Ideas to Inspire

Now that back to school day is over, keep your parents informed about what’s going on in your classes through your blog as well as a wikispaces site.

Advantages of wikispaces:

• students can be the authors of their pages while you still hold administrative power
• videos (imovies, voicethread, flip camera quicktime movies, recordings from photo booth) are all simple to upload to a wikipage
• ohana and other students can c0mment directly on voicethreads from the wikispace rather than sift through drafts of presentations on the voicethread site
• the site is as private as you want it to be
• if someone inadvertently erases some content, it’s easy to fix, as the program tracks who changed what and when
• wikispaces, unlike your school blog, can be worked on from home

Check out the wikispaces sites of some of your colleagues, and if you’re ready to add to your repertoire, I’ll be happy to help you set up a site.

Jerelyn’s grade 8 social studies

Mele’s Papa Nohona Hawai’i

      What makes one school’s reading/writing program more successful than another school? What makes the difference? Researchers at the National Research Center on English Learning and Achievement (CELA) examine student achievement in reading, writing, and other important literacy skills in classrooms across the country. One of the studies has been looking at English programs in two sets of middle and high schools with similar student populations. Most of the schools in the study serve students from high poverty, big city neighborhoods. One set of schools “beat the odds” and outperformed their peers on high stakes, standardized tests, and the other set of schools performed more typically.

Based on their findings, the group came up with six features of instruction that make a difference in student performance. These six features are interrelated and supportive of one another. The higher performing schools exhibit all six characteristics. They caution that although addressing one feature may bring about improved student performance, it is the integration of all the features that will effect the most improvement.

 Finding 1: Students learn skills and knowledge in multiple lesson types

What does that mean?

Teachers use a variety of different teaching approaches based on student need. If students need to learn a particular skill, item, or rule, for example, the teacher might choose to step away from the curriculum in a separated activity in order to introduce the information as an independent lesson, exercise or drill. (e.g., they might be asked to copy definitions of literary terms into their notebooks and to memorize them)

To give students practice, teachers prepare a simulated activity that asks students to apply concepts and rules within a targeted unit of reading, writing, or oral language. They learn their skill at their instructional level so that the focus is on learning the skill without the possible hindrance of the content of the material. (For example, students can identify examples of literary devices within a particular selection, or write their own examples of these devices.)

To help students bring together their skills and knowledge within the context of a purposeful activity, teachers use integrated activities. These require students to use their skills or knowledge to complete a task or project that has meaning for them. (For example, in discussing a work of literature, students might be asked to consider how a writer’s use of literary devices affects a reader’s response to the piece).

All three approaches, separated, simulated and integrated, should be used or teachers are missing opportunities to strengthen instruction and to integrate it across lessons throughout the year.
Some activities that work:

• offering separated and simulated activities to individuals, groups, or the entire class as needed
• providing overt, targeted instruction and review as models for peer and self-evaluation
• teaching skills, mechanics, or vocabulary that can be used during integrated activities such as literature discussions
• using all three kinds of instruction to scaffold ways to think and discuss (e.g. summarizing, justifying answers, and making connections)

What doesn’t work:

• reliance on any one approach to the exclusion of the other two
• focus on separated and/or simulated activities with no integration with the larger goals of the curriculum

Classroom example:

At Reuben Dario Middle School in Florida, Gail Slatko uses all three approaches to empower her students to be better readers, writers, and editors. She teaches vocabulary skills within the context of literature and writing, but she also asks students to complete practice workbook exercises designed to inrease their vocabularies. They also create “living dictionaries” by collecting new words as they come across them in books, magazines, and newspapers.

I’ve been able to go into two classrooms this week where the teachers are assigning multigenre types of research projects for the end of the year. Multigenre, loosely defined, means many types of different writing. Although all the projects start with writing, though, the projects should be a more complex, multilayered, multivoiced blend of genres.

In doing multigenre research, students don’t necessarily focus on the same content material, but multigenre research allows students to

• learn how to conduct research in search of answers to questions that they pose
• learn to self-evaluate by monitoring their own progress and set goals for themselves throughout the unit
• practice using technology skills in a variety of ways
• develop thinking and problem-solving skills by delving further into a topic that they are already familiar with or are interested in learning more about
• learn organizational skills
• learn the skills needed to collaborate

The outcomes of multigenre projects are ideals, and not all students will get the same satisfaction, or rigor out of their project, but teachers can keep several things in mind in order to keep their sanity. First, choose topics that students are interested in, or topics that have validity and usefulness for them. Second, have a clear rubric, but also allow flexibility. Don’t get upset if someone wants to do something that is not on your extensive list of options. Their passion for making iMovies could expand your list of options. Make sure students are balancing exploration with mastery. If the MLA format is important for all research, then have them practice until they show they can master it.  If you are not as picky about the elements of a poem, then let them go wild.

If you’re interested in learning more about multigenre projects, let me know. I have some resources for you.

It’s almost the end of the year and I’m sure you’re making summer plans, but if you’re looking for a simple graphic organizer to keep students focused on the higher level thought processes, try the “say, mean, matter” form attached.

How it works:

Students fill out the type of document and title/description on top, then move one to the first of three columns.

Column 1: “What does it say?” One social studies teacher used artifacts instead of documents, so the first column read “What is it?” (Draw and identify)

Column 2: “What does it mean?” The revised artifact form said “Where were the materials gathered from?” and “What was it used for?”

Column 3: “Why does it matter?” (”How was this artifact essential to daily life?”)

Try it, change it, adapt it, play with it.

say.pdf

This spring break is unique in that because I have no students, I have no typical preparation or grading to do, so I’ve been spending my evenings reading and thinking about the craft of teaching, and especially the skill of questioning.Einstein has much to teach us about questioning.

If I were given a problem and one hour to solve it, I should spend the first fifty-five minutes asking questions and the last five minutes using those questions to solve it.
–Albert Einstein

To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.
–Albert Einstein

Information is not knowledge.
–Albert Einstein

The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
–Albert Einstein

The only source of knowledge is experience.
–Albert Einstein

So what do Einstein’s quotes have to do with us as teachers?  We must continue to be curious, continue to be learners and pass that curiosity onto our students. We can’t just give lip service to the idea of “lifelong learning.” What did you learn about yourself, your craft, your students? Once we learn it, we must share it with our colleagues so that the curiosity gets passed on. If  we have a fabulous experience in our classroom, but nobody else knows about it, did it really happen? It is not our duty to share our “aha” moments, but it should be done out of love – love for our students as well as our colleagues.

Love is a better teacher than duty.
–Albert Einstein