Recently I spent about three hours visiting our Kindergarten Spanish immersion classes, listening in with what little Spanish I have, but mostly observing the teaching moves of the teachers and the engagement of the students. It was similar to watching a movie with the sound off - I noticed different things than if I'd completely understood what was going on.
Three things really stood out to me:
1) When I didn't understand the language, the importance of gestures took on a whole new meaning. If the teacher asked a question, she pointed at the chart to help the children see the source for the answer. When counting tens strips on the calendar, she exaggerated the counting motions. When reading aloud a book, she pointed at the part of the picture she was discussing and made "guitar-playing" motions when an unfamiliar instrument was mentioned. As a second language learner, I relied heavily on these clues to understand what was going on.
2) Repetition of concepts and terms took on a whole new level of importance. At one point the kids sang a song and I had no idea what the song was about. I did notice that at one verse the kids shouted, but otherwise it was a wall of sound to me. As a student I might have mimicked some of the words, but had very little understanding. However, after the song the teacher pulled up a small student and repeated words from the song while pointing between her short companion and her taller self, helping me to understand that the song was about opposites. She did this multiple times, asking the students to repeat after her. The same with the calendar pattern of small, medium, and large balls. The kids made small, medium and large circles with their fingers over and over, all while repeating the words after her. I began to understand the concept, and was even able to say the words, though I need more repetition because I can't recall them now.
3) Finally, being surrounded by an unfamiliar language was exhausting! I found I spent the first 10-15 minutes concentrating well, but after that I began tuning out, looking around the room for something I could more easily understand. As I spoke to the other observing teacher in English about what I was seeing, I realized I was doing exactly what we get frustrated with our ELL students for doing - mentally drifting, talking off-topic (or even on-topic, but just not listening to the lesson), and missing the intent of the lesson. No wonder students with very little English appear to have attention deficit problems - simply attending to what sounds like Charlie Brown's mom ("Whaa whaaaa whaaa whaa") is very tiring!
Not many of us get the chance to experience life as an ELL learner, and yet MANY of us have ELL students in our classrooms. If you have the chance, I'd urge you to put yourself in this position and then stand back and watch your own reactions. It's enlightening, and could have an immense impact on how we work with the second-language learners in our schools.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
Creating Grade Level Inquiries
As teachers, we're constantly running into problems in the classroom. Problems that, unfortunately, can't always be solved in the same ways from year to year. Teaching is a constantly evolving art form requiring us to be flexible and creative as we figure out why Jose isn't learning letter sounds or why Suzanne always ends up with a stomach-ache at math time or why Itzel's handwriting is illegible despite weeks of interventions. It's what makes coming to work interesting and, by this time of year, intensely frustrating.
While in New York not long ago for the Teacher's College Coaching Institute, I attended a break-out session with Shanna Schwartz about creating grade level inquiries to help us solve these types of problems. She walked us through a 5-step inquiry that a grade level team at a NY elementary school had undertaken after they'd noticed the volume of writing in January was lower than it had been in December. Shanna's steps, and the NY teachers’ example, follow:
1) We observe - The second grade teachers looked at student work and put numbers to what they saw. Rather than just say, "They're not writing as much", they noticed that students were writing on average 3-4 sentences in January when in December they'd been writing 8-9 per day.
2) We raise questions - They asked, "Why did they write more last month than this month?
3) We come up with hypotheses - The teachers realized that they'd changed genres, from fiction to persuasive, and so hypothesized the students needed more knowledge of the genre. They also hypothesized that students needed higher level models of good persuasive writing to raise the quality of their writing.
4) We try something - To help with creating higher level persuasive writing models, the teachers found mentor texts in the real world, such as book reviews on Amazon and restaurant and movie reviews in the paper. They created exemplars (great examples of persuasive writing) for students to study, and kept them in front of students for the duration of the study. Finally, they intentionally demonstrated their own persuasive writing in front of students during mini-lessons. In addition to this creation of higher level models, they also had the students formulate volume goals by drawing a smiley face on the line of their paper where they planned to write to each day.
5) We reflect and adapt - After a period of "trying something", the teachers re-evaluated where their students were, again putting numbers to the results. They found a marked difference in the amount the students were writing. After discussion, they decided the results had more to do with creating better models of persuasive writing and less to do with the daily writing goals. Their conclusion: They needed to use better models with all future writing genres. The learning from this inquiry study needed to expand beyond just this writing unit.
In the future, with the rise of teacher accountability and Race To The Top, we'll be asked to reflect on potential solutions to issues as part of our yearly evaluations. This version of the scientific method is a simple yet effective way to solve the problems we so often experience as teachers.
While in New York not long ago for the Teacher's College Coaching Institute, I attended a break-out session with Shanna Schwartz about creating grade level inquiries to help us solve these types of problems. She walked us through a 5-step inquiry that a grade level team at a NY elementary school had undertaken after they'd noticed the volume of writing in January was lower than it had been in December. Shanna's steps, and the NY teachers’ example, follow:
1) We observe - The second grade teachers looked at student work and put numbers to what they saw. Rather than just say, "They're not writing as much", they noticed that students were writing on average 3-4 sentences in January when in December they'd been writing 8-9 per day.
2) We raise questions - They asked, "Why did they write more last month than this month?
3) We come up with hypotheses - The teachers realized that they'd changed genres, from fiction to persuasive, and so hypothesized the students needed more knowledge of the genre. They also hypothesized that students needed higher level models of good persuasive writing to raise the quality of their writing.
4) We try something - To help with creating higher level persuasive writing models, the teachers found mentor texts in the real world, such as book reviews on Amazon and restaurant and movie reviews in the paper. They created exemplars (great examples of persuasive writing) for students to study, and kept them in front of students for the duration of the study. Finally, they intentionally demonstrated their own persuasive writing in front of students during mini-lessons. In addition to this creation of higher level models, they also had the students formulate volume goals by drawing a smiley face on the line of their paper where they planned to write to each day.
5) We reflect and adapt - After a period of "trying something", the teachers re-evaluated where their students were, again putting numbers to the results. They found a marked difference in the amount the students were writing. After discussion, they decided the results had more to do with creating better models of persuasive writing and less to do with the daily writing goals. Their conclusion: They needed to use better models with all future writing genres. The learning from this inquiry study needed to expand beyond just this writing unit.
In the future, with the rise of teacher accountability and Race To The Top, we'll be asked to reflect on potential solutions to issues as part of our yearly evaluations. This version of the scientific method is a simple yet effective way to solve the problems we so often experience as teachers.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Lucy Calkins and the Power of Feedback
These are hard times for education, there can be no doubt about that. It seems like everyone is under fire and nothing is sacred, even the legendary Lucy Calkins and her almost-as-legendary colleagues at Teacher's College.
At the recent New York Coaching Institute, Lucy Calkins talked with the group about how Teacher's College has stayed alive in these hard times. She had several suggestions, but the one that stuck out the most to me was her first one because of what they discovered as a result.
Lucy suggested that in order to deal with the current negative culture, we need to cultivate friends who aren't literacy geeks. Talk with them, use them as informants, and ask them, "What should I be reading?" Broadening our friendships helps expose us to the types of thinking we might not otherwise encounter.
That's exactly what she did, and in talking to some friends outside her department, she was told about the work of Geoff Petty. He has been examining the effects of feedback and found that specific feedback has the largest effect size of anything teachers do. Good feedback can add the equivalent of TWO years of growth if done well.
The website above has specific findings (in a very readable format) about how to make feedback specific by including medals (positive statements), and missions (ideas for improvement) based on clear goals. Lucy's commented that the difference between an excellent workshop and one not-so-good is the amount and quality of the feedback.
This makes perfect sense. I think about some classrooms I visit, in various schools, where the teacher may be teaching in a workshop format, but it's fairly obvious she's just going through the motions. The teaching is still very teacher-centered or standards-centered rather than student-centered. The teacher tends to view the class as a group rather than as a collection of individuals.
Lucy asked us to examine our workshops and ask ourselves, "Does it appear that the students know that their writing should be getting better each day? Do they understand that they're supposed to be a better reader in October than they were in September? Do they know that their partner conversations should be improving, and their reading logs and revision techniques should be building upon each other?"
Too many times we aren't explicit enough about how we expect students to learn in our classrooms. We hide the running record from the child and use it merely as an assessment rather than also as a teaching tool. Or we teach a concept without explaining how this will help them as a reader or a writer.
Students deserve for us to help them set honest, specific goals and to help them towards those goals by continually offering feedback on their progress. Wouldn't we all appreciate this honesty regarding our own work?
At the recent New York Coaching Institute, Lucy Calkins talked with the group about how Teacher's College has stayed alive in these hard times. She had several suggestions, but the one that stuck out the most to me was her first one because of what they discovered as a result.
Lucy suggested that in order to deal with the current negative culture, we need to cultivate friends who aren't literacy geeks. Talk with them, use them as informants, and ask them, "What should I be reading?" Broadening our friendships helps expose us to the types of thinking we might not otherwise encounter.
That's exactly what she did, and in talking to some friends outside her department, she was told about the work of Geoff Petty. He has been examining the effects of feedback and found that specific feedback has the largest effect size of anything teachers do. Good feedback can add the equivalent of TWO years of growth if done well.
The website above has specific findings (in a very readable format) about how to make feedback specific by including medals (positive statements), and missions (ideas for improvement) based on clear goals. Lucy's commented that the difference between an excellent workshop and one not-so-good is the amount and quality of the feedback.
This makes perfect sense. I think about some classrooms I visit, in various schools, where the teacher may be teaching in a workshop format, but it's fairly obvious she's just going through the motions. The teaching is still very teacher-centered or standards-centered rather than student-centered. The teacher tends to view the class as a group rather than as a collection of individuals.
Lucy asked us to examine our workshops and ask ourselves, "Does it appear that the students know that their writing should be getting better each day? Do they understand that they're supposed to be a better reader in October than they were in September? Do they know that their partner conversations should be improving, and their reading logs and revision techniques should be building upon each other?"
Too many times we aren't explicit enough about how we expect students to learn in our classrooms. We hide the running record from the child and use it merely as an assessment rather than also as a teaching tool. Or we teach a concept without explaining how this will help them as a reader or a writer.
Students deserve for us to help them set honest, specific goals and to help them towards those goals by continually offering feedback on their progress. Wouldn't we all appreciate this honesty regarding our own work?
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Leaders of the Free World
When my niece was 5 years old and beginning Kindergarten, her first day of school was the main focus of the extended family. We all had high hopes for her, knowing as we did that she was gifted and precocious, it was just a matter of time before the rest of the world discovered what we already knew - that she was the next leader of the free world.
She did impress her teacher and the other teachers in the school fell in love with her just as we had. But that didn't mean everything was peaches and cream. She'd ruled the roost for so long that following other's rules were a little hard for her to understand. After getting in trouble one too many times for not following directions, my brother sat her down and asked her why the teacher was having to redirect her so much.
"I like school and all," she said, "but really I just want to do what I want to do!" That comment stuck with us and has become an inside joke anytime one of us wants to be headstrong. Isn't that what we all want? Just to do what we want to do?
That comment came back to my thoughts again today when I worked with a second-language first grader during writing workshop. His teacher was concerned that he might be dyslexic because when rereading his writing his words were all over the place. It was almost as if he tossed them up and they stuck where they landed.
So, when Bryan said, "Miss, I've finished my book!" I went over to see, surprised and excited that he'd spent the time and energy to complete an entire story. Sure enough, he had written a story about playing soccer, and the words were scattered about. The cover said I play with friends my but when he read it to me, he read it correctly. He pointed to each word and simply pointed to my and then went back to friends. The same with the next page, which said: game the Me and Ernesto started which he read as Me and Ernesto started the game .
When I talked to him about it, and pointed out how it looked to me, he corrected me: "No, this is how you read it."
"I can see that, Bryan," I said, "but someone else reading it will get confused. You need to write it from top to bottom, just like other books in the library are written. Let's fix it and then see if Ernesto can read the page about him." Bryan erased and rewrote the words correctly, and when Ernesto successfully read his page back to him, his face lit up with a huge smile. Ernesto had read his book!
I think until that particular moment, Bryan had his own personal system of writing. He knew what he wanted to say and how he would write it. He just wanted to do what he wanted to do, by gosh! The thought had never crossed his mind that someone else might want to read what he wrote.
However, when they did, suddenly he was an author. An author with words that others would be interested in. And what we'd thought might be dyslexia simply became what it was - a misunderstanding about the purpose and intent of writing.
I wonder how many kids in our schools misbehave or have misconceptions about school simply because they want to do what they want to do. Kids like this need a certain element of choice in their day. They need to feel empowered. They just need help directing that empowerment in the right direction. Who knows...they might be the next leaders of the free world.
She did impress her teacher and the other teachers in the school fell in love with her just as we had. But that didn't mean everything was peaches and cream. She'd ruled the roost for so long that following other's rules were a little hard for her to understand. After getting in trouble one too many times for not following directions, my brother sat her down and asked her why the teacher was having to redirect her so much.
"I like school and all," she said, "but really I just want to do what I want to do!" That comment stuck with us and has become an inside joke anytime one of us wants to be headstrong. Isn't that what we all want? Just to do what we want to do?
That comment came back to my thoughts again today when I worked with a second-language first grader during writing workshop. His teacher was concerned that he might be dyslexic because when rereading his writing his words were all over the place. It was almost as if he tossed them up and they stuck where they landed.
So, when Bryan said, "Miss, I've finished my book!" I went over to see, surprised and excited that he'd spent the time and energy to complete an entire story. Sure enough, he had written a story about playing soccer, and the words were scattered about. The cover said I play with friends my but when he read it to me, he read it correctly. He pointed to each word and simply pointed to my and then went back to friends. The same with the next page, which said: game the Me and Ernesto started which he read as Me and Ernesto started the game .
When I talked to him about it, and pointed out how it looked to me, he corrected me: "No, this is how you read it."
"I can see that, Bryan," I said, "but someone else reading it will get confused. You need to write it from top to bottom, just like other books in the library are written. Let's fix it and then see if Ernesto can read the page about him." Bryan erased and rewrote the words correctly, and when Ernesto successfully read his page back to him, his face lit up with a huge smile. Ernesto had read his book!
I think until that particular moment, Bryan had his own personal system of writing. He knew what he wanted to say and how he would write it. He just wanted to do what he wanted to do, by gosh! The thought had never crossed his mind that someone else might want to read what he wrote.
However, when they did, suddenly he was an author. An author with words that others would be interested in. And what we'd thought might be dyslexia simply became what it was - a misunderstanding about the purpose and intent of writing.
I wonder how many kids in our schools misbehave or have misconceptions about school simply because they want to do what they want to do. Kids like this need a certain element of choice in their day. They need to feel empowered. They just need help directing that empowerment in the right direction. Who knows...they might be the next leaders of the free world.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
March Wildfires
For teachers, March is the longest month. There are no holidays and no workdays, our energy is drained, and spring break is beckoning, pulling our attention from where we currently are to where we want to be - on a beach, somewhere, with an ice cold adult beverage and not a single test prep passage in sight. March is the month of doldrums, the month of strained nerves, the parched month of having given every last bit of thought to struggling students who no longer seem to respond and instead seem to taunt us with their ability to remain exactly where they were back in January. March is the month we question our effectiveness as teachers, and dream about retirement.
In this parched landscape, it's easy for a small spark of a careless comment to end up as a conflagration. We're all on edge, our patience has worn thin, and we're all out of ideas. One moment of frustration can mean words are spoken that cannot be undone. In these circumstances, it's really best to withold all judgment until after the spring break rains. What's getting on your nerves right now may look a lot less significant once you're tanned and slathered in oil on the beach.
Remember - only you can prevent wildfires.
In this parched landscape, it's easy for a small spark of a careless comment to end up as a conflagration. We're all on edge, our patience has worn thin, and we're all out of ideas. One moment of frustration can mean words are spoken that cannot be undone. In these circumstances, it's really best to withold all judgment until after the spring break rains. What's getting on your nerves right now may look a lot less significant once you're tanned and slathered in oil on the beach.
Remember - only you can prevent wildfires.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Self-fulfilling Prophesies
Years ago I worked with struggling students as a reading specialist in a neighboring school district, and while my main job was to recover them as readers, as spring approached I'd also end up preparing them for the yearly high-stakes exam. One fourth grader (let's call him Mitchell) taught me a lesson about text anxiety that I've never forgotten.
The exam was still weeks away, and while I knew much of what we'd learned about reading strategies would transfer to the test, I felt the need to do some specific test-taking strategy work as well. To begin the process, I asked the kids in the small group I worked with what their thoughts were regarding the test. Were they worried or nervous about how they'd do?
Mitchell, who frankly had struggled much of the year with impulsivity when it came to decoding words and comprehending text, surprised me by telling me he wasn't worried at all. This was the first time I'd ever heard a student say he WASN'T nervous, so I asked him to explain.
"My teacher says she's been teaching us all the stuff we need to know for the test all year long," Mitchell stated. "She said she's not worried about the test and that we shouldn't be either. I know I'm going to do a good job, because she's... what's the word? Confident! She's confident in me."
Sure enough, Mitchell exuded peace about the upcoming test. Not over-confidence -- he was still willing to listen to my pointers about test-strategies -- but there was no fear evident in his demeanor over the next few weeks.
It's possible that on the day of the actual test Mitchell did end up experiencing some butterflies and self-doubt. But what's interesting is that the text anxiety that typically can be debilitating to struggling readers did not affect his ability to learn in the weeks preceding the test. All because of the confidence his teacher inspired in his own abilities. She gave him power over his fears by attributing his likelihood of success to his previous hard work. This self-efficacy made him work even harder instead of giving up, like so many struggling students do.
It's an interesting lesson in how powerful our role as teachers can be, and I've never forgotten it. To paraphrase Henry Ford: "Whether your teacher believes you can do a thing, or not, she's right."
The exam was still weeks away, and while I knew much of what we'd learned about reading strategies would transfer to the test, I felt the need to do some specific test-taking strategy work as well. To begin the process, I asked the kids in the small group I worked with what their thoughts were regarding the test. Were they worried or nervous about how they'd do?
Mitchell, who frankly had struggled much of the year with impulsivity when it came to decoding words and comprehending text, surprised me by telling me he wasn't worried at all. This was the first time I'd ever heard a student say he WASN'T nervous, so I asked him to explain.
"My teacher says she's been teaching us all the stuff we need to know for the test all year long," Mitchell stated. "She said she's not worried about the test and that we shouldn't be either. I know I'm going to do a good job, because she's... what's the word? Confident! She's confident in me."
Sure enough, Mitchell exuded peace about the upcoming test. Not over-confidence -- he was still willing to listen to my pointers about test-strategies -- but there was no fear evident in his demeanor over the next few weeks.
It's possible that on the day of the actual test Mitchell did end up experiencing some butterflies and self-doubt. But what's interesting is that the text anxiety that typically can be debilitating to struggling readers did not affect his ability to learn in the weeks preceding the test. All because of the confidence his teacher inspired in his own abilities. She gave him power over his fears by attributing his likelihood of success to his previous hard work. This self-efficacy made him work even harder instead of giving up, like so many struggling students do.
It's an interesting lesson in how powerful our role as teachers can be, and I've never forgotten it. To paraphrase Henry Ford: "Whether your teacher believes you can do a thing, or not, she's right."
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Noticing Walks
While at the Coaching Institute in New York recently, our cohort leader, Shanna, led us through classroom walk-throughs after hours. The kids had left and so had most of the teachers, and so we walked the halls like little ducklings behind our mother duck, mainly looking at what we saw on the walls.
Shanna modeled thinking through a two-column note headed “I notice” and “I wonder”. Out loud she’d think, “I notice that…bulletin boards are set up so that each student in the class has their own area. I wonder…why some boards don’t display any work at the moment? I notice…these two bulletin boards have a poster describing the process the students went through to create the work. I wonder… is that something they’re working on as a school?”
She encouraged us to be as specific as possible in our noticings – use numbers instead of generalities (no “some” or “lots of” allowed) and to remove all value statements from what we noticed.
For instance, I noticed that on one 1st grade bulletin board most of the student writing was written in pen and kids had scratched out their revisions and written over them. But when I phrased it that way she had me re-word it to, “I notice…all but one student wrote their letters in pen instead of pencil. I wonder… did the teacher ask the kids to write in pen in order to see evidence of their revisions?” Another coach said, “I notice… all the students’ letters are three pages long. I wonder… were children given choice about the length of their writing and was variance allowed?”
By the time we’d finished, the tone of our noticings created a very data-oriented feel to our observations. By withholding all value judgments and instead framing what we saw as specific observations with related wonderings, the result was very professional and impartial. We didn’t discuss answers to any of the questions we raised, but the questions remained nonetheless, floating in the air awaiting another day to find answers.
Shanna modeled thinking through a two-column note headed “I notice” and “I wonder”. Out loud she’d think, “I notice that…bulletin boards are set up so that each student in the class has their own area. I wonder…why some boards don’t display any work at the moment? I notice…these two bulletin boards have a poster describing the process the students went through to create the work. I wonder… is that something they’re working on as a school?”
She encouraged us to be as specific as possible in our noticings – use numbers instead of generalities (no “some” or “lots of” allowed) and to remove all value statements from what we noticed.
For instance, I noticed that on one 1st grade bulletin board most of the student writing was written in pen and kids had scratched out their revisions and written over them. But when I phrased it that way she had me re-word it to, “I notice…all but one student wrote their letters in pen instead of pencil. I wonder… did the teacher ask the kids to write in pen in order to see evidence of their revisions?” Another coach said, “I notice… all the students’ letters are three pages long. I wonder… were children given choice about the length of their writing and was variance allowed?”
By the time we’d finished, the tone of our noticings created a very data-oriented feel to our observations. By withholding all value judgments and instead framing what we saw as specific observations with related wonderings, the result was very professional and impartial. We didn’t discuss answers to any of the questions we raised, but the questions remained nonetheless, floating in the air awaiting another day to find answers.
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