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