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We're 7 minutes into our math block. The only sound I hear is the scritching of pencils on paper. Occasionally I'll hear a tsk and look up to see one of my 7th graders looking at her neighbor's paper and shaking her head. A lively debate is about to begin. 10 minutes into the block. My iPhone timer sounds and the kids race to raise their hands. They are eager and 75% of them have their hands up within 10 seconds. I wait another few seconds, looking around to see some of the usually less confident students who are ready to be called on, side by side with my keeners. I point to one and say their name. "Master ____". (The kids get a kick out of me calling them Master or Young Miss when they are engaged and ready to share their learning.) He's telling us his rationale for the 'imposter number'. "I notice that..." he begins, I beam at his logic. I pick another student who self describes as 'bad at math'. "I completely disagree. I chose my number because..." and her explanation is easily as convincing. Some students waiver as they re-examine their thought patterns, but I push on, calling on 3 more students, each with three different answers and equally valid logical reasonings. "I completely agree." I say with a smile on my face, ready for the groans. "BUT MRS. MOORE!! WHICH ONE IS RIGHT?" Comes the chorus. "That one." I say, pointing behind my shoulder in no general direction and we move on. They are unsatisfied and later at lunch I know I'll overhear a conversation in the hallway where one student won't give up on 'his' number. 23 minutes into the block. I am sitting at my stool height desk. Students are in a line to see me for help, but are also asking each other questions. Two students solve each others problems and head back to their desks to collaborate and teach each other. One student has completely moved through the unit in 4 days. He tested out and is sitting on my laptop learning trigonometry with Khan Academy. I work on the whiteboard giving students problems and helping them find their mistakes when they are done. "You divided the area by π but then what do you need to do before getting the pure radius?" A light shines and they nod, forgetting to verbally respond as they head back to their desk, muttering about the fixes they can make. To my left students are pulling out the answer keys to the worksheets and self checking their work on the standard they are trying to gain mastery of. 42 minutes into the block and I've gotten the same question 3 times. I call hands and half the students immediately look up, putting their hands in the air and are quiet waiting for me talk. I call the names of a couple of my talkers and soon the whole class is quiet. "Okay, I'm getting this question a lot, so let's go through it." I put up the problem on the board, keeping the latest asker right beside me. "Now, let's walk through it." As we go through the steps I can see several students realize they are either masters of this information, or it's way beyond them. They return to their work silently, not disturbing the kids who are listening and scrawling notes in their journals. I get through the impromptu mini lesson and assign a formative assessment to close out the block. The lesson takes 3 minutes. 3 minutes left, most students have handed in their 'exit slips', a quarter of a paper that I keep stacked by the desk for these moments. I'm going to be able to quickly look through them and know what students I need to pull for a more in depth walk through of this concept. All the students stack their journals and put away their worksheets. This math block is over but the kids walk out talking about some new concept they learned, or something they struggled with for the second or third day and still don't get. I know they're doing fine, and that they'll get there eventually. Our favorite quote, emblazoned everywhere "Math is not a language I speak. Not yet. I can't learn it by listening to people speak it at me, I have to practice it, to play with it. To make mistakes. Math isn't magic or mysterious." Does this happen everyday? Mostly. Teaching is a human practice so sometimes the students are squirrelly, or I'm not great at explaining things. But mostly, mostly it is this way. This is how we do math. I am teaching: out of control. The students pick the work they want to do (within the unit I've created), and they pace themselves. The Wall of Champions beckons them to try just a little harder, do just one more problem. They will get there, they can see their growth by a simple check of their Fresh Grade status. I can't brag enough about my kids. I am so proud of their work. The parents are crediting me, other teachers are spending hours after school asking me about my methodology, but really it's the kids. They have to buy into it and engage themselves. It's not hard, but it's certainly not easy to lose control, to give it over willingly. We've been told that the only way we'll get students to work is to force them into it, to catch the teachable moments, to find the educational backdoor. It's my experience (however limited) that the human condition is one of discovery and insatiable curiosity, all I have to do is get out of the way, say some well timed cheers, and give a few tips without giving students the full answer and they'll find their own path to the knowledge they seek. The stories are coming fast and furious. The quiet sounds of the writing students are music to my ears. I circulate, making sure the less engaged students are working, their hesitance to write more a product of their own insecurities than the lack of ideas in their heads. "Close your eyes." I tell one of my 6th grade boys and wait for a beat. "Now open them and tell me the first thing you see." "The soft pillows." He responds. "If you were laying down on those pillows, what would you be looking at?" I prompt. "All those fish!" His eyes get big. "Write about that! Tell me what you see and hear and smell! Are the blankets heated, are the pillows hard or soft?" I walk away as his pencil hits the paper, not lifting for another 12 minutes. I start -every single- language arts block with a writing prompt. The students have turned in their 'to be graded' writing assignments, this is just writing because people write. Or draw. Or sketchnote. Or diagram. All of those are acceptable in the ELA journals. They write to a prompt but if their ink runs dry they are allowed to go back and find a previous prompt to respond to, I try to write questions on every entry every day, encouraging them to continue their thoughts, detail some new images, or get a new chance on a story that went sideways. We call it "Daily 3" and eventually we'll get around to three things, but our focus is on the short stories we're about to crack open. We're looking at a variety of things, depending on our skills and confidence with texts. Some of the students are looking for metaphors or similes. Some are looking through their stories for new vocabulary, words they've never seen before. The more confident readers are huddled around a poster, excitedly searching for a new hint. "The bitter almond tea. I think that's a sign of poison!" One student says "Oh yeah!" Another student is grabbing his phone, searching for the answer. I have to ask them to head to the learning center, an empty classroom at the end of the hall so they can talk and work and not disturb those who need quiet to read and think. Two of my low students wave to me as they head out the door together. They are going to the elevator room and will be back near the end of the period, excited to show me how far they got working together. They know that it's a privilege to be collaborative on this assignment. It's not actually, but no teacher has ever let them express the language arts as a social activity so they take this very seriously. These two boys self describe as 'not good' at school. They are creative, bright, active young men that take gym seriously, and work well when they are laying down on the floor. They do need support, and definitely don't perform at grade level, but they need to be given appropriate steps, not just left to fend for themselves. Their journals get special sticky notes every day, asking guiding questions and giving very specific feedback, formative and direction oriented. This way they can read on their own and not get singled out in a special 'low group'. They can learn in a safe environment, without being publicly outed as needing special help. Some of my students do need to be pulled into small groups. They are usually targeted to a very specific skill on a very specific story. 'Examples of hyperbole in The Tell Tale Heart', 'Citing character traits in The Three Brothers', 'Concrete imagery in Lamb to the Slaughter'. The groups have to work independently first, but then they can collaborate after they've each found an example. Working together their language around the texts and confidence with new texts are becoming stronger. We have a poster in the front of the room that shows various responses we sometimes make. "Compliment, Comment, Connect, Question" it says with examples and prompts of starter conversations. "I like that... I agree with.. I wonder why.. This reminds me of..." I'm proud of my students. They work hard and they deserve to find and express their own confidence and knowledge, being fluent in the language arts have been an 'elite' skill for too long. They all can own the 6 strands, and I'm hoping they realize it too. I am doing my practicum prep for the three weeks of December that I'm going to be teaching. I am prepping to do something radical.
I'm prepping to fail. I'm prepping to fail because I want to be great. Wait. What? Yeah, that's right. I'm prepping to fail because I want to be great. I want to try something that is pretty radically different than the students have had before. It's a totally different way of teaching and learning and understanding. It's from the alignment of Standards Based Grading genuises like Dan Meyer, Mathy McMatherson, and my own real life mentor Jeremy Inscho. They have this (not so radical) concept that if you break math down into it's simple bits and allow students to self pace through them, while teaching mini-lessons for comprehension and new concepts, students will take charge of their own learning and get through the material with deeper understanding and a drive to succeed. But. It requires a lot of up-front work from the teacher. You can't just crack open your textbook and fly at her each day. You need to have the materials and Wall Of Remediation set up so you aren't back and forth, printing, running around, and scrambling to teach older concepts. This is what I'm prepping to fail on. I want to set this up and get it going, but it means I need to have space and time and take LOTS of notes on what is failing so I can fix it and make things smooth. Do you prep to fail in your teaching? I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on integrating more variation of the strands of ELA into my lessons. Looking back I can definitely see the trend to focus on reading, writing, and listening, and neglecting the viewing, speaking, and representing. One thing I’m really interested in is how I can help the students who need to take notes, but aren’t strong at writing.
One big challenge I see is that even though I'm teaching 6th and 7th graders, they are still in a largely literal phase of development. When we practice note taking skills many of them still are trying to write every word. I'm working on how I can give them the ability to translate larger thoughts into short descriptions, but I know that one of the biggest challenges they will face in high school is that they will be in front of teachers who have to get through so much content, they can't slow down and take the time to let students process the information.
Making that connection, for me, informs a huge chunk of my practice in giving students the time to process and then apply the information we are covering in class. I have already started to move towards a mini-lesson type instruction. I try to never speak for more than 10-15 minutes. If I am teaching a particularly complex topic, I try to break it into reasonable chunks that can be practiced or applied. I'm also finding that this is giving me great engagement in my class. Now I just need to help my students make the connection that not everything has to be done (or dictated) all at once. Assessment drives my metaphor for travel.
One of my Twitter mentors is a Principal in Courtney. Kyle Timms and I had the opportunity to discuss a view of how we should use assessment in our classrooms, schools, districts, and lives. The simile is that assessment is like Google Maps. It's actually a really brilliant simile!
Are you a teacher with a single iPad classroom? I've been talking to lots of single iPad teachers and I keep hearing about how hard it is to get excited about only having a single iPad in the classroom. We all see so many great blogs and Twitter feeds about 1:1 iPad settings where everyone has great Wi-Fi in the classroom and tables, couches, beanbags, and whiteboards aplenty. But that isn't reality for all of us. In my practicum classroom we have Wi-Fi (albeit slow!), a projector, whiteboards, a SD issued laptop, and an Elmo. All said, that's pretty decent. I know several of my Vancouver Island University colleagues have the miraculous overhead projector and are becoming fast experts at getting a chalkboard clean at the end of every lesson. I still bring in my own iPad, and use it for all sorts of good tech integration into our classroom. For the purposes of today's post, I'm going to assume that each of you reading this has an iPad and a projector (and the correct equipment to connect the iPad to the projector via dongle or AppleTV). One great thing about the iPad is that if you have good file management you can save pictures of your students work for future assessment purposes. You can also take those photos and mark them up, which will eventually mean that you're going to get rid of your document camera. (When you do, hand your doc camera to the most tech phobic teacher in your school. It's the gateway to wanting more tech, or so says Shawn Davids). So which app should you use for your doc camera needs? I prefer Notability. It's $2.99 but it's useful for any number of purposes. Below you see the opening screen. You can see that there are multiple folders you can create that will allow you to organize your information. I have a folder called Math and within it I have Unit 1. To the right you can see that each student can have their own collection of pages. Once you tap on a student's name, there are multiple options you can play with to find the right layout for every lesson and need. If you click the little wrench you will see a bunch of options, but one is Paper. The picture below shows the paper options you can use! Just to the right of that is a little icon that looks like multiple pieces of paper. That shows you a quick thumbnail shot of all the different pages in this student's Math Unit 1 Notebook. On the top right corner of each thumbnail page is a little bookmark. If you select that bookmark it will highlight the page to save it for later. You can pull it up by the little bookmark icon (just below and to the left of the red circle). This is ideal when you see something you want to bring up later for conferences, assessment, or IEP meetings. If you click the plus button (and by now, you should know that the plus button always adds something, everywhere in the iOS & Mac OS), you'll get a bunch of options of things you can add to your student's page. The two you'll probably use most often are Photo and Take A Photo. In your class, if you're on the go all the time and just taking photos for your blog, Twitter feed, or to mark up later, you're going to want to use Photo. If you are standing in front of a student in the very moment and want a photo use Take A Photo. ProTip: Take a photo of a page that your student is going to read to you, then click that little microphone link to the left of the plus button and record the student reading. You can go back and listen to the reading while marking later. Plus you can also track and listen to recordings over the course of the year. Insta-Awesome Assessment. If you click this little pencil tool, you can have a variety of sizes and colours to choose from for marking up all your notes, photos, and work! You can also see an example of how I use this in my classroom just below that.
If you have any questions, don't hesitate to leave a comment! Where do I even begin?
First off I met Kyle Timms (@k_timms) on the ferry ride over. We started our learning at O'Dawn Hundred and talked about the role of grades in schools and how grades and assessment need to be based on real world applications and experiences. We co-created an analogy about how grades and assessment are like the Google Maps app for our phones. You can't just type in the destination, you have to first tell the app where you are starting from. And then you don't just drive around aimlessly until Google tells you that you've arrived, you get step by step directions that follow you at every turn. Make a wrong turn? No problem! The app recalculates and helps you with a new route to your destination. But it gets better, maybe I don't like driving on highways, Google Maps has my back. It has differentiated routes for me to take what I am comfortable taking! We could base an entire practice around Google Maps! Then I was inspired and got to geek out over seeing Will Richardson (@willrich45), whose ideas really have shaped my practice and goals as a beginning teacher. I have been parroting his famous "You want to be found by strangers on the internet!" to everyone who will listen to me for a year, so to hear him speak in person was awesome. I got to attend a smaller session and asked the first question and overall had some great conversation with those in the room. Topics ranged from student teachers being desperate for any job not just a dream job, to defining vision in schools, to new literacies, to the importance of telling stories and getting parents on side. We had a great lunch, (seriously, delicious!), and great conversation with a fellow Student Teacher Jordan Ackerman (@UBC_flat) from UBC in a PDPP program. He has 1 year to learn what I'm getting in 3, and I know I still don't feel prepared. I have so many concerns about the way we are educating teachers today, and would love to see sweeping changes to adapt to the needs of the new literacies and skills of our students. The second session was by the very awesome Bryon Carpenter (@BryonCar) who showed us the way that he is using his iPad to do immediate and relevant feedback for his students while stopping as much of the paper wasting as possible. He showed off several apps that would be fantastic if I worked in a school with reliable internet, and definitely if I had older students. I'm going to let the wheels turn a bit more on how I can do it with the situation I have this year. Finally I hit up the Augmented Reality session. Aurasma has been a great interest of mine, so seeing some practical applications that Collingwood School has used it for is very cool. I plan on using Aurasma to trigger things for my parents and celebrations of learning. I use ColARapp to do all sorts of things. Their Starbucks Latte sheet is how I'm going to be teaching adjectives in a week. I'm excited about the use of AR in my classroom, and even more excited that I don't have all the answers. The students can learn and -play!- and make mistakes and try again. We're going to build our new literacy together. Thank you so much to #CUEBC for letting me come and be a part of the fun. I've been so blessed to be a part of your PSA day activities. Thank you for making it affordable for Student Teachers, and thank you for welcoming me and treating me like part of the family! |
AuthorI respond to Sarah, Mrs. Moore, Mrs. Smoore, Miss Sarah, (and sometimes Mom!). I have been an DL (homeschool!) teacher for 2 years and am now a proud member of the SD35 team! Archives
September 2018
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