End of the Year .......are you getting frustrated? Take a quick look.

           Click here to take the educator's three-step journey to reflect and refocus on student behavior.

Tech Tools - reminding myself today

Today during my Law, Media and Marketing I am reminded of the great tool - Symbaloo.
If you haven't used Symbaloo EDU, you may want to review it!  It is a quick way for students to get to connect students with new websites, new content, etc.  I see teachers use this tool for differentiating and/or personalizing learning.  Check it out - SYMBALOOEDU.com

Cultural Humility

I saw a post with this video link.  I believe the key is to take a moment at this time of year and celebrate the traditions you are familiar with and learn of the traditions of others.  Please take 30 minutes of your time and watch a video related to CULTURAL HUMILITY.  The medical community is using this term to better relate to patients, yet there is much that we as public school employees may also utilize as we interact with our various publics.  The people I admire most practice cultural humility naturally. 

This is powerful in my mind.  Kathy 

Two questions that WILL change you

From Daniel H. Pink, the author of the bestselling A Whole New Mind, comes a paradigm-shattering look at what truly motivates us and how we can use that knowledge to work smarter and live better.  You have to view this! Click here.

Most of us believe that the best way to motivate ourselves and others is with external rewards like money—the carrot-and-stick approach. That’s a mistake, Daniel H. Pink says in, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, his provocative and persuasive new book. The secret to high performance and satisfaction—at work, at school, and at home—is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.

Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does—and how that affects every aspect of life. He demonstrates that while carrots and sticks worked successfully in the twentieth century, that’s precisely the wrong way to motivate people for today’s challenges. In Drive, he examines the three elements of true motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose—and offers smart and surprising techniques for putting these into action. Along the way, he takes us to companies that are enlisting new approaches to motivation and introduces us to the scientists and entrepreneurs who are pointing a bold way forward.

Rti Update: 12 Essential Guidelines for Positive Differentation

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?"

Initiating a Rich Literacy Design for Struggling Readers

"serious, thoughtful, informed, responsible, state-of-the-art teaching" - Zemelman, Daniels, etc.

Sharpen our Instructional Student Lens - from Steven Covey

• Concern - beyond our control  Ex. the weather, dad is in jail, mom won't read to child, another teacher didn't do their job
• Influence - within our control; circle of influence  Ex. bring in volunteers to read to students who have this need

BUT factor - sad day when we use words like can't, won't, always and never instead of focusing on the solutions.

Positive differentiation factors - 12 essential guidelines

1. 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
2. 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
3. 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
4. demonstration - don't tell students - show them using models and actions, gradual release of responsibility, fishbowl strategy - modeling a strategy by the students, teach students explicitly the why and the how of a strategy,
5. application - independent application, when they know it independently then they have learned it
6. 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
7. acceleration - intentional  word line fluency or vowel review, must do the strategy every day
8. 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  
9. 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 
10. exploration - life strategy (LIFE), the wondering wall where you are generating your questioning
11. 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
12. coordination  - time to talk about the students we work with, mini-assessment wall
13. 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".

RtI Update: Bad Work, Good Work and Great Work

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