America’s public schools can be traced back to the year 1640. The Massachusetts Puritans
established schools to: 1) Teach basic reading, some writing and arithmetic skills, and
2) Cultivate values that serve a democratic society (some history and civics implied).
The founders of these schools assumed that families and churches bore the major responsibility for raising a child.
Gradually, science and geography were added, but the curriculum was limited and remained focused for 260 years.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, politicians, academics, members of the clergy, and business
leaders saw public schools as a logical site for the assimilation of immigrants and the social engineering of the citizens—and
workers—of the new industrial age. They began to expand the curriculum and assign additional duties.
And we have not added a single minute to the school calendar in six decades!
This was shared in my grad class today. I found it fascinating and I thought I would share. I want to know which schools have elevator and escalator safety training - maybe schools with elevators and escalators !!! K
Thursday, April 28, 2016
The MOST effective classrooms clocked 134 minutes a day of students reading and writing. This, of course, does not include teacher talk or talk about the reading.
In the average intervention 30 minute lesson, 23 minutes of reading need to occur so that instructional time is 75% reading. The other pieces need to be tight and fast.
In November, I posted a blog entry on teaching children to sound out CVC (Consonant-Vowel-Consonant) words. And like most Kindergarten classes, we are still working on mastering that skill. While most of my kids are doing fairly well with this, there are still a few little ones that are struggling to figure out how to blend sounds together. These are mostly the younger ones with the fall birthdays, so it is really not their fault at all, poor babies!
But, the Common Core State Standards were written for everybody- no matter when their birthdays fall- and so I am responsible for teaching all of them to sound out CVC words. It doesn’t matter if English is not their first language, or if they only just barely turned five years old at the end of November. It doesn’t matter if on top of that they were born prematurely, or may have a learning disability, or have any number of other problems you can imagine. It makes no difference if their parents are uninvolved in their schooling or if their attendance is poor. (Thankfully, this describes very few of my students!)
None of those things matter, except that I am responsible to make sure that everyone meets all of the state standards, to the best of their ability and my ability to teach them. So here are some of the things that we have been doing in our little after school tutoring group to help build up their phonemic awareness and therefore get them closer and closer to being able to sound out CVC words.
We practice sounding out words every day as whole group on this pocket chart from ReallyGoodStuff.com
Phonemic awareness forms the foundation for language arts in general, but especially for sounding out words. So when I have trouble getting kids to sound out words, I always remind myself to back up and see where they have fallen short on their journey to become readers. All of the bricks (skills) in the foundation must be in place if they are going to be able to sound out words. If they are having trouble, then there must be something missing. So what is it? I try to identify the gaps and see if I can fill them in.
Phonemic Awareness Skills Progression: 1. Blending parts of compound words (play + ground = playground) 2. Blending initial sound to rest of word in longer words (/m/ + arshmallow = marshmallow) 3. Blending initial sound to rimes in shorter words (/m/ + at = mat) 4. Blending 3 phonemes/sounds in context (“I like to /r/ + /u/ + /n/” = “I like to run.”) 5. Blending 3 phonemes (out of context) (/b/ + /a/ + /t/ = bat)
The natural progression after this step is that if a child knows the letter sounds, he would then be able to say the letter sounds him or herself and then sound out the words. The activities below are based on this progression of phonemic awareness skills, and the idea that once they master each of the preliminary skills, they should then be able to sound out words- with a little practice, anyway! The only difference between these activities and any other phonemic awareness activities is that I am doing them with the very same sounds and words that I am trying to teach them to read, rather than any random sounds or words that I might pull out of the air. This is VERY important! For example, since I might be ultimately trying to teach them to read the word “fat,” I would work on blending just the /f/ and the /a/ sound in the first activity below. Then, if I am also working on the word “sat,” then I would have them blend the sounds /s/ and /a/ in the first activity below, etc.
1. Guess My Silly Sound For this activity, I simply took any two sounds, such as /fffff/ and /aaaaa/ and said them out loud. Then I called on a child to blend them together to make a funny sound, which in this case would be “fa.” For some reason, my students this year find it easier to blend the words together if the vowel comes first and the consonant comes last.
2. Guess My Secret Word
This is my CVC book. You can also get it on a disc, which gets you the printable CVC bingo games with it, too!
For this activity, I just took the CVC flash cards from the unit in my CVC book that we are working on at the moment and just read each child the sounds from each card. I simply told each child the sounds of each word without showing them the letters, and asked them to blend the sounds together to make a word. If they didn’t get it, I started giving them contextual clues. For example, if the word was “dig,” then I might say, “This is something a naughty dog does in the garden.” If the word was “pig,” I might say, “This is a farm animal that loves the mud.” I’ve attached a sample of the “at” word family flashcards from this set for you to try.
3. Stretch Out the Word The goal of this activity is to get the children to be aware of every sound in the word; (hence the term “phonemic awareness.”) For this activity, I have the children put their hands up in front of them and show me how they are going to stretch out their words. Then we pretend to stretch out some rubber, stretchy snakes as we pull the sounds of the words apart. I say, “Say ‘fat.” Sound ‘fat.” Then the children begin to pull on their imaginary rubber snakes until we have isolated all of the sounds in the word. After we have done this for a few words, then I pass out some REAL stretchy snakes, and let them try it with some real ones! The kids LOVE this, and when we have stretched out our CVC words, I let them play with the rubbery snakes a little bit.
5. Write the Word and Sound It Out By Pushing Up Chips I learned this gem of a trick from my new friend, Janice Lawson, who is a retired Kindergarten teacher that has come to volunteer in my room one day a week! I asked her if she would work with a couple of my students that were struggling with sounding out words, and she pulled out this activity from her bag of tricks that she used when she taught Kindergarten in Baldwin Park, CA.
This is Janice’s board for sounding out CVC words!
She said that she felt that it was important for the children to write the words that they were going to practice reading themselves, to help them better focus on the letters. Then she asked me for some blocks or chips to use as markers, and had the children push them up as they said the sounds, one block at a time. Then they pushed the blocks together and tried to blend the sounds together as they did it. For my two lowest little ones, this really unlocked the secret of sounding out words! She said that they needed the kinesthetic element to help them remember and focus on the sounds. She also mentioned that the chips had to be something very boring, or the children (especially the boys!) would just play with them. She usually used poker chips.
This is my paper and the blocks that I used to sound out words with the kids.
I was so excited to see that something was actually working for these two little students, because I had been trying absolutely everything I could think of, and getting practically no where! So during after school tutoring, we tried it again! I handed out white boards to the group and had them all write a word. Then we put the blocks on the boards and pushed one block up on each letter for each sound as we said it. Then we pushed the blocks together to sound out the word. All of the children responded very well to this! The only problem was that it resulted in an erased word on the white board! So we put away the white boards and switched to paper and pencil and started over. We did one word together, and then did a second word. After our first word, we went back and read the first one again, using the blocks as before. Then we did a third word, and went back and reread the first two words again with the blocks, etc. We did several words, but each time we finished a word, we went back and reviewed the previous words.
This is what one of my student’s paper’s looked like. You can see how difficult it was for them to get the words spaced out correctly and the letters written legibly.
At the end of the session, I asked the children to read the words to me individually, without the blocks. All of them could do it, except for my two lowest children that I had my friend Janice work with. So I got out the blocks and let them try it again with the blocks. Guess what? THEY DID IT! I was THRILLED! They have sounded out a few words for me before, but they have been mostly words that they have memorized- not truly sounded out. So this is wonderful news! Hats off to Janice and her great ideas! I can’t wait to learn more from her!
I decided that to make this a little easier next time, I’m going to make up a printable with some blank boxes for the children to write their letters in. I’m also going to number them, so that when I ask the children to read the first or second word, we all know which one to read! The children were writing their words all over their papers and it was hard to keep them all on the same word at the same time. Some of them also were making their letters too small and too close together for the blocks, and I think that putting one letter in each box will solve a lot of these problems. If you would like a copy of this printable, click here.
Of course, the idea of pushing chips into boxes for each sound is not a new one; these boxes are known as Elkonin boxes. But I have never thought of using them with letters inside of them; I have only thought of using them as blank place holders to represent a sound in a word. In this case, the letters are written down, and the child moves the chip on top of the letter while saying the sound, so it is slightly different than the original idea of Elkonin boxes as I understand them.
6. Read the Word and Match It to the Picture Finally, I have the children try to read me the CVC word by sounding it out. No guessing allowed-they MUST sound it out! Then they come up to the pocket chart and find the picture that matches their word.
The pocket chart with flash cards from my CVC book.
7. Reading CVC Nonsense Words When the children get more proficient at this, I am definitely going to introduce them to the concept of reading nonsense words! I know that, at the moment, they are trying to make sense of what they are reading, and that is good. But I do think that in order to develop some good, solid phonics skills, they will need to be able to decode nonsense words. This is because when a child attempts to decode a longer, multisyllabic word, each syllable inside of it is essentially a nonsense word- and that’s why nonsense words are important. I use the Word Blending Pocket Chart pictured below from ReallyGoodStuff.com.
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(This last idea was added on an update to this blog on July 20, 2013).
8. Sing and Move to Sound Blending Songs to Help the Musical & Kinesthetic Learner We completed our Sound Blending Songs for Word Families DVD in Spring of 2013, and I have to say that using the songs as a teaching tool for my class made an incredible difference! As the children sing the songs, they take themselves through the process of saying the letter sounds, stretching them out, and then blending them together to read the word. They enjoy practicing this process because the songs are fun and active! These songs really made a difference to some of my students that were struggling the most!
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Wisconsin Guiding Principles for Teaching and Learning: What Do They Look Like in Mathematics Classrooms?
Wisconsin’s Guiding Principles for Teaching and Learning provide important guidance for Wisconsin classrooms. Each of
the guiding principles has implications for teaching and learning in mathematics classrooms. Wisconsin educators and
mathematics leaders have identified some of the characteristics that should be present in mathematics classrooms at all
levels.
1. Every student has the right to learn significant mathematics.
Mathematical proficiency is essential for every student in Wisconsin. Students need to be able to
formulate, represent, and solve problems; explain and justify solutions and solution paths; and see
mathematics as sensible, useful, and worthwhile. In order to achieve this vision, all students must have
access to challenging, rigorous, and meaningful mathematics. Schools and classrooms need to be
organized to convey the message that all students can learn mathematics and should be expected to
achieve.
What does this look like in a mathematics classroom?
All students are engaged in meaningful and challenging mathematics tailored to their needs.
All students have the opportunity to develop both conceptual understanding and procedural
fluency.
All students are given opportunities to see connections between mathematical concepts.
All teachers intentionally orchestrate classroom discourse to scaffold student learning and build
understanding.
All students collaborate on purposeful tasks.
All students show evidence of developing proficiency in the Standards for Mathematical Practice.
2. Mathematics instruction must be rigorous and relevant.
Teachers focus on engaging students in using mathematical reasoning, making mathematical connections,
and modeling and representing mathematical ideas in a variety of ways. The mathematics curriculum
needs to integrate and sequence important mathematical ideas so that mathematics makes sense.
Teachers use rich tasks to engage students in the development of conceptual understanding and
procedural skills. An emphasis on connections within mathematics helps students see mathematics as a
coherent and integrated whole rather than as a set of isolated and disconnected skills and procedures.
Through mathematical applications, students recognize the usefulness of mathematics and appreciate the
need to study and understand mathematical skills and concepts.
What does this look like in a mathematics classroom?
Curriculum is organized within and across grade levels and be integrated within and across strands.
Students see how various mathematics topics are related, not only within mathematics, but to
other disciplines, the real world, and their daily lives.
Students and teachers strategically use precision and the vocabulary of mathematics to
communicate orally and in writing in order to represent mathematical thinking, solution paths, and
solutions.2
Representational models are created and defended to enhance depth of understanding and to
reinforce the connections to mathematics and to students’ lives.
Lessons are structured to focus on specific learning goals and organized in a format to facilitate
student understanding and include a summary of the important mathematics.
Teachers and students us
inspiration - many students who struggle are not inspired by books, Are you inspired in areas in which you struggle?, access to lots and lots of books organized in ways to get them in the student's hands quickly - by topic, author, genre (Dr. Howard suggests adding poetry to your routine every day.) To find out what needs to be in your independent library you can ask students to make a passion list - topics they are interested in. Penny Kittle
accommodation - accommodate for the needs of students of the vast learners you have in a classroom, lots and lots of experiences with partners and small groups; use the time that students wait effectively with books, vocabulary card games or drills; school-wide book rooms with leveled readers and text sets around a topic (students create a bin, advertise the bin using oral and written presentations), advertising books weekly through book talks, when you marry reading and writing you have a better reading instructional approach
integration - motivation rises quickly when students are given choice, it takes more comprehension to ask a good question than to answer a good question, 4 corner activity: with different questions and/or activities in each corner, 3 X 3 activity - 3 minutes to tell 3 people one thing that makes you smarter using your notes
application - independent application, when they know it independently then they have learned it
individualization - every teacher needs to do this, necklace to flash the words each child needs to know which can be used during any transition, spelling words should rise out of the student's own writing
acceleration - intentional word line fluency or vowel review, must do the strategy every day
vocabulary - vocabulary and comprehension are so important to elevate thinking, context-based word building, our daily word break - 1 minute breaks throughout the day, frequent repetition over time, simple tasks can truly maximize the learning
repetition - word wall - one side of word wall would have the words and the other side would have the definition and picture, repeated bench where you practice it 3x and magically you are smarter, poetry break where they would bring a poem on a big paper into the room, text innovations of poems Ex. humpty dumpty and
exploration - life strategy (LIFE), the wondering wall where you are generating your questioning
collaboration - lots of opportunities for students to dialogue with others, Stephanie Harveys said, "Successful classrooms spent 60-70% of the time dialoguing on what they are learning." "Let me Catch You" - teacher takes notes and share with class in the end
coordination - time to talk about the students we work with, mini-assessment wall
celebration - notice when children are growing, self-evaluation increases achievement according to Hattie
Marie Clay, " We need common goals for all students but different pathways for different students." Our Curriculum such as our standards provides our common goals.
Writing reinforces memory. A picture with labels further strengthens the memory.
Teachers are special because they teach students "how to learn".
Monday, April 11, 2016
Good Teachers Don't Have to Like Teaching
By Patrick O'Connor
I have a confession: I really don't like teaching. Each September, when I hear that eager teacher say she can't wait to get back in the classroom, I look at her with a little bit of suspicion. Even when my class conversations are on point and I am at the top of my pedagogical game, at the end of the day I trudge back to my car, throw my backpack on top of a crumbling hill of paper coffee cups, drop into the driver's seat, and deflate. Click here for more as it is worth the read.
The brain's ability to attend flows in a wave-like action with hills and valleys. Average span is 7 minutes if you care about the topic. Never let kids go without a "turn and talk", "get up and move to talk" or writing for productive content talk. They will take the break whether you give it to them purposeful or not. Become a clock watcher as a teacher to break up your instruction.
Exception is if students are reading or writing on a topic of intense personal interest. Then the “fire in the belly” for learning extends to 11 minutes.
Evidence suggest that we must take engagement with informational text very seriously, focusing on active engagement and significant amounts of informational writing.
This session was presented by Natalie Louis who is the co-author of Writing for Readers (Heinemann, 2013) a unit of study for Kindergarten writers.
The lower grade is potentially in danger with text complexity. It's a huge learning curve from what we've been doing. We need to find new ways to move readers forward faster. Don’t abandon Fountas and Pinnell. We still need reading levels, the progression of students has just been ramped up.
In kids book baskets, in the past the teacher would mostly have the students independent level. We started to play around with the formula in the baggies. Marie Clay says what most grows readers is the instructional level (stretch level). So already we aren’t putting the right thing in the book bags. Reading Recovery studied and discovered kids grow one level every two weeks, so most of the instruction wasn’t at instructional level. So we decided to get more instructional level texts in baggies - more shared reading with a small group, sometimes one to two levels above their grade level.
I want to read that book with you!!!!
Kindergarten teachers understand the power of shared reading. How you know its a good shared reading - the kids are excited and UNRULY! And its mostly implicit (just doing reading - don’t talk about it). Less blah, blah, blah, more do, do, do. It’s why they want to read. They hear that model of you reading and want to sound just like it. If your kids are all sitting still, hands folded -it’s not a good shared reading (all eyes on same text - 1 book). More like a MOSH pit where kids want to surf toward the book. That's what she wants to see in classrooms. Excitement!
You do the dance of shared reading. As much as they need, until they DO back. Gesture for them to try, don’t talk about it. Continue saying "Join me if you can." as you turn the page. Just read it with them. We are talking levels below I , J.
Take guided reading books and use them for group shared reading. Teacher is only one with copy. All eyes on same text. The idea is that at the end they might be able to read by themselves.
Kids below benchmark get this burst schedule of shared reading instruction from you.
Example "Group Burst Schedule"
You would do two week cycles where you take one group and see them intensely and work with the instructional books in their baggie. This won't take much time! These are low level books you can shared read the entire book pretty quickly.
Day 1: Two or three instructional texts (meaning books 2 or 3 levels above their independent level) in shared reading. Saying to the kids: Join me if you can. The kids are shouting out things they notice and you just don’t respond. Keep reading and stopping and saying “Join me if you can” Day 2: Two shared reading two above level Day 3: Guided reading at their level Day 4: Two shared reading two above level and decide how each is doing Day 5: Informal or Formal assess to see if their level moved unless they are totally lost still
This can help them “burst” ahead. Even if you can move a few up faster the one behind can get more focused one on one help.
Partner Reading - There is no reason to have a reading partner unless there is trouble. If things are good...you don’t need help. A partner is there for help. Make sure kids know why they have a partner - so there’s someone else to help when there’s trouble or join the joy! They need to understand the why of partner reading.
Every child has that one book they keep picking up that is WAAAAY above their level. Maybe its a book they've seen an older sibling read, maybe it's a topic or popular character right now, but whatever it is - Let them have it! I call this the child's northstar book - way above your level but you will LEARN to read for this book. They want to read this book so bad they try to sound these huge words out when they are really a C level reader! Mark it with a post it and say this book is special because it is hard for you but we will give you a shot. Guess which book they work on hardest? If I say a book is "just right" and you struggle with it what are you saying in your head to yourself in your head? "My teacher said this book is just right and I can't read some of these words - ugh I'm so dumb." A hard book they know is hard they say, "Oh, I don't know lots of these words but she said it was hard for me so no big deal." but they work harder. Let them have it but label it with a sticky note with a star so they know that is their special hard book they chose.
As an aside...I remember when my son was in Kindergarten and hanging at the C level for so long and desperate to read Star Wars easy readers. I bought them anyway to keep at home and I would read them aloud to him at times but he sat in front of those books longer than any others trying to sound out "Obi Wan Kanobi". I'm pretty sure "the force" (or his Northstar books) propelled him through those primary reading levels. :)
I think the Common Core Standards and text complexity will force us to continue looking for new and different ways to get those "bursts" in reading levels. Do you have any tips or trick to share? Click here for more from Melanie.
Making a Mini - Green Screen work for your projects - speaking skills, digital storytelling, writing and directing a play, etc. You really don't need costly tools. You probably already have the tools around you.
Check out the Google app Speechcue to assist your students in creating a teleprompter for their next speech project. Students can easily upload a written informational report into this app. Then students can change the speed and other features to meet their differentiated needs.
“Asking a question calls for more cognitive demand than answering one. “
P. David Pearson
If the teacher asks the questions, are they working harder than the students who are answering the questions? Good reflection question.
Do good questions get as much praise as a right answer? Should they?
“We are in the hope business. We are the kids’ best hope. Teach like this year is the only year these kids have.” Steven Lange, WI
Dr. Mary Howard was the keynote at the Wisconsin Title One Conference
Laser Focus Turned Inward
Instructionally ask yourself, "Why are we doing this? Why? What are we not doing? Why?"
*Bad Work - every teacher does bad work some of the time, teachers are human - using flimsy instructional strategies or giving students flimsy tasks
Adjectives that describe this: time wasting, unproductive, frustrating
This relates to the complexity of the task. Students don't like worksheets even if it is done on a SMART board or has been scanned in to Google docs or a tablet
*Good Work - intentional teachers spend most of their time having students work in good work, this is planned and purposeful.
Adjectives that describe this: purposeful, Meaningful Engaging
Teachers look at their students and choose a book versus choosing a book and then look at the students. Are we planning for our guided reading time? CAFE = comprehension, accuracy, fluency and expanded vocabulary. Do not sit in your desk when students are present in the room.
If your room is visited, would Dr. Howard find your anchor charts that were created with the entire class. Would there be further mini-anchor charts that students are working on together.
*Great Work Will my choices enhance student learning potential? Teachers need to ask themselves this. Teachers need to ask other teachers this. This needs to be the conversation.
Tier I - Universal
This is not just during ELA but all core universal instruction. Tier II and Tier III must be in addition to a student reaching the entire Universal Tier I instruction (during any new teaching). Tier II and Tier III is for additional support to provide more additional practice or unique skill needs.
80% proficiency rule - Dorn and Schubert said if more than 20% of students in the classroom are not getting what they need in the Tier I - Universal Instruction, then the classroom instruction needs intervention.
Best Practice - serious, thoughtful, informed, responsible, state of the art teaching
students talk more than teacher
student feedback always includes dialogue - grades, stickers, etc without dialogue are not considered feedback according to the research with Hattie
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
“Instructional time is like a string of precious pearls. There are only so many pearls - so use them with great wisdom.”
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