Tag Archives: teaching

Jan 23 2013
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Expecting the Unexpected

This entry comes with a heavy heart as we have experienced something that happens everywhere. The first draft I saved because I needed to think on it before posting it. Then, at the close of the day, I decided to post a version of the original post.

We enjoyed the snow day, and I spent tons of time reworking the plans to make sure we could meet the objectives and district expectations of the essay without getting too far off pacing.

But last night, someone did something dumb – made a dumb choice – and we suffered a tragedy. I assure you when the unexpected happens, your best-planned lessons go out the window.

You see, teachers are more than teachers. We are teachers by our paperwork, but in reality our job description is limitless.
We are the instructors, giving your child a chance at competing in a global society.
We are the police officers, redirecting those who go astray when you aren’t there.
We are counselors, pointing out the importance of today on tomorrow’s successes.
We are the nurses, handing out simple things like band-aids, cough drops, hugs, and kind words.
We are the mothers, modeling compassion and all those social skills you have to have to live a productive life.
We are people, fighting each day to show how much we sincerely care.
And in our classroom, we are family. A family in mourning.

So what of instruction today? How does one implement Common Core in light of tragedy? Can it be done? I didn’t think so. I had to lead class the way it went – as close to structure as possible with open heart and open head and open box of tissues. You can’t plan for this and, God knows, no one should have to fluff through it. So, dealing with tragedy in a close-knit high school classroom is today’s thought.

I can’t tell you what the right thing to do is because an exceptional teacher does what he or she believes to be best for the students. When this catches you off guard, you gotta think on your feet. But here’s what we did…

I began class with the grammar, bell ringer, and vocab as normal. It was dreadfully quiet with secret tear and sniffles presiding. No one wanted to share the answers, and using our talking sticks was pointless because how can you call on a kid knowing words won’t come out when choking back strong emotion? Painfully, we made it through a normally 15 minute game-like activity in nearly thirty minutes.

I could tell we needed a brain break, and we transitioned with, “Well, guys, here’s what we were going to do. This sucks, huh?” I heard muffled agreement and an, “Amen to that.” We moved into, “You’re not feeling this crappy mood essay, are ya? What’s on your mind.” Mostly, they just wanted to make sure I knew. I said I did and that it sucked and that I didn’t know what to say or do to make any of it any better on anyone except to be there if I was needed. A few spoke up and one asked if they could “just write” for a minute. I agreed and walked around and talked to a few of the students one-on-one. One called me out from across the room for looking like I was going to cry. Amazingly, as close as I know we will be at the end of the semester, they could not believe I would cry over a student. In all, maybe thirty minutes of mostly silent sniffles and blank stares passed before one of the students made an announcement to break the silence: “So it’s like when Raspberry found her mom with a pole to her heard because of the neighborhood bully, huh?” And with that, we used the text and talking through the mood of the plot to process all that had occurred and to address the fear of what might happen next. When this happens, you expect some behavior problems. The kid’s not being mad or bad – I don’t believe in bad kids – they are dealing with emotions even adults struggle to put to words.

At the end of the block, we did not have a written essay. Pacing got a little off. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.

And today, that’s all I have for you.

My assessment of Common Core Implementation today:
Speaking and Listening – All standards addressed.
Writing –
9-10.W.3 – Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences.
Transitioned.
9-10.W.1 – Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.
9-10.W.2 – Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.
A – Introduce a topic; organize complex ideas, concepts, and information to make important connections and distinctions; include formatting (e.g., headings) to aid comprehension.
B – Develop the topic with well-chosen, relevant, information and examples appropriate to the audience’s knowledge of the topic.

Will we revisit these concepts? Yeah.

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Jan 20 2013
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Instructional Delivery: Plan and Progress, Writing

Writing: Diagnostic Assessments in Common Core Style

Getting students to write is challenging enough, but throw is a typical state writing assessment prompt and all chaos ensues. One thing I have noticed in eight years, two states, and three schools is that, for some reason, behavior and attendance suffer during writing. When it comes to research papers, it is even worse. With Common Core, though, we want to try to include the citations and text-evidence of the typical research formatting because this is what will help them more in college. Knowing how to back up an argument, even verbally, is going to help them in all aspects of life, so it can’t be ignored.
I started the year by having students take a survey of their past experiences in ELA. Two questions stood out when thinking of what to do to assess their writing:
1. What activity to you like least in an English Language Arts class?
A: Of the 16 students present, 13 students said writing.
2. What do you hope Mrs. Kirk does differently to help you this year?
A: Of the 16 students, 9 said some version of “Help us write better.” One student said, “Don’t assign essays you don’t teach us.”
Clearly, these students have a strong hate for writing. So what am I to do? I know I can increase motivation if I can get them to believe in themselves and see me as a resource, but getting to that point will be a challenge.

Thus come the next week of instruction: Chunking a Writing Assessment.

Step 1: I wanted to give the students a writing assessment, but I quickly realized this might lead to a revolt without proper scaffolding. First, I asked students what they hated about essays. Students agreed the prompts “never make sense,” and that gave the starting point. First, I used the gradual release to model how to break down a writing prompt. I looked at a prompt and broke it down for the students. I modeled by reading it, rereading and annotating it, paraphrasing it, and listing starter ideas. Next, we did one together. Finally, I let the students choose between two prompts to analyze with the knowledge they would be expected to actually write an essay on the prompt they chose.
> Interesting realization: Not a single student in the class knew what “expository” meant, so I did a scale back and had students take notes on the four modes of writing.

Step 2: I didn’t want to give students too much help with the essay, but I needed to make them feel they could be successful. I reviewed thesis statement with the students, and we broke it down to topic+argument/opinion=thesis statement. Students then wrote a proposed thesis statement to guide their writing. At this point, student had to commit to writing the essay on one of two texts. While the content and assignment was the same, the story could be chosen by the student in order to create higher motivation and provide a better assessment of student ability prior to teaching a thorough writing unit.

Step 3: Verbally, we reviewed the basic structure of a five paragraph essay. With this fresh on their minds, we looked back at the prompt to plan what we might need to use as main ideas for each body paragraph. As the prompt was reviewing the mood as reflected in the plot, students determined they were going to break the story into beginning, middle, and end. Students then reviewed their plot maps of the proposed texts (both stories) to see which one they understood and could explain to a partner the best. This was helpful because 4 students ended up deciding to switch to the other text before getting too far along.

Step 4: Looking at the evidence they gathered from the beginning, middle, and end of the text, we went back to our prompt analysis to see if we were ready to write the essay. Luckily, students reread their annotations and noticed they needed to include the mood aspect of the writing. Students were using words like “sad” and “happy” on their evidence, so I did a short version lesson of using a higher-level of vocabulary. I also found out I needed to do a short teaching of what mood actually is.

Step 5: Students were given a generic outline suggestion to serve as a checklist for writing the essay. For example, under “Introduction” students were reminded to “Have a hook to get your readers interested,” “Include the TAG (Title-Author-Genre) when writing about literature,” and “Did you have a solid thesis statement?” Students were then released to write the essay in one hour as that was the time which matches the actual assessment.

Druthers:
The student reaction to the CC writing prompt was intense. Part of me felt like breaking down the prompt and creating a writing plan was cheating, but the purpose of this semester is to help make Common Core accessible to our students. If they shut down, they won’t learn anything. In order to raise the bar successfully, it is my job to help scaffold the material in a manner which students can understand and feel they can master. I wanted this lesson to take one class, but it ended up taking two classes to help the students properly. They will have to take a district assessment next month, so hopefully the time taken in this activity will stick and prove helpful on their assessments.
As much as I freak out about pacing with my students this semester, I feel for the teachers and students who will be implementing CC as a directive next semester when the stakes are much higher than they are right now. I feel my students’ frustrations, and I hope they believe me when I tell them this will be helpful to them next year. While I support the idea of a common curriculum to put all students at the same level of academic expectations across the country, I worry about teachers leaving students behind in the fury of the year. Also, I worry about how the teachers will break down the objectives and what skills will be a part of the objective and what skills will be forgotten. I wonder if this was a plan we needed more time to plan for in terms of having students prepared for the jump, and I wonder how scores will look with the first round of CC Achievement Testing. Other vocal spokesmen of CC have said implementation with result in a lower score for students, and I wonder how this will affect the students and the teachers.
When entering a round of increase academic standards, I guess there is no perfect way to bring about such educational reform in a manner that does not hurt anyone involved. As I continue my struggles for this semester in terms of implementing CC and doing that which is best for my students, I will have to put forth more effort and work harder than ever before. We can do this. I know it.

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Jan 19 2013
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Pacing, Teaching

A note on pacing…

With the first week and the first snow days behind us, we will return to school knowing the honeymoon period at the start of all semesters is officially over.

Students have had nearly two weeks to get used to the course, and expectations have been taught, prompted, and rewarded. We have used brain breaks regularly, and behavior has not been a real issue – until they all received the text messages about the early release. We gained four new students this week, which has made the continuum of skills assessments challenging as one lesson has built on the previous lesson.

Academically, I must admit I’m relieved to have the snow day combined with the MLK holiday to revamp my planning and pacing. I learned the students struggle with basic literary elements vocabulary, the desire to complete homework is lower than I have even seen before, and writing is… just as excited as teaching and assessing writing.

Based on my assessments and student surveys, next week marks moving on to Writing Basics. This unit has been designed to teach students writing while working on logic and communication. By teaching rhetoric and reasoning early, it is my hope to be able to readdress these skills as we move through the remainder of the semester. My estimate here is about three weeks, give or take a snow day. And, thinking about pacing is the point of today’s entry.

Pacing is perhaps one of the most challenging parts of designing instruction. When I attended Maryville College, Dr. Simpson, Dr. Lucas, and Dr. Orren all touted the brilliance of over-planning a lesson. After all, chaos ensues when structure is lost and students have nothing to do. Starting out in education nearly ten years ago, this was acceptable. What wasn’t finished one day fluidly became the next day. When we finished early (as rare as that was/is), I extended the learning with an enrichment activity. Here we are, however, eight years and the teaching profession under more scrutiny than even before and pacing seems key to student achievement and teacher evaluations.

The first thing I have learned about pacing is that a solid teacher will teach bell to bell with all lessons starting moments before the bell. I addressed this in my Ten Minutes post, so I won’t go much further on that right now.
Next, I learned that pacing needs to move quickly through the lesson in order to address attention spans. For example, some research suggests students maintain focus for about fifteen minutes. To keep attention, try to plan you lesson in a manner where pacing is broken up between direct instruction (notes), guided practice, and individual task work. I aim for a shift in activity every fifteen to twenty minutes even if it is something as simple as a partnered shoulder discussion to process what we just went over or check a task we just completed. Try to have a coherent structure that is somewhat predictable overall but will keep students guessing about what you will have them do next.
If you are addressing attention spans appropriately, you are going to have to worry about differentiation for individual students who progress at different rates. One easy method for that is a “challenge” question or task an early-finisher can work on while the rest of the class works. This technique will also help with monitoring behavior, but you will have to find a way to keep students motivated to complete the challenge. Most students are not going to fall for the “This IS your job” or “You win by getting an education” argument. You’ll have to do better than that. One technique I have used to address that is by adding required independent reading in the class. Students are required to do SSR three days a week, and when they finish early they can work on that. During our grammar component, I copy a back side to the daily skill. Students who finish early can complete extra practice for one extra point a piece if the answer is correct. This may sound like a lot of extra points, but daily grammar practice is only 10% of the total student grade. A third idea I have used with early finishers is to assign a skill reinforcement packet based on the student’s individual weaknesses (from some data source to get parent and student support). Track this in your grade book as an extra grade opportunity, not extra credit.
While those ideas will help you with students finishing early, there are, inevitably, those who will work at a much slower pace than anticipated. This part was harder to learn to manage than dealing with the early finishers. Part of it was my fault because I was so desperate to see student mastery before moving on. Well, some of my students were in another class bragging about how they could intentionally fail a quiz or act like they did not know answers and I would go back over the same thing over and over, thereby decreasing the work they actually had to do. Hearing this was an eye-opener because it was true. When your students progress slowly, you really have to find out why to help them. For example, is he/she just a perfectionist? Is it a sick/sleepy child? Can he/she really do it? If not, where, exactly, is the dilemma happening? Rotating around the room can help you assess the situation better, but the bottom line is you have to figure out the problem and help the student reach mastery. Extending the deadline and talking with the student and parent both are good strategies.
Finally, pacing must be adaptable for the students within the class block. I can’t put to words how important this is because I am still working to master it. I’m much better at the end of the semester when I have better knowledge of my students, but the start of the semester is much like a guessing game because I need to be well-planned enough to scale back and reteach or skip ahead and move on at a second’s glance. To accommodate this need, start by breaking down the steps of any skill you plan to teach for the day. When I taught plot, I created slides for every single step – plot, character types, setting, components of various settings. Then, when I see students know setting, I just blow through it and tell them how smart they are as I pass through the slides. Typically, I am able to do this on drama and some persuasive devices as well. If the students know it, don’t be the teacher who reteaches it just because that is what was on the lesson plan.

So, pacing is tremendously important. So much so that I am still trying to work it out in my own class. Hopefully these ideas will be helpful to you or you can make additional suggestions for my classroom.

Now… back to reevaluating my pacing and planning my instructional delivery. The EOC is coming May 7.

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Jan 10 2013
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Starting a New Semester

Starting Right: SEDRC

Each semester I try to think about five key components for success of the students: SEDRC.

Standards
Expectations
Data
Relationships
Communication

With these five things always on the forefront of a teacher’s mind, the students will be set for success.

Standards:
I think most teachers start the first week with a review and recap of the foundation skills of the course. In keeping with the practice, we started out with a review of plot, character, conflict, theme, and setting as well. To try to keep students interested, we started out with “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell. I identified the CC Standards and linked them to the SPIs of the lesson. To help the students see what we were doing, I showed them the standards and had them tell me which objectives looked more achievable. Every student in class felt the CC standards were “overwhelming” or “just too much” for a lesson, but when showing them the SPIs, the students had much more confidence they could do the task. It was an important lesson learned because even I can get frustrated at complex text segments and need to take a break before breaking them down into manageable segments. After all, have you tried mulling through PARCC’s Mondel Content Frameworks? I think the point of this is seeing the imperative breakdown of an objective into manageable chunks written in student-friendly terms.
How will I communicate my objectives?
On the board, I think I will track the day’s CC standard using “I can” statement posters. I created them, printed them in color, laminated them, and placed a magnet on the back so I could easily stick them to the board. Beside this 8×11, I will post my daily objective in the same formula since my days in North Carolina: “Through the study of (material) I will be able to (skill), and demonstrate understanding by (assessment piece).” Beneath this I will continue to post the agenda.
Considering the powerpoints, I will continue to put the CC standard and the SPI list for the day. This is a good practice as it provides the structure for the lesson and works as a solid “teaching transition” to review the objective when progressing through activities or learning cycles of the 100 minute block.
For closure, I will continue the teacher recap and summary of the skills combined with some form of exit ticket or closure task for the day’s lesson. I am really going to work to increase the effectiveness of this part of class because I have read research on the way the brain continues to work if given an unanswered, thought-provoking question.
Bottom line? Post them. Explain them. Connect them. Teach them. Track them. Assess them.

Setting the Expectations
Looking at the standards and the testing window scheduled for May, I feel a time crunch already. I want to spend time working on teaching my procedures and expectations, but I also want to get the students into the content as quickly as possible. I have tracked their data as far back as my system will let me go, and I have analyzed their pretesting data enough to have a pretty good idea of what we need to work on as a class and as individuals or small groups.
To establish the need for rules and expectations, I modeled reading of “Humpty Dumpty” and provided discussion questions as to the fate he suffered and what might have allowed a better outcome. I feel like this is too soon to give them a text and expect them to think critically at the level I desire, so for a “we do” or guided practice, we used a section of text from Mark Twain’s Roughing It to look at the need for authority, rules, procedures, and expectations, and consequences. Now, this seems odd, but the students at my urban school actually got into the story and wanted to read more than the short excerpt. This gave the opportunity to create a consensus map on respect. The class definition is “thinking about what you say or do before doing or saying it and questioning whether or not that would be tolerated if it happened to you.” Nice. For an explanation, our class agreed on, “The Golden Rule.” Even better. I have a feeling this is going to be a great semester.
Now, with all of this, we reviewed the three primary expectations and I gave a hand signal for each. I will be able to use that motion later to prompt behavior without saying a word. Basically, the saying it, “Respect yourself, others, and the community.” For the motions, “respect” occurs with both hands out and fingers crossed (R in sign language). Drop the cross and point thumbs to chest for “yourself”. Point to classmates with pointer finger to say “others”, and take both hands outward in a circle as in “community”. With these expectations, everything is included. As you probably read in my previous entry, prodecures come with a User’s Guide and we practice those procedures regularly.
A final note on the expectations… I used to think it was commonsense not to act a certain way or do certain things. I can remember being in public, raised so modestly myself, and being astonished by some behaviors, blurting out, “I is just commonsense not to do that!” My Grandma Dunlap, in her infinite wisdom, always taught me that commonsense was not so common nowadays. Once during a parent conference, the student zoned out. The parent picked up a pencil and threw it across the room and hit him in the head. While I thought not throwing pencils at faces was commonsense, this child had come to know this action as commonsense. And throughout my teaching career in multiple areas of incredibly low SES, I realized “classroom” behaviors really are not commonsense. As a result, I made it a point to spend a fair amount of time on teaching and practicing my expectations BEFORE I could consequence them. I also use the positive discipline structure, and I would recommend that to you as well.

Using Data
I know right now exactly where my students stand on past testing, the English I Benchmark I gave, and specific SPIs (skills). I have seen their projected scores for the EOC. What will I do? Show them. Next week, I am going to meet with each student to discuss their data and come up with a plan to help master all areas. My class has been approved to work on standards-based grading, and I am certain this will be most beneficial to the students if they understand their data. So how do you get the data?
Someone in your school has access to a ton of data. You can talk to guidance about looking at cumulative records. You can talk to an administrator about past testing scores. You can track what happens in your class and get your department to track across grade levels. And in Tennessee, we have TVAAS. So what I have learned about the data is ask for it and use it.

Relationships
You know how if you like the person you are most apt to help them out but if you don’t like them you get that secret pleasure of watching them suffer? Well, students are the way. Think about the best teacher you ever had. You probably love that teacher because you connected on some level, even if it was just that you thought she was a giant jerk who always picked on you and it took years to see what she was talking about. So build those relationships. Show the students you care and you are a human being too. Be honest with them. Believe in them. Make them believe in each other.
Once again, I could go on and on about the importance of relationships and the strategies I use, but those will come in time.

Communication: Part 1
This goes back to the data. You know when you talk to someone who doesn’t really say a thing? That is sort of what data is to students and parents. If you take the time to find it, you need to share it with the parents and students – explaining exactly what is it, what is means, and what you can do to help it increase. And track it down as much as you can. Considering previous data, I track PLAN and EXPLORE tests, 8th grade TCAP scores in ELA areas. I look at their trend lines on TVAAS and see where they fell behind and what I can do to try to fix it. I look at TVASS projections for the English I EOC and use them to motivate me to do more to help the students master the objectives. During class, I break every teacher-created test question down by the standard and use standards-based grading. Then, I add the student mastery level to my data spreadsheets. At the start of the year and just prior to the actual EOCs, we take “Benchmark” tests. By going down to the skill on each test, you can actually encourage kids to do better. For example, if you score a 24% the first time and a 34% the next one, why try? You’re still failing. However, if you can break down the strands and know exactly what skill to work on, that overall percentage will increase. Also, an added bonus is that students will be able to see small gains in individual SPIs as a positive thing, not just give up over the feeling of never being good enough anyway. Finally, every single thing we do, I communicate that in terms of a percentage of 100 to the students even if I just enter it as 7/15 in the gradebook. Why? Because I drill “THE PROFICIENCY PERCENT” into their heads all year long. Every test.

Communication: Part 2
Outside of the data, you still have to communicate with parents. Call them to introduce yourself and tell them how excited you are about the year (even if you’re concerned on the first day). Pick a system and call a set number of parents a week for something nice. It will go far when you need the parent on your side when a research paper wasn’t turned in or a test is failed. Speaking of failing tests, call parents of students who fail a test with a positive twist on what you can send home to study and how much you think the child needs just a little more encouragement and confidence. Are students going to get the benefit of a solid education if they just apply themselves and do what you ask? Yes. But if you were not getting paid you probably would not come to work just because you knew you were doing what was right by helping out our future leaders. Think about how good it feels when someone helps you out or when you get some kind of recognition for all the work you do. Students need that too. Consider a monthly newsletter with important information about upcoming test or skills of the new unit. Why not print this on the back of a student progress report?
A couple of tools to try:
Remind101.com – Awesome text messaging system for parents and students. Set up an account to remind students of deadlines or a bonus question of the day. Remind parents the end of the grading period is coming and all missing work must be turned in before the deadline. Your personal number is not revealed.
Edmodo.com – I can’t say enough. It is Facebook on steroids for education. I have found students are much more likely to text in homework on the bus on the way home when they act as mom or dad when they get home. Check it out.
A class web page – Many schools and districts have a server to help you, but there are also sources where you can get free or practically free sites.

Activites/Resources mentioned in this entry:
1. ELA 9-10 Common Core Bundle with Mastery Checklists and “I can” Statement Posters. This file is available at http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/English-9-10-Common-Core-At-a-Glance-Mastery-Checklists-and-I-Can-Posters
2. Lesson for Expectations and Authority using “Roughing It” excerpt is available at http://www.civiced.org/index.php?page=fod_ms_auth02_sb.

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