Cougar Communication: Reflective and Transformative Teaching

Excellence in Education: Reflective and Transformative Teaching

The expert teacher does not simply deliver a script. Like the best actors, they have the ability to improvise when things are not going well or simply to take a lesson from good to great.

How do you diagnose student confusion?

How do you make corrections before misunderstandings become engrained and learned?

Great teachers create assignments and activities that enable them to monitor student progress and provide feedback. When the students aren’t understanding the content through the careful examination of in class activities and assessments, a teacher can guide all students to succeed. Part of the in-class reflective process, involves the gathering and analysis of evidence to determine what students know and where adjustments are necessary to ensure each student masters the content.

Revising your lesson in midstream, takes courage, flexibility, expertise,

Formative assessment is a planned process in which teachers or students use assessment-based evidence to adjust what they are doing.

Reflective teachers not only constantly ask questions of themselves and their students, but they also use the answers to the questions to guide and change their instruction to become more effective.

• 1.     Are my students engaged?
• 2.     Is the success temporary or is it connected to the essential question/understandings?
• 3.     Are my students mastering the content?

Some recent examples of immediate instructional adjustments:

• 1.     Ms. Harper, recognizing her students were not understanding the more complex content, simplified and extended her lesson.
• 2.     Ms. Campbell adjusting her lesson by adding a more
• 3.     Mr. Thorpe and Mr. Patteson providing additional support to a group of students who were struggling to meet the lesson’s objectives

While reflective practices appear to occur on the fly, advanced planning by the teacher in regards to identifying potential student struggles and appropriate instructional responses makes it more possible. While judging/measuring student understanding by the looks on the students’ eyes is possible, true feedback can only be garnered by carefully crafted formative assessment strategies. Additionally, it requires the teacher to actively engage and measure all students’ level of understanding.

The greatest reward in becoming a reflective teacher is that you become aware of how capable your students are. Teaching becomes a rewarding experience from which you and your students learn every day.

Administrative Notes

Positive Referral Link: http://goo.gl/cZIXm7

Tweet of the Week

Cougar Communication: No Hands and Haiku Deck

Cougar Communication

Excellence in Education: No Hands

Did you know, that education research suggests that banning children from raising their hands in class improves classroom performance?

It can.

In a study conducted by Dylan Wiliam students were banned from raising their hands and the results were impressive:

• Shy and struggling students did better
• Strong students performed better
• Expectations were raised for all students 
• Classroom question and answer sessions were not dominated by a select few

What are some strategies you can use to avoid hand-raising?

• Cold call (randomly) on students
• Have students write their answers on individual dry erase boards, their desks or on paper
• Turn it in to a visible quiz with students either writing their answers down, displaying number of fingers to answer, ABCD cards

Do the above strategies take more planning and class time? Most certainly, but it’s time well spent.

In the classrooms where teachers take the time to develop their questions and questioning strategies before the class, student learning increases and academic expectations and rigor are higher.

Tech Idea for the Classroom: Haiku Deck

Great news!

Haiku Deck, a great ipad app, is now available as a web application as well. With Haiku Deck creating stunning slideshows and sharing the on the web  (Facebook, Twitter, email) becomes simple. The presentations also can be exported as PowerPoint files and can easily be embedded

What separates Haiku Deck from other presentation creation apps/sites? Haiku Deck’s intuitive and integrated image search and text-sizing are amazingly simple.

Haiku Deck offers a variety of themes and templates to use in your presentations. The best aspects of Haiku Deck are the integrated image search and the automatically resizing text. On each of your slides you can add images of your own or search through Haiku Deck's library of images. As you type text on each slide, the text automatically shrinks to fit in the space allotted. The shrinking text feature is great for encouraging students to minimize the use of text in their slide designs.

Check it out at www.haikudeck.com

Administrative Notes

Positive Referral Link: http://goo.gl/cZIXm7

Reminder, please invite me into your classroom to see a new, creative lesson. The lessons I’ve been invited to see so far have been inspiring. I look forward to seeing your passion-filled, student-centered lessons. You do a phenomenal job and I look forward to seeing it and then bragging about it for you!

Tweet of the Week

Responding To "I Can't Do This" and Whip Arounds

Excellence in Education: “I Can’t Do This”

“I can’t do this.”

When Michael Oher, the football player portrayed in The Blind Side, told his tutor, Ms. Sue (played by Kathy Bates), that he couldn’t do it, she responded, “Not yet.”

In observing several classes this week, I was impressed with how they rarely provided students with the answer and how they dealt with “I can’t do this.”

We should aim to instill a growth mindset, grit and personal responsibility in our students. We can’t let them off the hook by providing them with the answer. But, we can’t simply say “Try your best” and walk away either.

So how can we answer student questions and instill the growth mindset in our students when they don’t get it?

The teachers I saw asked specific questions, enabling them to discover why the students didn’t understand the material. Sometimes the questions were scaffolded, enabling the student to work towards the right answer.

Ms. Harper turned the student’s I don’t get it into a diagnostic opportunity by asking Why? Of course, the student simply retorted, “because I don’t.”

Instead of getting frustrated, she asked another question, “What part do you get?” and then asked a series of scaffolded questions that enabled the student to get it.

Another advantage to asking Why?: it serves as a starting point in enabling our students to grow and take responsibility. The reasons for students stating, “I can’t do this” are varied and asking why enables us to tackle each of them.

Reasons students claim, “I can’t do this.”

1.      They truly don’t understand how.

2.      They’re distracted by something in their personal life that they can’t control (homelessness, hunger, poverty, etc.)

3.      They’re emotionally exhausted. Being a teenager isn’t easy and can be emotionally draining.

4.      They’re physically exhausted.

As teachers, our job is much more than just dispensing content. We need to get to know our students as individuals. We must instill a growth mindset in our students so they can see and reap the rewards of determination and hard work. We must teach our students the skills necessary to be successful in school and beyond. 

Ideas for the Classroom: Whip Arounds

Building upon our group work conversations of last week, one aspect that stood out to me was a comment made by someone in my afternoon group (can’t remember who). “We can’t expect students to work in groups unless we teach them how to work together.” (see stat below for further proof)

One way of building collaborative skills is to use cooperative, interactive strategies. One of my favorite strategies is called the Whip Around. Here’s how it works:

1.      Teacher poses a question—one that has multiple parts to it

2.      Students individually answer with a list.

3.      Students then turn to a partner and create a common list. The common list can not include any common words.

4.      All students stand.

5.      Go around the room with each partner reading one word from their common list.

6.      Students cross off and words on their list that are shared by another student. Students can also be required to add any words that they don’t have on their lists.

7.      Continue until only one is left standing.

Administrative Notes

Positive Referral Link: http://goo.gl/cZIXm7

I’ll be moderating another edition of #vachat on Twitter tonight at 8pm. The topic is School Culture and Climate. We’d love to have you join educators from around the Commonwealth and around the nation. I recommend using www.tweetchat.com/room/vachat . This will show only tweets with the vachat hashtag.

Stat of the Week

I came across this and thought it built well upon our Cooperative Learning/Group Work Conversation.

Around one million students were asked how good they were at getting along with others, 85% rated themselves above median and 25% rated themselves in the top 1%...Far more than 50% of the people rank themselves in the top half of driving ability. When couples are asked to estimate their contribution to household work, the combined total routinely exceeds 100%. And most men rank themselves in the top half of male athletic ability.

Teaching social and emotional skills is as important as teaching academic skills.

(Keller, Scott: How to get senior leaders to change, Harvard Business Review http://blogs.hbr.org/2012/06/how-to-get-senior-leaders-to-c/, 2012)

Upcoming Schedule

Tuesday and Thursday of this week are flex days. The average teacher is inviting more than 5 students to his/her classroom for a variety of reasons (extra help, tutoring, work with peers, make-up assignments, etc.)

The in-school talent show is next Tuesday during first block.

Going Beyond Standards

Excellence in Education: Going Beyond the Standards

As a teacher, I struggled trying to balance SOL standards with bringing history alive, instilling creativity, developing higher-order thinking skills, and building 21^st-century skills.

Recently, I’ve seen several teachers—and more importantly, students—go beyond the standards.

• Ms. Campbell’s students doing book projects. 
• Mr. Kuzma’s students creating mini-projects and posters that required creativity and personal touches
• Mr. Batt and Ms. Harper’s students allowing students to run with their own ideas.
• Of course, this is only a partial list but I wanted to focus on teachers who have End of Course Tests.

What do all these activities have in common?

• Teachers recognizing that standards are just a framework and are not limiting their teaching to standards-only
• Creativity
• Questions being asked that don’t have right-wrong answers
• Student enthusiasm
• Passion and pride

In addition to applauding your efforts, I want to encourage you to take risks. Step out of your comfort zones. Try something new. Diverge from the pacing guide. Challenge yourself and your students. Try a new lesson, one where the outcome is not always known.

We owe it to our students to encourage risk-taking behavior.

Please know that I have complete confidence in you. In this era of standards and accountability, risk-taking can be daunting, but I’ll come back to a simple question, “Why did you become a teacher?”

I’m willing to bet that none of you answer, “So my students can pass a multiple choice test?”

So as you enter the second term, take a risk. Step out of your comfort zone. Bring your subject alive. Create lessons that embody your spirit, your passion and show why you became a teacher.

As we go forward, lets make it a goal/expectation that each of us tries one brand new lesson this term. Please invite me into your classroom when you try this new lesson.  I look forward to seeing your passion come alive.

Administrative Notes

As we near the end of October and the first term, please take a couple of minutes to submit a positive referral http://goo.gl/cZIXm7 . Possibilities: biggest improvement from marking period 1 to 2, student who brought the most to your class, student who got the most of your class, etc.

We have a leadership meeting this afternoon. If you have any questions or concerns, please share them with your department chair.

Interested in attending an edcamp? Some upcoming edcamps near us:

• Nov 2: Harrisburg, PA
• Nov 9: Baltimore
• Nov 16: Hagerstown
• Nov 23: New Jersey 

I’ll probably be going to the Baltimore edcamp if anyone is interested in carpooling (know a great place for crab cakes on the way home)

Stat/Tweet/Article of the Week

From the Harvard Business Review, After a Failure, Shame is Harmful, Guilt is Productive http://goo.gl/XtuYYV

Cougar Communication, September 30

Excellence in Education: Different Seats for Different Lessons

One of the common elements to our faculty meeting discussions was the need for classroom procedures. One of the simplest, yet extremely effective procedures is having different seating arrangements for different activity types. While the seating arrangement is dictated by the type of activity, the opposite is also true: the arrangement of seats tells the students what type of activity and what behaviors are appropriate.

I’ve seen several teachers time students (Ms. Tuthill and Ms. Fermoselle to name a couple) and set an acceptable limit to move seats from one arrangement to another. Great way of setting the tone that every second counts.

While sitting in rows (direct instruction) has a place in education, in many ways it’s a relic of the Industrial Age when we wanted all students to be like the factories they were destined to work in--robotic, identical, one-size-fits-all with an emphasis on rote memorization.  However, today’s world calls for a more personalized educational experience, one that emphasizes collaboration, creativity, skill development and knowledge. Our classrooms should be designed in modular, ever-changing arrangements to meet these needs.

Some of the teachers who seem most at ease and most skilled with creating a fluid, modular approach: Mr. Patterson, Ms. Overholt, Ms. Marple, Ms. Murphy, Ms. Krasny, among others.

And the most extreme award goes to Mr. Kuzma who last year changed his seating arrangement every day before class. I actually heard students in the halls excited to go to class to see what arrangement he had created.

Ideas for the Classroom: Fact Pyramid Because Box

Solid evidence supports the use of graphic organizers as an effective means of enhancing student learning. So when I came across this graphic organizer which requires higher-order thinking, I fell in love with it because it can be used in so many different settings (after reading a document/text, after a video, as part of a lecture, during a presentation, as part of a web assignment, etc.)

In the pyramid students write 4 critical pieces of information from most important to “least” important. Then the students explain their reasoning in the “because box.” After completing the graphic organizer, students should summarize (another highly effective strategy).

Here’s a PDF https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxEB32psimZXRzk4Sl8yNGNaQUU/edit?usp=sharing

Administrative Notes

Positive Referral Link: http://goo.gl/cZIXm7 Please remember that it is expected that each teacher submit a positive referral for one of your students by the end of today.

Based on your feedback, we’ve made some minor tweaks (improved passes, announcement, etc.) to improve flex. Please let us know how the new changes work. While flex does mean a loss of some instructional time, we feel that it is important to provide many of our students with additional time to work in smaller groups with their teachers. We know for many of you that the flex period means an additional assignment/prep; your willingness to meet our students’ needs is what makes Kettle Run a family.

Working with the belief that “if we don’t tell our story, who will?” we’re trying to do a better job of sharing all the great things that we do here at Kettle Run. One of the things we’ve added is Cougar Chat, a daily blog to our school website. We’re always looking for special events and classroom activities to share with our audience.

Stat of the Week

Most research indicates that as much as 80% of classroom questioning is based on low order, factual recall questions.

Cougar Communication, Sept 23

Excellence in Education: Writing to Learn

Writing to learn is more than just putting a bunch of words on a paper and turning it in. It becomes a high-impact strategy because it requires thinking, writing, sharing, reflecting and rewriting. While I saw it being used mostly in English and Social Studies classes, it could easily be used in math (explaining the thought process associated with solving a difficult mathematical problem) or science (reflecting on a lab). Writing to learn also could easily be incorporated into online discussion boards or blogs. 

In observing several classes this past week, I saw various Writing to Learn strategies. The following is compilation of those strategies.

Phase 1: Original Write

Students write what they’ve “learned.” This quick write should only last a couple of minutes. Punctuation and spelling really don’t matter in this stage; the importance is in students getting their ideas and thoughts on paper. The original write could be a personal reflection/opinion (Do you think the United States should use military force in Syria?). It could be a quick summarization activity or it could be analytical (Why do you think the protagonist decided to act in such a manner?) The possibilities are countless but it could easily be used to set up a lesson, after a video clip, as part of an interactive lecture, or as an exit activity. 

Phase 2: Share and Compare

In the second phase, students partner up, share and compare (think-pair-share). During this stage, the teacher becomes the guide by the side, walking around the classroom, asking clarifying questions and answering questions, all while formatively assessing the students.

Phase 3: Clean Up

Students break from their partners and rewrite their original. This rewrite should be more complete and grammatically correct.

Optional Phases:

The ability to converse and share with classmates can be extended after the original Pair-Share and/or after the Clean Up stages.

The process can be repeated throughout a unit as new information is added, challenging students to apply their new learning to the original essential question. For example, a teacher could expand on the original question US involvement in Syria by assigning a newspaper article to read; students repeat the Quick Write Process. Later in the week, students could research the issue on the Internet enabling them to once-again engage in another round of Quick Writes.

Of course, if you’ve used the Quick Write process several times on a similar question, students should be able to better support their statement with facts. At this point you may have them write in more depth and breadth, participate in an in-depth conversation, create a blog, etc.

The Writing to Learn process individualizes learning and requires students to use both lower and higher-order thinking skills. The multiple steps to the process ensure practice, feedback and reinforcement.

Inspired by what I saw classrooms, I spent a little time researching and found several good sources:

·      From Colorado State: http://wac.colostate.edu/intro/pop2d.cfm Here’s a 10 page pdf for math teachers: http://wac.colostate.edu/journal/vol9/russek.pdf

·      Writing Across the Curriculum (several strategies that could be used in any class): http://writing2.richmond.edu/wac/wtl.html

·      Writing to Learn (lots of resources): http://www.leadandlearn.com/resource-center/writing-to-learn-resources

·      Ohio State (explanation and booklet): https://carmenwiki.osu.edu/display/osuwacresources/Writing+to+Learn

·      BYU (great chart/examples): http://writing.byu.edu/writing-to-learn/

Administrative Notes

Positive referral link: http://goo.gl/cZIXm7 . Please remember to submit at least one by the end of this month.

Flex starts in October (Tuesdays and Thursdays). More information to come. 

Quote of the Week

Our job is to teach the students we have.

Not the ones we would like to have.

Not the ones we used to have.

Those we have right now.

All of them.

~Dr. Kevin Maxwell

Upcoming Schedule

September 23^rd         Field Hockey @ Culpeper 4:30/6:15 Varsity first

                                  JV Football vs. Skyline 6:00

                                  Volleyball @ Sherando 6/7:00

                                               

                                                                                                                                                           

September 24^th         Volleyball vs. Eastern View 6/7:00

                                  Afternoon faculty meeting                                                      

                       

September 25^th         Cross Country @ Nokesville Park 5:00

                                  Field Hockey vs. George Mason 4:30/6:00 Varsity first

                                  Conference 27 Golf Tournament @ Fauquier Springs 10:00

                                  Morning faculty meeting                                                        

                                                                                                                                                           

September 26^th        Volleyball vs. Fauquier 6/7

                                 Field Hockey vs. Spotsylvania 4:30/6:00 Varsity first

                                                                                               

September 27^th        Varsity Football @ Skyline 7:00                                                                                                                                                                                         

September 28^th        Competition Cheer @ Eastern View 12:00

Cougar Communication

Excellence in Education: Individual Oral Check For Understanding

In observing several teachers this week (Patterson, Krasny, Miller, Smith, Murphy, etc.), I saw teachers interacting with students as they worked at their desks. The teachers used this time to guide, assess, provide feedback, and interact with students. The below ideas are a conglomeration of what I observed and how the process can be used to maximize student learning.

Oral Checks For Understanding are a great way of assessing students while providing immediate feedback. In using Oral Checks, you work your way around the classroom asking students questions to ensure they have met the learning target.  This can be as students are working on/completing an assignment or a way of checking to see if the students understood their homework (obviously, you want to have the students working on something as you go from student to student). Your questions should be aligned with your learning target/objective (as a matter of fact, you can simply turn your learning target into a question). As students answer the question, you simply record their level of understanding in your grade book. This can be a simply check ✔ , a letter grade, or a scaled (1-4) grade.

Examples:

Question stems: Why? Explain…Tell me about…What do you think about...

Math: Have the students explain how they came to an answer or how the could apply the mathematical concept in real life.

Vocabulary: Randomly ask students to define/use one-three words

Any subject: How does this relate or differ from something we’ve previously studied?

Advantages

1. You’re not relying purely on a written assessment.
2. It gives you a chance to interact with each student.
3. It’s a great means of differentiating based on readiness. You can tailor your questions based on the student’s ability, readiness, or interest.
4. Great way of formatively assessing and providing feedback to your students. If you see a student is struggling, you can easily redirect her, and if the whole class is struggling to answer your question(s), you have an opportunity to immediately re-teach. If a student is experiencing success, complement her on his effort.
5. It’s a quick and efficient means of assessment. There’s no need to spend more than a couple of minutes with each student. Since the assessing is already done, you don’t need to take home the students’ papers.
6. By visiting with each student, you are holding each student accountable. Students can’t hide, cheat, or fake it. The responsibility for learning is placed on the student. A student can’t simply do the homework, he needs to actually understand the work.

How can you use this in your classroom? What tips do you suggest?

BYOD Ideas for the Classroom: QR Codes

QR Codes, or Quick Response Codes, are everywhere, so why not bring them into the classroom?

Here are some simple ideas on how QR Codes can be used?

1. Include a QR Code on worksheets/questions to direct students to a website. What could you link to: an online article, primary sources, a video, etc.
2. When students create online projects have the share their projects using QR Codes.
3. Link to Dropbox, tagmydoc, or Google Drive for collaboration.
4. Perhaps you have students researching different topics. They could then save their research onto an online cloud storage (Google Drive, for example) and then create a QR Code to share with their classmates.
5. Carousel Walks. Create online and editable Google Documents with different review topics. For example, if you’re reviewing for Driver’s Education, you could create several topic pages, post a QR Code for each topic, have students scan the QR Code and then add to the document. After a couple of minutes, have them rotate to the next station.
6. Another extremely valuable resource is Russel Tarr’s QR Code Scavenger Hunt Generator. It’s extremely easy to use; all you have to do is enter a series of questions and answers, click print and the codes are ready. You can display the codes around your classroom or even around the school.  By the way, check out all of Mr. Tarr’s stuff; it’s excellent.

Creating a QR Code

There are countless QR Code Generators. Some top suggestions:

1. QR Code Generator: http://goo.gl/rBL3
2. www.snapmaze.com allows you to link to a website, a phone number, or text
3. www.goo.gl You know this one as a url shortening tool, but when you use it a QR Code is also generated. Simply, click details and the QR code appears. It also tells you how many times the link has been accessed, so you can see if all of your students have actually accessed the site

There are tons of QR Code Readers for both Android and ios devices. These apps work on both devices:

Kaywa.com

ScannerPro

Redlaser 

Neoreader

Administrative Notes

Thanks to all of you who have already submitted a positive referral for a student. If you haven’t yet done so, please submit a positive referral by the end of this month. Again, this is for any student who shows Courage, Character or Citizenship. http://goo.gl/cZIXm7

Stat of the Week

The United States has fallen from second to fifteenth in college completion rates in the past thirty years.

Upcoming Schedule

September 16^th         Field Hockey vs. Eastern View 4:30/6:15 Varsity first

                                  JV Football vs. Sherando 6:00

                                  FFA Field Trip

                                                                                                                                                           

September 17^th         Volleyball @ Liberty 5:30/7:00

                                  Golf vs. Stonewall @ Prince William 3:30

                                  DECA Fall Rally Field Trip    

                                                                             

September 18^th         Cross Country @ Nokesville Park 5:00

                                  Field Hockey vs. Fauquier 4:30/6:15 Varsity first

                                                                                                                                                           

September 19^th        Volleyball vs. Brentsville 6/7

                                 Senior Portrait Retakes

                                                                                                                                   

September 20^th         Varsity Football @ Sherando 7:00                                                                                                          Senior Portrait Retakes

                                                                                   

September 21^st         Cross Country @ Oatlands 9:00 am