Pushing Ahead

We had our assessment on explorers today. I coarsely looked through them, but was fairly pleased with the result. The questions that were missed tended to be those that required some close reading of the question (exp: "where did Columbus BELIEVE he reached?") or the text (religious beliefs). I haven't even thought about the writing yet, but I'm hopeful.

Coming up next we are traveling to the early colonies. What is a colony? What was colonial life like? I sat down and mapped out my outcomes for the unit. What I need to look at is the list of reading gle's I want to hit, and how I am going to accomplish that. Comparing and contrasting will be one of the main things, as the various colonies are detailed in the text. Since we've done that once, I'll be excited to see the next round come a bit easier.

Wiki Stuff

Found this today via twitter... worth checking out. It has a crazy amount of wiki information and use in classrooms. I don't tweet very much education stuff, but I do follow many educators for all their professional network stuff.

Mountain Climbing

I found this slide over at Dangerously Irrelevant. It reminded me of a quote from a running book I am re-reading. In the book (Run Faster) Brad Hudson talks about goal setting, and how runners need to set high goals. Those goals need to be high enough to challenge you and keep you interested, but not so high that you'll never reach them (and constantly feel like you're failing).

I think of that in my practice as well. There are many teachers who I read about that inspire me on a daily basis. Reading the Tempered Radical, Learning is Messy, Two Writing Teachers, or the Reading Zone (or any of those in my blogroll), I realize how much room I have to grow. I want to be like some of the teachers in my building that have taught for a few years, and are doing wonderful things with their kids. But I need to worry about being the best first year teacher I can be, and move on from there.

Weirdest, Bar None

Today was the oddest day of my short teaching career, including student teaching. The rain in the morning started to throw us off, as did having a sub for one of my teammates. But those shouldn't be that big of a deal. Perhaps it was the absence of some kids, while others had returned from near week long sickness. Whatever it was, I hope it is gone on Monday. I fear that it won't be because of Halloween, and our fall celebration on Friday. But we talked about it before leaving: we aren't taking kids to the party who haven't been focused all week. We'll have our fun, but we need to do the work to earn it.

Next week we've got an assessment on explorers, and a new unit on the colonies. Additionally I am starting a writing unit delving into essays. Reading the Units of Study book on essays has me excited to get started. I think it will be fun, meaningful and relevant to the kids.

As an aside, the presentations/projects I received today were great. Really good stuff.

Goal Setting

We are in the midst of finishing our opinion piece on explorers. Last week I asked the 60+ kiddos to find some information about explorers. They needed to read strategically, looking for ideas that were in the social studies text. The questions ranged from: where was the explorer from, to how did the explorer help/hurt native people. The kiddos were able to easily find some of the explicit information, but inferring was more difficult (isn't it difficult for everyone?!). From those pieces of information we compared and contrasted the effects of European explorers, and worked towards drawing conclusions (do you think they were positive or negative, and why? what facts support your opinion?).

Since the tasks were so diverse, I've had to teach a myriad of skills. For example we started with identifying important information in text, then transitioned into the reading skill of compare/contrast. After that we worked on our thinking, and how we evaluate information (with the idea of the two column chart being like a scale). Where I have had to circle back, and often, has been how to structure writing. In many ways the writing is similar to a summary, as you have a topic sentence followed by facts to support that sentence. But I've found myself repeating the sequence, and reteaching the sequence each of the past 3 days. Has it sunk in? Not necessarily, which tells me that I need a more engaging teaching point as well as more guided practice.

I will admit that I am excited to look through their work. I want to see if they hit everything on our writing checklist (topic sentence, 3 supporting facts, opposing opinion, closure, readability, etc) as they have assured me they have. Next time around I will be introducing a self-assessment piece. I want them to assess where their own writing is, and what they need to do in order to make it better. I already do something like this for their homework and it has worked well. Now if I could only get it out of my box of teaching stuff....

Conferring With Authors

Writing conferences are a wonderful tool for writing instruction. I feel like they are the backbone of instruction, as they allow the teacher to see what lessons students are employing. From there you can provide feedback, learn more about the student as a writer and person, and you can make changes to your instruction. These conferences are where I find my instruction to be most meaningful, as you can move students along in a way that is individualized to where they are in the writing process.

What I've noticed is that I need to make some changes to my Writer's Workshop (my homeroom literacy time as a whole). My writing workshop has been on a 3 days on/off cycle, alternating with reading. But the cycle is too quick and momentum is lost too quickly. I feel like we are returning to "small moments" for the 8th time since September. It feels stagnate, and change needs to be made. So I'm hoping to put a substantial dent into my writing instruction by going for the next 2-3 weeks with writing, then going for the following 2-3 weeks with reading instruction. I'm less concerned about reading instruction, largely because they are receiving that instruction (from me) during our social studies time.

Ultimately I need to consider my end objective... I want my kids to develop a love of reading and writing. They won't love writing when it comes in 3 day bursts every 2 weeks. You love writing when you get to dive in deep and apply an assortment of strategies that lead you towards improvement. The only sad thing is that I won't be trying out any of the strategies from Strategies That Work 2 quite yet with my homeroom kids. The book is wonderful and worth picking up.

What Do You Value?

In my social studies rotation we have focused on reading comprehension. A big part of that, in nonfiction particularly, is finding the main idea. But you can only go so far with that. Ultimately we need to be exercising our thinking skills, and trying to make sense of the information.

So the past 3 days have been focused on forming conclusions. "What do you think, did explorers have a positive impact on history or a negative impact?" Aside from the question "what do you mean 'impact'?" it has gone pretty well. I had them think of a scale, with the idea that the things which are most important to us influence our decisions/opinions.

We took some statements about explorers (conquered the Aztecs, found new land, etc) and placed them on a two-column chart. Then we looked at them altogether, and made a judgement one direction or the other. How successful was that? Mixed. Some really struggled looking holistically, while others were very clear about their opinion. The writing is still a work in progress, and tells me that I need to provide more writing instruction to get them where I want them to go. But I was happy that they were struggling with the ideas of positive and negative impacts. When I have kids saying, "Mr Hanson, it could be both positive and negative" I know that they are thinking critically about the information- precisely my objective.

How is a banana like an orange?

We working on comparing and contrasting today. The end goal was getting a chance to compare different information on explorers, and see similarities and differences. Why is that important? Well because it gets us thinking about patterns in the information we see. Additionally, it gets us taking a closer look at that information. Ultimately that is the goal, as we are moving towards looking at what impact did explorers have on history (positive and negative)?

The best part of this was modeling Venn diagrams with the kids. Part of the I do/We do/You do cycle involved me setting up a Venn diagram on fruits, and then starting to add to it. They got talking about what bananas and oranges had in common, and what was different. For example, one student said "they both need to be peeled." Well... really? Thankfully another student said "no, it doesn't need to be peeled. You can {squish} [hand smash on the table] it." That wasn't where it ended because I said "but you brought up a big point, maybe it doesn't need to be peeled, but think about that word peel..." The student replied "they both have peels or skin on the outside." Yes!

Once I cut them loose for independent practice, they did a great job. Included in that was one of my students restating the objective, and what he'd be able to learn from his Venn diagram. If there is one thing I have figured out, state your learning target often... and have it posted. Kids (and others) want to know what it is that you are doing, and WHY!

Curriculum Mapping

Today was my first day with a sub. I ran the gamut of emotions. First I was upset for having to be gone. Then I was content with needing to fulfill my new teacher release day obligations, but unsure of what to get together. After that I was nervous that I hadn't written everything down, followed later by nerves that I had written way too much down. Once we got going today, after 8:30 and my phone hadn't vibrated, I let my nerves evaporate.

The entire experience was interesting, and I'm hopeful the process will feel more relaxed next time (but that is wishful thinking). Why was I gone? Because I was at a new teacher support release day. What did I do? We spent part of the day focused on curriculum mapping, which was greatly helpful. That might seem like a nature thing, but it certainly wasn't at first.

Backing up, I hadn't really done much curriculum mapping before. ie. I hadn't looked at the year, looked at the number of weeks to teach, and then looked at the standards that needed to be taught to see where they would fit. Why? Because I was too consumed with ensuring that the next day's lesson would be as impactful as possible, essentially perpetually living in the moment with my kids. I still do, to some extent, live in the moment. I look at the social studies content, look at where they are (grasping wise), and then adjust instruction to meet their needs. Curriculum mapping doesn't replace that. Instead it provides a big picture map, and gives you an idea of where you are going to go.

How is that important? For example we have been hammering away at main ideas in nonfiction text. It is one of the grade level standards for reading, and is hugely important for reading comprehension. What is the text about? What is the big thing the author wants you to know? Well I need not worry that they don't get it right now. Besides that, they won't all get it the first time. I can look at my map and be sure that I will be teaching to that standard again, and know that my kids will get more practice. Instead of bogging down, work on it then move on. We will consistently be returning to that standard, since it is so essential to nonfiction, and bogging down now takes away instructional time for the many other standards I need to hit.

At least I've got some sort of map... funny since geography is one of the social studies EALRS (essential academic learning req's).

Keep the main thing the main thing

We've been working on identifying main ideas in text. That is the major reading comprehension strategy we are focused on. Today we had additional instruction on how to find it, and then how to find supporting details. What I was realizing in my instruction is that the reader needs to continually ask themselves what the author is trying to communicate.

The context for this was reading about the Age of Exploration. While it isn't a Social Studies EALR, it provides background for those first few colonies (I one or two who thought North America hadn't been invented yet). As we were reading about the astrolabe, an instrument similar to a compass, we muddled through finding main ideas. "The main idea is that it has a metal arm..." Where I was intentional in my instruction was trying to connect the heading and chapter title to the passage. After that I gave direction about where to usually look. "Authors want to tell us something, and they want their reader to know the main thing really quickly... the first 2 or 3 sentences usually."

Finding the main idea is difficult. My goal is to make them more critical readers. We want to read everything, but we also want to be strategic in what we are looking for.

Professional development and technology

I'm fortunate to be working in a district that values professional development, collaboration, and technology. Mesh those together and you have half of today's non-student day. Our learning centered around OneNote from Microsoft, essentially a digital version of a binder with assorted tabs. Using OneNote will hopefully allow for more transparency in collaboration, keep people engaged when they aren't able to meet in person, and increase productivity. How? Ideally your team would meet, talk about students and goals, and establish a to-do list for what you are going to implement in your classroom. From there you can revisit those goals and to-do's, and see where your team is with respect to meeting them. That is the ideal of course, and I'll be interested to see how that works out over the course of this year.

I also stumbled across this post on This Week In Education. It started me thinking about a statistic that I heard at today's training: if you were to use your Activeboard (or SmartBoard) during 70-80% of your instruction, and couple that with good pedagogy and best practices, then you'll increase student achievement. I forget how much, but I was more than a little surprised (and I'd also like to see who funded the study, always important). The statistic came from Marzano, so I'll try to find it.

On one hand I was excited. I have a ton of tech resources at my disposal such as computers, an activeboard, digital cameras, hi-speed internet access, a document camera, video cameras and my laptop. I need to find ways to better integrate technology into my teaching, and ensure that I am NOT letting the tech be the focus (Note: I use it daily, but not as efficiently as I could... lately using the activeboard to have kids highlight main ideas in texts was fantastic). But what I wonder is how much tech exposure kids need to have in order for technology to really have an impact? Would those schools with less technology, such as my student teaching site in Seattle, have the same result? Or would the lack of tech exposure (and the newness of it) circumvent those gains? Maybe it would simply slow the statistical benefit. All very interesting.