Classroom Integration

Collaboration…who doesn’t have time?

January 14, 2015 by Amber 4 Comments

There is clearly not enough time in the day. I have a never ending to do list that seems to grow more than it shrinks. Recognizing that I don’t have enough time to do all the things that I have to do, much less what I want to do, I still feel like this post needed to shared.

Collaboration isn’t an option, it is now a necessity.

Knowing that we can get bogged down in our buildings, or in our classrooms, can make us feel like taking an extra step to communicate and collaborate with other teachers may push us over the edge. But sometimes? It can lead to the most organic of discoveries!

Last week, I was scrolling through Instagram, I came across a post from another educator friend talking about the website Popplet. Popplet is a visual mind mapping tool that students can use to organize facts and thoughts and learn to create relationships between them. I took a screenshot and sent it to two of my teachers whom I thought would enjoy teaching with it.

The next week, one of them, a second grade teacher, had her students use popplet to write word problems. They had to roll a dice and get three numbers. They then used those three numbers to create a math word problem and had to show different ways to solve it on a popplet.

The other, a fourth grade teacher, used it to illustrate all the different forms of numbers they had been studying. The students wrote one form of the number in the middle and then connected all of the different ways it could be written around it.

His comment? “You never know what a students doesn’t know until you ask them to create something.” It began very clear, and very easy, to see which students were struggling.

I couldn’t have required such an epiphany!!

The point here is that I didn’t pay to go to a conference. I didn’t sit through a webinar. I didn’t read a book. I simply saw a picture on a form of social media and shared it. Something that quick and easy allowed these teachers to add another tool in their toolbox to gather formative assessment data from their students. Sharing doesn’t require a tremendous amount of effort, you just have to do it!

Lane check…who is your “check in person”?

September 29, 2014 by Amber Leave a Comment

I love my daughter’s day care. They care about her, they love on her, some days they even fix her hair in these amazing ponytail/braid/thingies. (If you’ve seen that curly-haired energetic baby girl of mine, you’d know that is an impressive feat.)

One afternoon last week, I pulled into the drive of her school, and again experienced the dilemma of where to park to run in to grab her. There are two lanes under a large carport, and then an outside “lane” that is the fire lane. One half under the carport is clearly labeled, “no parking”…and being married to a fireman, I know you’re not supposed to park in the firelane. The dilemma comes in that every day there are people parked where I think they shouldn’t be parked. And every day I just pull up behind one of them and go get my girl.

How many things do you do in the course of your day because everyone else is doing it? Things that you may or may not think are correct but that you do none the less, because it’s what others are doing?

That afternoon, I grabbed the office manager and asked her what the correct protocol was for parking. (Inside carport, or fire lane is fine…for the record.)

It made me wonder again how much happens during an instructional day that we do, not because its right, or what’s best for students, but because it’s what everyone else is doing. I challenge you to find a “person” (if not a complete PLN!) that you can check in with that help keep you in the right lane…the one where you’re supposed to be, not just the one everyone is in.

vroom, vroom,

Amber

So you want to have a class blog…

September 3, 2014 by Amber 1 Comment

Below is a SAMPLE first blog post…this is one that I used with my fourth graders many moons ago that started off our blogging adventure. (Feel free to use!!) During class we’d discussed the many do’s and don’t’s of our classroom blog, and also how we wanted others who read to “see” us. It was a VERY long conversation! Students knew that other adults, as well as other students, would be visiting our blog and they wanted to come across as intelligent as possible, 🙂

By setting the “tone” for what and how we wanted the blog to work, the expectations were in place before we’d even logged on. In addition to the student safety pieces we’d discussed, we also talked about web netiquette and what made a “good” comment versus a “blah” one. Also, spelling errors weren’t a focus for my classroom, I was more interested in what thoughts they were trying to convey rather than whether or not they spelled them correctly. Each teacher (and class!) can make that decision for themselves. That being said, students were way more critical of each other than I could have been about their errors on the blog.

There are so many support systems out there, like #commentsforkids. That stream on twitter will generate more traffic for your class posts to help show your students what a global audience can really look like! There are also a multitude of blogging platforms out there…blogger, kidblog, wordpress, etc. Do NOT be scared of blogging with your students!! I can’t stress this enough! You have complete autonomy of your “space”. I always set my comments settings to where I had to go in and approve them before they could be “seen”, to ensure no personal info was shared. I used a generic title & my kids didn’t use their real names. It was a safe space!

Good luck with blogging in your classroom! I hope you see as many benefits as I did from the relationships that I was able to develop from both my students and my parents throughout the years.

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It’s time to get blogging! We’ve talked about the different do’s and don’ts for blogging…but I wanted to add a couple more here. Read through these and post a comment about the rule you think is MOST important and why.

1. Don’t give out any personal information like telephone numbers, home address, school name or parent’s office address.

2. Don’t use your real name as your log on name.

3. Make sure you’re not simply typing “Yeah” or “That’s right” or something equally boring.

4. Learn how to use “smileys” to show how you are saying things. Read the smileys sideways – they make a face. 🙂 or 🙂 is a smiley face. You are happy and smiling when you speak….let me see that personality!

5. Adhere to the same standards of behavior online that you follow in real life.

Be ethical. Don’t believe anyone who says, “The only ethics out there are what you can get away with.” If you encounter an ethical dilemma in cyberspace, consult the code you follow in real life. Chances are good you’ll find the answer, 🙂

OK, put these rules to the test and comment letting me know what you think!!

Bloggingly,
Mrs. Teamann

An @ASCD review…Learning in the Fast Lane #ASCD

August 19, 2014 by Amber 2 Comments

In a book that promises to lay out a plan that helps teachers close gaps in small group instruction, I found myself hoping that Ms, Rollins could do just that, knowing that my focus this school year would be p instructional strategies that truly makes a difference. “Learning in the Fast Lane: 8 Ways to Put All Students on the Road to Academic Success” may be my action plan to do just that.

Ms. Rollins discusses the notion that students who need remedial instruction are typically working on skills that close the “gaps” from previous years, vs focusing in on skills & concepts that could help them be successful in class that day.

“Rather than build students academic futures, remediation pounds away at the past.”

She first discusses the term acceleration, to be used as an academic advancement vs remediation. Helping students become successful on what is being covered this week, this class, in order to help them be successful. Instead of removing the student and making them learn something they missed however many years ago, it prepares them to be successful NOW. I love the line “Reverse movement at a tedious pace with little relevance to today’s’ standard will not catch students up to their peers.”

She then lists other strategies that teachers can utilize to help get all students, not just those who are at risk, learn material & concepts taught the first time.

Having standards walls: Listing standards with no connection to relevance or lets students know the expectation from the daily lesson. (Interesting tie in here to the Fundamental 5, which I believe does a much better job with its framing the lesson than just simply posting lesson standards.) She gives three easy to use components to help make these standards listed as a gigantic “you are here” arrow for students.

Success Starters: (which, as a Pirate would say, an effective HOOK!) She suggests activities that involve active engagement rather than just compliance. Like role-playing, surveys, or making predictions…there are several detailed suggestion in this chapter.

Formative Assessment & Feedback: Frequent ungraded feedback helps students focus on what they are learning versus measuring what they’ve learned. Formative assessment gives students timely feedback allows the teachers to modify immediately their instruction. If we want students meeting our learning goals each and every day, waiting once every two weeks to asses and give feedback won’t cut it. Note: formative assessment isn’t about testing more, it’s about about knowing exactly where each student stands on the material being presented.

Vocabulary Development: An inadequate vocabulary can make it difficult for students, especially struggling learners, to have any kind of conversation about content. Vocab touches every single aspect of a student’s’ development. She also suggests that learning new vocabulary isn’t as simple as prescribing MORE reading. She cites a study (pg. 79) that students need multiple exposures of a word to be able to grasp, retain, and use them. Her offering is that there should be a strategic vocabulary plan. KNowing that a strong vocabulary knowledge leads to reading proficiency, there are several ways shared that can help make this happen in your classroom.

Student Work Sessions: Giving Students Greater Responsibility with Valuable Work All students need the opportunity to collaborate, be creative, and have collegial relationships with teachers.

Student Motivation The buzz word of the day is student choice and student voice, with good reason. There has to be a reason for a student to WANT to learn before its going to happen. And you’re going to have to WORK to find that reason! Otherwise, you wouldn’t be dealing with the academic apathy that you may have in your classroom.

Just in time Scaffolding: Knowing what your students needs right when they need it, versus trying to cover years worth of gaps just makes good sense. This chapter gives research and a common sense plan on how to make that a reality.

There are checklists after each chapter that help you discern where your room stands with each of these ideas. If you’re looking for a way to do things a little differently, I think you’ll enjoy this book! It’s an easy practical read, and she completely supports each of these strategy with examples and “how to’s” that you can make happen. Plus, who doesn’t like living in the “fast lane” every once in a while?? 🙂

pedal to the metal,

Amber

Theory X vs Theory Y leading

August 13, 2014 by Amber 1 Comment

In my summer reading pile of fun, 🙂 I have recently started “6 Habits of Highly Effective Bosses” and thus far have been fascinated by how easily leadership styles can be “sorted”.

45 years ago Douglas McGregor coined his clarification of organizational management into Theory X and Theory Y. As you begin your new school year, take some time to see which of these styles apply to you, and which you feel you most want to emulate. I see direct parallels to the classroom.

Theory X think people have an inherent dislike of work, that they avoid working when they can, and need to be controlled. They think employees prefer to be directed, dislike responsibility, and prefer the security of their role more than anything else.

This is the manager who feels employees (or students!) can’t ever be trusted, and need to be watched at all times. They need to be given explicit instruction, down to the very last detail, because there is an assumption that it won’t be done, or done correctly. Theory X leaders can mildly be described as micro managers; they feel that employees don’t care about the company’s interests in the long run. Formal rules, clearly laid out in black and white, and structures have to be in place to define clearly what WILL happen when employees don’t do things correctly…because obviously, they won’t.

In contrast, Theory Y believes people need to be inspired and empowered. They assume that control and punishment are not the only ways to make people work, and that employees (or students!) will actually direct themselves if they are committed to the work. If people are not ALL IN, then what they do becomes a job, versus their passion, versus something they are fully committed in seeing become successful. Theory Y sees people as assets that can be nurtured for the talent that they bring to the organization.

This directly correlates to the culture eats strategy for breakfast mindset. Or as Ron Willingham, author and chairman of the consulting firm Integrity Systems says, “People are important than processes.” Managers should base their success on team accomplishments. Maslow (yes, THAT Maslow) even suggests that managers that are comfortable with interpersonal negotiation , mediation, teamwork, and staff empowerment are more likely to be “successful” than “power kick” managers. Let go of some of that control and recognize that if people understand the why, they’ll be able to handle the how without being micromanaged.

As you kick off your school year, consider taking more time to build relationships than establishing the “rules” and the consequences of your world, whether it be your classroom or your campus. Student choice, student voice, and allowing our students to have a say in what they do can make a difference!

theory Y hopeN,

Amber