Engaged Learning Part II

I think that modeling is important in a classroom. However, I particularly like how VanDeWeghe explains it one step further as being more than just showing the students what to do. Allowing students to see the teacher's thought process and feelings about the task at hand bridges the gap between "impossible" (as so many of them think classwork can be) and possible (maybe even enjoyable). I also like how he points out that when, "we plan lessons with an eye toward modeling such habits, we teach ourselves as much as we teach our subjects (51)." By putting ourselves out there to our students, they are gaining insight of how to reason in their own heads. It goes back to making the material relatable to the students.

Furthermore, I enjoyed reading the section about "Engaging Silence." In all but one of my 6 classes, I can pick out at least 2 students that will raise their hands every time the class is prompted with a question. Before I finish asking the question, I look up and there are hands raised and the class is filled with "pick me!"s. This makes the discussion go faster, and it almost becomes difficult to catch up. Thus, I like the idea of maintaining some silence. I can tell them to put their hands down until I ask for responses, and this will open up the opportunity for other students to answer. The statistics supporting the method of engaging silence really blew me away. I would really like to try this to see how my students' responses differ from their normal quick answers.

Copying Tim's Refresh Refresh mini lesson

I used a mini lesson today that Tim did for us in Teaching Writing last year and it brought out tenderness from some of the tough, disruptive boys. I made overhead transparencies of the first several pages from the graphic novel and we talked about each frame, especially what could be "read" in facial expressions and inference. In particular, I spent a lingering time on the frame in which the father's hand is on the bus window and the son is on the outside touching his hand. When I got to the stopping spot at which the boys have said goodbye to the fathers and say that they want to make the fathers proud, I said Tim's line about writing a letter from the father to the sons about their idea of toughness defining manhood. Well, the most surprising boys wrote letters that contained messages of "toughness not being a man, but tenderness and feeling and not being afraid to cry." Really! I was blown away...and none of this came from the girls.

To be real, I did have to stop and regroup them at times as they got off task and chatty, so a 15 minute free-write took about 30 minutes.

We had a sub today

I'm sitting in the lobby of a building on campus trying to put myself in a better mood/attitude for my upcoming class. On Friday my coop spent most of the day getting the kids to respond to the sub the day before and prepare them for having a sub today. We had hoped that since I would be teaching today and the sub there for merely logistical reasons that the kids would respond better and have a better day than they did on Thursday. It didn't happen.

I tried several ways to get one of our sections to be on task and quiet. Nothing worked. We had that particular section for three periods in a row, and the only way we got them to work was that the sub called the office and requested that the principal come up because the kids were so loud and unresponsive that we didn't know what to do. I felt incompetent and a failure to the teaching profession. It was one of the hardest days I've had in my short time observing this profession. (I'm talking in all of my time observing ... Like the past 3 years included.)

How do you get kids to respond when they simply won't? They know me but because there was a sub in the room they went crazy and would not stay on track or do what they were expected to do. I'm entirely drained and wiped out and I have no idea how to make it better for next time. I had some fun activities planned for one of the periods but it took us almost two whole class periods to get through something that should have taken maybe a half an hour. I'm so discouraged.

Help??


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Engaged, Part 2

I really have to start posting my blogs before Claudia does, as she is always stealing my thunder. I also loved the exercise on page 94, but I haven't thought of anything that will go with it yet.

I guess I can kind of pat myself on the back for already doing some of this stuff in my classroom. I have already been modeling my writing to the students. However, I have yet to do it on the projection screen. I think that next time I will try to write it on Microsoft Word so that they can watch it on the big screen in class.

I also share in the frustrations of Kortny(phenomenal pic by the way.. is that some sort of springer spaniel? maybe a short-haired pointer?) in that I am constantly trying to get my students to push beyond their self-inflicted limitations. I am always hearing, "Mister, I am not that smart. I don't know." Then, when I push them, they get it right! I also have problems getting them to understand that at least putting forth some sort of effort is better than nothing.. even if their answer is way off. This takes me down another road that I could vent about though, and that is everything having to be graded... ugh.

The one thing that I didn't fully understand was the part about how repeating the students answers is a good thing. I have done this many times already in class, and my co-op says that this is a bad thing. So now, I am trying to make sure I don't do it. I am confused. Any help on this?

Getting students to write more "exploratory" essays is a good thing.... I just worry if they will think it's a productive task; though I suppose it is my job to make them see that.

Part II Engaged Learning

My marginalia throughout Part II of Engaged Learning speaks for itself; I will use this book heavily when planning my daily lesson for student teaching. As my district's Pacing Guide calls for me to teach non-fiction texts in the winter and early spring months, I will copy the
"before reading" exercise on page 94 and use Martin Luther King's "Letter From a Birmingham Jail" as text that we study and use as mentor text for a writing assignment. (Also page 102 T-Chart) I will also use this book's examples of actively letting students observe my thinking aloud about the beginnings of a piece I write in front of and with them. I'll model this process from "raw bones" and ask for their input as I flesh it out and revise. I know that this is the type of process that will get them sitting up in their seats and paying attention, because it won't seem boring to them and it says to them, "I value your opinion and input on this." I believe that will go a long way in establishing trust and good behavior when the full day is my stage.

As for questions, I will never again rely on the "safe" questions that I am guilty of reverting to on some days. You know, the kind of question that allows us to swoop in with the "correct" answer, at the last minute, if no hands go up! From now on I will work hard to formulate questions that cause the students to pause and think about their opinion or that will have them analyze a piece of information in a reshaped way. This will be more invigorating for me and for them.

Carmen's story with school reading was so similar to many students in my classes and I now feel better equipped to help them engage with heart, mind and flow. I'll report back on how this all works!

Engaged Learning: Part 2

First off, I just want to say that I will be using some of these English-focused ideas when it comes time to do RPG #3. I actually wish we would have read this before we had to do RPG #2 because some of the questioning strategies could have come in handy, but I guess that's just the learning process -- finding what works and what doesn't.

One thing Reynolds MS (and maybe SDoL as a whole) is really pushing is for teachers to model to the students. I'm not going to lie, I'm a little intimidated by this because I have a weird thinking-to-action process that few can follow! I also worry about this because not all students learn this way. While modeling is great, it's probably better for the visual learners more so than the verbal learners. I've watched some of the students when my co-op models and some of them are so lost you can actually see the point when they tune out and stop listening! I've been brainstorming about how I could model a little differently than my co-op so that the students would not only be engaged, but would also understand.

I agree completely with the idea that students beat themselves up when they get a bad grade or don't understand something. This is difficult because I found several of my students won't even try if they don't think it will be right! Case in point: a student refused to answer two questions on his test, and he literally wrote, "I refuse to answer these two questions.' When asked about it, he said he just didn't understand and knew whatever he was going to put down was going to be wrong, so he didn't see the point in trying. I think it is important to acknowledge student's actions and help them positively create sort of learning identity.

I love, love, love the concept of repeating a student's answer back to them (uptake). I actually did this without realizing it when I was putting together my RPG 2 video. The interesting thing is when the student heard their response coming from my mouth, they immediately wanted to change it because they knew they didn't clarify it completely!

I can see myself using the hybrid and exploratory essays with the 6th graders. I despise structured, rigid essays because I often feel like I'm saying what someone else wants me to say and there is no room for my personal expression. If I'm reading this correctly, exploratory writing is more open to personal style and expression, but falls in with the essay because the students must have done their reading/studying in order to do it. My favorite example is asking the students, If you were a character in The Great Gatsby, would you have admired Gatsby -- or not? Why? This is something I can see myself using when the students start working on their research papers towards the second half of the year (my co-op is not a fan of teaching writing so she told me I would be more or less taking over those lessons!). This will also come in handy for our poetry unit because I could ask the students to write a poem about a concept they learned in their Social Studies class.

There is a lot more I want to touch on from this reading, but I don't want to get too lengthy! As a final note, I realized that I tend to do a lot of these engaging activities already, but there is so much room for me to improve that I'm not really sure where to start!

NYT article

Just some food for thought centered around assessment. We've been talking about this type of thing a lot in PDS so I thought I'd share.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/us/assessments-of-chicago-schools-are-flawed-report-says.html?_r=1&ref=education