachers who really do look for the negatives in their students. I'd just always hoped some teachers wouldn't be my kids' teacher.

Student Led Conferences

2011-11-09T13:17:00.000-05:00

Our middle school is looking forward to our 14th annual student led conferences tonight and tomorrow night. We love our student led conferences. And I am so envious of the parents who get to hear their children talk about their learning.

My daughters attend a different district than where I work, and I will be missing my own 6th grader's conferences because I have to be here at work. But I am not even really sorry. Her conferences are conducted with all teachers in the cafeteria and parents have to wait and wait and wait to see each teacher. How I long for them to hold conferences where my child takes ownership in the ability to tell me how she is progressing in her learning.

The staff of our middle school, grades 5 through 8, all take time in the days before conferences to help the students put their binders together. The students practice in their classes what they will say to their parents. They take it all very seriously.

Having the grade 6 intervention class this year, I was so excited to once again watch students prepare for sharing their classwork. We took time this morning to practice what they wanted to share from the intervention class. And some of them decided they wanted to share with the world as well. Below are videos from three students who wanted to practice for conferences and reflect on one piece of learning from our class. It would be awesome for them to see the reach of technology. Please leave them a comment with some feedback!

Tiers of Vocabulary Revisited

2011-11-08T12:40:00.000-05:00

Last week I taught my grade 6 intervention block about the Tiers of Vocabulary. They spent most of last week reading, analyzing, and discussing words. On Friday, I did a quick writing-to-show-understanding to assess where the students are in their understanding of the Tiers. I gave them two options:
1. Write a letter to a parent or one of your other teachers to tell them what you have learned about the Tiers of Vocabulary.
2. Pretend you are a Tier 2 word and write a letter to your Tier 3 friend explaining why you are a harder word.

My reflection on these assignments showed me several things. 1) The two options were not created equally. The second option really was harder to do and the students who tried it were not really able to show understanding of the tiers. 2) Once again, I failed to give the students clear criteria about what I was looking for. (See my fluency post for more about matching criteria to assessment.) 3) If this were my classroom of 10 years ago, I'd have given grades and moved on, though most of the students are not showing me that they understand the tiers on a higher order thinking level. Teaching is so much more rewarding when learning is the motivating factor, not grades.

So I once again went back to the drawing board. I realized I was looking for the students to be able to do three things: to explain the tiers and how to know which words fit which tier, to give example words for each tier, and to explain why it is useful to know the tiers of vocabulary. I read over their assignments and grouped them into three categories:
1. The students who still had some confusion or misconceptions about the tiers themselves.
2. The students who could explain the tiers but who were only picking examples we'd already discussed in class.
3. The students who had good explanations and gave examples, but didn't include why it is useful to catagorize words this way.

Today we created 3 stations to address the three groups. The students in group one started at station one and once they cleared up their explanations, could move on to station two: giving examples, and then to station three: the "why" station. At the end of the class, most of the kids were ready for station 3. I have three students to confer with tomorrow. I am going to give these three the opportunity to explain the tiers orally because the writing part of the assignment was getting overwhelming for them.

And while I had a couple who could give me some reasons why the tiers might be useful, none of them are all the way there yet. And that is due in part to the fact that so far, we've just been categorizing. Next week, we will go back to the Mysteries of Ancient Poop article and start to look at how we use context clues to determine the meanings of words.

The pink highlights are Tier 2 words, the blue are Tier 3. What I want the students to discover is that they will encounter more Tier 2 words in a text and Tier 2 words are much less often defined in context, while Tier 3 words are quite often defined in context. These are the reasons why it is also important for teachers to know the tiers. Content teachers often focus on their Tier 3 words, when it is usually the Tier 2 words that give readers the most trouble in terms of comprehension.

Here are a couple of students sharing their assignments. You can hear that they have a good basic understanding of the tiers. I am hoping over the next week, we can deepen that understanding for the whole class.

Re-assessing how I assess fluency

2011-11-07T12:12:00.000-05:00

I've really been doing a lot of thinking about students becoming the architects of their own learning. I have begun incorporating learning targets and having students do some self-assessment on those targets.

An example of learning targets with stoplighting stickers. The students applied the stickers to indicate how they think they are progressing towards the targets.

What I noticed was that in terms of fluency, my students didn't have a clear picture of the criteria. And this is despite the fact that we use this rubric to talk about fluency:

I decided to put the rubric into a different format to see if I could break the criteria down better. I came up with our USIP Fluency House.

This is our class chart. Each student also has their own copy for their folders.

Our fluency house has four rooms. Today we focused on the speed room because that is mainly what they have been peer-assessing in the partner fluency checks. I broke the wpm down into a chart that let them know if they needed a lot of work, a little work, or if their speed was right on. The star colors signify this and I can tell at a glance how many students need to work on their speed. They put the appropriate color sticker on their personal fluency house as well, so I can see where individuals are just by looking in their folders.

The "speed" room close-up.

Our next task will be to focus on the other rooms in the house. So far, I am the one best able to listening in order to assess using word phrases, intonation, and punctuation. But our plan is to find ways to audio or video tape each other so that the students can listen to themselves and their fluency partners to self- and peer-assess for those areas of fluency.

I am hoping that by breaking down fluency in this way, the students will be better able to create specific fluency goals for themselves and concentrate on their weak area. I also hope that this format will allow the students whose wpm is WAY above 150 to see that they may be reading too quickly and that their ability to use intonation or follow punctuation is being negatively affected by their speed.

Tiers of Vocabulary....with kids!

2011-11-03T18:06:00.002-04:00

Last year I held an inservice for my middle and high school staffs about the Common Core State Standards. In going through the vocabulary standards, we spent some time talking about Elizabeth Beck's tiers of vocabulary. You can read in-depth about the tiers in Beck's book, Bringing Words to Life. In a nutshell (or a graphic organizer) here are the tiers described:

Most of our words fit in tier one. In tier three, the words are very specialized. We tend to encounter them infrequently. Tier two words can show up in any class. They are words we use more often in writing to make our writing "juicy" or more specific. Tier two is general academic language as well; words like analyze, synthesize, defend.

Can you tell from my graphic organizer that I decided to teach kids about the tiers of vocabulary? I began with the graphic organizer. Then I did an activity where I put Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 signs on three different tables (one sign per table.) I put a bunch of words on index cards, handed them out to the kids and telling them to go to it. I let them decide if they wanted to work alone or talk to others. Here's what the activity looked like:

Grade 6 girls debate whether a word should go on the Tier 2 table.

After the students were done placing their word cards, we stood at each table, starting with Tier 1 table. I asked the students to look over the words and make sure they agreed with all of them. Occasionally, they would want to debate one and we would sometimes leave the word, and sometimes move it. The students realized that some words might be able to fit in Tier 1 for one person and be a Tier 2 word for someone else.

The words the students put in Tier 3.

After this activity, we were ready to apply our new knowledge to a piece of reading. I chose an article from Dig magazine called The Mysteries of Ancient Poop. Cuz, seriously, what sixth grader doesn't want to read about poop!? The students really focused on vocabulary, pulling out Tier 3 words like archaeologist and coprolite (the scientific name for ancient poop!) and Tier 2 words like excavate and comparison. Their thinking was deep, their discussions about words were heated but respectful. It was so fun to watch them!

The students have realized the importance of focusing on Tier 2 words. They see that they are often harder to understand because they are often abstract words, while Tier 3 words are often long and hard to pronounce but represent concrete things. So next week, we will take some of their Tier 2 words and start to talk about context clues and what strategies we can use to figure out what these words mean.

It is so amazing to see their interest in words grow. To see them work with joy and excitement to analyze and talk about words. I can't wait to see what they figure out next!

ADDENDUM: Thinking about these vocabulary activities with a lens of formative assessment and triangulation of data (gathering student evidence through conferences, observations, and products) I was cognizant of being aware of the understanding of every student. The sorting activity allowed me to make great observations. I looked for evidence of understanding or confusion in their faces and body language. When I saw a student wavering between Tiers but working alone, I conferred with that student, asking questions like, "What are you thinking about that word?" or "What might be making you lean toward Tier 2?" And during the debrief when we all stood around tables, each student had the opportunity to explain the placement of a word. Their classmates listened and asked questions or made arguments to push their thinking, giving lots of peer feedback. Who needs summative assessments when you can gather all the evidence of success that you need formatively? :)

Reader's Theater!

2011-10-24T14:18:00.001-04:00

Fluency is one area that we work on in our intervention block in 6th grade. Not only do we work on our words per minute, but we also self and peer assess following this rubric:

A fun strategy we like to use for increasing fluency is Reader's Theater. Recently, our daily schedule was all messed up due to state standardized testing. The intervention block didn't meet as many days, so we took some time to do some fun reader's theater plays. We hope you enjoy them!

Phat -n- Famous

2011-10-20T12:32:00.000-04:00

The formative assessment team is entering its third year. You can read previous posts on the team if you are interested or need some schema built for you. :) This year we have three new members and a new team name, and we held our first meeting of the new school year last Friday.

The project itself has a new name: FAME or Formative Assessment for Michigan Educators. All coaches were asked to discuss this article with their teams. My principal asked that I do something around formative assessment for the whole staff for our PD day, so I used the article with my whole staff. This had three benefits. First, it left more time to get to the nitty-gritty in our team meeting. Second, reading and discussing the article ahead of time and with the whole staff gave two of my new members a chance to read and talk about FA before coming to their first meeting. I hope it helped ease a bit any anxiety they were feeling. And third, the whole staff activity also resulted in one more member joining our team.

When the team got together after lunch, our first task was to create our group norms. Two years ago, we created our norms using the Hopes and Fears protocol. Because six of the team are returning members, I didn't want to use the same protocol, but because we have three new members, I knew it was important to follow a protocol to create new group norms that belong to all of us. I used a protocol called Forming Ground Rules from the NSRF website. These are the norms that the group decided on:
     There will be snacks.
     We will follow a short, succinct, flexible agenda.
     We will set long and short term group and individual goals.
     What happens at PHAT stays at PHAT.
     We will all be contributing members.
And our safety word will continue to be SQUASH. (Yes, there is a fun story behind that!)

Our next task was to do some team building by creating a team poster that would include a team name, symbol, and motto. Our new team name is PHAT -n- Famous. This is (obviously, I hope!) an acronym and a play on words. PHAT=Pretty Hot Assessment Team and the Famous incorporates the new name of the project (FAME.) Our motto is Assessing Outside the Box. Here is the poster:

Each star coming out of the box has a team member's name on it.

The next thing I wanted to do was to "prime the pump" of formative assessment by accessing their prior knowledge. Now that we are a couple of years into the process, I know that team members have a lot of knowledge about FA. To bring that out, the team did a chalk talk. A chalk talk is accomplished by each group member writing what they know about the topic in the middle. They may branch off things other members write, but they cannot talk out loud--all talk is in writing. After the Chalk Talk, we reviewed some of the resources from last year and briefly brought up points from the article again.The group then went back to the Chalk Talk and added to it (in red so we could all see what was jogged in their memories after the review.)

Chalk Talk is a formative assessment tool that can allow a teacher to see how much a group knows about a topic before teaching about it. Groups of 4 are about right in a classroom, and if each student has a different colored marker, the teacher quickly gets an idea of where each student is in terms of their knowledge on the topic.

By this time it was getting late in the day, and we all know how functional teacher brains are at 3:00 on a Friday...after a long day of PD! The last thing I asked the team to do was to create individual goals and write them on a ticket out the door with a section where they also were asked to consider ways I could support them in reaching their goals. I will meet with team members about their goals in order to support them before we meet again. The goals also help me see where the group wants to go and so they assist me in planning our next meeting together.

It was a great meeting and I am looking forward, once again, to spending another year with such dedicated and curious teacher/learners.

On Becoming a Better Thinker

2011-10-09T10:04:00.000-04:00

Last week I completed an 8-day professional development series on Cognitive Coaching(SM). Though I have been involved in many professional conferences and workshops that have improved my practice, none will have the far-reaching effects of this. I have learned how to help ~~my colleagues~~ the people in my life mediate their thinking: to be better at planning, to be reflective, and to use their own internal resources to resolve problems in their professional and personal lives. Through this learning, I have been able to be more aware of my own thinking. But that doesn't mean that a cognitive coach doesn't need a coach sometimes.

On the last day of training, our trainer, Carolee Hayes, asked me to have a problem resolving conversation with her. I was excited about the opportunity because, while this was designed as a model coaching conversation as part of our training, I knew the benefit to me as someone with a problem (something I was "stuck" on) would be immeasurable.

I had begun this school year with a professional goal to "develop a backbone." I didn't really have a better way to say it to myself. But I knew that I needed somehow to be more influential in my position. While I feel like I have made some progress towards my goal, I knew it would be hard. I hate confrontation. I avoid situations where there might be any kind of discomfort. And in "getting a backbone" my vision of myself was "getting in the face" of people I felt needed to hear certain messages. I knew I was not going to be very successful at that for several reasons: 1) the aforementioned aversion to confrontation, 2) my lack of any kind of power to force change, and 3) my philosophy that (even if I had the power to demand) I can't force people to change by demanding it.

My problem was that I had been encouraging staff members to attend workshops offered by our ISD on Argumentative Writing. I know this is instruction our students need, but very few teachers are yet registered for the sessions. I tried to presume positive intentions...I know teachers don't like to be out of the classroom. But this is one of the biggest (in my view) changes in curriculum with the new Common Core State Standards.

Through the coaching conversation, I came to the realization that what I really meant by "developing a back bone" was that I had to have the difficult conversations about student success and academic achievement, but I had to have them in an impersonal way. I realized that if I want my staff members to take part in professional development sessions that are going to help change practice that is good for kids, I have to show them why they should do it. I have to create cognitive dissonance without personal confrontation. I need to show them the data that our kids need this instruction and they aren't getting it right now. And I feel capable and empowered to do that because Carolee was able to change my thinking. What I had seen as a third party problem I came to see as MY problem. I was able to think through what I can do to get my desired result. I also came to the realization that if I do all that, and they still choose not to attend the sessions, I have to be OK with that. My cognitive shift was huge.

And now I am excited to help my staff have these same shifts in thinking; to be more efficient planners, to be reflective practitioners, and to find the internal resources to resolve the issues they face.

Building Community Part 2: Giving Students a Voice

2011-08-18T09:53:00.000-04:00

Do you really want to have a learning community in your classroom? Some teachers say that they do, but then the only person who gets any kind of say in the classroom is the teacher. Students aren't going to feel like they are part of a community if their thoughts and ideas don't count for something. And for some of us, as teachers, that means we have to give up a little of our power. We have to trust that our students want to learn; that they want to be active and engaged. Giving them a voice in the classroom is a necessity. Following are some areas where students can rise to the challenge of helping to create the kind of learning environment that will be attractive to all members of the class.

1. Setting norms, rules, guidelines. So many teachers on the first day of school sit or stand in front of their classes and lecture students on the rules they are expected to follow. Instead, why not ask students to help create those norms. One way to do this is to have students individually brainstorm a list of what they need in a classroom to be successful learners. They can pair-share their lists and then as a class, create a master list of what they feel are the necessary conditions. Using these conditions, the teacher can then ask, "If these are the conditions we need to be successful learners, what norms or guidelines could we create and follow to ensure the conditions are met?" Different groups will need differing amounts of support to create these guidelines. Sometimes, they can be very abstract, such as "We will respect each other." That's ok, but what I have found with abstract norms like this, it can be very helpful to create a Sounds Like/Looks Like T-chart. This will produce a concrete list of actions to guide behavior. I always end the process of developing norms by having the students create a "warning" word or phrase; something we can quietly say to one another when we are getting off-track in following our norms. I also wrote about another protocol for creating norms here. This was done with adult learners, but I think would work just as well with children.

These are the norms created by my graduate class this summer.
The chart paper below the norms is their list of conditions
necessary for a successful learning environment.

This is an example Sounds Like/Looks Like T-chart.
My graduate class created this one about what a community
of learners should be. It helped them get to their vision of what
they wanted in their classroom.

2. Setting procedures. Teachers put a lot of thought into the procedures they use in their classroom. That's good. Good planning for transitions, for when and how to sharpen pencils or turn in papers, or for what a student should do after returning from an absence make a classroom function in a smooth and efficient manner. What if we let the students develop these procedures? We might be surprised when their ideas make more sense than our own. And when students have a voice in the way things are run, they are much more likely to remember those procedures!

3. Starting the year without rules. I wish I could remember where I read about a teacher who actually did this. But I did read it in either a blog or a classroom management book. I admit, it would scare me to try it! But in spite of my fear, I can still see the power behind letting students come to the realization that guidelines are necessary in the successful functioning of a class or a school...or a society!

4. Giving students a voice in the curriculum. I am a firm believer in teaching through an integrated curriculum. But teaching this way requires a shift in paradigm that many teachers lack the knowledge of and courage to try. Mandates in certification require us to be "specialists" in an area and quite often at the middle and high school level, teachers see themselves as a teacher of their content rather than a teacher of students. But there are ways to add student voice to the curriculum. One way is add choice. When creating assignments or assessments, give options for students to choose from. Teachers can also give students a voice in driving the curriculum. If you are a science teacher and you are teaching a unit on space, show students the benchmarks you are required to help them meet, tell them about some of the content and then ask them to brainstorm questions they have about the topic. Their questions can become the essential questions that drive the unit.

If you center your units around a concept rather than factual content this becomes even easier. One activity for gleaning curriculum from a concept is to do a List-Group-Label. The pictures below are an example of this process that my graduate class did as they began to plan an integrated curriculum around the concept of Change.

I was the guinea pig for this activity. The students asked me
to make a list about change.

Earlier in the week, my 5th and 8th grade daughters were at
class with me and the students asked them to create a list as well.
This shot shows how our lists compared. The left side is my list,
the right; my daughters. It also shows how a teacher could use the lists from more than one classroom to create a cohesive unit that all students would be taught.

After creating my list, I was asked to group them. The color-
coded circles in the first picture show how I did that. Then I
had to label each group. My labels were: Society, Descriptions Of,
and (I can't remember the third one!) Then I wrote an essential
question for each group. My essential questions were:
Can change ever be positive and non-threatening?
I wonder if the changes happening in society are too negative
and too fast for our species to survive? and
Will scientist ever be able to change the speed of the cycle of life?

Students have a tendency of questioning everything we ask them to do. This is a good thing. And we as teachers should be able to answer their questions in an honest way. I think that the more voice students have in their own education, the less they will ask us "Why?" Because in using their voices, they see and understand the why.

Building Community Part 1: Knowing Your Students

2011-07-14T11:29:00.000-04:00

Everything that happens in a classroom is a direct result of the time and energy that a teacher puts in to build a safe and caring environment. The classroom is a microcosm of the larger school community, and it can mirror that school community or it can be in contrast to it. Teachers who hope to foster a love of learning, productivity, and a sense of caring in their students know that the foundation for this is in the type of community they create in their classroom.

Jeremy Bentham said: "It is vain to talk of the interest of the community, without understanding what is the interest of the individual." A teacher who understands the importance of building that sense of community knows this is true. Students will not feel a sense of worth or importance if the teacher does not know who they are: what are their strengths and weaknesses, their likes and dislikes, their hopes and fears. Following are some activities that can help a teacher get to know his/her students:

1) Million Words Assignment: This assignment involves giving homework to parents, which makes it a winner in the eyes of most students. Parents are asked to write, in a million words or less, all about their child. This activity not only allows teachers to get to know their students, it opens the lines of communication with parents in a positive way. Most parents love nothing more than to talk about their children. For the few instances that this assignment is met with parental resistance, it can be offered to aunts, uncles, grandparents, siblings, or previous teachers.

2) Star Activity: Each student receives a star cut-out. They put their name or a picture of themselves in the center. The teacher can decide on a prompt for each point; for example: # of siblings, favorite genre of book or music, last/first movie seen, favorite color, season, food, etc. After filling out their stars, the students can do Mix-Freeze-Grouping to find commonalities. Another option is to have one student start by reading their points and then one-by-one having students connect to each other's points to create a physical web. This web creation could also be done by pinning the stars to a bulletin board and connecting common points. Language arts teachers have the added benefit of using any information gleaned from the stars to help direct students to books which they might find interesting.

3) Two truths and a lie: In this activity from Spencer Kagan, also called Find the Fib, students think of facts about themselves that their teacher and classmates wouldn't know. On an index card they record 2 facts and then make up something that could be true but is not. Students then share their 3 statements and the class has to guess which is the fib. This activity can also be great for language arts teachers to help students see the stories in their lives for writing. A variation for sharing is to have students turn in the cards and the teacher reads the statements. The class has to first decide to whom the statements belong and then which one is the fib.

4) Whip around: This is a quick activity in which one person (the teacher or a student) gives a prompt (such as: What is the furthest you've been from home?) and then each student in turn quickly gives their answer. It is another activity that can be useful for mining the stories in their lives.

5) Good new, bad news, any news: This activity can be a quick way to have a "morning meeting." Students are encouraged to share something in the way of news in their lives. Because middle school students love to talk and mostly about themselves, teachers who use this activity usually limit it to once a week. A variation is to ask students to respond in the form of a simile or metaphor. For example: My weekend was a whirlwind because we visited family in three cities in two days and my Aunt Lucy got married.

These are just five simple activities to get you started on getting to know your students. Having a full tool box for community building and then using it throughout the year will ensure your classrom community will become and remain one where students feel safe and accepted. Please feel free to share in the comments any tried and true activities you use in your own classroom. And stay tuned for Part 2 in Building Community: Giving Students a Voice.

The Beauty of a Good Read-aloud

2011-05-15T12:01:00.000-04:00

I love to read-aloud to kids. Honestly, it probably goes beyond love...I'm obsessed with it. I adore when I have to cover classes for coaches at the end of the day because it gives me a chance to share a great story with kids. When I find the right read-aloud, I could sit in front of a group of kids and read ALL DAY. So, what a treasure I found in Alan Sitomer's soon-to-be-released book Nerd Girls: Rise of the Dorkasaurus.

My copy of Nerd Girls was given to me by my good friend Linda (@linda704 on twitter-you should follow her. She's even a doctor.) She picked it up for me at the Michigan Reading Conference and had it signed by the author; I positively adore owning books signed by the author. It makes me feel so special. Anyway, soon after I arrived home from the conference, I read Nerd Girls. Oh. My. God. It is so funny. I knew immediately that this was a book I HAD to read aloud. To girls.

Luckily for me, our 6th grade has a split gender reading program. So I went into one of the all-girl classes and asked the teacher if I could use her class. That day, I began reading to the girls. They were enthralled for a couple of reasons. First of all, I showed them that the book was signed by the author. Many of the kids in my middle school have learned to get geeked out by that because I have shared so many of my signed books. Secondly, I explained to them that the book was and ARC, and advanced reader's copy. Once they understood that it didn't mean they had to be "academically gifted" (advanced) to read it, they realized it was pretty awesome that they were getting to experience this book before it ever hit the bookshelves. And thirdly, it is apparent very early on that this book is Funny. That's right, Funny with a capital "F."

It is the characters that make this story. The main character is a cynical, wry outcast. She bands together with two other outcasts to defeat the popular girls (The ThreePees) in the school talent show. It is a great story of friendship, courage, and character. It yields so many different topics to talk about with kids.

After reading the book to the girls, I showed them that many books will have short, often single sentence, reactions from readers and other popular authors. These mini-reviews help people decide if they want to read the book. Because Nerd Girls is not yet out in stores, the girls wrote their own mini-reviews. And because the girls know that I have been sharing their reactions to the book with Alan on twitter, they are pretty excited to know he'll be able to read their reactions here. So without further ado, I give you the girls!

Nerd Girls was awesome; I loved it. The book was funny and sad. Girls can relate their life with this funny spectacular book.                  ~Taylor M.

"Girls will laugh." ~Jade

A great book that tells the true meaning of friendship, something that not everybody really knows. GO NERD GIRLS!!                     ~Taylor J.

Nerd Girls is funny and the drama from the ThreePees keeps lots of readers on the edge.   ~Lauren

I absolutely loved it! I can't wait to hear the others! I love it because I can relate to the Nerd Girls, I'm just glad I got to read something so interesting and funny! I hope people love this book as much as I do! Once I started reading it I couldn't wait for the next chapter to start. Outstanding!   ~Serena

It was a very very good book. It kept me hanging on the edge of my seat. ~Breanna

I thought it was great. I hope to hear more and it was funny and I loved the name Nerd Girls. I loved the talent show. It was so interesting to hear what happened, so detailed and funny--that was the best part.               ~Marissa

The book Nerd Girls is a very cool, funny good book. My favorite is the ending. ~Lauren

Nerd Girls was outstanding and wonderful! You will never want to stop reading it! ~Trisha

Wow! Nerd Girls was so amazing! ~Sadie

Nerd Girls rock. Girls can relate to this funny spectacular book. These girls are true dork-a-sauruses. ~Hannah

Girls will love Nerd Girls! ~Amber

Nerd Girls was really funny. I almost cried at the part....Also is was funny when the ThreePees lost....Nerd Girls put readers on their edge of their chairs because it is so funny.   ~Andria (This entry edited to remove spoilers. :-D)

Nerd Girls was funny and exciting and they have a very fun adventure.   ~Meagan

Nerd Girls is definitely a book I would consider reading again. It's the best book I have read in a long time and I would encourage people to read it because it was a good book and has so much understanding of girls. ~Emily

This book is brilliant. It may be by a guy but it is about girls and it is great. So when Nerd Girls is on the shelf, buy it. This book will keep you on the edge of your seat.    ~Jamie

Nerd Girls was amazing and I absolutely loved how it always left you in suspense from one chapter to the next. ~Morgan

Awesome book. I loved it. It should be a series!              ~Alyssa

Nerd Girls was a really great and inspiring book. I thought it was pretty funny because I've never heard a book where the main character had the same last name as me. My favorite thing about the book is that it shows "Good attitude will get you wherever you want to go." ~Kylie

Nerd Girls was a great book. It inspired me to never ever let anyone put me down and it taught me that it doesn't matter what you look like, it is what's inside that counts.       ~Alexis

A funny, interesting, and disgusting story. ~Jasmine

Nerd Girls is a funny and awesome book and now I want to buy the book. Nerd Girls is the best book every. I like the part where the Nerd Girls get back at the ThreePees.         ~Summer

Nerd Girls was cool. I can't wait for Nerd Girls number 2!    ~Demona

I loved Nerd Girls. I can't wait for the second book to come out. I couldn't wait for Mrs. M to come back and read a chapter every day. It was the best. I want to read it again.           ~Emily

Wonderful, funny, and creative. Urges readers to keep reading. ~Zoey

Aydan had two reviews to share:
Alan Sitomer has outdone himself with Nerd Girls. Once you pick it up, you won't want to put it back down. ~Aydan

Warning: This is a well-executed book with an awesome plot and hilarious characters. It also has dangerously strong powers that suck you in in the most amazing way. Be careful!!      ~Aydan

And Maddie loved it so much she wrote four:
It was funny...hilarious...Nerd Girls rock. With friendship, determination, and a lot of laughs.   ~Maddie

I'm gonna tell my children and grandchildren about this book for ages to come! ~Maddie

Funny. Probably the best book of all with funny characters everywhere.    ~Maddie

Sitomer is a true genius, a mastermind. I can't wait for the rest of the series to come out! ~Maddie

So that is what the girls had to say. And really what can I add to that? Not a whole lot. However, if you need further proof that this was a great book, I have one more piece of evidence. I have read many books and stories aloud to students. Many that they have loved and that have caused them to want to read the book on their own. But one thing that had never happened before DID happen at the end of Nerd Girls. When I finished the last chapter, the last page, the last word, and then closed the book....the girls all began to clap. It was the first time one of my read-alouds garnered an ovation. It was so sweet and awesome that it almost made me cry. Thanks, Alan Sitomer, for a great, great book. For the opportunity to share a wonderful, relevant story with some fantastic girls. And thanks girls for being such great nerdy listeners!

Why I Hope We Never Stop Teaching Kids to At Least READ Cursive

2011-05-08T08:01:00.000-04:00


A wedding present from my Grandma

The story of her wedding day

A book that I am writing to my girls

One of many pages...it's almost full.

I know my daughters can read these, but will my grandchildren be able to? My great-grandchildren? Will precious memories like these be lost one day if, as a society, we give up on cursive?

Reading Month 2011 Recap!

2011-05-02T14:05:00.000-04:00

It was a very busy month of March in my middle school. We celebrated March is Reading Month with an underwater theme. This theme was the top choice in a school-wide theme creation and voting process. Before March arrived, we had a poster contest so that we could begin to spread the word about Reading Month.

The Artists

Second Place Poster

Third Place Poster

First Place Poster


Fourth Place Poster

During Reading Month, we like to come up with activities that will help brighten up the building while stressing the fun and importance of reading. This year we had a Door Decorating Contest. Students in each homeroom decorated their homeroom door. The doors were judged on adherence to theme, creativity, and originality.

Most Creative-a 5th grade Homeroom

First Place-the 7th Grade Entry

Second Place-the Art teacher's door, decorated by 8th graders


Third Place-a 6th Grade Homeroom

The art teacher is always great about having art students create displays in the halls for Reading Month.

Nonfiction reading is highlighted during Reading Month with Information Scavenger Hunts. This year we had one on the topic of water animals and one on the topic of rivers of the world. Informational articles are hung throughout the building and students have to read to find answers to questions. Winners are drawn from all correct entries and the students received books of their choice.

Looking for all this information is making her crazy!

Some 6th grade boys take a break to pose.

Each Monday morning during the month, a passage is read to the entire building over the intercom system. Students have to guess the genre of the passage. They guess by filling out an entry slip which they must have turned in by the end of their lunch time that same day. Correct entries are put into a drawing. Winners get to select a book that they donate to a teacher and a small prize for themselves. These prizes consist of pencils, bookmarks, small notebooks, and such. The Parent Group sponsors this activity and gives us $500 to spend on the books that help to grow classroom libraries.

Students look over their choices to pick a book to donate to a teacher.

"Found one!"

Of course, our goal during Reading Month is to get kids to read. This year we created, with the painting skills of one of our parapros, an underwater mural on the windows in the cafeteria. We ordered some fish die-cuts from the REMC and cut fish in four colors, one color per grade level 5-8. Teachers had students fill out a fish after they finished a book, adding their name and the title of the book. The fish were hung as part of the mural and it was fun to watch our school of readers grow!

The month was capped off with a "water" themed Mock Rock, which was a complete and total blast! Click here to see the videos of Mock Rock, which include some killer teacher dance moves to Ice, Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice!!

Hope you enjoyed the recap of Reading Month. We are always looking for new ideas to incorporate and to build a love of reading in kids. I encourage you to leave a comment and let us know what you do to celebrate Reading Month in your school!

Reading Month Finale: Mock Rock 2011

2011-04-25T17:53:00.000-04:00

For the finale of March is Reading Month, we cap things off with a Mock Rock.

Student groups try-out for a coveted spot and a teacher group or two always provide added enjoyment.

This year, our Reading Month theme, voted on by the student body, was underwater. We used catch lines such as "Dive into Reading" and "Hooked on Books." In the Mock Rock, acts had to have a connection to the Reading Month theme. The Mock Rock director instructed our students that their chosen song or artist had to mention water in some way, shape, or form. This led to a variety of acts; from Umbrella by Rihanna, to Barbara Ann by The Beach Boy, and Water by Brad Paisley. Our Mock Rock was too long to post as one video on You Tube, so enjoy parts one and two!

Text Complexity and the Common Core

2011-03-12T21:51:00.000-05:00

Ever since I attended the roll-out of the Common Core State Standards, I have been intrigued by the topic of text complexity. I have read Appendix A of the Common Core document and I am not surprised by the fact that the complexity of the texts we require of k-12 students has dropped. I could go into several reasons why I think this has happened, but I'll save that for another post.

Over the last two days at the Michigan Reading Association State Conference, I feel that I finally have a firm enough grasp on the complexities of text complexity to begin to share the information with my middle and high school staffs. I see this as being a process in which we formulate answers to three sets of essential questions: 1) Why is text complexity such a big deal? Why should we make sure that students are reading and comprehending more complex texts, both in narrative and expository reading? 2) How do we determine the complexity of text? How do we take into account the themes and ideas of a writing when we determine the level of complexity? and 3) How do we scaffold and instruct our students in ways that ensure they can get to a necessary level of comprehension? How do we formatively assess their progress so that they and we know what needs to come next in their growing abilities of comprehending complex text.

I am excited about the work that we have to do together to examine our expectations for students in our district. I look forward to the conversations about teaching and learning--conversations that, sadly, are too often missing in our day-to-day work. I am also excited about what it means for our students that we are bringing the science and social studies teachers into the conversation through the inclusion of the 6-12 Literacy Standards in Science, Social Studies and Technology in the Common Core.

Thoughts on the Formative Assessment Process

2011-02-15T04:30:00.000-05:00

Is this book too hard for me?

2011-02-11T14:38:00.000-05:00

The first lesson I teach struggling readers who are in literacy groups is how to tell if a book is going to be too hard for them. I use a strategy called the five finger test. I did not create this test, but I have adapted it a bit. Basically, in the five finger test, a student opens a book to a full page somewhere in the middle. They read that page and hold up a finger for every unknown word.

Many resources for the five finger test will tell kids that five fingers up means a book is too hard. I find that with my middle school students, three fingers up is too hard.

I think the reason I had to change the number of fingers is because my students only counted words they couldn't say as unknown words. When I ask them to read out loud to me and there are words they can say but I think they don't know, I will ask them to tell me what the word means.

Quite often these students can't determine a word's meaning from the context. Because so many struggling readers are not metacognitive about their reading, they don't realize when they don't understand a word. I tell my students if they are going to partner read, or follow along with an audio book, they can probably read a four or five finger book. But if they are reading independently, my students choose one, two or three finger books.

What makes a PLC tick?

2011-02-02T09:01:00.000-05:00

For the past two years, I have been coaching a formative assessment team. I've blogged about our work before here and here and here. Today as I was processing the notes from our last meeting, I reflected on what it was that makes working with this group so great. The people are wonderful, but it can't be just that, as the make-up of the team is not the same this year as last. And both years have been successful and fulfilling work. I think there are two really important criteria that have made these groups into true professional learning communities.

One is that participation on the formative assessment team is voluntary. The invitation was extended to the entire staff of approximately 20 teachers. Eight staff members chose to become part of the team. I do not mean to insinuate in any way that the 12 teachers who are not on the team would not be valuable members, or that they have no interest in learning new skills and ideas. There were very legitimate reasons for not volunteering. Coaching responsibilities, child care concerns, and other commitments created situations where people could not give more of their time. Because even though I try very hard to schedule at convenient times, my team is putting in a lot of extra hours to be a part of this group, and they knew that coming in.

The second element that has helped us be so successful is the establishment of norms. I was very intentional in using a protocol that would allow everyone in the group to have a voice in the establishment of our norms. I chose the Fears and Hopes protocol. In this protocol, group members brainstorm what they fear about being a part of the group on one side of a T-chart. On the other side of the T-chart, members brainstorm what they hope to achieve by being a member. After completing the T-chart, the group has a discussion to set norms that will allow their hopes to be realized and their fears to be avoided. Our group's hopes included statements like: 'I hope this work results in increased student achievement' and 'I hope to learn ways to become a better teacher.' We feared things like spending personal time on something that would not lead to significant change and dealing with negativity from other staff members who are not a part of the team.

The final revision of the norms yielded this:

At the beginning of each meeting, the norms are reviewed and discussed. The tent card stays in the middle of the table during meetings and we do use our code word when we stray from the norms, usually by getting off topic. Our code word, Squash, came about from a funny thing that happened at one member's 40th birthday party. Just a word of advice: if you want a funny story to share, bring squash as your dish to pass at a party.

A side note on protocols: there are many sites on the web for protocols. The Fears and Hopes protocol comes from The School Reform Initiative. Another great site, and my personal favorite is the National School Reform Faculty site. The NSRF site organizes protocols in many different ways, making it very easy to find one that will fit whatever need you have. Any of the protocols, while designed for working in Critical Friend Groups (CFGs) and Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), also work well for organizing learning in the classroom.

Nobody else thinks this is wrong?

2011-01-26T19:15:00.000-05:00

Today I was at a meeting at the Intermediate School District. I am part of a group that meets monthly to look at data and make decisions about how the data is presented to schools, what data we want to be in the data base, etc.

Today we were looking at results from a multiple choice common math assessment taken by all 7th and 8th graders in all middle schools in the ISD. One thing we noticed is that some students (a very small number) marked answer choice E, even though each question only had 4 choices (A, B, C, D.)

I thought I was probably asking a stupid question, but I asked it anyway. "Why are we giving them a scan sheet that has five options when they only need four?" Apparently, that is the only scan sheet option. And NOBODY else seemed to have a problem with that. There were comments like, "Well, that is how the MME is, so it is good practice." or "It gives us a chance to teach good test taking strategies."

I don't get it. With all that we can and should be teaching our kids, we have to now spend time on the tricks of taking this one specific test? Because we can't find a scan sheet to match our needs? And nobody else can see how ridiculous that is?

Phonics Games

2011-01-11T15:13:00.002-05:00

Here are some games for students to play online:

Phonics Games

Short Circuit Suffix Game

A variety of suffix games

Suffix definitions game

Match the Suffix and Base Word Game

Take a quiz about suffixes

Bouncing Letters

A bunch of games to try

Ke$ha in the Classroom? Maybe Not, But...

2010-12-18T12:27:00.004-05:00

This morning I was singing in the shower. I do that every morning. Some people say they do their best thinking in the shower, but I think my tuneless-but-joyful singing voice drowns out any thoughts.

Not today! I began with a lusty sing-a-long to Don McLean's American Pie. The next song on the playlist was Ke$ha with Tik Tok. It's probably a bit funny that a 40-year-old woman likes Ke$ha. But, hey, I have two daughters (13 and 10) and I teach middle school. I think it is important to stay current with kids' fads. Liking them as well is a plus!

So as I'm singing along with Ke$ha I find it amusing that there are certain lyrics I won't sing out loud. Even all alone in the shower. Kind of funny. That got me thinking about appropriateness of popular music, and that some people are too uptight about it. It is not thinking that is unique to 2010. People have been lamenting the state of popular music since the first song hit the airwaves. From Elvis's hip thrusts to George Michael wanting our sex, there have been people who want to shelter kids from negative effects of pop music.

I am not one of those people. In March I am taking my daughters to see Lady Gaga in concert. I am pretty geeked about it. I know there are parents who think the concert is not an appropriate place for me to take the girls, though nobody has criticized this decision to my face.

In deciding whether or not to take them to see Lady Gaga, I began to think about all the songs I have loved over the years. Songs that came under scrutiny by censors or parents (not mine thankfully.) Songs like George Michael's I Want Your Sex (which, during my senior year, my best friends and I blared on the car radio every morning before school as we drove to the nearest gas station to buy Robo-Pops, until Def Leppard's Pour Some Sugar on Me took its place) and Salt-N-Pepper's Push It.

These songs did not turn me into a deviant. They were simply the sound track of my life. I can attach a song to almost every memory I have. Many people feel this way, and kids at the middle and high school levels are no different.

I read recently--I wish I could remember where--scathing indictments of universities offering courses such as The History of Rock and Roll. What makes people think these courses can't be challenging and full of learning? Do they think if students are really interested, it can't really teach them anything? Music mirrors society. Why wouldn't students be interested in taking a course that can really teach them history through the lens of one of their biggest loves: music?

And that is one of the problems with education, in a nutshell. Too many people, mostly those on the outside--politicians, critics, some parents--think in order to be a challenge, education has to be drudgery. What our students need is to find relevancy in their education. If music makes history relevant, why wouldn't we offer The History of Rock and Roll? If Katy Perry's Firework can help students understand metaphor, play it loud!

If history and society are mirrored in the popular culture of the time, I say, show the movie clips and play the songs and teach students the higher order thinking skills to analyze what was happening at that time in history and how those events led to what came next. Because something is interesting is a reason to use it in education, not a reason to criticize it as frivolous.

In a past blog post, I shared some songs that could be used in the curriculum. Take a peek and find something you can use after the holidays to help your content area come alive for students: Music as Motivation.

By the way, just to be clear--I do believe that the parent has the ultimate say in what their children listen to. When I use music in the classroom, I am cognizant of that, and I do not use songs that may be offensive. I do like Ke$ha, I don't care if my daughters listen to her, but I wouldn't play most of her songs in a middle school classroom.

Building Tier 2 but on a Foundation of Sand?

2010-12-07T11:53:00.003-05:00

C. S. Lewis once said, "We read to know we are not alone." Unfortunately, our struggling readers in middle school often feel very much alone. They are left on the perimeter of understanding in every class they attend. For many of them, we have turned our focus from learning to read to reading to learn and we've made the switch before they were ready for it.

I moved into the position of middle literacy coach after 10 years of teaching 8th grade language arts. During those 10 years, the administration went back and forth between listing my class as a reading class and a literature class. My focus changed with the name, but even when I was attempting to teach my students to be better readers, I was not doing the best job. I knew they needed help, I tried to give it to them through instruction in reading strategies but I didn't understand nor did I know how to adequately address the lack of fluency that many of them came to me with.

I've learned much in the last six and a half years that I have been a literacy coach, but that fluency piece has still been slow to come for me. After looking at some longitudinal data, it was apparent that our struggling readers are not making the gains necessary to close the gap. Something had to change. And in January, those changes will begin. Intervention groups that are all currently working on comprehension will be restructured to deliver an intervention that suits their needs better. I have set up an intervention using REWARDS authored by Anita Archer to address the 5th and 6th graders who are still struggling with phonics and decoding. Another set of students will be using the Read Naturally program to help increase their oral reading fluency. And the students who are not struggling with phonics or oral reading fluency will continue to get direct instruction in comprehension strategies. But I worry that even these additional interventions are not going to be enough to close the gap.

My district, beginning in the two elementary buildings is using the Response to Intervention (RtI) model. Our two feeder elementary schools each have a literacy coach who is addressing the needs of students in their buildings. But the three of us still feel frustration at building an intervention system on a foundation of sand. In the middle school, I know I am doing what needs to be done for Tier 2 of interventions.

But Tier 1, the classroom, is not strong. In our district, we don't have a set reading curriculum. The basals that exist are old and falling apart. And while I do not think a basal reading set is the way to go, we haven't had any money to buy any books AT ALL in the last three years, not even trade books. Content areas like science and social studies should be supplementing their curriculum with material accessible to struggling readers. But although most text books in science and social studies are up to date, those content areas haven't had money for supplemental books either. And when struggling readers are presented a text book written above the level at which they can read, it is no wonder that they fall behind and feel alone.

So, while I am excited about starting our new programs in January, I am still worried about these struggling readers. They need interventions that begin in the classroom, with teachers who have to walk the tight-rope of meeting every child where they are and moving them forward in the way that is best for them. They also have to do this in a way that does not become drill and kill, as it often does for the strugglers. As we help them to become more literate, we have to try not to create aliterate readers. It is not an easy task we take on.

Practical Homework Tips for Parents

2010-12-05T09:01:00.002-05:00

Last month, I blogged about the purpose of homework. This post was written mainly for teachers to hopefully reflect on their homework-giving practice. This morning, I came across a post on homework tips for parents written by Scott Guditus, a middle school principal in Massachusetts. His blog is a good one. His homework tips for parents make sense. But there are a couple I would add:

1. If your child is legitimately struggling with a homework assignment because he does not understand the concept, do not push him to finish the assignment. It is the teacher's job to teach that concept and it does no good to try and practice a concept the child does not understand.

2. If the homework seems like pointless busy work, don't be afraid to respectfully ask the teacher for a rationale for the assignment. Assignments like spelling packets, time-consuming workbook pages of drill and kill practice skills, and copying words and definitions from a book have little research to back up their effectiveness. And if the teacher mentions teaching responsibility, pass along the name Alfie Kohn for their reading pleasure or let them know that the chores you assign at home do a good job of teaching responsibility. Here's a great resource to share.

3. If the homework is turning your kids off learning, respectfully ask the teacher for other options. If taking low-level comprehension based computer tests over books or building dioramas is making reading a chore rather than a joy for your child, take a stand against them.

Parents and teachers must be partners in a child's learning. In order for this partnership to be valuable and valid, parents shouldn't be afraid to have open, honest, respectful dialog with teachers about the homework being assigned.

To Catch a Cold

2010-12-03T10:39:00.002-05:00

"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them."
— Ray Bradbury

It is the goal of reading teachers to foster a love of reading. They employ many strategies to try and win young hearts over to the beauty of undiscovered lands, unrequited loves, and adventures that are daring and sometimes deadly. For some students, this one teacher holds the entire world and she does it with zeal and enthusiasm. But is it enough.

"When you sell a man a book you don't sell just twelve ounces of paper and the ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night - there's all heaven and earth in a good book."
—Christopher Morley

Alliteracy is a concern in today's world. Parents who choose not to read risk raising children who also choose not to. But non-reading parents are not the only concern. The one place where students should be surrounded by reading role-models, school, they often are not. Surveys conducted of teachers show that they do not read any more often that adults in the general population. What can be done?

"Reading early in life gives a youngster a multitude of 'friends' to guide intellectual and emotional growth."
— Carroll D. Gray

Can the reading teacher alone turn every student into a person who finds the joy of reading? They try! They band together. They share their reading lists. They make recommendations to help each other when they have a student who doesn't seem interested in anything. They book talk, they display books, and they read, read, read. But would more kids be bitten by the reading bug if all teachers shared a love of reading with students? If the science teacher shared science fiction titles. If the social studies teacher book-talked historical fiction. If all classes made time in the day to show that reading is a priority, how much of a difference would it make?

You can't catch a cold or the love of reading from someone who has neither. -Jim Trelease

I do not want to go to work today...

2010-11-29T09:32:00.002-05:00

I would make an excellent couch potato. I could be the queen of all couch potatoes. And as a wanna-be-queen-couch-potato, I was blissfully happy with five days off from school over the Thanksgiving break. Last night, as I spent the last few precious couch moments and bemoaned the fact that I would have to get up early and go back to work, I was browsing the topics in my RSS reader. Stephanie Perkins had a new post.

Stephanie is a YA author and her posts are great to read when you are lounging on the couch. She is witty and fun and she includes a lot of pictures of really cute guys. I really needed her post last night. Stephanie was lamenting the struggles she was having with one of her writing projects. She had spent a "couch day" but was ready to get back at her writing because, as she says in her post, "I do not want to write. But I do want to be a writer."

That was the kick I needed to change my attitude about getting off the couch. I did not want to get out of bed this morning. But I do want to be a teacher. So, here I am back at school. Bring on the learning!

The Power of Integrated Curriculum

2010-11-22T10:48:00.003-05:00

Today has been declared a Day of National Blogging for Real Education Reform. There is no way I can be as eloquent as many of the bloggers in the educational community will be today. I still have a hard time wrapping my head around the bigger picture of education reform. Merit pay, firing teachers, getting rid of unions. I admit that some of it frightens me. Ok, maybe a lot of it frightens me. We are talking about some pretty major changes coming at a time when, financially for many schools, things can't seem to get much worse.

In thinking about how I could contribute to this conversation, my mind kept returning to the theory of integrated curriculum. The world inside our middle and high schools is so subject oriented and fragmented that it should be no surprise that we are "losing" students at an enormous rate. We are losing them literally as many choose to drop out, and we are losing them figuratively as they become more and more disenchanted with school and education.

Integrating the curriculum in order to make apparent the connections between all facets of life and the world could go a long way to bring the enchantment back to education. We need to get away from teaching Biology for 45 minutes, then sending our students off to 45 minutes of History, then 45 minutes of math, etc. By centering the curriculum around essential questions and the bigger concepts that transcend subject areas, we bring meaning back to the curriculum. And by letting students ask the essential questions that drive the curriculum, we bring relevance and authenticity back into learning. For students, we bring back the joy of discovering that so many of them lost after elementary school. The National Middle School Association has addressed the value of curriculum integration in this Positon Statement.

The theories of curriculum integration have been around a long time. But it was in 1993 when James Beane wrote his book A Middle School Curriculum: From Rhetoric to Realilty, that the conversations began in earnest for middle level educators. Beane describes curriculum integration in a 1995 article from Phi Delta Kappa this way:

Curriculum integration is not simply an organizational device
requiring cosmetic changes or realignments in lesson plans across
various subject areas. Rather, it is a way of thinking about what
schools are for, about the sources of curriculum, and about the uses
of knowledge. Curriculum integration begins with the idea that the
sources of curriculum ought to be problems, issues, concerns posed
by life itself. (p.616)

But some of the structures put in place during the middle school movement actually keep us from the goal of curriculum integration. When teachers are teamed in order to have common planning time, students are attending their "specials" classes of art, music, and PE. In a truly integrated curriculum, these "specials" are part of the core.

And even teachers in teams still tend to think of themselves in terms of the subject they teach. While teams of teachers may do innovative things like interdisciplinary units to help make more concrete the connections between subjects, these units are often add-ons. Some teachers even feel resentful when they have to take time away from their curriculum to "do interdisciplinary units." These teachers cannot be faulted for their feelings of fear and resentment. Our culture of standardized testing has made them feel that the curriculum, the standards, benchmarks, and grade level content expectations for their subject are of the greatest importance. And the fear of repercussions if students don't achieve to those standards has led many teachers to teach in a very regimented way.

The fact that teachers see themselves as subject area experts is partially a result of teacher training. Therefore, teacher training and certification is another roadblock to integration. When teachers have to be certified, tested and proven highly qualified in a subject area, we severely limit their ability to attempt curriculum integration. As a teacher who is certified to teach language arts, I can easily integrate other subject areas into a class, but I still have to send students off to do their time in those other subject areas. Although I am perfectly capable of leading my students to answering their questions and helping them find the resources they need when I don't have all the answers, the state says that because I haven't passed a teacher certification test in social studies, science, or math, I am not qualified.

Organizing the curriculum around essential questions and larger concepts is something many teachers have no practice with. Even elementary teachers, who tend to teach with themes, may find that their units are a lot of flash with little substance. Organizing units around dinosaurs, apples, Western Expansion, etc., limits the depth that we can help students achieve in their thinking and learning. Carol Ann Tomlinson addressed this in a November 1998 article in the Middle School Journal; For Integration and Differentiation Choose Concepts over Topics.

For the past 4 years, as an adjunct instructor, I have been teaching a graduate level course on middle level curriculum. The final assessment in the class is to be able to create integrated curriculum. My university mentor has always wanted me to require that the teachers in the class work in teams to create an integrated unit. While I admire her immensely, I have been moving away from that requirement in the last couple of years. As school budgets dwindle, middle schools that operate on the middle school model tend to be first on the chopping block. It takes extra staff to provide common planning time for teachers. Because so many of my grad students no longer work in team-teaching environments, it has become increasingly important to me that they learn how to look differently at their subject area. That they help students ask the important questions, develop curriculum around those questions. That they show their students the integrated nature of learning in order to re-awaken their desire for learning. It is important that they be able to work on their individual subject area to find ways to make the concepts of that subject integrated and show their students how the knowledge gained in their class can help them develop deeper understandings of our world.

Resources recommended and/or mentioned in this post:
Beane, James A. (1993.) A Middle School Curriculum: From Rhetoric to Reality. Columbus, OH: National Middle School Association.

Nesin, G. & Lounsbury, J. (1999.) Curriculum Integration, Twenty Questions--with Answers. Atlanta, GA: Georgia Middle School Association.

Tomlinson, Carol Ann. (1998) For Integration and Differentiation Choose Concepts over Topics. Middle School Journal, 30(2), 3-8.

The Purpose of Homework

2010-11-19T10:53:00.004-05:00

Recently, a member of my PLN, Russ Goerend, sent out this tweet:
Would you do the homework you're assigning?

It is really quite a profound question. I have found myself thinking about it off and on since he tweeted it. It is a question I have often wanted to ask the teachers with whom I work as well as my daughters' teachers. Not because I question the homework they give (though in all honesty, I often do), but because I want them to question the homework they give.

The homework debate can get very heated and I am not writing to add flames to the fire. I don't see homework as inherently evil, but I have seen some pretty evil assignments. I think Cathy Vatterott, in her book Rethinking Homework, gives teachers many angles to think about in assigning homework.

One consideration she highlights is the purpose of homework. She delineates 4 main purposes. The first is prelearning. I like to think of this as building background knowledge. Homework for this purpose may be as simple as these directions: Tonight for homework, find two people who can tell you something about the Civil War. In class the next day, what the students share can be the beginnings of a group KWL chart. When using homework for this purpose it should not be graded. Hopefully, homework assigned for prelearning would involve tasks that are motivating to students and get them thinking about the specified topic. If that is the goal, there is no reason to give a grade.

The second purpose for homework is checking for understanding. I'd like to think that was the purpose for my daughter's math homework last night. What her teacher would have found out was that she had very little understanding. However, knowing that probably wasn't the purpose and that she would end up getting a grade for an assignment she didn't know how to do, my husband spent 30 minutes figuring out how to do the math so that he could teach her what to do. This was after I spent 15 minutes trying to figure out how to do it. I think my husband should get part of that teacher's salary for doing the job of teaching that concept. (By the way, the concept was: stupid-slope-y-intercept-graph-crap. At least that was the way I texted it to my husband to get him out of the deer blind!) When using homework for this purpose, it should not be graded. A teacher can tell by checking the homework if there was understanding. If there wasn't, it becomes the teacher's job to determine what needs to happen next in their teaching to get to that understanding.

Practice is the third purpose. I think this is what the math teacher intended last night's homework to be. But a student can't practice something they are not close to mastering. It only builds resentment and confusion for the student--and sometimes the parent! When using homework for this purpose, it should not be graded. When a basketball coach instructs her players to practice free-throws at home, the players don't earn points for the ones they make. The points only count in the game. Homework for the purpose of practice is like free-throws.

The fourth purpose for giving homework is for processing. Getting students to think more about the learning that took place can extend their understanding. Processing might take the form of a learning log post reflecting on what was hard and what was easy in that day's lesson. This is information that a teacher could then use to determine where instruction needs to go next. When using homework for this purpose, it should not be graded. The information that a teacher gets from student processing is invaluable to further planning of instruction, but should not translate into a score.

You should have noticed that Vatterott does not believe in grading homework. For any reason. So don't even try the "teaching responsibility" argument. Here is what she says about the flaw in the concept of homework teaching responsibility:
The flaw in this concept lies in the implementation--when students don't complete
homework on time, late policies punish them for not learning responsibility! So if
don't complete homework on time, doesn't that mean that the teacher has failed
to teach them responsibility? If that is true, the logical act would be to reteach
them without penalty. Instead, the use of late policies judges students for not
learning responsibility and then fails them as a result. (p.89)

The next time you give homework, think about your purpose. Consider what you will do with the information you get from it. And ask yourself, Would you do the homework you're assigning?

Vatterott, C. (2009). Rethinking Homework. Best practices that support diverse needs. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Starbucks and Writing

2010-11-09T13:37:00.003-05:00

When the latest issue of Time magazine appears in my mailbox, I immediately turn to the last page and read the last column. I find that quite often, Joel Stein's or Nancy Gibbs' essays are ones that often resonate with me and would also be accessible by 7th or 8th grade students. And sometimes even with 5th and 6th graders. When Joel wrote recently about his personal experience with bed bugs in a hotel, I could pair his essay with the Time For Kids article about bed bugs to give literacy students a reading experience that was first at their reading level and that then moves them to text that is more complex. In this way, I can push their comprehension to higher levels.

What a neat surprise I had today, when I got the November 15 issue of Time and in turning to the last page, I found this advertisement for Starbucks coffee on the back:

The first thing I thought was, "I need to get me some of this coffee!" And then realizing the article's effect on me, I thought, "Self, how could this be used with students?" And oh-so-many ideas began to hit me. Aside from the obvious that it can be analyzed critically, like any advertisement, for the appeal that the author is using to entice customers, this one sentence is a great piece of writing.

A writing teacher could use it in a mini-lesson on using juicy words in writing. It could be used for a mini-lesson on personification. It would also be fun for students to think of a product and see if they could write one sentence about it that would make someone want to buy it. It could even be made multi-disciplinary by having students design their own ads for their product, thinking about graphics, size and placement of design elements and font style and size.

Autonomy-or the lack thereof....and then some humor

2010-11-06T07:57:00.003-04:00

I seem to have had several things to complain about recently. Complaint is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as you try to also offer suggestions to help remedy the problems about which you complain. Yesterday, I had to opportunity to speak to the principal of my daughter's middle school. He said some things about the 8th grade situation that give me hope for the way it is being handled.

I also emailed my younger daughter's teacher and linked him to information that explain my stance on the reward/punishment system. The link led him to my blog and my last post, which I think insulted him. That would never have been my intention, as there are MANY teachers in the district who are wonderful, caring, challenging teachers. He is among them. One thing he said, though, in his email was that the PRIDE program was the decision of the administrators. That bothers me. I have always felt that the great teachers in this school system are not afforded enough autonomy, and that was what I meant when I said in the last post that I chose not to look for a job here because my values didn't match the schools. Even when I attended high school here myself, I felt the teachers were not treated like competent, intelligent professionals. I need to work in a place that I feel a part of because my expertise is understood and appreciated. His statement explained a lot too. If the teachers are not given more than a token voice in what happens in a district, how can they be expected to understand how to help students have a voice? At this point I am just going to keep my mouth closed for a while. I have made my feelings known, but I think I need to learn when I've said enough.

In honor of staying on the positive side, here's a fun middle school story I have to share. The other day, I was coming out of the copy room in the office. Right outside the copy room door there is a phone on the wall of the main office. As I walked out, I saw one of our POHI students (not sure if that label is still the one in use.) Asa (not his real name) is short and squat, with Coke-bottle glasses and a smile that warms your heart. He was looking at the phone like it was a new invention, holding the receiver off to the side in his left hand. I asked him if he needed help and showed him how to choose an outside line to make his call. I watched him painstakingly dial the 11 digits, but still hold the receiver off to the side as he rechecked the number in the display. I assured him he had dialed fine and that he needed to put the phone to his ear, but he continued to stare at the display. I took the receiver from him and heard a voice saying, "Hello?"

"Hi, this is the school. Asa needs something, here he is," I said into the phone and then handed it back to Asa, telling him to go ahead and tell his mom what he needed.

Asa took the phone, said "Hello? Hello?" looked up at me and said, "I can't hear anything." So I took the phone again.

Speaking into it, I checked to make sure someone was still there and that the reception was ok. I had the brief thought that perhaps Asa had called a cell phone and had lost the connection, but mom was still saying hello, plain as day. I asked her to hang on just a second, then looked at Asa and said, "Asa, why did you call mom? What do you need?" His answer made me laugh out loud so that I was barely able to relay the message to his mom. He said...........................................

"I need a battery for my hearing aid."!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Making 8th grade a police state is not the answer.

2010-11-04T08:26:00.002-04:00

Remember the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld? He held the ultimate power over whether Jerry and friends received soup or not. When the show's characters entered the store, you could see their change in demeanor. They lived in fear of being yelled at and denied soup. It is unfortunate that I find myself making a connection between the Soup Nazi and some of the 8th grade teachers at my daughter's school. She has coined them "The Gum Nazis."

Right now, there are several things rotten in the state of Denmark that is my daughter's middle school. I am so frustrated at how the values of the school seem to be the polar opposite of the values I hold as a parent and as a middle school educator. (As an aside--people used to ask me why I never went for a job in the district in which I live. I think I always knew that I couldn't be happy working there specifically because some of the policies and practices are in direct conflict with my beliefs. I never fully realized that was why until I my own children became school age.)

My daughter is a responsible young woman. I also realize that she is a child. She will make mistakes. She will get in trouble. But for the most part, I find that her reflections on what is happening in her school, while tinted by the lens of adolescence, are usually pretty accurate. Two days ago, the principal, explaining to the entire class just how terrible their behavior is, enacted new rules that make an analogy to a prison state pretty accurate. As data to support his plan was the fact that the 8th grade has the largest number of PRIDE slips--more than the other three grade levels combined. PRIDE slips = discipline referrals. I have a hard time keeping them separate in my mind from PRIDE tickets, which are given randomly for "doing good things." I'll just let you read what Joe Bower has to say about these reward systems; he says it much more eloquently than I could.

So, they have a lot of PRIDE slips as a group. My daughter has had zero. Most of her friends-zero. But some of the teachers are seeing this new list of "rules" as vindication and revenge. ("Rules"? I call them punishments-see what Joe Bower has to say about that as well. He is one smart guy.) It seems that one rule being broken quite often is No Gum Chewing. And a couple of teachers are on the war path to catch the gum chewers. They have decided that chewing gum will earn a PRIDE slip. After 4 PRIDE slips, students "earn" a suspension. I don't know. I would be embarrassed as a teacher or administrator to explain to a parent that their child was suspended from school for gum chewing.

I can understand the frustration of a whole group of students that is overwhelming naughty. We've had that group move through my own school system. They were trying. They were aggravating. But we always tried very hard to remember it was the behavior of a few that made the whole group seem "bad." And we tried to remember that there was some reason behind why each student who was acting out made the choice to do so. It was our job to try to help them understand what those reasons were and to help them learn to make better choices. My daughter's teachers don't seem to understand this. My daughter described one of her teachers as being "cocky" when she enforces the "new rules." And that is just not necessary. In fact, my daughter said, "Geez, we get it. They have all the power. We have to do whatever they say. She doesn't have to like it so much." The sad fact is that when the teachers take this attitude, they are alienating themselves from the "good" students who at one point wanted to make them happy and proud. The "good" kids are so fed up with being in trouble and they aren't taking it out on the "bad" kids causing the trouble, which I think is something adults often hope will happen. Instead, they are losing respect for the authority figures who are abusing their power. Kids shouldn't be given the task of monitoring or trying to change the behavior of another kid, especially through manipulative ways like group punishments.

Any teacher's #1 strategy in having an efficient, learning classroom should be creating caring and respectful relationships with students. My daughter no longer feels like she has a respectful relationship with several of her teachers. Turning 8th grade into a police state is not the answer. This school needs to take a careful look at their beliefs about teaching, learning, and basic nature of people. If their behaviors are supported by their beliefs, I have to seriously ask myself if this is the school in which my child belongs. I would much rather my children learn in a school that spends time reflecting on the best way to teach each child to reach higher levels of critical thinking, life-long learning, and ethical behavior and not on devising punishment and reward systems that do things to kids rather than work with them.

What is Important About the Common Core State Standards?

2010-10-29T10:59:00.002-04:00

Lately, I've been pretty immersed in the Common Core State Standards. I'm trying read up on the research about why and how they were developed. I am thinking about the best way my district can begin to have conversations about them. In listening to others talk about what their districts are doing, I keep hearing, "We just have to get the Standards into the teachers' hands."

I don't know, maybe I am being too cynical, but I have this vision of me handing teachers a binder with the Standards and teachers sliding the binder onto a shelf. I do not mean to say that my teachers don't care about teaching and learning. I am part of a staff that is very caring and committed to student learning. I know they are going to think, "This is just another passing fancy. In a year or two, I can empty the binder and have another empty binder for my collection." Teachers are just busy! If I put the standards into their hands, I think I also need to give them the time and opportunity to talk about them, to dissect them and discuss them. Unfortunately, I am not the one that has the power to do that.

Last Monday, I went to a conference led by the Michigan Department of Education. The purpose of the conference was to give information about the standards and about the assessment that is supposed to be ready to replace the MEAP by 2014. I appreciate that the state put it together. I got some good information and some teaching ideas from the break-out sessions. But the general session that attempted to address the new Common Core test really bothered me. (It bothered me first of all because it was "a suit" reading a power point to me.) I know schools are going to be worried about the new test--what it will look like, who will score it, where will the cut scores be set (this one, I think, could cause some real issues for Michigan. MEAP cut scores in math have been set as low as 32% in the past!)

I think the focus of adopting the Common Core State Standards should be the teaching and learning associated with them. How do we engage in best practices to ensure that our students are learning to be critical readers and thinkers? How do we engage in conversations to make sure that we implement the Standards in a way appropriate for our community, school, and students? The focus should always be our students. But one of the state people, in regard to what was of primary importance in adopting the standards and getting ready for the change in assessment, actually said (and this is when I really started getting hot under the collar):

We don't want to endanger how we prepare for tests.

Seriously? That was the important piece of information I was supposed to take away from the day? The content specialists were saying that the standards aim for teaching the "capacities" of English language arts and "mathematical practices" in mathematics. That sounds like a step in the right direction. But the people at the top are worried about "endangering how we prepare for tests." Nice.

And the consortium that is charged with developing the new assessment asked for $350million to develop the test. They were awarded $160million. No money has been earmarked for administering or scoring. Of course not. Why would the state or federal government ever issue a mandate to schools AND then actually fund it? But we shouldn't worry about that. We just need to remember not to endanger how we prepare for tests. Oh-and one more thing-that the goal of the new standards and the new common assessment is to improve teaching. Because that has worked well for us so far.

Who wants to develop the scale that improves weight loss for me?

Me as a Reader

2010-10-28T17:45:00.000-04:00

Franki, Kevin, and Linda all recently blogged about things that define them as readers. Aren't they great lists? They inspired me to create my own.

1. The first book I remember reading on my own was Bears in the Night.
2. I think that book fueled my love of horror novels!
3. I read aloud a book in my first grade class. It was a Tweety and Sylvester book and I remember my teacher marveling over my Tweety voice: "I tawt I taw a putty-tat. I did! I did taw a putty-tat!"
4. I read The Hobbit in 4th grade.
5. I also read A Wrinkle in Time in 4th grade and Madeleine L'Engle became my favorite author.
6. In 7th grade we had to write 7 book reports per marking period. I was in heaven!
7. I was an Anne McCaffrey fanatic in 7th grade.
8. I cannot remember a single book that I had to read in high school.
9. I have never read Shakespeare and I have no desire to do so now.
10. I used to read to my daughters every night. I still read to them, but not as often. (They are 13 and 10 now.)
11. When I read to Genevieve as part of her bedtime ritual, I was the one who fell asleep!
12. G and I cried together when we read about Matthew Cuthbert death.
13. I have read almost everything by Stephen King. But not the Dark Tower books.
14. The Stand is my all time favorite book. It is another book I read in 4th grade!
15. Every year for Christmas I got one boxed set of books. It was my favorite gift to open.
16. When I think one genre is my favorite, I remember all the great books of another genre!
17. I wish I were a published author.
18. I love to read aloud in classrooms.
19. Today I read "Are We There Yet?" a short story from the book Just Annoying. The kids LOVED it!!
20. I remember racing Mike Bachman (not sure what grade it was) to see who could finish the SRA kit first.
21. I loved those SRA kits as a kid.
22. I hate those SRA kits as a teacher!
23. On long car trips, I read aloud to the family. I think my husband likes it more than the girls.
24. I partner-read Red Dog with a 5th grade boy. After it made me cry, he was determined to find another book for us to read together that would make me cry.
25. I don't think I have read a single Patricia Polacco book that did not make me cry.
26. I saw Patricia at last year's Michigan Reading Association conference...and she had THE keeping quilt with her!
27. My personal picture book library has over 800 books.
28. I love meeting authors.
29. I love getting my books autographed.
30. I love sharing autographed books with kids, who then see them as treasure like I do!
31. I was beyond geeked when I book I bought in a whole box of picture books was autographed by Patricia Polacco.
32. I think it is so uber-cool that I can follow and TALK TO some of my favorite authors on Twitter!!! (I'm @mom2preteens if you'd like to follow me!)
33. I fell in love with the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature in high school.
34. In college I used the Reader's Guide like a treasure hunt to learn about things I didn't even know I wanted to know about.
35. I find it harder to read longer nonfiction text since I've been online.
36. I love science fiction--especially Heinlein and Asimov. But also Orson Scott Card and Ray Bradbury.
37. Two of my favorite books, The Doomsday Book and Outlander, are an incredible mesh of science fiction and historical fiction.
38. Goth Girl Rising was the first book that ever made me want to write to the author. And I did. Here. (And he read it, because I follow him on twitter! :D)
39. I am addicted to Scholastic book orders and I often will not let myself go into a book store if I know I can't buy anything.
40. I get disappointed when books I've really loved get made into movies. The biggest disappointment was probably The Tale of Despereaux.

I think I will stop at 40. Maybe I will come back and add more at another time. If you decide to blog about yourself as a reader, link back to me!!

6 Word Memoirs from 5th Grade

2010-10-23T12:32:00.000-04:00

October 20 was the National Day on Writing. To celebrate, I spent some time with a 5th grade classroom, writing 6 Word Memoirs. They would love to share their work with you!

Is it cyber-bullying

2010-10-22T09:51:00.002-04:00

Being a mom to a young adolescent is so much different than just being a teacher of young adolescents. And the world of our preteens and teens is so much different now than even 17 years ago, when I first set foot in my 8th grade classroom. We have so many things to worry about as parents. And technology can add to those worries. Thankfully, it can also be an outlet for finding people who can help with answers and advice. That is what I need today!

My 13 year old daughter is on facebook. She handles herself well and she understands (mostly) how to stay safe, how to develop her digital footprint. I like to think that I am right there beside her to guide her. I am her friend on facebook and I do monitor what she says and what others say on her wall. I do not get into her account, as she has given me no reason to think she is hiding anything or doing anything inappropriate. In fact, the issues she is facing right now, she is being very up front with me about. I guess I just need some reassurance that I have handled things correctly and maybe some suggestions on what more I might need to do.

The issue is that there are a couple of high school girls who are posting very catty posts to her wall and commenting snarkily on her status updates. There is nothing overtly threatening to the posts, but I can tell that it causes my daughter anxiety. I recommended that she "unfriend" them. Really, why do you want to invite people into your life who make you feel that way? She did take my advice, but reluctantly. She seems to think these girls will view her as weak if she unfriends them, or that they will think they have the upper hand. I think at this point she needs to ignore them. She is already worrying about next year when she will be in the high school with them!

So at this point, do I ignore them as well, or do I let someone know about the behavior of these girls? And if so, who? I know my daughter is worried, and it is a worry that I share, that if I do say something to the school or to the parents, the backlash from the girls will be worse than what she is currently experiencing.

When these perplexing problems show up, I really miss those sweet little toddler days, when the biggest struggle in her life was avoiding naptime!

First Meeting continued....

2010-10-18T14:09:00.006-04:00

If you haven't already, read about the first half of this meeting here...

The second team member to share was the art teacher. After reading the William's article, she realized she wanted to work on giving students wait time after she asked questions. That became a focus for her in the first month and a half of school. It became apparent during the meeting that she does like to jump in when people are speaking and to finish sentences. It really did help our rapport grow that we could tease her when this happened and help her to self-monitor her behavior. In addition, she wanted to decrease the number of times she had to give instructions in her class. To do this, she utilized the tool of Thumbs-Up, asking students to show her non-verbally whether they understood directions or not. This tool helps students to become metacognitive and to think and decide if they really do understand. We talked as a team about building the kind of classroom community that makes it OK for students to be honest when they are confused or behind, so that they aren't giving the "thumbs-up" even when they don't understand something.

Next to share was the 8th grade language arts teacher. She was sharing her new Independent Reading requirement with the group and how she was trying to monitor that with Reading Logs, which were the tools she was sharing. I had had a planning conversation with her the week before about this new part of her classroom requirements, and I could see how her thoughts had progressed since our conversation last week, and also her misunderstandings about how formative assessment might fit into the independent reading requirement. In explaining her reading logs, she talked about how much time her students were required to read. Some probing questions led her to the understanding the giving students a reading log and a goal was not requiring the students to set goals, which is the formative assessment strategy she thought she was accomplishing. It was serendipitous that over the weekend I found a great blog post in which a reading teacher wrote about her students using reading logs to do some self-assessment and for conferencing between the student and teacher. I passed this reading along to my teacher and will check in with her later in the week to see what she thought.

The last presenter for our first meeting was a 5th grade teacher. This teacher was part of the team last year and in a classroom, she would be the perfectionist. :) The tools she shared, I think, really gave the rest of the group a clear picture of how to plan for using formative assessment tools and for using the data that the tools provide. She shared some learning targets she had written for her fifth graders in their science class. The learning targets had been revisited by the students after each classroom activity and once more after the summative assessment. Students were self-assessing their knowledge and understanding of the learning targets. The team was able to suggest to this teacher that she somehow have the students code each time they re-assess the targets, better tracking the flow of their understanding. It is the mark of a good team that even though it was apparent this teacher has a deeper understanding of formative assessment, they still felt comfortable giving her suggestions for improvement, and she was thankful to hear them. This 5th grade teacher teaches ELA as well. She also shared a method of providing feedback to students using twiducate. Twiducate is a social net-working site that is private in the classroom. It has a format similar to facebook. The teacher posted a prompt for students to write about dealing with the book she is reading aloud to them. After their posts, she went back and left feedback comments for them and the students made changes to their posts to reflect what they had learned from the feedback left to them. Several other teachers were eager to learn more about using twiducate for similar lessons.

The last part of the protocol for sharing formative assessment tools asks presenter to reflect on how the data from the tool caused them to adjust their instruction. As a group we kept struggling with this reflection. We realized a couple of times that instruction wasn't adjusted because the tool really wasn't used formatively. In those instances, we all brainstormed ideas for pushing those tools to be formative. Other times, we were just confused about how that adjustment of instruction was supposed to happen.

But then we moved on to our new learning. We looked at chapter three in our formative assessment learning guide. This chapter is about the triangulation of data in order to get a valid picture of what students know and can do. This chapter gave us an "A-HA moment" when we read this:
"The purpose of developing and using assessments and gathering student evidence within The Formative Assessment Process is three-fold. It allows (1) you to know where students are in relation to the learning targets, (2) students to see what they know and need to work on, and (3) you and your students to use this information to make decisions about where to go next with the learning."
And then I knew the problem. When I created the protocol, I was making formative assessment about the teacher only. And it isn't! The huge power of formative assessment comes in the way that it puts the ownership for learning back into the hands of the students. It gives them choice and power. It takes the veil of secrecy off our teaching, letting students in on the "why" of learning. The team discussed how we could revise the protocol to reflect our new understanding.

In addition to the above new learning, the chapter outlines the three types of formative assessment: products, conferences, and observations. I asked the team members to think about their own practice and share where they felt their strengths and weaknesses in using these three types of assessments. After some discussion, I asked the team to start being intentional and trying to use all three types with at least one class. This was their homework.

I had planned to spend a bit more time on the learning portion of the meeting, but the time got away from us and I did not want to hold them any longer on a Friday afternoon. But honestly, I could have. When I said it was 4:30, so we would wrap it up, they were all surprised. How refreshing to still feel ready to share and learn more on a Friday afternoon after a full day of professional development!

The last thing I asked the team to do was to fill out a Ticket Out the Door. The first question was asking them to reflect on the tool they presented (or were going to present) and explain which type of assessment it was. In this way, I was tying what they had done to the new learning they accomplished from Chapter 3 in the learning guide. The second question was asking them to reflect on which tool from today's presentations they could envision working in their own classroom. With this question, I was hoping to build their efficacy as well as have them reflect on their craftsmanship. In the coming weeks, I can check in with them about what they indicated they wanted to try and see how it is working for them.

I have such positive feelings for the year ahead!!

First Formative Assessment Team Meeting

2010-10-18T13:25:00.002-04:00

This is the second year that my school district has been involved in The Formative Assessment Process, an initiative by the Michigan Department of Education and Measured Progress. My team last year consisted of three high school and three middle school teachers. As the Literacy Coach in the middle school, I functioned in the role of their coach. At the end of last year, one of my high school teachers became the coach for a full high school team and I opened the middle school team up for new members.

My original three members remained and five new teachers joined the project this year. My team consists of one 5th grade teacher, two 6th grade teachers, three 8th grade teachers, the middle school art teacher, and the middle school Spanish teacher. Math, English Language Arts, Science, and Social Studies are all represented in the team. In a rural school with about 24 teachers, my formative assessment team represents about one-third of my staff. I think that is pretty impressive when one considers that the team is completely voluntary.

Last Friday was a Professional Development day across our district. There were several meetings and presentations throughout the day and the formative assessment team agreed to place our meeting at the end of the day and stay beyond the posted end of the day to accomplish the goals we had set out for ourselves. In exchange for putting in the extra time, they asked to have the meeting held off-site, so at 2:30, we headed for the meeting room of a local restaurant.

We began our meeting with the protocol called Hopes and Fears. We discussed what we hoped to gain from our work together as well as our fears about what was ahead of us. Through this protocol, we came up with our norms. We are a fun-loving group and in addition to the norms that will keep us on track, we entertained some less academic norms as well. We agreed that our one male team member should be reminded at least three times per meeting that he was the only guy. And I was quick to veto the norm that the coach would pick up the tab for off-site meetings!

But we soon got down to business and discussed an article from Educational Leadership by Dylan Williams called Changing Classroom Practice. The team all agreed that the article helped assuage their fears that this process was going to be more than they could handle. We all agreed that each member should consider where they are now in their understanding of formative assessment and set a goal to move forward. We don't all have to be at the same place but we all have to respect where each person is.

The next part of our meeting was the sharing portion. Each team member was asked to bring in evidence of a formative assessment tool they used in their classroom since school began. Each person was given five minutes to share following a protocol I created that asked them to consider and talk about their goal or objective, how the tool was used, with which formative assessment strategy it aligned (activating prior knowledge, goal setting, feedback use, self-assessment, and peer assessment), and how the data from using the tool was used to adjust their instruction. I created this protocol hoping to create some reflective thinking about the tools teachers were selecting and if and how it really was formative assessment. Last year I sometimes felt I was not fulfilling my role of coach as well as I wanted to. Often, the tools teachers presented were very creative, fun activities. But they were not always formative assessment.

It was apparent an hour into the sharing time that we were not going to get through our agenda and through everyone presenting. We decided that four people per meeting would share. That would allow us to explore each tool in depth and not feel rushed.

The first person to share was the 8th grade Social Studies teacher. He shared a rubric he created for a Town Project in the Living Through History program. His goal with this tool was to allow students to have choice in the point values assigned to each criteria on his rubric. As the group discussed the strategy that this tool aligned to, I could really see the thinking being much more reflective and deeper than it got last year. While the rubric was a good one, and giving students some choice in how they would be graded is also a positive thing, the group decided that the actual rubric was not formative assessment. The group then helped this teacher brainstorm some ways that could push his rubric into the formative assessment realm. For example, if the groups had the rubrics from the start of the project, they could use it to self-assess half-way through. The teacher could conference with the groups on their progress and the groups could reflect on areas that they felt needed more work, or in which they lacked knowledge or understanding. That group brainstorming was powerful, as was the safe and respectful way that we recognized the good teaching in what was presented yet were still able to help push the teacher to see through the formative assessment lens.

Come back tomorrow to read about three other teachers using formative assessment tools and to find out what the team learned together!

Dear Barry Lyga...

2010-10-12T09:08:00.002-04:00

Recently I read two books by Barry Lyga: "The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl" and "Goth Girl Rising." They are two of the most excellent books I have ever read and I thought about writing traditional reviews of them. But this is not a book review blog. And there are many book review blogs out there that do a much better job than I ever could.

Instead, I was reading an interview with Barry on amazon.com and I came across this quote: "The sequel had to be a better story than the original, in my mind. That's the standard I hold myself to when writing a follow-up--it has to be better than the original." It was serendipitous because as much as I enjoyed "Fanboy and Goth Girl," I found "Goth Girl Rising" to be so much more engaging, fulfilling, suspenseful. That is when I decided that I needed to take a page from the book and write to Barry Lyga. The fact that I follow him on twitter and that he could potentially read this letter (unlike Neil and Kyra's letters to him) both excites and terrifies me! (Or maybe Neil has read Kyra's letters? If not, he should!)

Dear Barry,
Kyra is one of my most favorite characters. Ever. I would have loved her as a teenage girl, but as a (gulp) middle-aged woman, I can relate to Kyra and her story on so many levels.

First of all, kudos to you! As Kyra marveled in Fanboy's ability to relate to and write about a mature woman, I marveled in your ability to capture the feelings, insecurities, and idiosyncrasies of an adolescent female. Though I did not have to suffer Kyra's heart break of losing a parent, I can remember how volatile it was to live through adolescence. The highs and lows, the need to be an individual yet also belong to a group, to feel connection with others but to push those connections away--those are all feelings I dealt with--feelings that are almost universal for many adolescents both male and female.

But Kyra also made me think about my adult roles. My heart broke for her many times throughout the book. I wanted to scream at her through the pages to let her guard down, to let someone in. And at the same time, my mind's eye was seeing students that have come through my classroom and my middle school. Kyra has nothing good to say about her teachers (much like Melinda in Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak) but that doesn't mean they weren't good people. For whatever reason, none of them established the connection necessary to help Kyra navigate her troubled waters. And none of them really took the time to get to know her, to understand exactly what she was going through, to find a way to show their compassion for her loss other than through looks of pity. Kyra would be a hard student to like. But as a teacher, I need to remember that every student has a back story that I don't know. Every student, whether their actions are positive or negative, is acting to fill a need. Thank you, Barry, for making me remember that. For reminding me that I need to look at every student as an individual. That every student wants to be known and understood. Every student is a soul to be nurtured, not just a vessel to fill.

But, Barry, where your story affected me the most was through the final stages of Kyra's relationship with her mom. When you finally revealed the last words Kyra spoke to her mom, I lost my breath. That is not just a euphemism; I very honestly could not breathe. The guilt and anger that Kyra had been carrying became so clear in those four words. And then I cried. I am not talking a couple of tears spilling out of my eyes. I mean a full-blown-put-the-book-down-and-sob-out-loud cry. I was crying for Kyra's mom, who wasn't able to be the kind of mother I know she wanted to be. I was crying for the whole future of what Kyra lost when she lost her mother. I cried because life is so fragile that Kyra's world could be any child's world--could be MY child's world. And so, Barry, you taught me another lesson through Kyra: I have to give my daughters the skills, knowledge, and courage to face this world without me. I have to make sure EVERY DAY that they know how much they are loved. I have to give them a support system outside myself that they can rely on in times that I can't be there for them. I am hoping that that day is long into the future, but the actions I take today will help them grow into the kind, strong women I hope they become.

Kyra will get there too, I know. Her support system just took longer to establish itself. Thank you so much for her story.
Sincerely,
LeeAnn

Music as Motivation

2010-10-01T08:54:00.002-04:00

Connecting instruction to student interest is a crucial component in motivating students to learn. Music is one way to create that connection and there are many songs that the classroom teacher can use to introduce concepts in all content areas. This post will focus on social studies, sharing some bibliographies that came from a MAMSE conference (Michigan Association of Middle School Educators) many years ago. These songs were shared by Vincent Calcaterra, an educator at L'Anse Creuse Public Schools in Macomb County, Michigan.

ECONOMICS
Anything You Want-Roy Orbison (Unlimited wants, needs)
Did You Ever Have to Make up Your Mind-The Lovin' Spoonful (choice, opportunity cost)
The Road Not Taken-Bruce Hornsby and the Range (trade-offs, opportunity cost) talks about the result of choices made by both the singer and object of his disappointment
Paper in Fire-John Mellencamp (trade-offs, choice)
Look Out Any Window- Bruce Hornsby and the Range (externalities, trade-offs) As we seek new products or increased quantities of existing products, our own desire to satisfy our unlimited wants lead to the production of wastes and residues that, themselves, impose costs.
Please, Please Me-The Beatles (utility, exchange, markets, prices)
Baby, You Can Drive My Car-The Beatles (complimentary goods)
Money for Nothin'-Dire Straits (labor, factor markets, exchange)
Workin' for a Livin'-Huey Lewis and the News (labor, factor markets, exchange)
The Way that You Use it-Eric Clapton (productivity, entrepreneurship, risk)
Money-Barrett Strong or The Beatles (money, scarcity, monetary policy)
If I Ever Lose my Faith in You-Sting (money) The value of fiat money is people's confidence or faith. When people loose their faith or confidence in money, its value and usefulness collapse.
M.T.A.-The Kingston Trio (role of government, fiscal policy, representative government, place, movement, individual rights, historical events, freedom of speech, assembly, petition)
Tax Man-The Beatles (fiscal policy, role of government)
Satisfaction-The Rolling Stones (utility)
You Can't Always Get What you Want-The Rolling Stones (scarcity, wants, needs)
Candy Everybody Wants-10,000 Maniacs (supply, markets, demand, wants)
All or Nothing At All-Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (scarcity, wants, risks)
Takin' Care of Business-Bachman Turner Overdrive (wants, scarcity, trade-offs)
Everybody Wants to Rule the World-Tears for Fears (wants, scarcity, trade-offs, utility, decision-making) We want it all and are sometimes upset by the decisions we make to get there. The Problem is, there's always a cost.
Shop Around-The Miracles (choice)

CORE DEMOCRATIC VALUES
My Sweet Lord-George Harrison (freedom of religion)
Amazing Grace-Judy Collins (freedom of religion)
Tom Dooley-The Kingston Trio (justice)
The Times They are A-Changin'-Bob Dylan (representative government, popular sovereignty)
Contract on Love-Stevie Wonder (rule of law)
This Is My Country-The Impressions (equality, pursuit of happiness)
Keep on Pushing-The Impressions (equality, pursuit of happiness, black pride, civil rights)
Amen & People Get Ready-The Impressions (freedom of religion)
Ohio-Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young (individual rights)
Freddie's Dead-Curtis Mayfield (justice)
Gangsta's Paradise-Coolio (justice)
Everyday People-Sly and the Family Stone (equality, diversity)
Someday We'll All be Free-Alicia Keys (individual rights, equality)
Abraham, Martin and John-Dion (equality, justice, truth, diversity)
Cuttin' Heads-John Mellencamp (equality, justice)

GEOGRAPHY
Dancing in the Streets-Martha and the Vandella's (location, place)
New York State of Mind-Billy Joel (place)
Chicago-Frank Sinatra (place, location)
My City of Ruin-Bruce Springsteen (place)
This Land is Your Land-Pete Seeger (place, location)
Mercy, Mercy Me-Marvin Gaye (human/environment interaction)
Drive My Car-The Beatles (movement)
American Pie-Don McLean (history, chronology, movement, place)

VARIOUS ISSUES
Foreign policy: Washington Bullets-The Clash; Civil War-Guns-n-Roses; Political Science-Randy Newman
The environment: Big Yellow Taxi-Joni Mitchell or Counting Crows; What's Goin' On-Marvin Gaye; Bogusflow-Beck
Homelessness: Man in the Mirror-Michael Jackson; He Call Home-Candlebox
Child Abuse: Luca-Suzanne Vega; What's the Matter Here?-10,000 Maniacs
Social change: At Seventeen-Janis Ian; Revolution-The Beatles; Smells Like Teen Spirit-Nirvana
Apartheid: Biko-Peter Gabriel; Talk to the People and The Waiting-Johnny Clegg and Savuka
Suicide: Richard Cory-Peter, Paul and Mary; Jeremy-Pearl Jam
Native Americans: After the Buffalo are Gone-Buffy St. Marie; Freedom-Rage Against the Machine

HISTORICAL EVENTS
The Battle of New Orleans, Sink the Bismark-Johnny Horton
Auld Lang Syne from Kenny G's "Faith" album
Route 66-Nat King Cole
Alamo-Marty Robbins
The Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti and Joe Hill-Joan Baez
The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald-Gordon Lightfoot
Allentown-Billy Joel
Youngstown-Bruce Springsteen
Wind of Change-Scorpion
Yellow Rose of Texas-Mitch Miller

So those are the ones included in Mr. Calcaterra's list. I would also add a few:

We Didn't Start the Fire-Billy Joel
Sweet Home Alabama-Lynrd Skynrd
One-U2
Sunday, Bloody Sunday-U2
Pride in the Name of Love-U2
(Can you sense my love of anything U2? So many of their songs deal with issues of social justice.)
The album Deisel and Dust-Midnight Oil (struggles of the Australian Aborigines)

What songs do you use to connect content to student interest?

We Must Speak Loudly

2010-09-20T11:07:00.007-04:00

Here we are, approaching another Banned Books Week (9/25-10/2), and the haters are already crawling out of their dank, dismal crevices to wreak their havoc. The current threat against our freedom to read what we choose, and to offer quality literature to students is one Wesley Scroggins. You can read his rant here. He has attacked several books in his letter to the editor, but the one that is causing the troops to rally the most is Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak. Laurie has responded to this newest crisis in censorship at her blog: Mad Woman in the Forest. It is a much more satisfying read than Mr. Scroggins'.

Across the virtual world, people are sharing their experiences with Speak to give support to Halse Anderson and to speak out against censorship. I am joining them, because I think Speak is such an important book. Many people can share how this book touched them personally, allowed them to find their own voice and speak out about the problems in their lives that, before reading Speak, had remained buried. That is the power of the written word.

But one does not need to have shared the experiences of the main character in Speak to have a powerful reaction to the book. I used this book the last two years that I taught 8th grade, at the end of the school year when the students' excitement and trepidation for entering high school was beginning to grow. I framed the unit around essential questions of decision-making and consequences. Students examined the multitude of relationships present in the book to see that the problems experienced by the main character were compounded by the decisions, inaction, and apathy of others around her. More than any other book I used in the classroom, students connected to this book. It made them evaluate their own relationships with friends, parents, peers, and teachers. As a teacher, it made me look more closely at every student.

Two instances illustrate the fact that this book truly touches readers. Because I used it at the end of the year, I had students working on their final projects right up until and including ON the last day of school. They did not complain, they worked with great zeal and put forth such effort to create a collage that would capture the theme of the book:

or to write a "letter in a bottle," in a theme-decorated bottle, to tell someone else why they should read the book:

or to create their own piece of art:

Their work showed their depth of thinking and understanding.

The second instance occurred a year or two later. Speak was made into a movie after I used it in the classroom. After it was broadcast, I couldn't even count how many students made a special trip back to the middle school to leave notes in my mailbox. They wanted to make sure I had seen it. Some of them wanted to thank me for "making" them read it, and many of them wanted to tell me that the movie could in no way, shape, or form, compete with the book. Laurie Halse Anderson's writing showed them that a good book can outshine a movie like a thousand suns. She has created many readers with her book.

I ran into my own problems with censorship and Speak. I had a mother who requested her daughter not read it. I had no problem with that (other than the fact that I personally felt she was robbing her daughter of a valuable reading experience...even if she believed it couldn't happen to her child, who's to say it couldn't happen to her daughter's best friend?) But parents have a right to decide if there is something they do not want their child to read. What they should not have the right to do is to attempt to enforce that censorship on other students. This mother tried, taking her complaints to the principal.

Thankfully, he had faith in my abilities to take a tough topic and to make it relevant and appropriate for my students. Many administrators don't have the backbone to stand up to vocal parents. I am proud of the fact that my administrator and the students I taught using this novel have the tools they need to Speak Loudly.

Literacy Coach: My Evolving Job Description

2010-09-14T13:26:00.002-04:00

In the past couple of weeks, I've seen some folks on twitter and on the EC Ning asking about job descriptions for Literacy Coaches. I decided to reflect on my work as a middle school literacy coach and open the door to my world a little bit.

I came into this role seven years ago, and it was a new position in the district where I'd been an 8th grade language arts teacher for nine years. The administration didn't really know what they wanted me to do, so I had to figure it out for myself. It certainly feels like, over the years, more tasks have been added yet none taken away. I find myself kept very busy...and that's a good thing!

I work in a middle school that is grades 5 through 8. In the fall of every school year, I administer the Gates-McGinitie reading test to all 5th graders and new 6th graders. I then score, record, and analyze this data (along with DIBELS and STAR information from 4th grade) to set up Literacy Groups. These Literacy Groups consist of 4 or 5 struggling readers who work in small groups with a paraprofessional for 30 minutes a day to boost their reading skills.

After groups and schedules are established, I work with the paraprofessionals to make sure the Literacy Group students are receiving the appropriate interventions. I provide the parapros with professional development through modeling and book and article studies. Once the literacy groups are established, I also administer an Individual Reading Inventory (IRI) to each student. This helps me to target more specifically the areas they are struggling in the most. Teachers will often request IRIs for other students that they have questions or concerns about and I administer these as well. Also, after groups are established, I meet with parapros weekly and between them and me, the students are given the IRI four times through the year. I often step in and lead literacy groups when a parapro is absent.

Throughout the year I organize special literacy events for staff and students. This includes Reading Month/Week, World Read Aloud Day, Poem in Your Pocket Day, Scripps Spelling Bee, Modern Woodmen Oration Contest, author visits, and strategy days for staff development. I like to stay on the look-out for other opportunities to open up the world of literacy for my staff and students. This year I am attempting to establish a writing club for our authors who would like to tackle National Novel Writing Month (nanowrimo.)

In my building, teachers are on grade level teams and each grade level team has common planning time. This makes it easy for me to get to team meetings to share the latest research and literacy strategies on a monthly basis. From this sharing, teachers will often request model lessons in their classrooms. Monthly, the 5th grade team gathers to use the Tuning Protocol for Looking At Student Work. I come to their meetings to facilitate this process.

I also meet individually with teachers by request to help them plan lessons, to share resources, to be a sounding board, and to schedule model lessons (which also includes a planning meeting and a debriefing meeting.) I analyze our state testing data to determine which literacy skills may cause struggles for students in our building/district. Strategies to meet these deficit areas are often the focus of my model lessons.

I have set up a literacy closet in one part of my room. This closet has over 800 picture books which I have in a database. In the database they are categorized by genre, reading strategy, writing strategy and theme. They are shelved in numbered boxes by genre for ease in locating. All teachers have a copy of the database and access to the closet. Most of the time, however, they stop in to see me or send an email detailing what they need and I deliver it to them.

I am often seen as the resident techie and I try to encourage the use of technology in the classroom. Last year I ran Tech Thursdays where I invited teachers to come in after school one Thursday a month to learn about integrating technology in the classroom and using it for their own professional development. Unfortunately, people seemed too busy and the project fizzled after a couple of months.

It is my job, in the spring, along with the Literacy Coaches in our two elementary feeder schools, to organize summer school. Last summer we provided learning experiences for approximately 140 students in grades 2 through 9. The other literacy coaches and I also plan Parent Nights throughout the year to help parents understand how to help their children with literacy skills at home. We've given out over 300 books at our literacy nights in the last few years. One year we held a family game night. Families came in to play board games and then got to take a game home with them at the end of the night.

Last year, in an initiative through the Michigan Department of Education and Measured Progress, I led a team in the Formative Assessment Process. This team was made up of three high school and three middle school teachers. This year, the high school put together their own team and I added five new members to the middle school team. Our plan is to meet monthly for a couple of hours to learn/discuss/share formative assessment strategies used in the classroom. I am thrilled at the number of my staff members who were interested in joining this group!

I am a member of the data team for our Intermediate School District and I attend monthly meetings for this.

I think that exhausts the list of my current job responsibilities. I have been asked by my superintendent to consider taking on some of the responsibilities of Curriculum Director or Instructional Services Director. It is not something I am excited about, but he definitely has more on his plate than he can handle right now! But at this point I am waiting for him to make a final decision on exactly what it is he wants me to do.

As the financial outlook for schools looks more grim every year, this is a job that I take from year to year. I fully expect that if things don't turn around for our state soon, I will be back in the classroom in the next couple of years. That won't be a bad thing either (for me!)

August 10 for 10

2010-08-10T16:10:00.002-04:00

Several bloggers today are celebrating August 10th by answering the question: If you were stranded on an island and had to teach, what 10 picture books would you hope to have in your bag?

I love picture books and it was hard to choose just ten, but here they are, in no particular order:

1. The Ghost Eye Tree by Bill Martin Jr. and Jon Archambault and illustrated by Ted Rand. This book is great for making connections as two young children have to face their fear of a scary tree in the dark to run an errand for their mother. Students at any age can relate to having childhood fears and often like to write about them after reading The Ghost Eye Tree. I also use this book as a model for sentence fluency in writing.

2. Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems. This is another book that all students can make connections with. I love this story because little Trixie's attachment to her Knuffle Bunny reminds me so much of my daughter, currently 10 years old and still attached to her blanket, Pinkie. Of course her situation also creates connections with Kevin Henkes' Owen and his blanket, Fuzzy. Knuffle Bunny makes a great mentor text for teaching voice in writing as well.

3. The Relatives Came by Cynthia Rylant. I guess I must love using books that I know students can connect with! The language in this book is lyrical and beautiful.

4. HooWay for Wodney Wat by Helen Lester. The topic of this book is bullying and dealing with a personal trait that others make fun of, so once again, students of all ages can connect with this book where the little guy is the hero in the end. This book is also great for teaching voice in writing.

5. Airmail to the Moon by Tom Birdseye. I love, love, love reading this book out loud with a nice thick southern accent! This is another book that kids can connect to. But I like to pull it out when the accusations of theft start running rampant: "Someone stole my pencil." "Someone took my book!" Airmail to the Moon opens up a nice conversation about blaming other people before we check all options.

6. Terrible Things by Eve Bunting. This book, an allegory to the Holocaust, is one that I used when I taught 8th grade as an opener to a unit on the Holocaust. The message really sticks with students and they remember it through the unit. I used it during the unit, paired with a poem titled The Hangman by Maurice Ogden.

7. Pink and Say by Patricia Polacco. I love being able to recommend picture books to content teachers. Pink and Say is one of my favorite, which I share with the 8th grade social studies teacher when he is teaching about the Civil War. It is another that I enjoy reading aloud, even though I can't get through without shedding some tears. I use many of Patricia Polacco's books as mentor texts for writing personal narratives, and the fact that I have met her in person and had some books signed always awes my students!

8. Hello Ocean by Pam Munoz Ryan. This versatile title is one I use often. It is fantastic for helping readers learn to visualize. The imagery in the book makes it an excellent mentor text for writers wanting to add more imagery to their writing, and the organization of the information around the five senses makes it easily understandable and imitable. Using the bilingual version opens this title up to being used in Spanish class as well!

9. Skippyjon Jones by Judy Schachner. How much do I love this book! Skippyjon is my favorite little Siamese-cat-pretending-to-be-a-chihuahua. This book is silly but also sophisticated, making it great to teach clarifying and inferring to students. I also use this book as a mentor text when I do an "instead-of-said" lesson when writing dialogue.

10. Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi by Cindy Neuschwander. Math is the toughest subject for me to assist teachers in integrating reading strategies. The Sir Cumference series of picture books makes my job a little easier.

Those are my picks! I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments about these and others that you like as well.

Mock Rock Video

2010-06-08T13:51:00.002-04:00

Need Advice About Troubled Student

2010-06-05T10:29:00.002-04:00

I've been spending the last couple of days at school giving Informal Reading Inventories (also known as Individual Reading Inventory or Qualitative Reading Inventory) to my 5th grade Literacy Group students. For the most part, the test is straightforward and takes between 10 and 15 minutes per student. However, Beth (not her real name) is not my typical test-taker and I spent over an hour testing her. I am very perplexed by her mannerisms and I am hoping that my readers may have some insights to share about this student.

Beth is a victim of abuse, but I have no details about the particulars. She has seen a therapist in the past, though I don't know if she is still. She was tested/assessed for autism, but was not diagnosed as autistic.

When I begin the IRI testing, I try to put the students at ease, letting them know that the test isn't for a grade and it just helps me and their classroom teacher be better at teaching them to become successful readers. The students are instructed that if they don't know the answer to any question, it is ok to say that they don't know.

The particular behavior that makes Beth hard to assess are that she takes a long time to process before she answers a question and she won't say when she doesn't know an answer. She uses silence as avoidance. This makes it very difficult for me when testing her because I do not know how long to wait for her to give me an answer. With some of the questions on the IRI, I waited up to five minutes for her to say anything before I finally asked her if she would like me to repeat the question. She immediately answered, "No." Then I asked if she had an answer and again she replied, "No." But she won't say that she doesn't have an answer. She was very obviously frustrated and cried during the testing. This was distressing to me as I am NOT testing students to cause them fear and frustration. I tried to keep things light and kept telling her it was ok not to know answers. During the portion of the IRI where she can look back at the reading for the answers, she chose not to. I spent some time at the end of the test going over the answers with her; she seemed frustrated because she did not believe that the answers were in the text and I wanted her to see that they were, and to explain to her how she could find them.

The length of time it takes her to answer a question or complete a task is a detriment to her in classroom as well. A classroom teacher with 30 students does not have the time to wait for 5 minutes for a student to answer a question. It is difficult for her to participate in discussions because it takes her so long to formulate what she wants to say. This time conflict also manifested on the standardized Gates McGinitie Reading test that we give to all students at the end of each school year. Taking the test as a timed test (35 minutes), as it is supposed to be administered, shows that Beth has a comprehension grade equivalency of 4.1, but when given the time to complete the test (which took her three hours) her grade equivalency is 9.3.

Both the Gates test and the IRI are just tools we use to assess where our students are. They help us to determine which students need more attention and they help us to individualize instruction. The bigger question I have is not how to assess Beth, but how to address her needs so that she is not overlooked in the classroom. As she moves through the grade levels, I have serious concerns that she is going to slip through the cracks.

I'm hoping that someone out there has worked with a student like Beth and can offer some strategies that will help us (her teachers) be more successful with her.

Gearing Up for Grad School

2010-06-02T09:31:00.002-04:00

One neat thing about this time of year for me is that while I am looking forward to the ending of one school year, I am anticipating the beginning of another session of summer grad school. I am spending some time tweaking lessons, looking over new resources I have found this year to replace articles that might be getting out of date, and deciding what I need to get rid of to make room for new information.

Because of my work with my formative assessment team this year, I am going to put more emphasis on this during the assessment phase. Creating learning targets and really making sure that students understand concepts before moving on in the classroom is crucial to good instruction.

Another element I am adding to my curriculum this year is instructional technology. I am currently taking a class through my ISD on 21 Things for the 21st Century Educator, adding to the knowledge I have picked up on my own and through my colleagues on twitter. In order to practice some of my new skills, I am attempting to add all of my class documents to Google Documents. So far, I have added my MLE 644 Syllabus, the Course Reading Requirements, and the Integrated Unit Instruction Requirements. Check them out if you have a minute and let me know if you see any problem areas. Maybe you'd like to sign up for my class!

Good-bye Middle School, Hello Junior High?

2010-05-27T08:37:00.004-04:00

The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize. ~Franklin D. Roosevelt

Last week, our school board voted to pink-slip 14 teachers. Talk of severely cutting specials (PE, art, computers, music) would create a ripple effect, especially in the middle school. Aside from the fact that these programs are the ones students love the most and that are an important part of creating well-rounded, imaginative, and civilized people, cutting specials will also affect the general education programming.

The middle school in which I work is built around the middle school concept. A team of related arts teachers is crucial in ensuring that grade level teachers have common planning time. This common planning time is necessary for teams being able to flex their schedule, to plan interdisciplinary and integrated units, and to meet for looking at student work and monitoring student achievement. If this common planning time is lost, our students will be the ultimate losers. Our middle school will exist as a middle school in name only.

These budget cuts make it even more crucial for teachers at the middle level to be certified specifically to teach middle level, even though it is not required by the state. But, unfortunately, young teachers working toward a Masters degree are looking for programs that will forward their career. An administrative degree will qualify you for an administrative position. A degree in curriculum opens doors to becoming a curriculum director or specialist. A middle level degree can open those doors as well, but only if a district understands the power of having middle level specialists. For information on what exactly is gained through a Masters in Middle Level Education, you can read previous posts I've written here and here.

A middle school that loses the elements that make it a middle school becomes a junior high. Young adolescents are not little high-schoolers. It is so important, crucial, imperative that if our young adolescents are attending a school that has the structure of a junior high, they must have educators who understand what it means to BE and what it means to EDUCATE young adolescents.

2010-05-26T09:31:00.004-04:00

This morning I was surprised by my twitter friend, Philip Cummings, with this Blog to Watch award. Truly an honor, Philip! As well, it was a needed kick in the pants to up the ante and be more regular about updating my blog. I think I need some Activia for Bloggers! Philip, in his blog A Retrospective Saunter named my blog and 9 others as ones to watch. So in the spirit of the award, I will list ten blogs that I enjoy reading. Philip's would be in the ten, but I've linked back to it already, so below I will highlight ten others, in no particular order.

The following are the rules of this award:

Copy and display the picture of the award given to you;
Link back to the blog that nominated you;
Nominate 10 different blogs yourself;
Inform the people you nominated, so they can in turn, continue the chain and spread the word about other great blogs out there.

1. A wonderful blog by my twitter friend Katherine Thomas. Katherine's artwork will enchant you, I promise. Her fashion sense will make you jealous. And the sweet thoughts she shares about her classroom will make you wish she were your child's teacher.
2. Another twitter friend, Julie Petersen, is a newby blogger, but she is blowing me out of the water with her blog, TWRCtank.com. Julie is a wealth of information for reading teachers. She has so much great stuff on her blog that I cannot even keep up with it all!
3. I read the blogs of many published authors and I love them all. Sue Stauffacher isn't on twitter, though I told her she should give it a try! But her books are fantastic and her author visits are awesome. You can read about her visit to our school here. And you can learn more about Sue and her work at her blog, Imaginerience.
4, 5, and 6. Keith Schoch has three blogs that all teachers should read: Teaching That Sticks, Teaching with Picture Books, and How to Teach a Novel. All three of them offer tremendously usable teaching ideas and strategies.
7. Kelly Hines is another twitter friend who is an amazing educator. I see that her blog, Keeping Kids First, has already been tagged, but it deserves another mention. I have an affinity for Kelly because of the way she is able to make connections back to her classroom with almost every thing she does, reads, and sees. In the midst of changing lives for her students, she's doing an incredible job of raising twin boys!
8. The Reading Workshop is a model of how to use a blog in the classroom. Jim McGuire shares book talk videos of his students. He poses thought provoking questions about class readings to which his students respond. He links to his students' blogs as well.
9 & 10. Another great example of using a blog in the classroom is William Chamberlain's blog. William is another fantastic educator who I met through twitter. It was he who encouraged me to start blogging and he gave me lots of assistance and advice in the first few months. I always enjoy catching up on what is happening in his class and school through his blog. Blog #10 is William's reflective blog, At the Teacher's Desk.

There you have it; 10 blogs I think would be well worth your time to peruse!

Five Writing Tips for Grades 3-8

2010-04-20T09:32:00.002-04:00

Steven Layne is an author, lecturer, and associate professor who is passionate about books and literacy. If you get the chance to see him speak, RUN to where he is! And if you are on the look-out for a gift for a special language teacher in your life, look no further than this little gem of a book.

At the Michigan Reading Association annual conference this year, I had the privilege to hear Steven Layne for the second time. His presentation was on five writing tips and you can find a handout at his website: stevelayne.com

You will find many other good resource on Steven Layne's website. But in case you don't have time to look right now, let me outline his 5 writing tips in a nutshell:

1. Don't have students write a whole piece all the time.
Don't grade a complete piece all the time.
In other words, if you are working on creating good leads, have students write a variety of good leads without any plans for finishing them. And even if students do write a complete piece, you can choose certain elements to look for in assessing.

2. Use samples (including poor ones) often. Write your own.
This is one piece of advice that I see many teachers overlook. Students need to see samples of what we are asking them to write. Save samples over the years and look for samples in your reading. Look for mentor texts to share with students.

3. Write with them.
If you are asking them to write it, you should write it first. And don't worry if you think your writing isn't any good. I don't think that Shaq's coaches can play ball as well as he, but they can still coach him to play better!

4. Write in response to literature.
Doing this with students helps them to think deeper about what they are reading. And if you happen to be a content teacher, get them writing in response to math and science and social studies too! Writing is thinking!

5. Write for authentic audiences; together or separately.
Find ways to make writing real. Create a class blog to give your students a world-wide audience. Write letters: to the editor, to authors, to politicians, etc. Create class-made books to put in local doctor and dentist offices. Open up your thinking to come up with other ideas.

You can see that these are not Earth-shattering ideas. But if you follow these tips, you might see some Earth-shattering writing from your students! HAPPY WRITING!

To Pay or Not to Pay...

2010-04-16T08:43:00.002-04:00

Yesterday, Ning broke the word that they would be discontinuing their free service of social network creation. In the world, that news was not even a pond ripple. I didn't see anything on the network news shows. Nobody I know "in-real-life" was talking about it. But in the virtual world, and especially on twitter, it was just about all I saw in my circle of followers/following.

It shouldn't come as a surprise to me anymore that the first things we humans do when it comes to change is panic. I didn't feel much, but I could tell that some members of my PLN were deeply affected. I know there are districts and individual teachers who use the ning network to keep in touch with families and students. I belong to several professional nings and place high value on the information and connections that I make through them.

I saw two distinct things happening after the news broke. The first thing I noticed was very disheartening. Members of my PLN began lining up on metaphorically "opposite sides." Some were expressing outrage at the news. I'm sure that is because they felt the panic of an impending change.

The outrage didn't last long, though I am sure that among many teachers, hard feelings toward Ning linger on. But the debate began by those on the other side. The ones asking if teachers who were complaining about having to pay for the service were just "gimmees" who think everything should be free? Or, they wondered, is it that those in the world of education are so out of touch that they don't understand capitalism and a free market economy? That is what a few people were posting on twitter. There were a couple of posts that verged on personal attacks. Thankfully, my PLN does live up to the "P" in the title: Professional.

My take on it is that teachers are not just sitting around waiting for hand-outs. And I believe that most teachers are fully aware that a business has to make money to stay in business. But teachers are also sharers. There are not many teachers who post their lesson plans on sites where they earn money when the plans are downloaded. Far more teachers post their plans, resources, and ideas freely on networks like a nings, blogs, or even their own websites where they PAY to have a web presence, allowing other educators to benefit from them at no cost. And many teachers already spend large amounts of their own money on their classrooms and their students. To be told, basically out of the blue, that a service they had been relying on was now going to have to be paid for, was probably an unwelcome shock. I can't blame them for complaining. I think of all the web tools I use at no cost and realize that I would have to do some major trimming if they all had a fee attached to them.

Today, I am happy to say that the negativity seems to have left my small branch of the twitter stream. What I am seeing today is lots of educators sharing resources of social networking sites that are similar in nature to ning, but still offered at no cost. And these educators aren't charging for the information. In my opinion, it is this open, sharing nature, the generosity of teachers, that rises to the top in all of this mess.

Alfie Kohn on "Traditional" vs. "Alternative" or "Progressive" Education

2010-03-29T10:34:00.004-04:00

I know it makes me an EduGeek, but I couldn't think of a better way to spend St. Patrick's day than by attending a lecture by Alfie Kohn at Central Michigan University. His talk focused on what he outlined as the three differences between traditional and progressive education:
1. Traditional education has a "right answer" focus. Teachers have the power and the answers and students compete to get the right answer first. This causes many students in a traditional classroom to give up. If they feel they will never have the "right answer" or that they cannot get it fast enough, perhaps they stop trying.
**This point leaves me feeling conflicted. I understand where Kohn is coming
from on the point of competition. I tend to not be as anti-competition as he
is. I have seen, especially in the classes of boys I have worked with, that
competition can be a motivator. I do agree that care needs to be taken that
competition in the classroom doesn't become mean or destructive. On the other
hand, we've been complaining in my building recently that students don't seem
to have the ability to persevere when learning gets tough. Is that partially
because we have been all about getting the right answer quickly?
2. Traditional education is all about facts and skills. Textbooks are the curriculum and teachers often use skill sheets to drill memorization of facts. In progressive education, facts and skills are taught in context, with textbooks, worksheets, and lectures used sparingly.
**This point makes me contemplate something that the math teachers in my
middle school have been saying for the last couple of years; that many
of our students seem to lack number sense. Could this be a function of
our traditional approach, that we aren't asking students to reason and
understand math operations? When they memorize formulas but don't know
why they work the way they do, have the students really learned anything?
3. Traditional classrooms have no real purpose for learning. A student may say she is working for a grade, but she isn't taught to think about her learning. In progressive classroom, learning is done for a purpose. Students know what that purpose is and the focus is on what is learned and on being reflective about learning.
**Alfie Kohn's ideas of progressive education match the philosophy of the
middle school concept; specifically, James Beane's
theories on integrated curriculum. In integrated curriculum, the
driving force is the questions that students have about their lives and their
world. Curriculum and the learning experiences in integrated curriculum are
created by teachers and learners together, motivating them to find answers to
their questions and learning for the sake of learning and not for a grade.

In addition to these differences, Kohn outlined the four main problems of traditional education:
1. The quality of learning is low, creating superficial thinkers who often ask, "Do we have to know this?"
2. There is an increase in the gap between the "haves" and "have-nots", between whites and blacks, etc. in traditional education.
3. There are more behavioral problems in traditional schools/classrooms.
4. As students move up the grade levels in traditional education, there is a loss of curiosity and less desire to learn.

It is interesting to note that what we think of as traditional schooling is not really that old. What we consider elements of progressive education: multi-aged grouping and learning by doing in apprenticeship situations, are much older than our traditional age-based, lock-step approach.

I was very impressed by Alfie Kohn. Although his ideas may seem utopian to some, and he is viewed by many as being "out there," I found him to be very realistic. I had the opportunity to ask him how he has tried to ensure that his own children receive the kind of education he proposes. His answer; that he has always been open to his children's teachers if they were interested in help and that he sometimes had to "hold his nose" and help his children with assignments that seemed pointless or worthless, put him in the context of a real person working for change while understanding and dealing with the realities that parents and teachers are surrounded by daily.

So many of his ideas were confirmed and reiterated for me the following Monday, when on the last day of the Michigan Reading Association's Annual Conference, I had the opportunity to hear a keynote by Jim Grant. But that's another post!

Looking Forward to Summer Even as I Learn!

2010-03-17T13:57:00.003-04:00

I have been attending a series of workshops on digital storytelling. I always enjoy learning new things and I am already thinking about how to bring these new skills back to my staff. In our final day today, I created a digital story that is modeled after a lesson being taught in one of the fifth grade classrooms. The classroom teacher is having her students write about their favorite Michigan memory. To give them a focus, they used the book This Is the Tree as their mentor text.

I decided to write my own and create a digital story to share with the students. This way, I could model that the adults in the building are writers and I could begin to plant the seeds of using digital storytelling. I ran into one major issue. My daughters narrated the story for me and I used audacity to record their narration. When I added the narration in PhotoStory3, it automatically faded out the narration in each picture. Because the girls aren't here with me, I went ahead and rendered the project, but my plan is to go back and re-record the girls right in the PhotoStory program. Maybe at that point I'll repost. But I think you can get a good idea anyway. Here it is:

Reading Sparks

2010-03-08T11:38:00.004-05:00

Back in December we ran our first SPARKS classes of the year. They were a hit and we wanted to offer these exploratory opportunities to our students again. Sometime last year, one of our language arts teachers suggested that we do a SPARKS that might be more academic in nature, offering sessions that would all somehow involve reading. With that idea and with March is Reading Month close at hand, the language arts staff decided to run with a second SPARKS session of the year.

We are holding out Reading SPARKS on each Friday of the month of March from 2 to 3pm. The offerings are quite diverse. Students could choose to read about hunting and game management, to create their own teen 'zines, to learn how to create and keep their own blog, to research and plan their dream vacation, to study their family history and create their own heralds, and so many more. The three most popular offerings among students were learning about and hatching out baby chicks, reading and solving a spooky mystery story, and reading about the creepy crawly bugs that live on our bodies and that people around the world actually eat. And we had a huge number of students who just wanted the opportunity to get comfy with a good book!

World Read Aloud Day 2010

2010-03-04T11:24:00.001-05:00

World Read Aloud Day 2010

Truth is Stranger Than Fiction

2010-03-03T13:57:00.010-05:00

Developing a love of reading and writing is so crucial in our schools today. Strategies should be in place all year long to foster this love, but in March, many schools place an extra special emphasis on the importance and love of reading. Our staff has always celebrated a Reading Week during the month of March. Every year we would also talk about having an author come to visit our school, and we finally decided to stop talking and make it happen. The process of selecting an author was tedious, as we believe in all staff having input in our decision making. Lists were drafted, books were bought and read, research on the cost of various authors was conducted.

The author we chose was Sue Stauffacher. No-one on staff had heard of her before our research began, but based on the fact that we could afford her, and the fact that her variety of published work would appeal to all of our students, fifth through eighth grade, we decided she was the best choice. Her books Harry Sue, Donuthead, and Donutheart have become very popular in our school!

I don't think anyone was as excited as I for this author visit. Authors are like rock stars to me. Even though I know it makes me sound incredibly geeky, the fact that I have interactions on Twitter with authors such as Laurie Halse Anderson, Neil Gaiman, and Meg Cabot is something I find incredibly cool and exciting! I wait in line at the Michigan Reading Conference every year to meet authors and have books signed. Now I was going to have the opportunity to spend the whole day with one!

A schedule was created so that Sue would present to our students in two different large groups. Her first presentation was to our 5th and 6th graders and then she repeated the presentation to 7th and 8th graders. Using a power point slide show that was mainly pictures, Sue had the students choose from different "chapters" of her presentation to allow students to determine the order of the information they heard. This kept her presentations very spontaneous and interesting.
In the afternoon, Sue led a small group of 20 students in some story brainstorming and prewriting. Sue also spoke with this group about where ideas come from. Many of the happenings in Sue's stories are snipped right from the headlines and she explained to students that "truth really is stranger than fiction." Sue also talked about the importance of revision in writing. She shared a scrapbook that has some of her prewriting for an upcoming picture book:And she shared her first hand-written draft of her novel, Harry Sue,as well as her a typed manuscript with the revisions suggested by her editor.

All of our students were gracious and kind. It was a fabulous day for us all. But it was an extremely special day for me. As lucky as I am to have the job I do, it is perks like this day that make me pinch myself sometimes. As hostess for the day, I had the pleasure of taking Sue to lunch and introducing her to a tiny glimpse of our local Amish culture. Sue is such a joy to spend time with, and we became so lost in our conversation that we were nearly late returning to school for her afternoon session! What had begun for me with a feeling of awe ended with the feeling of having met a true friend.

As an author, Sue writes books about characters that seem so real. Her stories are touching and sometimes a bit sad, but with just the right amount of humor that you know the characters are going to be ok, despite their troubles. Her writing style doesn't condescend to kids, but rather, it communicates to kids that they are capable and mature. This style also comes across in her presentations and in her face to face interactions with students. I could not have imagined a better experience.

Formative Assessment

2010-01-29T09:12:00.003-05:00

This year, I am coaching a group of middle school and high school teachers to learn about and practice using formative assessment practices in the classroom. This initiative is being led by a group called Measured Progress and by the Michigan Department of Education. Measured Progress supplies us with coaches we can access through a ning and email. They also provide a study focus for each month and the resources to learn about the focus. I normally post about our formative assessment team meetings on the ning blog. But as that one requires an invite, I thought I should post here as well.

Once again, I am so impressed by my formative assessment team. We had our third meeting on January 22nd in the afternoon of a professional development day. It works so nicely when we can meet during our PD days and not have to worry about meshing schedules to meet after school, or dealing with the hassle of getting substitute teachers for a half day.

The focus for the meeting was descriptive feedback, so we began with a Chalk Talk using the guiding question: Why is providing descriptive feedback at the right time so effective? The comments noted by the team show that they have a good understanding of the purpose of descriptive feedback. We noted that one word that appeared many times in their chalk talk was immediate.

Next we discussed the Fisher and Frey article, Feed Up, Back, Forward, using the Making Meaning protocol. It was a great discussion, affirming what we've been working on with learning targets. There was discussion around the idea of language frames, with a high school language arts teacher asking about how she can learn more about or find examples of language frames. As the coach, I will do more research into this topic, but if anyone out there has ideas, please pass them along!!

We also discussed the point made in the article that the role of the teacher is to ask the right questions. It made a great segue into February's focus on questioning. Like many of the other teams have already mentioned, we are also ready to begin diving into the information as soon as it becomes available.

Every meeting, my team takes time to share one thing they have been working on or a strategy they have tried since the last meeting. This month we saw some great strategies applied in a variety of ways. The high school history teacher shared a geography project rubric that was generated by his students. What a great way to get students invested in their work!

Our high school English teacher shared some examples of a Frayer model that she used as a pre-assessment for a Greek mythology unit. She noted that it helped her focus her teaching by knowing what her students already knew and seeing where they may have misconceptions. She plans to use a sequential alphabet summary form to review the unit. We also offered her the idea to have the students complete another Frayer model and to have them analyze the learning they have accomplished through the unit.

Our fifth grade science teacher used chalk talk as a pre-reading activity for the circulatory system. After reading, the groups did another chalk talk and compared them to see how much they had learned through the reading. This teacher also shared a frustration that some students did not do as well as she expected on their summative assessment. The team discussed whether this was a problem with the test format or the students really not knowing the information. It was suggested that she use her summative assessment formatively, allowing students to go back, fix and restudy after she has added descriptive feedback. Then to give another summative assessment in a different format. Another suggestion was that she conference with those students who did poorly to give oral feedback and try to determine what might have happened in each situation.

The eighth grade social studies teacher was excited to share some collaborating he had done with the eighth grade language arts teacher on a writing piece. Working together, these teachers created a Self-Peer Edit Revision checklist. The checklist incorporated elements of good writing instruction, such as creating an interesting lead and having varied sentence structures. Using terminology of different disciplines across the curriculum will help our students have that transfer of knowledge.

The sixth grade social studies teacher was feeling frustration that she hadn't accomplished much in the way of formative assessment in the past month. But she shared some personal reflecting she had been doing in regards to the way she'd been teaching her social studies. It was fabulous the way she has been pushing her own thinking. She involved her students by having a class discussion about what they wanted to learn about the Western Hemisphere (part of 6th grade curriculum.) Fantastic! And yesterday, she and I sat down together to work on some learning targets for her Mexico unit and she made great progress.

Once again, I am so impressed by my team! We meet again on March 8; it's a teacher marking day so slated to be strictly time for teachers to work in their classrooms. But I think it shows the power of this team process, as well as the dedication by my team, that they want to take some time that day for our next meeting.

Remembering what is important...

2010-01-11T13:57:00.006-05:00

The last couple of years have been hard on many middle schools in Michigan. Budgets have been slashed and teachers' jobs have been lost. These cuts can have a drastic impact on middle schools that attempt to operate under the true middle school model. Being able to implement common planning time, advisory periods, and an exploratory curriculum often means that middle schools are staff heavy.

My middle school was created in 1997, when the district built a new high school. The old high school had been a 7-12 building but would now house 5-8. The principal at the time decided if we were going to be a middle school, we were going to do it right. And we did! A comprehensive school reform grant allowed us to learn about the best structures and practices of a model middle school.

My school has not escaped the budget woes, and over the years, our staff numbers are down. We have managed to hang on to common planning time and we believe strongly that we teach CHILDREN not subjects. Yet many constraints had left us tired. This winter, with renewed energy and enthusiasm, the staff decided to revive a program that had been abandoned when changes in state testing times and other obligations and concerns made us feel too weighted down to continue.

The program was given that name SPARKS, which stands for Special Programs All Reaching Kids. Yes, we were in a crazy acronym phase when the program was developed! But really, despite its bulky full name, the program does have the power to spark interest and enthusiasm in both staff and students. It is a program that aligns with our values as a developmentally appropriate middle school with an exploratory curriculum and with a focus on students as individuals.

The goals of SPARKS are simple:
1. Give students a chance to participate in a skill or interest outside of the traditional curriculum.
2. Build relationships between students and staff by keeping groups small and class offerings anonymous.
3. Build relationships and mentorships between students by allowing mixed grade level groupings. (Our middle school is 5-8 and we usually keep very distinct and separate boundaries between 5-6 and 7-8.)

To achieve these goals, each teacher came up with a course offering and wrote a description. Students ranked their top three choices and were placed into a SPARKS class. In this current SPARKS session, we conducted our SPARKS classes on the Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday before winter break, from 2:00 to 3:00. Many staff members chose to offer courses in which the students would be creating projects that they could use as holiday gifts. Others were designed to showcase the interests and talents of staff. Some staff members worked together to provide unique experiences for our students. Everyone was so happy that we took the time to remember what is important with our kids: building relationships as we build new skills and interests. Please view the videos to see the fun our students had!

Holiday Break Reading Challenge Activity 7

2009-12-24T07:58:00.008-05:00

Best and Worst Book-to-Movie Adaptations

This Activity is completely and totally based on your opinion.

1 - You need to choose the BEST Book-to-Movie Adaptation you've seen and the WORST Book-to-Movie Adaptation you've seen.

2 - Post the pictures of the book cover next to the movie poster for each pair.

Best book to movie adaptation:

Worst book to movie adaptation:

2009-12-20T10:06:00.003-05:00

If you are looking for some boredom busters over the holiday break, check out Karin's Book Nook.

I love her Create a Cover activity, so I am re-posting her instructions, along with my contribution. I'd love to know if you try it!

Here are the directions for the Create a Cover activity.

1 – Go to “Fake Name Generator” or click http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/

The name that appears is your author name.

2 – Go to “Random Word Generator” or click http://www.websitestyle.com/parser/randomword.shtml

The word listed under “Random Verb” is your title.

3 – Go to “FlickrCC” or click http://flickrcc.bluemountains.net/index.php

Type your title into the search box. The first photo that contains a person is your cover.

4 – Use Picnik, or something similar to put it all together. Be sure to crop and/or zoom in.

And here is my attempt:

When his world began to crumble around him, his anger took on a life of its own. Can anyone save Seth from self-destruction?

What I especially love about this activity is how it can generate an actual writing idea. I still need to get back into my NaNoWriMo novel and do some revision. But maybe I'll start a new novel first!

Soar to Success

2009-12-01T14:32:00.003-05:00

Part of my job as literacy coach in my middle school is to recognize and help struggling readers. We use an intervention called Literacy Groups. These are essentially small group reading strategy instruction sessions. I have four paraprofessionals who lead these small groups of three to five students. They work with the fifth and sixth grades.

The instructional strategy we use in Literacy Groups is Reciprocal Teaching. It focuses on the reading strategies of clarifying, predicting, questioning and summarizing. The hardest part of working with these struggling readers is getting them to understand that these strategies must be used by them consistently, and not just during the reading they do in group time.

I had an idea that the best way to get them to understand this might be to have them reflect more on which strategies they are using well and how it helps them to be a better reader. To increase their motivation for reflection, I videotaped them explaining how one strategy helped them in the last story we read: Truman's Aunt Farm.

You can see more videos of three different Literacy Groups on my YouTube Channel.

Six Word Memoirs from Mr. Sutherland's Class

2009-10-23T10:27:00.002-04:00

Here is another batch of six word memoirs. Enjoy!

Love my family. Unincludes my sister. -Anon.
Eat, play, sleep, and unfortunately...work! -Patrick
Braces stink. Who invented that junk? -Phelicia
Two brothers, one me. Not fair. -Anon.
My life is crazy but cool. -Elizabeth
No one knows my diabolical plan. -Anon
I wish school wasn't every day! -Destiny
Got bucked off but still walking. -Tyler
Goth is me. Parents don't accept. -Monica
My dog bites, so back off. -Anon.
I love my dog. He's cool. -Anon.
Please don't make me do science. -Robert
Piercing rods and rings change faces. -Anon.
Sisters...annoying but still love them. -Breanna
Math is very very cool...NOT! -Jon
My sister is a good target. -Megan
6th grade destroys all the fun. -Kenneth
Ride, ride, ride all the time. -Elizabeth
Mohawks, go blue. We are awesome. -Mekenna
Just take what life throws out. -Demi
I went hunting. Hunting is fun. -Anon.
I'm a genius, why still school? -Noel

Six Word Memoirs from Mrs. Hadder's Class

2009-10-20T14:55:00.003-04:00

As promised, we did some writing for National Day of Writing! Mrs. Hadder's 6th graders had a blast AND they wrote some amazing six word memoirs!

Little sister's are so so annoying. -Cody O'Neal
Work keeps me from riding horses. -Mikayla Thumser
adventure, sea-doos, tubing, wild water fun. -Chad DeHaven
Sisters, it's life, deal with it. -Katie Eaton
Trapped under ice but still alive. -Anon.
Love of my life, a mystery. -Garrett Weeks
It's tough getting really good grades. -Anon.
Don't be afraid, let feelings out. -Megan H.
Live life on the edge. Peace. -Danielle Jankowski
Sleepy time, morning shine, hate it. -Sadie Stevens
Pizza is good. Onions are not. -Shayla Franks
Live, laugh, love. Horse lover-me. -Anon.
Peculiar past, weird present, unknown future. -Zach Cousineau
I am a slowly falling star. -Rachel McNeil
Star Wars geek. Yep, that's me. -Anon.
Boring life, crazy mind, interesting world. -Abbie Andrews
A fashion girl, you like sleep. -Melinda
I wish I had a retry. -Gage
My animals are my best friends. -Taylor
Really small guy. Pretty big attitude. -Roy Corwin
Brother is very extremely super annoying. -Anon.
Fuzzy blankets, sleeping cats, open books! -Mrs. Moore

2009-10-20T09:08:00.002-04:00

Today is the National Day of Writing. How will you share the day with your students? Because we in Michigan are in the middle of our state testing, I was looking for a way to incorporate the spirit of the day without bogging students down with what they might feel like was more work. Enter the Six Word Memoirs! This is an idea created by SMITH Magazine and also published in a book (which I would love to own someday...adding it to my looong list!) called Not Quite What I Was Planning.

To begin this lesson, I found some guidelines created by the author of the book, Rachel Fershleiser. I created the Wordle above from these guidelines and will introduce the concept of the 6 word memoir by having students make predictions based on the wordle. Then I will discuss the actual guidlines with them and share these examples from a group of 4th graders.

There are also many videos on YouTube and the SMITH website. I may show these videos after the students have written their own memoirs and then discuss with them how they would like to publish their memoirs. We could create a video to post to YouTube or an Animoto show. We could also create a book or make posters to hang throughout the school. I think whatever idea they decide upon will increase their motivation to complete the task as well as to put their best ideas and effort into it.

That is how I plan to recognize the National Day of Writing in the classroom. Now I am off to write my own 6 Word Memoir!

They always bring us back to humble!

2009-10-06T13:40:00.002-04:00

After recent success with the 6th grade boys reading class, I am reminded today that without the lows, there would be no highs in teaching. Today was definitely a low in terms of any real learning happening. I am having some pretty major frustrations trying to work out blogging with the boys. I am hoping some members of my PLN can give me some advice! So, here are a list of frustrations today:
1. Helplessness: I walked the boys through how to log on to the blog site and had a step by step guide on the whiteboard. Yet anytime the boys run into trouble their first instinct is not to work through it, but to ask for help. And even though there were step by step directions, half of them ask, "What do I do next?" after finishing each step.

2. Lack of basic internet knowledge: The internet in the computer lab opens to msn.com. A full half of the class then enters the web address they want to get to into the search on that page instead of into the address bar. And when I direct them to use the address bar, they 1) don't know what that is or 2) think I mean their street address!

3. Writing: Once I get them to the blog site and they read the prompt I have set up for them, which should generate at least a good paragraph of writing, they type in one sentence, call out that they are done and ask (again), "What do I do next?"

I have to honestly ask myself what good trying to get them to blog is doing for them. I don't know if I am accomplishing anything through it, other than gaining an insane desire to beat my head against a wall! Am I using the wrong format or tool for what I want to accomplish? Do my boys not have enough background knowledge of technology to be able to use blogging effectively? Would anyone care to look at our class blog page and give me some feedback? I would be eternally grateful!

Get them moving to get them thinking!

2009-10-02T14:30:00.008-04:00

What a great day the 6th grade Mohawk Boys Read and I had together today! Working with boys is challenging, but it is also fun and energizing if a teacher can keep in mind what a boy needs, cognitively and developmentally. We've been reading and talking about the survival in class. I've been using an excerpt from the book Between a Rock and a Hard Place as an instructional read-aloud. For their guided and independent practice, half the boys are reading Stone Fox and half are reading Call It Courage (though we are considering substituting Tracker as CIC seems to be too difficult for the boys to read silently.)

After reading the first chapter of their guided books, we engaged the boys in a discussion of character traits. The boys were able to come up with adjectives to describe their main characters as well as find evidence in the story to support their decisions. The next day after putting those adjectives on slips of paper, my co-teacher led the boys in a game of charades. They boys had to decide what adjective was being acted out and which character it was attributed to.

The next day, I finished the instructional read-aloud story and they had had an opportunity to watch the author talk about his ordeal. They were very invested in this reading! I had them do a rally table, recording the character traits of Aron Ralston.

Today was exciting as a teacher! I created a triple venn diagram with the three main characters. I recorded all the adjectives the boys had listed for all three characters on sticky notes. In class, each boy got a sticky note. In table groups, they discussed the words and where to place them on the venn. After they were all placed, the boys checked to see if they would change where their classmates had placed words. If they thought a word should be moved, they had to explain why and the original poster could argue why their posting was correct. Watching boys race to pick up a book, find evidence and defend their answers was so cool.

I took their finished venn and created a master on the computer using Class Tools. We will refer back to this venn as we continue in our guided reading groups, moving and adding words as necessary.

There is another site that I am going to use to assess the boys' ability to think about character traits in the next week. At this site the boys can manipulate a double venn diagram by dragging and dropping words where they believe they go. I will also require them to orally explain their evidence for their decisions. That site is called Word Magnets.

This lesson was so motivating for the boys. They were able to be social and to get up and move around. They loved challenging each other's thinking and defending their own answers. The discussions were very high level thinking. They are definitely moving towards proficiency in the learning target of analyzing characters!

Technologically Thinking!

2009-09-10T14:47:00.002-04:00

I am considering offering some after school PD sessions on different technologies. I still consider myself a newbie, but maybe I can learn faster if I have some people learning along with me! I want to begin with blogging or social bookmarking. Not sure what else--maybe I'd let the wants/needs of other participants help drive it. Just brainstorming right now. I think I'll put together a handout for the next staff meeting and see who's interested. In the meantime, here's my latest tech learning:
First Day of School

Blogging with students

2009-09-09T15:01:00.003-04:00

My co-teacher and I are excited to start our class of 6th grade boy readers on the path of blogging. I never realized how much work this would be! I don't know how classroom teachers have the time to get the technology set up amid all the other priorities that they have vying for their time!

I gave the boys a tech survey and so far 11 of 19 boys have returned them. Of the 11, only 7 of them have an email address. As I wait for the rest of the surveys to be returned, I am wondering what my next step will be. On the survey, I am asking for permission to post student work online, but now am wondering if I can extend that permission to setting up email addresses for those students who don't have them.

On the bright side, the boys got a chance to see some blogs today and what they might be able to accomplish with them. They created a name for our class blog: Mohawk Boys Read! and have started brainstorming what picture they want me to take of them to use for the header. I've sent out log-ins for the 7 boys who already have email, so I am interested to see if they do anything with it tonight.

In the meantime, I'll continue to read all the tutorials on edublogs. Sue Waters's The Edublogger has been extremely helpful, and I'd recommend it to any blogger with questions!

How to prepare when there is no substitute for your job?

2009-09-08T15:51:00.000-04:00

Today was our first day with kids. It was a great day. I am so happy to be working with one of my 6th grade teachers in her all boys reading class. Sometimes literacy coaching can be a lonely job at the beginning of the school year.

Today I was able to cross many items off my to-do list. And that might be a very good thing because I was informed about an hour ago that one of my colleagues most likely has the H1N1 virus and since I was in a meeting with her last Thursday, I may have been exposed. Now I am looking ahead to how I can help keep things running smoothly in the event that I get sick. This planning can't hurt; if I stay healthy, I've just made my life that much easier.

This first two weeks of my job are normally spent testing 5th graders and students in grades 6-8 who are new to the building. After analyzing test scores, I set up interventions for struggling readers in 5th and 6th grade and then I work with the teachers and paraprofessionals who deliver those interventions. In the next two days that testing will begin.

I know from experience how hard it is to keep up with the needs of job when I can't be in the building. A couple of years ago, I was on a jury for a murder trial and I missed several weeks of school. I guess if I could catch up from that, a little flu virus can't slow me down too much!

Co-teaching in the Role of Coach

2009-08-23T10:13:00.000-04:00

Recently I attended a two day workshop on coaching. The workshop was valuable and informative. It has also left me with serious doubts about my plans for this fall. In discussing the coaching model that includes cycles of modeling, collaborative planning, observing, and providing feedback, the presenter said that the modeling phase should not be confused with co-teaching. He said that the research indicates that co-teaching as a form of coaching, where the coach will eventually leave the co-teaching situation is not effective. The classroom teacher would revert back to their old way of teaching because they lack the partner in the room.

I have plans to co-teach this year with a 6th grade teacher in her boys only reading class. The reason we had decided to give this a go was due to a workshop led by Laura Robb that I attended at the Michigan Reading Conference last spring. Led by the ideas in Robb's book Differentiating Reading Instruction, we want to implement a differentiated way of teaching strategic reading in our school. We are planning to implement Robb's methods and then report to staff and have the methods and strategies spread through the school.

The presenter's statement leaves me wondering if I have chosen the best method for creating change. Unfortunately, it is too late for me to "back out" of co-teaching. We've already begun planning and my co-teacher does not feel confident about pulling this together alone. And really, I'm not convinced that the presenter or his research were correct. I do think that it provides new questions for my co-teacher and I to discuss. I need to remember that this is really HER classroom, not OURS. We need to develop strategies for her to be able to run this new style of classroom on her own at some point, and I think we need to determine what that point should be.

If I consider our work together in terms of the gradual release model of instruction, I still believe co-teaching is the best option. The changes we are seeking are not ones I can simply model, as I've never taught this way. These changes are a whole new process for designing and implementng a reading curriculum. They will require both my co-teacher and me to shift our paradigm. But I think if the rest of our thinking follows the gradual release method, always reminding ourselves that at some point it will be she alone in the classroom, we can make co-teaching work.

A New Role This Year

2009-08-20T19:53:00.000-04:00

The Michigan Department of Education is taking on an initiative entitled Developing and Implementing the Formative Assessment Process in Michigan. I was selected to be an assessment coach in my district and today was the first day of training. Thankfully, my colleague, Marla, was also chosen.

The training today was focused on the role of coaching and how to be an effective coach. Our first task was to jigsaw an article about the 5 dynamics of group facilitation. We had to design a way to teach our assigned dynamic to the rest of the group. We had two great ideas that involved some active participation and role play, but when the facilitator heard one member of our group explaining an Affinity Diagram, he railroaded us into completing an affinity diagram for our presentation. It felt too directed to me. The 5 dynamics are an effective way to think about the role of coaching. They include planning, making learning a priority, modeling, working through the tensions, and building capacity over time.

In the afternoon, we did a looking at student work protocol called Atlas. I was left with a few questions about the protocol, but I did like the process. I facilitated the 5th grade team in my middle school last year in some looking at student work sessions using the tuning protocol. That protocol worked very well for the team, so I am interested in how they will find this new tool. I like that it has a focus on one student. It fits nicely into RTI theory.

Summer School--Working out of my comfort zone!

2009-07-30T08:47:00.000-04:00

Summer school begins next Monday. I am excited to be with kids again (other than my own!) I'll be taking a break from the middle school level as I will be the lead teacher for the group of students entering 4th grade in the fall. My own younger daughter will be a 4th grader this fall and she is quite a character. I seem to remember her sister being rather strange at this age as well, so I am interested to see if it is a phenomenon with 9 and 10 year olds, or if it is just my girls! (As an example of her silliness: last night my 9yo used a key to unlock my head, opened it up and said, "My it's very dusty in here. You must not use your brain very much! Let me just clean it up for you." At which point she, blew on my head and then closed me back up and locked it tight!)

I am a bit nervous about working with these kids as I've been in the middle school now for 16 years. I think I will have to make a conscious effort to slow down in my teaching. Right now my plan is to work in a genre study on folk tales and then work with them on strategies for reading expository text.

On the first day, I want them to be involved in setting the norms and guidelines for our work together. After that, I want to have them set goals for themselves. I am hopeful that they will be able to do this, and I know that they are going to need more scaffolding than I have to use with my middle schoolers. But I am not quite sure what that scaffolding should look like. I plan to try using a mind mapping activity to get them to think about how they want to be different at the end of our work together. Then perhaps to put their goals into words, I will use a close paragraph that they can fill in.

Please share any words of advice or wisdom!

So Confused!

2009-07-27T10:00:00.000-04:00

Sometimes learning new things can be very taxing! I'm finding this to be especially true with the new information I find myself bombarded with on Twitter. Here are the new terms I've been exposed to:
Skype
Delicious
Diigo
wiki
ning
Second Life
Moodle

And then there are the terms I already knew, but still have not much idea about how, when, where and why to use them:
podcast
ning
blog

I am taking baby steps with all this new information. As you can see, I've begun the blogging process. I am a part of a couple of nings, and I really like the networking and collaborating I get from that. But as for the rest, I feel like I just need someone to tell me which are the best tools to use.

I also need guidance on time management for all of this. On Twitter, many of the people I follow seem to be on the computer all the time! I am sure this is just my perception, but the conversations I see that took place while I slept leave me feeling jealous that 1) I missed out and 2) that I have to sleep! And aside from sleeping, I have to do all the other daily routines that being a wife, mother, pet owner, teacher, friend, daughter, etc. come with. I don't want to log hours on the computer!

So, someone (or lots of someones!) out there on the net, please share your computer-time management skills. And please help me sort out how to prioritize these new-to-me-tools.

Why Middle Level...cont.

2009-07-18T08:54:00.000-04:00

The fact that many structures of model middle schools are being tossed by the wayside in these tough economic times makes it even more crucial for teachers to pursue graduate studies in middle level programs. We all know that in education, we're riding a pendulum that swings back and forth. Ideas come and go, but even if they have different names, the philosophies behind them are usually the same.

In the middle level program at CMU (and hopefully in all!), a teacher will first learn about the distinct needs and characteristics of these "kids in the middle." These sweet darling are undergoing such dramatic changes physically, cognitively, and emotionally. It is imperative to understand them in order to best help them grow into democratic life-long learners.

The second important part of a middle level program is the structures that best suit the needs of these kids. Teaming, flexible scheduling, advisory, parent communication and contact are all crucial elements. Teaching in a school that does not already employ these structures makes it even more important that we have qualified and knowledgeable staff who can advocate for them, and who have the desire to implement them in the toughest circumstances.

In order to understand middle level kids, we need to understand the diversities that enter our classrooms. These kids are diverse in every way-from their rate of their development to ethnic, cultural, and socioeconomic diversities. The middle level program will help teachers understand these differences and then go on to model the instructional strategies that will allow teachers to meet the needs of all students, in spite of their diverse natures and backgrounds.

Understanding curriculum that best meets the needs of middle level students is the next step in the journey to becoming a highly effective middle school teacher through the program at CMU. The National Middle School Association advocates for a curriculum that is integrated, rigorous, and incorporates student voice. This type of curriculum is best planned in collaborative teams, but even teachers who find themselves still working in isolation can implement the elements of effective curriculum within their own classroom.

Becoming a middle level specialist through an endorsement or masters program will enhance the practice of teachers at every level. It will change the way you teach. Maybe more importantly, as many middle schools do away with teaming and common planning time, flexible scheduling, and the other components that make a model middle school, it will make you an advocate to maintain instruction and programs that research shows are best for middle level students.

Why Middle Level training is important.

2009-07-17T13:32:00.000-04:00

Today I completed my 5th year of teaching as an adjunct instructor at a nearby university. Every summer for the past 5 years I have taught two classes in the Middle Level Master of Arts program. The two classes I teach are Meeting the Diverse Needs of Middle Level Learners and Middle Level Curriculum. The 6 credits are taught in three weeks, and they are fast-paced weeks!

This year, as in all others, I am left in awe of the tremendous learning that my students pack in. Between the two classes, there are 5 required texts, all of them packed with valuable information and teaching strategies. The reflections that my learners turn in at the end show the way their thinking around middle school curriculum and teaching strategies have changed. But I also feel sorry for my students this year. Situations in educate in my state have led to a dramatic decrease in the number of teachers seeking to further their education with a middle level masters degree. In my first 2 summers, I had classes of 12 and 14. But these numbers have decreased so that this summer I had 6 students for one class, and although it is best to take the two classes together, it is not necessary. My afternoon class, therefore, had 5 students.

The lower number of students means that they are missing out on substantive conversation that comes from having more voices in the classroom. All of our tasks this year were completed in record time, and I really missed those one one or two "devil's advocate" voices.

Today, the class and I brainstormed with the department head what might be the causes of diminishing numbers in the middle level program. We all agree that university costs are exorbitant, but beginning teachers still have to complete 18 hours in 3 years. Other departments are not experiencing the same struggles. The one possible answer we came up with is that the dismal financial situations facing most school districts has caused most to put the middle level concept on the chopping block. It takes more staff to be able to have common planning time, advisory, and flexible scheduling. It seems that teachers think if their school doesn't follow the middle school concept, the masters program is not right for them. But this is faulty thinking! If anything, middle school kids need qualified middle level educators who understand their developmental characteristics and needs now more than ever!

I will discuss these ideas more in my next post. Stay tuned!

Legitimate beef or disgruntled softball mom?

2009-07-17T05:56:00.000-04:00

My 12yo daughter, G, is a good softball player; one of the best on her team this year. She pitches and plays first base. Not only is she good, but she works hard. She gives 110% at every practice and every game. Being a very non-athletic mom, I often marvel at her skill and perseverance and tenacity. This year, she was chosen by her team mates to be on the All Star team--a team made up of 4 players from each of the three regular season teams. The All Star team was coached by a regular season coach, but not G's regular coach. G attended the one practice that was held before the game, a 2 1/2 hour practice. Her dad said she was the most accurate pitcher, though not the fastest, and she did well at first.

G's team ended up playing 5 games in the All Star tournament, an average of 25 innings. G sat out 10 of those innings, played first base in maybe 7 of them and was relegated to left field the rest of the time. I tried to soften the blow by explaining that left might not get much action at her age, but it is an important position in high school. The sitting out is what frustrated me. The coach had the same two girls pitching the whole tournament--which is ok, they are good pitchers. But in one game, G's team mercied their opponents. This seemed like a great time to me to mix it up some. All 4 girls from G's regular season sat out 2 innings per game. The girls from the coach's regular season almost never had to sit out an inning. I don't think this is right. These girls are young; going into 6th and 7th grades. They haven't finished growing and developing and their talents and skills could still grow. Yet, I felt this coached had made some major decisions about each one's abilities. That wouldn't bother me, except that this coach is also the Varsity softball coach for the school district. I don't want my daughter to be "softball tracked" right now based on his (I believe faulty) assessment of her ability.

So my question is, are my concerns legitimate and would it be appropriate for me to address these issues with the coach? Or am I seeing things through the eyes of a mom and not being fair about the situation? I would appreciate any insight!

Decisions, decisions!

2009-07-16T20:38:00.000-04:00

Thanks to my twitter friends who have ventured over to offer suggestions and guidance! I think I am going to try to do an all-inclusive blog rather than separate personal and professional. I'm not sure how it's going to work and maybe I'll only be writing for myself, but that's ok!

But this is going to have to be a short entry. The husband is out at the boat for the night and I should not be neglecting my girls! They've been so great about working on to-do lists that I've left for them the last couple of weeks as I put in my time at the university.

Next week is all about them and the houseboat!

Welcome to My Blog

2009-07-16T12:30:00.000-04:00

I am not sure how to start this off! Let's begin with why--why did I create a blog? Well, I recently created a Twitter account. In the few short months that I have been tweeting, I have learned tremendous amounts about all of the different ways to use the web, both personally and professionally. My job title is Literacy Coach and my goal is to advance the professional development of my staff. Technology is changing the way we do so many things and I would like to be able to help my staff navigate that change. But I would feel lost in helping them navigate uncharted waters, so here I am--charting a course.

I am starting with a Blog, but who knows where it will go from there. In fact, if you have recommendations about where it should go, I'd love to hear them!

I'd also love input on personal vs. professional blogs. Do I merge the two parts of my life into one blog? I work in a middle school but I also live with a soon-to-be 7th grader and a soon-to-be 4th grader. And the stories I could tell about my husband! Part of me feels like maybe there should be two blogs. But another part argues that I am only one person and I'm not even sure how I'll be able to keep up with one blog, let alone two! I would like to actually LIVE some experiences to write about! In yet another facet of my life, I am an adjunct instructor in a middle level master's program. One of the major tenets I preach about teaching at the middle level is that we need to have integrated curriculum; a blending of the boundaries between the subject areas. To then chop up my life into little separate parts seems hypocritical.

That's where I'll leave it for today. I have a lot to learn and guidance would be good!