Posts Tagged ‘
classroom tactics ’
Here it comes…the first day of school! Walking through the doors, you can feel the exhilarating mixture of excitement and nervousness in the air. Kids will be meeting new teachers, seeing old friends, and showing off their stylin’ new clothes. It’s fantastic fun for some, but for students with high geographic mobility, the prospect of yet another new school, filled with unfamiliar faces isn’t exciting—it’s scary. How can teachers help these kids feel welcome, and make their transition into another new environment a little easier?
Students with high geographic mobility are those who have attended many schools during their K-12 years due to frequent moves. For some families, moving more than once in the course of a single school year is common. Usually these moves are associated with employment, housing, or relationship problems, and can be a contributing factor in low academic achievement (http://www.edweek.org/ew/issues/student-mobility/).
Every child is different, and deals with change in his or her own way. I spoke with several friends who moved around a lot, attending as many as 11 schools during their K-12 years. They were all affected differently.
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Category:
student achievement, student success, teaching strategies |
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Tags: classroom tactics, new students, student achievement, student engagement, student mobility, teaching strategies
I may be revealing how much television I watch, but those K12.com Oregon Virtual Academy commercials are everywhere these days. Issues of school choice aside, their refrain of praises for online learning has me thinking more and more lately about the role of technology in education. How will new technologies help students’ learning? How will digital tools change the classroom? Will all these developments help create critical thinkers and global entrepreneurs (with “21st century skills”), or will they disconnect people from each other and create a generation of frenzied consumers of the overwhelming digital stream of information?
In our current ChalkBloggers poll, not one person has selected “Utilizing new technologies” as the most important element of classroom instruction. That’s a relief to me. I would never want a teacher to sacrifice real interactions (like providing constructive feedback and creating a positive and open learning environment, the two top answers) to let a computer do it for them. No one wants robotic teaching.
But certainly, lessons can be enhanced with new digital resources—and more and more, this and future generations of technology-steeped children will need to be reached with constructive interactive tools in the classroom. No one can completely shut off to new technologies and risk being left behind. The trick is finding a balance and carefullychoosing the most effective tools that will enrich, not distract from, student learning.
But how to sort through the myriad options that seem to be growing and changing even faster everyday? It seems like a full-time job just to keep up. But I’ve found a few new online resources (of course) that look to do the work for you.
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education technology, innovation, student achievement, student success, teaching strategies |
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Tags: classroom tactics, innovation, resources, student achievement, student engagement, teaching strategies, technology
I love reform. I’m excited that as a state and nation we are looking at making changes to public education. But sometimes in moving forward, it’s good to look back.
I’ve been moved to look back at my earlier career by the publicity around Jose Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and product of the California middle school where I taught. I’ve been thinking about the Jose days (mid-90s) and the staff and organization of that school. Of course, he is only one student, but there were many new immigrant kids who did quite well there. So what were we doing there that worked?
One thing that we did have was lots of faculty communication across the grade levels. I taught an intense and rigorous program partly because it was jointly developed by all the teachers on the 5th grade team. We met every Wednesday during prep, opened our plan books and shared. As a 5th grade teacher in a 5-8th grade school, I was reminded in staff meetings and in passing about where kids needed to be in order to be successful in later grades. There was a mindset that we were preparing kids for college. It helped that we were a Silicon Valley school sitting in the shadow of Yahoo, Netscape and SGI, where innovation and hard work were cultural norms in the neighborhood.
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education reform, professional development for educators, student achievement, teaching strategies |
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Tags: classroom tactics, collaborative culture, education reform, innovation, learning styles, professional development for teachers, reflection, student achievement, student engagement, teacher effectiveness, teaching strategies
Here’s my bottom line: The most important task of a school leader is to embrace the challenge of having a clear and shared vision of equitable outcomes for all students. It is the democratic principle of fairness upon which our country is founded and the basis for truly changing the achievement gaps that now prevail.
With the recent news that only 66% of Oregon students graduate high school, it’s clear that this vision does not “just happen.” It has to be owned and shared by the whole school community. It must be intentional, planned, implemented and supported to be sustainable. It must be evident every day, every week and every month in every classroom. All students, teachers and parents need to know and own a common vision of outcomes at their school. What must each student know and be able to do when he/she graduates? When this is clear and held dear, there is a true school spirit.
All students come from somewhere special, each with different backgrounds, different experiences and different circumstances. The whole of their differences is the beautiful mosaic of school. And when they come through the school doors, they are in a place where equity can happen. But there must be a roadmap for success for each student in each classroom across these differences.
Teachers must lead the way for the students. They must know their students well, understanding them across all their differences. They must ask the question: What does it take for a student to enter a school at one level of achievement, move forward, and then graduate with the highest potential achievement? That’s the daily challenge of teaching, at every level.
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Category:
education achievement gap, equity, student achievement, student success, teacher effectiveness, teaching strategies |
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Tags: achievement gap, at risk students, classroom tactics, creativity, education reform, inspiration, learning styles, reflection, student achievement, student engagement, teacher effectiveness, teaching strategies
One of the questions I posed last week to my fourth graders was, “If I’m a carnivore, do I need plants?” Some said yes and some no.
I spend a good deal of time teaching kids how to convince with facts and polite discussion. They sit in teams, put heads together and work out their issues. The yes people proved their point to the no people. We don’t always have smooth discussions and feelings sometimes get hurt. We work on it—a lot. Kids learn that they can stand down from an initial idea when faced with proof and not lose face. Some of the phrases we use are “That’s a good idea, but have you thought about…”
Yes, civility and debate need to be explicitly taught as does critical thinking.
When one kid declared that, “We are all in this together,” after our food web discussion, it made me think of the remarks that I often hear about educational issues. One argument in particular strikes me time and again: the one about how public education generates no money so it should bear the brunt of the economic crisis while corporations should have a lesser tax burden because they drive the economy. Obviously, these people have not reflected on the interdependence of the public and private sector, just as some of my students at first didn’t see the connection between individual members of a food web.
I wonder if across our nation, we are reaping the harvest of a generation that wasn’t asked to dig deeply to find connections. The inability to debate civilly quite possibly stems from inadequate training in school, the result of sitting in rows and competitively trying to get the highest score on tests that have no gray areas. Our curricula have always tended to stress superficial knowledge of lots of subjects at the expense of in-depth collaborative analysis.
The good news is that there is a move to develop an American public that is more thoughtful. Educators at all levels currently use “larger questions” to teach higher level thinking through content. Just last week we debated whether Capt. Meriwether Lewis was a good leader, which prompted a search for direct evidence. And it’s not just me—it’s happening in many classrooms. A current national push for high school graduation requirements to include community service will develop a generation that also looks beyond themselves.
In Oregon, we have developed testing that now necessitates that kids think critically. In fourth grade, students are asked to write a multi-paragraph paper in order to pass the writing test. Writing takes considerable logical thinking to organize and stamina to produce. New this year in elementary school math, we now have three tested areas where kids need to show a truly deep understanding of the topic. Gone are the days when success on standardized tests solely involved memorizing the algorithm to answer a computation problem.
While today people may look exclusively at test scores and think that public schools are failing, many of us are thinking more deeply about what defines success in our schools. We are aiming for higher standards. We work to develop a generation of superior thinkers who will debate logically and civilly, and who will in turn respect the contributions of all individuals in our society.
Category:
education reform, student achievement, student success, teacher effectiveness, teaching strategies |
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Tags: classroom tactics, collaborative culture, creativity, education reform, inspiration, reflection, student achievement, student engagement, teaching strategies
Traditionally, grades have been interpreted as C means average, B means above average, A means excelling, D means below average, and F means failing. Yet no student of mine in fourteen years of teaching believes this. My students view B as average, A as above average, C as below average and D/F as failing.
Furthermore, I’m unsure whether most students know what it means to excel. Most are accustomed to earning As for simply following instructions. It’s not uncommon for a student to ask me why an essay was scored a B, when they listed all the requested information. I’ll reply yes, you listed the information, but you didn’t explain the information, support the information, demonstrate that you truly understand the information. In other words, you met the minimum criteria, but you didn’t surpass them. Often I receive a blank stare in response.
It seems that our students are receiving increasingly better grades, and not necessarily working harder or smarter to earn them. A 2005 study by the organization that administers the ACT test concluded, after analyzing the GPAs and ACT test scores of 800,000 students per year over 13 years, that grades had inflated over 12% over that time period, meaning a student that scored a 20 on the ACT in 2003 had a 12% higher GPA than a student that scored a 20 on the ACT in 1991.
If grade inflation exists, if we instructors are assigning students ever higher grades, then we may be doing them a disservice. They may be learning that top marks are not hard to come by, and that’s certainly not going to motivate them to become the next great innovators and problem solvers our world needs.
I’m not suggesting teachers simply need to grade students harder. In truth, I wish we didn’t have to “grade” students at all. I wish, instead, that we could simply provide students and their families meaningful qualitative information and data to monitor and promote learning and growth. But as long as we do have grades — as long as colleges and communities look to grades, regrettably, as the sole barometers of student achievement — then we owe it to students to hold them accountable to solid standards and evaluate their work accordingly, and resist pressure from students, parents and administrations to grant favorable grades. That means when a student and/or parent asks for extra credit assignments at the end of a semester for the sole purpose of boosting scores, we should reply no, and let scores reflect actual performance.
Category:
education reform, student success, teaching strategies |
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Tags: classroom tactics, education reform, student achievement, test critera
A parent emailed me and four other of her son’s teachers last week. She was concerned about his low grades and requested a meeting with us. In advance of the meeting I asked my colleagues about their experiences with this student, and one commonality stood out — He often is sleepy in class.
At the meeting I asked the parent if she knew how much sleep her son got each night. She did not know. I asked him when he typically goes to bed, and he would say only “late.” I then asked the parent what kind of electronics he has in his bedroom. “Oh, the usual,” she said. “Phone, laptop computer, iPod, television.”
This is an all too typical story in our high schools. Kids will complain that they’re up until all hours doing homework — and for some that is true — but for many the homework is tucked in between texts, facebook postings, downloads and The Daily Show.
It is recommended that teenagers get 8-9 hours of sleep per night, but a 2007 survey published in the Journal of Adolescent Health reveals only 8% of high school students hit that mark. Most sleep 6-7 hours, with 23% regularly getting only 6 hours, and 10% only 5 hours.
The result? A 2006 study by the National Sleep Foundation reports that 1/4 of high school students fall asleep in class. The Foundation adds that “experts” tie lost sleep to poorer grades.
So parents, you want to help boost student achievement? Please make sure your kids are getting proper rest. How will you know if they’re not? The Sleep Foundation says to watch for these signs: (1) Difficulty waking; (2) Inability to concentrate; (3) Drifting in class; (4) Moodiness or depression.
How can you know for certain whether they’re getting enough sleep? Check on them! You are still the parent. If they’re not getting enough sleep, you and your kids may need to make some changes. You may need to limit their activities so they don’t have to be up until 2 am doing homework. And you certainly may need to limit their access to electronics in the privacy of their bedrooms.
Don’t want to be the bad guy? Blame me, the teacher. I’ll take the heat. For their sake.
Category:
parent involvement, student success, teacher advocacy, teaching strategies |
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Tags: classroom tactics, student engagement, teacher frustration
I was in the middle of my lesson when the literacy coach for my building interrupted me. “Ms. Honnold?” she asked. “I wonder what would happen if you had a student write the steps on the board as you went over them. You know, to give the visual people in your class a way to access what you’re talking about.” As she spoke, the students in my class looked on, clearly unused to someone giving their teacher feedback.
It could have been mortifying. And I’m sure some of you, reading this, are reliving all the horrific teaching moments where someone called you into question in front of your students or undermined your authority in some way. But it wasn’t like that. Instead, it was exactly what I now think of as teacher collaboration at its best: two professionals working together, in the moment, to figure out what is going to serve students best. (more…)
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education reform, professional development for educators, teacher advocacy, teacher effectiveness, teaching strategies |
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Tags: classroom tactics, collaborative culture, education reform, learning styles, reflection, teaching strategies
“All children are born artists. The problem is to remain artist as we grow up.” ~Picasso
Ken Robinson agrees, “We don’t grow into creativity; we grow out of it. Kids will take a chance. If they don’t know, they’ll have a go. They’re not frightened of being wrong.” But something happens that shuts down this inherent spark. Robinson claims the classroom is to blame for crushing creativity saying, “We are now running national education where mistakes are the worst things you can make.” Listening to his bold interpretations, I cannot help but nod along with his words. Because yes, a magical quality exists within children—the willingness to try, to step into the unknown, to create from scratch—that allows creativity to thrive, and yet somehow, somewhere, it disappears.
Too many classrooms suck the creative spark out of children—suffocating with standards and structure, judging on numbers and ranking with letters—merely equipping students with the tools necessary to obtain the “correct” answer using minimal time, effort, and resources. While this may be optimal for industry—high accuracy and efficiency—it’s far from preparing students for who they can be: innovative, collaborative, authentic, critical-thinking intellectuals and creators.
But the story doesn’t end here, for the crushing of creativity is not confined to classroom walls. No. It’s contagious and running rampant throughout all levels of education in America. Teachers, administrators, board members, union representatives, educational leaders… we all face that fear of making a mistake, which drives us to choose the shortest, simplest, most familiar, most likely to be “right” route. We do what’s been done before—because it’s safe. (more…)
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education reform, student success, teacher advocacy, teaching strategies |
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Tags: classroom tactics, collaborative culture, creativity, education agenda, education reform, innovation, inspiration, learning styles, student engagement, teacher frustration
“When I say pencil, you say pushers. Pencil.”
“Pushers.”
“Pencil.”
“Pushers.”
And with 32 voices booming our chant, class begins.
You see, I began last week with an inspirational “pump-up” speech as a way to introduce the upcoming state writing assessment—a weeklong test that is often an exhausting effort with little incentive to perform to one’s potential. Yet the stakes are high, so I needed something to strike their spirit, to beckon their best, to bring this “test” to life, to awaken a purpose beyond a numerical score that’s to be filed away for the school’s statistics. That something leaped out of my mouth Monday morning, unplanned and uninhibited. I looked my students in the eyes, as I described our present circumstance in a language they could grasp: sports. (more…)
Category:
teaching strategies |
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Tags: classroom tactics, student engagement, test prep
