Do You Want to Post?

Any of you who are interested in being able to post to this blog, please let me know?  I will need the email address you would like to use for access to Google Blogger.  Then I can add you.  Being able to post means that you can post questions for the learning community or add topics and information that you think will benefit us all.  Contact me if you are interested or if you have any questions.

PD 360 - Online Professional Development

Please take the time to sign up for a membership.  It is really worth it.  Some of you who are looking for ways to improve will really enjoy this site.  It has thousands of videos that teach and model strategies for educators.  Visit www.pd360.com and click create a new account.  It is free.  If you have any questions or encounter any problems, please contact me.  I will work with you to set up your account.

For a preview video of this resource visit http://schoolimprovement.com/preview/

Strategies and Tips for Students Who are Not Studious…

Many of our students come to school completely ready to learn.  They come from households where parents care about them and their education.  They are expected to go to college and to become successful members of society.  They bring their school supplies, their good attitudes, and their best behavior.  Then there are the other students who need to be taught to know all of those things about themselves.  We not only have to teach them the content, but we have to teach them school etiquette.  We have to teach and model for them how to learn and how to be successful.  Here are some suggestions.  Please add some strategies you would use.

Create routines.  Students (especially male students like me) need structure and routines that help them feel safe and successful.  Students have to be taught to care about grades and failing.  They need routine assessments.  Create a predictable testing schedule (the same day every week) with study sessions and test review sessions.  Also, include optional and mandatory make up sessions for those assessments. 

Create a daily routine.  Students should know what to do when they enter the classroom.  There should be no guessing for the start of the class.  They should know when, where, and how to unpack, sharpen pencils, if they should talk or be quiet, and what to do with their homework.  Eliminate the guessing from them.  Students complain about structure and rules, but they want it.  They need it.  It makes them feel safe.  Vary your delivery of instruction and their activities, but start and end class in the same exact way until your students become the hard working, responsible, self-motivated learners that they need to be.

Create a class theme.  A classroom should be a window to the real world.  Find a subject based theme that builds around a career, job, or social issue that could be interesting for the students.  Your ELA classroom may become a newspaper, magazine, or television studio.  All of your activities may center around the publication or production of a periodical or broadcast.  Every month the students can record their news segments or sell their periodicals to the staff and students.  It can be full of current events, content material, entertainment, or school news.  Your social studies class can run a website that creates history lessons for kids.  Your science class can be a special research organization full of different types of scientists working together to solve societies problems.  Math classes can be analysts and pundits for news and sports shows who solve math problems to teach younger students.  These are merely ideas, but the idea is to MAKE THE LEARNING RELEVANT.

Take responsibility.  Be consistent.  Hold the students accountable for their actions.  Teachers must carry themselves as if they have the power to make things happen.  Things being… learning – discipline – success…  Before I felt like a good teacher.  I acted like a good teachers I had seen.  Eventually, I became a better teacher.  

This new semester is a chance for a fresh start.  Good luck and I look forward to hearing from you.

Highly Effective Teaching

I recently read an article that discusses highly effective teaching.  While I don't feel like there is a formula for being effective in the classroom, there are common strategies and characteristics that effective teachers and school have in common.  Below is a summary of the article and the links to the full article with resources.

What Teach for America Has Learned About Highly Effective Teaching

(Originally titled “Leadership, Not Magic”)

            In this Educational Leadership article, Steven Farr of Teach for America describes the key findings of his organization’s study of exemplary teachers. “Our most effective teachers show that great teaching is leadership,” he says. “In every highly effective classroom, we find a teacher who, like any great leader, rallies team members (in this case, students and their families) around an ambitious vision of success. We find a teacher who plans purposefully and executes effectively to make sure students reach that vision, even as that teacher also continues to learn and improve.” Here are the key elements:

            • Setting big goals – For example, Crystal Jones focused her first graders on reading, writing, and doing math like third graders, and Taylor Delhagen got her high-school history students working toward applying for and succeeding in college. This contrasts to the vaguer and less ambitious targets set by less successful teachers – “I want my kids to learn as much as they can each day.”

            • Getting students invested in learning – Highly effective teachers create and maintain a welcoming environment in which students can take risks, build strong relationships, use role models, and strive for academic success. They get students to abandon the idea that they’re “dumb” and commit to working hard. When Farr asked one fifth grader what she was learning, she said politely, “Can you ask me later? I’m kind of busy.”

            • Planning backwards – Exceptionally successful teachers are clear about exactly what their students need to know and be able to do by the end of the year, divide the year into units, plan a logical sequence of skills, plan assessments for each unit, and then prepare lessons. They also systematically manage student behavior and use every minute of classroom time.

            • Executing effectively and making on-the-spot adjustments – When great teachers see that a lesson isn’t working, they analyze the situation and use a repertoire of skills to make mid-course corrections and get to their objective.

            • Continually improving – Exemplary teachers push themselves to do better and analyze their mistakes, even reviewing videotapes of lessons to tweak elements that aren’t working. “Teachers who are getting the greatest results treat their classroom as a laboratory,” says Farr.

            • Working relentlessly – The best teachers find ways of increasing instructional time and getting more resources. They work with students before and after school and on Saturdays. They apply for grants and scrounge extra resources. 

From his analysis of Teach for America’s most effective corps members, Farr draws several conclusions:

-   Much higher performance is within reach for many teachers. The practices of the best teachers can serve as a road map for their colleagues.

-   “Certain mindsets and beliefs are necessary for success,” says Farr. These include a willingness to take responsibility for students’ learning and unwaveringly high expectations.

-   Great teaching by itself will not solve educational inequity. Teachers can make an enormous difference, but for systemic and long-range change, they need support from the school and the community.

“Leadership, Not Magic” by Steven Farr in Educational Leadership, December 2010/January 2011 (Vol. 68, #4, p. 28-33); Farr is available at steven.farr@teachforamerica.org; article at

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/dec10/vol68/num04/Leadership,-Not-Magic.aspx.

Farr’s book, Teaching as Leadership: The Highly Effective Teacher’s Guide to Closing the Achievement Gap (Jossey-Bass, 2010) has a companion website with videos of teachers in action and other helpful resources: http://www.teachingasleadership.org. 

Lesson Closure

Many teachers discuss the fact that they teach and teach, but students don't retain the information being taught.  Just because we teach, it doesn't mean that students are learning.  In my humble opinion, I feel that students learn through appropriate assessments with feedback, being allowed to struggle with problems, and through lesson closure that causes them to reflect on concepts taught.  Below is an attachment to ideas for lesson closure.  Let me know if it is helpful.

40 Ways to Close a Lesson

What Would You Do Differently?

Often when I am in the company of non-educators and I reveal to them that I am a teacher, people will ask if I am a good teacher.  I always respond that I am a better teacher today than I was yesterday.  None of us are perfect.  We have good days and bad days.  But as long as we strive to make different mistakes than we did in the past, we will be better at what we do.

Reflect on this year.  Identify a situation you could have handled better or something you could have been better prepared for.  Tell what you will do differently in your classroom to ensure that you handle that situation or how you will prepare differently in the future.

Time to Teach?

I became a teacher to make a difference in kids' lives by inspiring them and making them see their worth.  I thought about how to make school more fun and interesting than most of my teachers made it for me.  What I did not sign up for is the endless mounds of paperwork and administrative duties that come with this profession.  I remember the endless weekends of grading, averaging, and calling parents.  I had to find a way to proactively get the work done.  I had to get off of my heels and end the back-peddling that would eventually interfere with what I needed to accomplish in my classroom.

I also had to find time to REFLECT - one of the most important parts of teaching, learning, and growing.  Without the time to reflect on what went well and what didn't, on what was learned or what was not understood, or how to correct mistakes made, I can not be better.

Take time to reflect on ways you have made good use of your time and respond to this post.  If you have no answer, then reflect on what you don't have time for so that we can provide feedback on your situation.  The link below contains articles that may assist you with organizing your days and prioritizing to become a more productive educator.

Articles on time saving strategies for teachers (http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/collection.jsp?id=330)

Taylor Mali on "What teachers make" (written version)

Taylor Mali on "What teachers make" (video version)

Student Managers

There are some kids in our classes who come in looking for something to get into.  As soon as they walk into the door, they are playing and running around.  Teachers get frustrated and the student never gets fully engaged into what is going on in the classroom.  One way to channel that negative energy is to give students jobs in the classroom.  Instead of looking for something to do when they enter the classroom, challenging students should be given a job or responsibility to focus on at the start of the class.  If you have some good ideas of jobs or classroom responsibilities for our boys, please share them with us.  To post a response, click on the title of this post or the word comments below.

Resources and Links

This post is an opportunity for teachers to participate in reasonable online courses for personal or professional development.

http://www.teachereducation.com

This post is for teachers who would like to join a community of science and math based inquiry teachers.  it has resources and an interactive blog to get advice and tips from experts in your field.

http://iteachinquiryblog.com/

Teacher Rapport: How Do You Create It?

As I walk in and out of classrooms, I notice the various teaching styles and relationships that teachers have with their students.  The teachers who tend to get the most out of their students use best practices (consciously or subconsciously) and have a fairly good relationship with the majority of their students.  I found an article about teacher rapport that I would like to share with you here.  Let me know if teacher rapport is essential in being a happy successful teacher.  If so, please share some steps you take to build rapport in your classroom community.  To post a comment, please click on the word comments next to the envelope each post.

Article link: Student and Teacher Rapport: An Essential Element for Effective Teaching

Quizhub Educational Resource

Click the above link to access Quizhub as a resource for your planning and in your classrooms.

Data Meetings Reflection 10-26-2010

Today, we met with the core and PEC teachers of BEST Academy.  We discussed data and issues related to instructional interventions.  One issue that surfaced is that of vocabulary instruction.  Teachers are concerned that students are not successful on tests because of a lack of vocabulary.  If you have ideas or strategies to share about successful vocabulary strategies, please add your comments to this post.  I have included a link to a website that offers suggestions and strategies.  Let me know if it is helpful to you.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6516/is_2_45/ai_n29452064/

New Teacher Support Group Meeting

Our new teacher support group meeting for the month of October gave me insight into how our young teachers are feeling.  The conversations were interesting, serious and focused.  Their issues were all too common for new teachers.  Most of them feel the pressure of getting IT all done.  Many times teachers feel as though they are drowning all by themselves.  I think it was very helpful for them to know that we all feel overwhelmed at times.

One of the most complicated things for a teacher to do is to stay ahead, or even keep up with all that has to be done.  Having a healthy routine that structures a teacher's day and contains realistic expectations and boundaries is needed to keep everything in perspective.  Below is a link to a website that gives simple and practical tips on how teachers can better manage their time.

http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/collection.jsp?id=330

Remember:  When teachers make a conscious effort to do what is in the best interest of student learning, everyone wins.  Prioritize the work based on what will make learning better in your classes.

What Would You Do?

The scenario that follows describes the case of a hypothetical child who is disruptive because his disruptive behavior results in unusual comments from the teacher.

During seat-work assignments, William seems to be constantly involved in some kind of inappropriate and disruptive classroom behavior. Mrs. Rutherford has to constantly remind him to stop disrupting the class and return to his seat. When he is in his seat, William often turns around and teases the student behind him, or he taps the person in front of him and begins talking loudly. When Mrs. Rutherford sees that, she often redirects him back to work with some kind of comment such as, "William, once again you win the motor mouth contest for the day! Stand up and take a bow. Now that you have received your just recognition, please return to work!" Of course William and his friends break up in laughter, which then gets Mrs. Rutherford's "goat."

Sometimes Mrs. Rutherford sends William out into the hall when he is disruptive, and sometimes she sends him to the school principal. Mrs. Rutherford complains to the school student success team that she cannot control William's frequent disruptive classroom behavior. She wants him assessed for possible attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.  What would you do in this situation?


Please give a detailed response that allows for the growth of the overall group.

New Teacher Support Group

Monday, October 25, 2010, will be the launch of the new BEST Academy Coaches' Corner New Teacher Support Group Portal.  In efforts to save time with physical meetings, we have created this virtual arena to share ideas, information, and resources.  Please join this group and enjoy the resources that will be available.

Digital Nation

Atlanta Public Schools has signed on with A+ Educators to provide its middle schools with the resources of Web 2.0 and Digital Nation.  Below I am listing information that pertains to Digital Nation including the link to the site, the password, and links to other very useful classroom sites.  I will be moving around the building to assist you with the implementation of these resources in your classes.

A+ Technology Workshop - Digital Nation

http://www.4aplus.com/jato/digital-nation

username - aps-mid-001

password - 1234

www.xtranormal.com

www.allmyfavs.com

www.blabberize.com

www.polleverywhere.com

www.tagxedo.com

www.acapela.tv

www.voki.com

www.googleearthlessons.com

www.incredibox.fr

www.crocodoc.com

www.ging.com

to create video and pull it from desktop.

www.blogger.com

Even Geniuses Work Hard

September 2010 | Volume 68 | Number 1
Giving Students Meaningful Work Pages 16-20

Even Geniuses Work Hard
by:  Carol S. Dweck

Let's give students learning tasks that tell them, "You can be as smart as you want to be."

We can all agree that meaningful schoolwork promotes students' learning of academic content. But why stop there? I believe that meaningful work can also teach students to love challenges, to enjoy effort, to be resilient, and to value their own improvement. In other words, we can design and present learning tasks in a way that helps students develop a growth mindset, which leads to not just short-term achievement but also long-term success.
Why Foster a Growth Mindset?

During the past several decades, my colleagues and I have conducted research identifying two distinct ways in which individuals view intelligence and learning. Individuals with a fixed mindset believe that their intelligence is simply an inborn trait—they have a certain amount, and that's that. In contrast, individuals with a growth mindset believe that they can develop their intelligence over time (Blackwell, Trzesniewski, & Dweck, 2007; Dweck, 1999, 2007).

These two mindsets lead to different school behaviors. For one thing, when students view intelligence as fixed, they tend to value looking smart above all else. They may sacrifice important opportunities to learn—even those that are important to their future academic success—if those opportunities require them to risk performing poorly or admitting deficiencies. Students with a growth mindset, on the other hand, view challenging work as an opportunity to learn and grow. I have seen students with a growth mindset meet difficult problems, ones they could not solve yet, with great relish. Instead of thinking they were failing (as the students with a fixed mindset did), they said things like "I love a challenge," "Mistakes are our friends," and "I was hoping this would be informative!"

Students with a fixed mindset do not like effort. They believe that if you have ability, everything should come naturally. They tell us that when they have to work hard, they feel dumb. Students with a growth mindset, in contrast, value effort; they realize that even geniuses have to work hard to develop their abilities and make their contributions.

Finally, students with a fixed mindset tend not to handle setbacks well. Because they believe that setbacks call their intelligence into question, they become discouraged or defensive when they don't succeed right away. They may quickly withdraw their effort, blame others, lie about their scores, or consider cheating. Students with a growth mindset are more likely to respond to initial obstacles by remaining involved, trying new strategies, and using all the resources at their disposal for learning.
Creating a Culture of Risk Taking

Teachers who strive to design challenging, meaningful learning tasks may find that their students respond differently depending on the students' assumptions about intelligence. Students with a growth mindset may tackle such work with excitement, whereas students with a fixed mindset may feel threatened by learning tasks that require them to stretch or take risks.

To prepare students to benefit from meaningful work, therefore, teachers need to create a growth-mindset culture in the classroom. One way to create such a culture is by providing the right kinds of praise and encouragement. My research has shown that praising students for the process they have engaged in—the effort they applied, the strategies they used, the choices they made, the persistence they displayed, and so on—yields more long-term benefits than telling them they are "smart" when they succeed.

Teachers should also emphasize that fast learning is not always the deepest and best learning and that students who take longer sometimes understand things at a deeper level. Students can learn about many historical figures who were not regarded as "fast" learners in childhood. Albert Einstein swore that he was slow to learn and that's why he pondered the same questions year after year—with, as we know, excellent results.

Some teachers teach their students about the different mindsets directly. (To learn about a growth mindset curriculum that my colleagues and I have created, go to www.brainology.us.) Teachers may illustrate the concept of the growth mindset by having their students write about, and share with one another, something they used to be poor at and are now very good at.

In one class, for example, the students were astounded to learn that the school's baseball star used to be inept at baseball and only became proficient after much practice. Such discussions encourage students not to be ashamed to struggle with something before they are good at it.

Teachers can also ask their students to choose an area in which they would like to improve and then to establish a personal goal that would be a big reach for them. For example, a student who is typically afraid of criticism might decide to seek critical feedback on her next art project; an algebra student struggling to understand absolute values might commit to watching a YouTube video on how to solve linear absolute value equations, and then teach the process to his classmates; a student who lacks physical confidence might join a sports team; or a shy student might approach other students she would like to befriend. Students can share their plans and even help one another enhance their skills and reach their goal.

Another strategy is to have students write a letter to a struggling student explaining the growth mindset, telling the struggler not to label himself or herself, and giving the student advice on improvement strategies to try.

Through such exercises, teachers are transmitting crucial information— telling students that they view them all as having intelligence that they can choose to develop. The teachers are also communicating that their role is not to judge who is smart and who is not, but to collaborate with students to make everyone smarter.
Building a Growth Mindset

Within a classroom culture that supports a growth mindset, teachers can design meaningful learning tasks and present them in a way that fosters students' resilience and long-term achievement.
Emphasize Challenge, Not "Success"

Meaningful learning tasks need to challenge every student in some way. It is crucial that no student be able to coast to success time after time; this experience can create the fixed-mindset belief that you are smart only if you can succeed without effort.

To prevent this, teachers can identify students who have easily mastered the material and design in-class assignments that include some problems or exercises that require these students to stretch. This way, the teacher will be close at hand to guide students if necessary and get them used to (and ultimately excited about) the challenging work. Some teachers have told me that after a while, students begin to select or create challenging tasks for themselves.

When presenting learning tasks to students, the teacher should portray challenges as fun and exciting, while portraying easy tasks as boring and less useful for the brain. When students initially struggle or make mistakes, the teacher should view this as an opportunity to teach students how to try different strategies if the first ones don't work—how to step back and think about what to try next, like a detective solving a mystery.

Suppose that a student has attempted a math problem but is now stuck. The teacher can say, "OK, let's solve this mystery!" and ask the student to show the strategies he or she has tried so far. As the student explains a strategy, the teacher can say, "That's an interesting strategy. Let's think about why it didn't work and whether it gives us some clues for a new path. What should we try next?"

When, perhaps with the teacher's guidance, the student finds a fruitful strategy, the teacher can say "Great! You tried different ways, you followed the clues, and you found a strategy that worked. You're just like Sherlock Holmes, the great detective. Are you ready to try another one?" In this way, the teacher can simultaneously gain insight into what the student does and does not understand and teach the student to struggle through knotty problems.
Give a Sense of Progress

Meaningful learning tasks give students a clear sense of progress leading to mastery. This means that students can see themselves doing tasks they couldn't do before and understanding concepts they couldn't understand before. Work that gives students a sense of improvement as a result of effort gives teachers an opportunity to praise students for their process. That is, teachers can point out that the students' efforts were what led to the progress and improvement over time.

Some teachers make students' progress explicit by giving pre-tests at the beginning of a unit that purposely cover material students do not know. When students compare their inevitably poor performance on these pre-tests with their improved performance on unit post-tests, they get used to the idea that, with application, they can become smarter.

Homework is an especially important component of an instructional program that enhances students' sense of learning and progress. Homework assignments should not feel like mindless, repetitive exercises; rather, they should present novel problems for students to solve, require them to apply what they've learned in new ways, or ask them to stretch to the next level.

For example, suppose that students are learning about the rise and fall of civilizations. Their homework assignment might be to apply their learning by designing a civilization that would either thrive (by building in positive factors) or implode (by building in risk factors). They can write the story of their civilization and what happened to it. Or suppose students were studying Shakespeare's sonnets. For homework, they could write a sonnet to the person or animal of their choice in the style of Shakespeare.
Grade for Growth

The way teachers evaluate their students' work can also help students develop a growth mindset. At one high school in Chicago, when students don't master a particular unit of study, they don't receive a failing grade—instead, they get a grade of Not Yet. Students are not ashamed of that grade because they know that they're expected to master the material, if not the first time, then the next time, or the next.

The word "yet" is valuable and should be used frequently in every classroom. Whenever students say they can't do something or are not good at something, the teacher should add, "yet." Whenever students say they don't like a certain subject, the teacher should say, "yet." This simple habit conveys the idea that ability and motivation are fluid.

Some teachers my colleagues and I work with tell us that they've shifted their grading system to consider more growth-mindset criteria, so that no student can coast to an A and students who struggle and improve get credit for their effort. One school bases one-fourth of each student's grade on growth-mindset factors, thus rewarding students who challenge themselves, are resilient in the face of difficulty, and show clear improvement over time. Other schools give a separate grade for challenge-seeking, effort, and resilience. Of course, for that grade to be effective (and not just a consolation prize), teachers need to have reinforced the value of these qualities daily throughout the school year.

What if a student puts in great effort but does not improve? The teacher needs to factor in the effort but then work with the student to figure out what the impasse was and how the student can break through that impasse.
Long-Term Success

Meaningful work not only promotes learning in the immediate situation, but also promotes a love of learning and resilience in the face of obstacles. This kind of meaningful work takes place in classrooms in which teachers praise the learning process rather than the students' ability, convey the joy of tackling challenging learning tasks, and highlight progress and effort. Students who are nurtured in such classrooms will have the values and tools that breed lifelong success.