A-B-C. Easy as 1-2-3.

Sometimes you just need something easy to engage your learners in conversation and get them thinking right away.  The A-B-C brainstorm is such an easy and versatile strategy, and yet it gets little credit for being amazing.  Not only does this strategy engage your aural and social learners in conversation, but it also engages those who are linguistic and read/write learners due to the alphabetizing and writing.  It can be used as a background knowledge retrieving activity , an informal formative assessment, or a note taking strategy.  Here's how simple it is:

• Give students a copy of the organizer

  

  click the link for the source

  at the beginning of class or as they walk in (good for visual learners, as there are boxes for drawing pictures and  organized visually). 
• Direct them to work with a partner or group of three on filling in the organizer with words and/or pictures that directly relate to the topic and begin with the letter in the box (or have that letter in the word - your choice).
• Students can use their resources or not - it's completely up to you.  
• Walk around, monitor, and ask questions to engage students in deeper conversations, pointing out other words that can be written in the boxes.  

You can time the activity or not.  I could even see it used as a homework assignment so that your students review learned material from that day.  Making students go into a text book to skim and look for relevant words that are directly related to the topic might make a good preview activity for a selection of text.  For our kinesthetics, make them do it on big paper.  Tape it to a wall if you want to get crazy!  

Keep in mind that a quick reflection should always be used after any strategy.  Start out by saying something like this, "Okay, so what did we do to start out learning today?"  [Students answer with A-B-C Brainstorm]  "How did using this help you to review/learn/dig out background knowledge?" At this, your students should be able to tell you that they talked about it, reviewed the text, wrote about it, etc.  Finally, ask them what part worked best for them and how it relates to them as learners.  Making your kiddos talk about their specific learning preferences is beneficial here because they will begin to relate these preferences with their individual learning, ultimately creating more metacognitive and independent learners.

Using a three-minute-pause to break things up

I rarely walk into a classroom anymore where a teacher starts a video at the beginning and lets it just run all period.  Those days are long gone, thanks to United Streaming and YouTube where we can pull a seven minute clip rather than a forty-five minute documentary.  Last year I blogged about studying for tests, and I mentioned that I usually consider a minute per grade level the maximum a student can do the same thing before zoning out.  So for the average eighth grader, we're looking at about eight minutes of note taking, video gazing, worksheet doing, or even group discussion before they get sidetracked and lose focus.

Enter: the three minute pause.

I love this strategy because it is a quick and easy way for a student to regain focus and for the teacher to gauge what is happening inside the student's head.  Here's how it works.

• Decide ahead of time if you want students to discuss while pausing or work independently.  I tend to lean toward discussion if the lesson has been a sit-and-get with note taking or independent if the students have been actively involved in discussion or activity.  
• Also decide ahead of time how you want your students to be held accountable for the pause.  Should they write out their answers on a page?  On a large piece of poster paper?  Sticky notes?  Record it?  
• After eight minutes of a video or note-taking, find a logical stopping point and pause.
• Ask students to summarize key points so far, make connections and react to what they've learned, and ask questions or predict what they will learn next.
• Resume the activity.
• At the end of the activity, take a few minutes to have a group discussion about how the Three-Minute-Pause worked for them as learners, and get a feel for who seemed to benefit more than others.

And that, my friends, is it.  So go ahead.  Use it, and use it often.  Watch that forty-five minute video.  Make those kiddos take notes for the period.  But pause, pause, pause.  Don't forget who you have sitting in front you, and understand that they're all going to need to get refocused - even if you are shoveling the information in by means of the correct learning style.  

Metacognition (originally published in 2011)

Several years ago I wrote this article in lieu of a conference presentation.  Dr. Carol Santa actually enjoyed it so much that she recommended it get printed in the CRISS national newsletter after I revamped a few things.  The article below is the original article (before the Dr. Santa revamp - although it was good both ways!).  I was very proud of this research, and I am looking forward to using some of it this year at both the Day of Reading Conference and the IRC Conference as well.

The Epiphany

                Metacogntition  - a word that even Microsoft Word doesn’t recognize, and yet eighth graders in my language arts class can tell you that it means “thinking about your thinking”.  This year, however, I was compelled to step back and take a look at just how much I really knew about the word.  That one act opened up a flood-gate of research, ideas, and discoveries that I could not wait to share with anybody who would listen . . .

                My name is Heather Lambert.  I am a read/write learner.  Five learning-styles tests have proven that I am incapable of being a successful learner by kinesthetic means.  Teach me to play hockey by writing it out for me.  Teach me to fix a toilet or make a cake by giving me written directions.  Do not show me or tell me.  Let me read it. Interestingly, I am both intrapersonal and musical.  Put that together with read/write, and you get a poet.  Spiritual balancing has indicated that I am also a communicator.  I love words.  So what is the problem?

                The problem is sadly simple. 

                During our study of Flowers for Algernon in eighth grade, my student teacher drew attention to Howard Gardener’s theory of Multiple Intelligences.  She had students perform a self-assessment on themselves that ultimately indicated their highest intelligence.  Most of our students scored highest in kinesthetic, musical, and visual.  Not a match to their highly-wordy teacher. 

                Still don’t see the problem?  

                After assessing my own teaching, I discovered that most of my teaching methods, although highly engaging, were language-based.  I was comfortable with words, but I was not working with subjects who had the same strengths.  Without knowing it, I had clearly set up some of my students for failure because I had not reflected upon myself as a learner/teacher and allowed myself to see my students through my multiple-intelligence glasses.  Yikes!  Even scarier, I was so wrapped up in my intrapersonal-self that I didn’t take into account that many of the adults with whom I engage are not like me either! 

                In the six years that I have been training for CRISS, metacognition has always been a word that meant “reflection on act”.  But the idea that I was teaching toward my own learning style on a daily basis allowed much more than reflection on act.  It allowed understanding that my lessons needed to become more multi-modal if I am to reach all of my students.  But it was more than that.  It was not just about giving students multi-modal work, but about seeing them as learners who take in information in different modes.  Even one-on-one informal discussions take on new meaning when you think of it that way.  What an epiphany!  And what a heart-break.  To discover that the blood, sweat, and tears that I had put into my work was not enough was devastating to me!  And how was I going to sell this to our overworked, over scrutinized staff?

The Three-Tiers

                Upon attending a stirring talk by Dr. Carol Santa on what really works in education, I was inspired to move forward with my research, and I wanted to drag my colleague Pam McGreer along with me.  With one eyebrow up in curiosity for literally thirty minutes, she listened to me go on and on about Dr. Santa’s ideas in the three tiers of CRISS understanding.  The more I talked, the more it made sense to me.  Dr. Santa had hit the nail on the head for me.  We understand CRISS at three levels: by strategy, by principle, or by a deeper clinical psychological level. 

                Most teachers, having gone through their first level 1 training, are so overwhelmed by the strategies and how they can be tied together that often the metacognitive piece is overlooked.  Strategies are fun and engaging; they allow for differentiation by level and by learning style.  Reflection on a strategy takes time.  I don’t have it.  Done. 

                After four or five years of training, I finally was able to wrap my head around the second tier, principle, and it dawned on me that the P&P were a set of guidelines that, if followed daily, one can hit a variety of learners in a lesson with little major changes in those plans.  Discussion?  Check.  Writing? Check.  Explanation and modeling?  Check.  And so on.

                But to ask a teacher to know oneself as a learner before even evaluating oneself as a teacher?  Then to meet students head-on with your knowledge of self?  And to engage in activities that take student strengths/weaknesses into account all the while knowing where your strengths and weaknesses lie?  Well, that is the root of where communication lies, and that is where we must stoop to reach the kids who seem unreachable.  At the base. 

Implementation

                So what does this mean for us, as educators?  Throw up our hands and walk away – the task is too daunting?  Certainly it does not mean that we need to revamp our entire curriculum, does it?  The answer is no.  What is does mean is this:

•  Before you go any further, take a learning styles test (http://www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=questionnaire)and a multiple-intelligences test (http://www.businessballs.com/howardgardnermultipleintelligences.htm or http://www.thomasarmstrong.com/multiple_intelligences.php).  Reflect upon both and journal about parts of your life and your teaching that align with the results.  If you are not satisfied with your results, take another one somewhere else (I took five, remember?).  In your journal, take time to reflect upon your teaching – focus on strategies and activities that you do that align with your learning styles and your strengths.* After this, jot down things that you do already as a teacher to reach students who are of other intelligences and learning styles.  Visit some of those websites listed above to give you a thorough explanation of the types of intelligences you will encounter.  Make lists of things you can do as an educator to keep all intelligences in mind.    *I say “journal” because that is how I would do it – remember, I am a read/write/intrapersonal type.  If you have a better way of keeping track of yourself, use it!  But don’t let the information go away.  Save it somewhere so that you can reflect back upon it later. 
•  Give students a learning-styles and multiple-intelligences questionnaire and allow them to reflect upon themselves as learners as you did above.  Expect them to give examples from their lives that support their learning style.  Some will disagree with the outcome.  Have a second test handy for this reason.  Dive into what learning styles and multiple intelligences mean for them as learners so that they can carry this new knowledge with them from class to class.
• Make a CRISS P&P checklist and be sure to hit as many of the P&P as possible during each lesson.  Understand and accept that some activities will support some students better than others and that handfuls of students will be more comfortable with certain strategies more than others.
•  Teach strategies and directly relate them to students as learners.  Confess that some of the strategies just don’t work for you, and get excited when you, as a learner, benefit from a strategy.  Encourage your students to reflect upon their strategy usage in this way.
•  Use CRISS vocabulary and multiple intelligence/learning-styles vocabulary when introducing activities and strategies, not only for strategy-calling, but for principles.  For example, “To help you to build background knowledge we’re going to be using a discussion strategy called Mind Streaming.  Our interpersonal and verbal/linguistic students will love this activity because it involves discussion, and you love to connect with others and talk!” Build in reflection time and have students draw their strengths into their reflections to different activities and strategies.
•  Give students choices within the same activity.  In eighth grade, we spend time in language arts supporting our students with note-taking strategies so that they can take these skills into their content area courses and be more organized learners.  Modeling different note-taking strategies at the beginning of the year and pinpointing what types of learners may benefit from using the different types would be a great place to start!  When discussing learning styles, I often recommend that our verbal/linguistic students try power notes because we (the verbals) tend to be pretty wordy.  Power note taking gives students lots of room to reword and summarize.  Two column-notes might work better for those kids who are kinesthetic and aural because they don’t see much value in note taking.  Two-column notes are easy to organize and allow for very brief summaries to be written.  Webbing or mapping, although challenging for me, is really easy for a more visual learner because that type of learner can see relationships visually.  I am completely distracted by the lines and boxes, but then I would be.  I’m verbal.
• Get crazy.  Set up a portfolio system.  At the beginning of the quarter go over a list of the learning targets that students will hit by the end of the quarter.  As you hit each target in your lessons and assignments, direct students to this list and remind them that they need to be able to prove with physical evidence (ie. a piece of writing, test/quiz, assessed project, reading logs, journals, etc.) that they have been able to meet that goal.  At the end of the quarter, have students put their portfolios together.  Included should be a checklist of the targets and student-selected evidence along with a metacognitive reflection for each piece.  Reflections should indicate why the student feels that the evidence supports learning and how his/her learning style/intelligences fit into the equation.  Why not have students check off a list of the CRISS P&P and allow them to make connections with that as well?

Whew!  Talk about knowing oneself!

September 27 Crumble - Close Reading

The 2013 educational buzz word seems to be close reading, and, unless you're a language arts teacher, you may not completely understand this term.  In fact, some language arts teachers still struggle with it because it's complex and has no concrete rules.  I, myself, become impatient with the practice because I'm a slow reader, naturally, and close reading just makes me read more slowly.

So what is close reading, why should I care, and how could I use it?

Close reading is very much what the term says - it's a close reading of a piece of text for a particular purpose, looking for clues to help you determine what is important for your purpose.  It blends Project CRISS's purpose setting principle and the free-write into one strategy.  When you give your students an activity or a piece of writing, you do it because there is a standard or target that you're trying to hit.  Consider that target when you give your students the assignment, and either communicate it to them or allow them to identify that purpose on their own (checking to be certain they are on the right track). 


To illustrate, take a piece of reading from a book selection on climate change (one of my current collaborative projects).  Your objective may be that students identify causes of climate change.  You communicate that to students and give them the passage.  Modeling the close read is always important, so on the projector or on the board with colored markers (our low-budget interactive white board), show your students what you expect.  A close read is not simply highlighting the causes of climate change, however - but that's a good start.  It requires multiple read-throughs, stopping after EVERY sentence and processing what the sentence is really saying.  The picture to the left shows what this might look like on the white board (thanks to my most amazing colleague for takings pics during one of her lessons!  You can check out her super cute and informative blog right here!).  Notice that she color-coded the annotations here and even made a key. 

This next picture to the right shows how it might look without the color coding.  Notice that she labeled a lot of what she underlined.  The idea here is to have students converse with the author of the selection - to stimulate the internal conversation that is missing so often when students read.  Our kiddos are being asked to perform more and more complex tasks while learning and reading, and many of them become so overwhelmed with the daunting requests that they freeze and forget to be metacognitive while they read.  The close read requires metacognition because students must record their thoughts about the text as they read.  This ultimately gives them a closer understanding of what they are expected to read and allows them to process and ask for help with difficult text.

What can they highlight, underline, or annotate? you ask.  Below is a list of ideas that you can give your students as they practice their annotation and close reading.

• Main characters or the "who" of the selection and evidence of traits of those characters (this can include the narrator).  Traits can be inferred, but the evidence to prove that inference should be marked and noted.
• Setting or the time and place of the selection as it pertains to the purpose of the reading
• Problems/Conflicts and solutions as they pertain to the purpose of the selection
• Unknown vocabulary
• Cause and effect relationships
• Chronological events that pertain to the purpose of the reading and notes as to how they relate to each other
• Questions that you have for the author (that may or may not be addressed later in the selection)
• Answers to previous questions asked
• Reactions to surprising points
• Details that support a conclusion that you have drawn
• Connections to previous learning or real-life situations

The options are really limitless, but remember - your students will get lost in the text if they don't have a focus.  To simply tell them to perform a close read will require them to set their own purpose, but unless you guide them, some of them will, undoubtedly, miss the entire point of the lesson and spend a lot more time processing useless facts than necessary. 

If you're interested in taking a stab at this truly valuable strategy, pick the brain of a language arts teacher this week!  All of our students should have been practicing their close reading the first part of quarter one, and some of them are ready to take their show on the road to other subject areas.

Time for reflection - May 17 Crumble

The year is ending, and classrooms are beginning to look empty.  This last week I had a group of five eighth grade girls ransack my office and pack up books, photographs, and supplies.  They just showed up one day at lunch, and, like a band of hungry vultures, pecked my office clean.  Then they had the nerve to show up the next day and complain because I had unpacked some of my boxes so that I could do my job for the next two weeks!  I have some nerve, I know.  I love middle schoolers.  Sincerely. 

This week I've felt a little revitalized, and I thought I'd give the area of metacognition a good shake down as we all prepare to take off our educator hats for at least a few weeks and rest.  As many of us know, reflection is such a key component in becoming a better anything, and there is no better way to know oneself as an educator than to reflect upon oneself as a learner and a person.

One of the foundations of Project CRISS is a skill called metacognition, which many of you know means thinking about one's own thinking.  How do I, as a learner, learn?  I almost think that this reflection is more important for teachers than it is for students because, cognitively, these kiddos are still in stages where they haven't got a clue how they learn and are looking for us to supply them with those answers.  If we can't show them our confidence in our ability to detect our own learning styles, then how can we show them how to explore theirs?

Several years ago I conducted a refresher geared toward learning styles, and it's been a while since I preached that sermon, but I recall one revelation that many of us had after we all took the VARK learning styles assessment together and a multiple intelligences assessment.  It was like light bulbs went on all over the library as we started sharing our learning strengths with each other!  After I took those tests, I realized why I get frustrated when I sit in lectures or when somebody tries to tell me how to play a game.  My auditory listening skills stink, and I tune out after the first few instructions. 

But something even more amazing happened that day.  My ability to connect to my colleagues expanded because I was able to identify each person by his/her learning style.  I also began to notice that we bring those styles into our interactions with others.  Anybody ever notice me staring at your hair or interrupting a lengthy conversation with a completely new one?  Yep.  It's because my ears have shut down.  I don't mean to do it.  I am a better emailer and texter than I am a face-to-face conversationalist - and it's not because I like to hide behind my computer and my phone.  It's because I can't focus on my ears for too long.  Knowing this about my colleagues made it easier for me to communicate because if I knew I was working with a person who was kinesthetic - I showed them how to do something rather than type them out an email with directions. 

It even made a difference in my relationship with my husband - who is completely kinesthetic.  My strengths are my read/write ability and my musical/rhythmic ability.  Instead of frustrating him with lengthy instructions about things, I try to show him.  This is a challenge for me, as I produce better with my words, but to improve our (already amazing) relationship this is what I do.  With my daughter (the technology and visual girl) it is even more of a challenge, but I am learning.

My point is, friends, if we are willing to put forth the effort in creating engaging and meaningful lessons geared toward the highly-rigorous Common Core Standards, we have to be willing to go all the way.  Our kids will meet us with what they have to offer, but if their brains aren't wired for what we're giving them - good luck!  You can rebuttle this with the idea that as they get older learning isn't going to be geared toward their intelligences, and that they need to learn how to adapt - if you want, but the fact remains - we have these kiddos now.  Our job is to pack them with confidence, skill, and the ability to learn without being directed.  What better way to do this than to empower them with the idea that their way of learning may be different than others and by giving them ideas to adapt that way to today's education.