Waiting until they're ready

I follow a website that recently posted a meme with this quotation:

You can struggle for weeks to teach a child something before they are ready, or you can do it in a few moments when they are ready to learn.

This statement was so impactful to me as I reflected upon my own experiences as a teacher and a mother.  I immediately drew a connection with my own daughter - now eleven years old.  As a musician and piano instructor myself, I was convinced that my parents had the right idea starting me on piano when I was seven. Seven is about the earliest age I recommend for parents to start piano with their kiddos, so why would I NOT start my own daughter in piano at seven?

So we did.  And it failed.  So we tried again when she was eight.  And it failed again.  I felt kind of like a failure and took her inability to play very personally.  Of COURSE she will play.  All Lambert children will play.  But my husband just looked at me and said, "Maybe she's not ready."  I knew he was right.  So we stopped trying.

When she turned eleven we had an evaluation for vision therapy and made the decision to pay for the twenty sessions to see if it would help her academically. We had no idea, however, that the vision therapy would impact her in more ways than just academically.  What surprised us so much was the confidence that the therapy sessions instilled in her.  Her stamina in reading fluency and writing climbed, and she went from below the tenth percentile in many areas to over the eightieth percentiles in everything.  Her ability to absorb information visually increased so dramatically, we were all baffled.

As we neared the end of her sessions, she brought up piano lessons on her own, so we started immediately.  Would you believe that when she sat down at that keyboard it was like her fingers had finally come home!  She was ready, and she is moving steadily through her lessons with very little prodding or help from me!

I see this over and over at school.  A kiddo struggles and struggles with reading, no matter what type of interventions we serve her, and then one year - WHAMMO! She is healed.  It's like something just clicks - hormones click in and she settles down long enough to learn how, or she matures enough to be remotely interested, or she is just ready.

A girlfriend of mine was so determined to potty train her daughter at the age of two, and therefore it took her two years to fully potty train her.  The stories I can now recall of this same type of "pushing" are endless.

The moral of this story is to have patience.  Am I saying don't worry? No.  It is our nature as parents to worry when our children seem to "lag" or "fall behind".  We want to compete, and we feel judged when they can't keep up with their peers.  We know that other parents take full responsibility when their children are gifted - "Oh, well.  We have been reading to him since before he was born." or "We work math every summer."  Well, guess what?  So do we.

I'm a mother with two advanced degrees in education, and my daughter struggles with reading.  I can't take responsibility for that.  But I can take responsibility for knowing my daughter - who she is, how she learns, and what her strengths are.  I need to remember that who my daughter is is not the same thing as who I want her to be. Recently I had a father tell me, "I know what he is capable of, and he is not producing."  But we should remind ourselves regularly that what we want them to be able to handle may not be what they are capable at this time to handle.  Regardless as to why.  And pushing them will only beat them down.

I go back to my favorite psychology professor from Harvard who tells us that kids will produce if they have the skills to produce.  Figure out your children.  If you can't, then find somebody who can.  Approach your child with curiosity rather than as a detective looking for something wrong.  Barricades may show up in all forms, but without your parental eye those barriers may never be discovered.

Be mindful.  Be aware.

“We don’t need more data to tell us we need action.”  The concluding quotation in a March, 2014 article written by Joy Resmovits of the Huffington Post.  The article, entitled “American Schools are STILL Racist, Government Report Finds,” is almost a year old, and yet it stabbed at me as if it had just come hot off the press.  In this report Resmovits rattles off statistics indicating that our education system is racist – the conclusion from a series of data surveys given by the US Department of Education and Civil Rights Data Collection.

The post made for a good morning Facebook conversation with a psychology professor I’d never met. It’s currently eleven o’clock, and I’m still fired up about it. 

In the first few paragraphs Resmovits stuns readers with statistics about the percentage of black students versus the percentage of black students who have been suspended or referred to law enforcement.  She also continues by revealing that a higher percentage of students of color are exposed to teachers who “fail to meet license and certification requirements” AND that teachers in areas where there are higher numbers of black students get paid less than those in less diverse districts.

First off, putting unqualified teachers into classrooms of our most at-risk groups of students is the result of decisions made by people who are obviously not qualified to make those decisions.  It would be like sending in a surgeon who hadn’t finished med school to perform an intricate and delicate procedure that, if done poorly, would likely result in death.   Because, often, the result is death – is it not?  Maybe not physical death, but death of opportunity.  Death of self-esteem.  Death of future. 

Why are we not spending money on recruiting the thousands of highly qualified and caring educators who are currently jobless to move into these schools?  Why are we spending so much time and energy on assessing, when we already know what the assessments are going to tell us?  In the state of Illinois, property taxes, by county, indicate a significant portion of the income schools receive to run the schools.  I, myself, work in a district where, next door to us is a large district that doesn’t even have busses to bring kids to school!  On the other side of that same district is a district that has enough busses to take everybody to school at the same time.  This is a true picture of inequity.

Racism, according to several dictionaries I consulted this morning, means anywhere from a belief that a race is inferior to another to simply liking or disliking a race based on some judgment.  In all of the definitions I read, there was one commonality – a person (or collective group) who is racist must make some judgment about a race.  So basically what Resmovits is saying in the title of her article is that America’s schools are judging races and have made a decision that blacks are indeed inferior OR that America’s schools just don’t like blacks in general.  Call it picky.  Call is syntax.  That is what she’s saying.

But is that what she meant?

Resmovits continues in her report by bringing up Brown v. Board of Education and the 1964 Civil Rights act that use ambiguous words such as “quality education for all children” and “equal access to education”.  Apparently these historical decisions were supposed to put away hundreds of years of judgment and hatred and learned behaviors.  But one person’s definition of quality education and equal access is not everybody’s.  Enter today’s education system.  A broken system with more holes than a honeycomb. 

The remainder of the article references a survey by the Education Department’s Office of Civil rights and continuously points to the fact that our system hangs minority students and students with disabilities (how being disabled got into the article about race, I have no idea) out to dry.  The entire article is so full of generalizations that it’s tough to grasp the point except that it keeps screaming racism.

One truth that Resmovits discusses is that change is needed.  She even talks about easing discipline and how that won’t help with the increase in school violence.  How the problem has such long roots, that we see these trends even in preschools!  Even the discipline/skill correlation surfaces toward the end of the article.

What would happen if we started treating our students more like people and less like numbers?  What if – and this is a big IF – we honored the gifts of each of our students and allowed them to be themselves rather than the people we think they should be?  What if we knew what our students’ strengths (and I’m not talking about academics) were as they walked into the door, and what if we could use that information to guide them to advocate for themselves?

Our problem is the fact that we have lost focus on what is really important.  Those children and adolescents who walk into our classrooms each day are singularly different – so much so that you could never carbon copy one of them.  To know each one’s strengths and preferences in learning is to empower ourselves as educators to teach the entire child.  More than half of them will not be academically talented, but academics is what we emphasize in school.  Some will have a gift for art, music, or sports – so why do we limit those times to once or twice a week while we pummel them with phonics and math facts?  Believe it or not – the gift of gab that some of them have will end up being their forte in life and may take them places we have never dreamed!  Is their curiosity or creativity not important?  The message we are giving them at school is that it is not.

Before we start pointing fingers at systems for being racist, what we ought to do is take a look at ourselves as a society and reflect on what is really important.  Perhaps it is us who have created a society that embraces a way of life – one in which certain populations of our children are still being treated as unequal.  I am in no way saying that any race behaves a specific way or has a particular strength, but if we step away from skin color and focus on our students as students – we might find that we can see a piece of them that we have never been allowed to see. 

What we perceive as negative behaviors may only surface because the whole child is not embraced.  Excessive talking in a kid who is interpersonal becomes a way to cope when math is hard.  Doodling helps visual students get through a tough literature class.  Physical aggression allows kinesthetics a release when a student has been cooped up in school for ninety minute blocks of testing. Once we view our students through these new lenses, we can then begin the task of building them up so that they feel like they want to succeed.

If they have the skills and want to succeed, they will.  Dr. Ross Greene of Harvard University says very pointedly – Kids do well if they can.  It is our responsibility as a society to find out why they are not producing.   Generally speaking – it’s not because they’re black.

Using the visual strength to compensate for lack of linguistic

I couldn't not write about this, as it was such an amazing revelation today, but I'm stumped and thought I'd put it on "paper" to see what my colleagues and friends say about it.

One of my eighth graders is really struggling to read.  His fluency scores tipped me off that there might be some phonics issues underlying, so I gave him a screening test for phonics.  It was a quick and simple one that tested nonsense, single-syllable words, and he passed it with flying colors!  He also passed the next section of it, which was real multisyllabic words.  In the past, I would have stopped there.  He passed.  No deficits.  But something was telling me to dig a little more, so I gave him a multisyllabic nonsense word screening.  What I found on this assessment stunned me.  

He couldn't put two syllables together to create a multisyllabic word!

Now I was confused by this because he can clearly read multisyllabic words, as was demonstrated by the first screening.  So what happened?  I couldn't figure it out.  Until today.

We were sitting together at a table working on silent-e syllables.  He was flying through reading the single syllable nonsense words.  And then he got one wrong.  He stopped, and I tried to talk him through it, but he couldn't do it.  

"Miss," he said.  "I can't think of a word that looks like it."

"What do you mean?" I asked.  

"I mean, I usually just look at it and think of a word that looks like it and then change the first letter or whatever."

Oh my goodness, I thought.  He's using his visual strength to cope for his lack in linguistic.  I almost fell out of my chair.  How do you teach a child who has come up with such an amazing coping mechanism to forget it??   He's fourteen.  Is it possible to fix this?  

I'm considering working a phonics program with him that starts with phonemic awareness using color tiles instead of letters to appeal to his visual side in hopes to strengthen his linguistic, but . . . . he is fourteen and he leaves me in four months for the high school.  Time is not on my side.

Taking a breather

If you've been checking back looking for more, just know I'm taking a breather from blogging professionally.  I've made a decision to take a leave of absence from my job in public ed beginning at the end of this school year, and I'm trying to focus on "What's next?"

Stay tuned, as I will undoubtedly have more to say as the year closes this year!

Using strengths, not discipline, in your classroom management

You're sitting with a student looking over her work for the last week.  The rest of the class is supposed to be working on the vocabulary for the current unit.  Quietly.  Independently.  It's the only way you can be certain they're all working while you conference with individual students.  It's the only way you can keep them all accountable.

But who is throwing a wrench into your plan because he just cannot stop talking?  Enrique.  You've moved him three times and put him in a corner.  You're tired of moving him.  You've given him incentive tickets for times when he can sit quietly and work.  You've kept him in for lunch detentions for not shutting up.  You have called home because there is no end to his chatting with his peers.  Honestly, you're frustrated with his incessant talking, and you're about ready to lose your cool!

The way I see it, you've got a few choices.  You can lose your temper and unleash your teacher dragon on him, which will feel better initially but only to you and not for long.  You can kick him out to sit in the hallway.  This will "drive home the message", "teach him a lesson", and make and example of him.  Again, this might make you feel better for teaching him a lesson and using him as an example, but will it really stop the behavior?  It also removes him from under your watchful eye and gives him more room to mess around.  The likelihood he will get much done out there just went down about fifty percent . . . . or more.  You could write him a discipline referral - again driving home your message of "too much talking".  But will this eliminate the problematic behavior?

Sound familiar?  You're about ready to get into a struggle with a thirteen-year-old kid who likely doesn't care whether he is in your classroom or in the office.  Guess who else has had enough too.

Let me tell you a little bit about this boy.  After taking a multiple intelligences test and test of learning styles, Enrique's scores show that he is highly interpersonal and prefers to take in information by listening (aural).  He's people smart.  He watches body language and listens to tone of voice and is able to interact with you the way he should to get just the response he wants.  And now if you look at him, you can see this is very true.  No matter who he engages in conversation - his peers, the principal, even the school resource officer -  his body language shows high sense of self.  As long as he is talking and listening, one has to wonder even if he isn't eighteen or nineteen years old and not thirteen.  He carries himself in a conversation beautifully, and he even has a tendency to bluff his way through things you're certain he doesn't know.

Unfortunately, since he was five, his teachers have made it clear that the constant talking is inconvenient, inappropriate, and unwanted.  Upon his entrance to kindergarten, Enrique's strength in his interpersonal has gotten him into more trouble than not, but no matter what his teachers did, they just couldn't squash this boy's gift for gab.  By the age of thirteen, his weakness in math and reading has gotten so out of control, and his teachers blame most of it on his inability to stay focused on anything but his peers, that Enrique can't wait to turn sixteen and drop out of school.  He has no qualms with sharing his goals and puts little focus on anything academic.

Enrique doesn't feel comfortable doing much academically.  Neither does his friend Dalia, who is also in this same class.  But instead of talking nonstop, Dalia spends most of her time drawing.  During whole class activities Dalia keeps a sheet of paper on her desk and doodles or draws while she tries to listen and/or participate.  Dalia's strength is . . . ?  You guessed it - visual/spacial.  And maybe a touch of kinesthetic since it seems like her hands have to be moving often.  

Reading is difficult for both of these kiddos.  They both struggle with linguistic activities, and when they feel unsuccessful in an area, they tend to feel bad about themselves.  Being the still-very- egotistical beings that they are, they try to salvage what little self esteem they have by doing something that makes them feel good.  What better way to do this than by doing something in which they excel?  For Enrique, his answer is to talk. For Dalia - drawing and doodling soothes her.  What we find to be blatant disobedient or disrespectful acts might actually be mechanisms they are using to save the little bit of academic self esteem they have left.  Will dishing out punishments stop the behaviors that are being conceived as disrespectful?  Absolutely not.

So what do we do with these two and others like them?

Honor their strengths.  We all have had the drummer.  You know, the one who taps her pen or pencil to rhythm without even realizing she's doing it.  Musical strength?  That's likely.  Barking orders to stop tapping is probably going to chop her down a little and make her feel bad.  She may stop.  She may not.  But nothing beneficial comes out of calling her out in class and making her stop.

Point it out.  For example - Gabby, I see that you're tapping again.  That musical strength of yours could be put to some good use if you could find out a way to fit those definitions into a rhythm.  Can you work on the first one for me for a minute and I'll come help you with it after I'm done here with Dylan?  or Enrique, you're talking again.  Your interpersonal strength is distracting Charise from getting her work done.  How about you and George go into the back corner and work on the vocabulary together?  Make sure that you both talk about the answer before you choose the correct one.

Sometimes you can't let them showcase their strengths, but just bringing the strength into focus and honoring it - maybe even asking your kiddo to tone the strength down a bit will help a lot more than a disciplinary action or being called out in front of peers.

Your students want to be respected, honored, and understood.  Being aware of each of them, how they interact with others, and why they behave certain ways will most certainly benefit you in more than just a few ways.  This is truly the key to building their confidence and creating learners who take control of themselves as learners.  And then maybe - just maybe - Enrique's talking will no longer be a nuisance to you, but a message that he needs something a little different than what you're offering today.

The most important lesson ever

It's been a few weeks.  In fact, I was almost of the mindset not to blog again this week until my husband and I sat and chatted this morning about  how things were going this year.  After I rambled on and on for about ten minutes straight, he encouraged me to blog about it.  Either he thinks what I said is worth the read or he was tired of listening and thought maybe if I wrote about it I would shut up.  Or a combination of both.  :)

I have to tell you all, this year has been a ride so far.  Going back into the classroom was a challenge that I knew I could handle, but it wasn't something I wanted to handle.  I liked what I had been doing - supporting our students in their content areas and working with them in their intervention classes, going through school-wide data and making program change recommendations, and being a resource for our teachers who needed support in reaching their resistant readers.  But once I got back in front of a group of my own kiddos, life got amazing.  And it reminded me why I went into this business in the first place.  As a colleague of mine keeps gritting her teeth and saying, "It's all for the kids."  Any educator worth her salt today has to keep reminding herself of this because nobody is making this job easy.  Nobody.

My plan at the beginning of the year was to instill a sense of self-worth in all of our kiddos who either were performing out of fear or who weren't performing at all.  I wanted them to feel free to take risks and reach for success.  I knew it would be a challenge.  I knew I would have to work at it and tweak my approaches along the way.  I prayed it would just happen.  Well, to say it's been a challenge has been an understatement.  To say I've had to tweak my approaches is putting it mildly.  And I've needed a lot of prayer this year.  And a lot of Kleenex.

But what I'm seeing is kind of blowing my mind.

After spending a month at the beginning of the year learning about ourselves as learners - our learning styles, intelligences, learning types, interests, and even love languages, these kiddos now had the tools to advocate for themselves.  They have been given the gift of self-knowledge and have been helped to understand why they struggle with things and excel at others.  Why they can't shut up or sit still for forty minutes.  Why they hate PE or art or language arts.  When their high energy or chatterbox-ness is getting on my last nerve, instead of getting exasperated and directing frustration at them, I point out how one's interpersonal or kinesthetic intelligence is getting in the way of their learning and ask them how they can bring that strength into their learning.  I point it out as much as I can, we joke about how things are hard when we don't get served to our strengths and what we can do to communicate our needs to others.

What happens?  My kiddos work.  Not for a grade or for a ticket to buy things at the school store.  They don't get a "good job" at the end of the period, and I don't give them candy.  Heck, I don't even email home or send home postcards to tell mom and dad how proud I am.  But I do talk to each student as much as possible.  I give them the gift of my attention, and I point out what I see them doing.  And when it comes time for them to measure their growth, they get nervous about it and celebrate when they see the quantitative proof that they've worked and grown.  I'm proud of them.

It's funny that I didn't notice this growth until my husband and I started talking about it today.  But now that I'm reflecting, I wish there was a quantitative way I could "prove" that my approaches are creating more confident, happier kiddos.  I see it, and I hope their teachers and parents are seeing it too.

It says something when I have kiddos who "graduate out" of my class and choose to stay.  When I have students who ask if they can work on the eighth grade vocabulary rather than the seventh grade.  When, even while I'm working with a small group, I look over and see heads bent over interactive notebooks working or hands flying over desks of vocabulary matching activities - all by just saying, "Okay, go ahead to your first activity today.  You've got fourteen minutes until we switch."  There's no participation points or names on the board.  No way to keep track of who is working and who isn't.  I have students who come in to get their notebooks so they can take them to the library to check out a book on their list or to take it home and study their vocabulary.  We don't have homework, nor do I expect students to take their work home - and yet they're choosing to do this on their own.

So - go ahead - ask me. How is my year going?  It's a tough change, and I DO mourn the loss of what I was able to accomplish the last three years.  But I'd never ask for it to be different this year.  What I'm learning this year is going to be invaluable as I continue my research and work with students on intrinsic motivation.  And by the end of the year, I forsee dozens of my babies walking out of my classroom with their heads held higher and a lighter step because they were able to learn.  Not phonics or fluency or reading skills.  The most important thing in the world ever to learn.  About themselves.

Give your students the two minute challenge

If you've been following me for a while, you may have picked up on a few of my philosophies.  First off, I am a firm believer in the idea that motivation must come from within rather than externally.  Second, in order to be motivated to do something, you must feel like there is a chance that you will find success in whatever it is.

This is the big hangup with a lot of our kiddos.  Success seems so distant to them that refusal is a much better option.  These are the failure accepters.  

During her Friday pre-conference presentation for the Secondary Reading League's Day of Reading, Dr. Janet Allen mentioned a simple way to build some confidence in those who are somewhat resistant when it comes to learning.  The two minute challenge works really well as a background knowledge builder, and as long as you can find a few paragraphs pertaining to your topic, you should be good to go!  Here's how she explained it.

• Give your students a small passage full of facts on whatever topic you are going to study.
• Allow your students to read it in whatever format you choose.  You can read it aloud to them, have them read silently (if you have a class full of independent readers), or pair them up and partner read.
• Set the timer for two minutes and have students write down a set number (she suggested ten) of facts derived from the text.
• Choose a way to wrap up the exercise.  Sharing in a group of 2-3 is great because they can add to their lists during the group time.  Having them all share one thing from their list with the class may give a few a boost just because it's not often that they have anything academic to say.  This will help them to feel competent, and a feeling of competence breeds intrinsic motivation.  

Doing an activity in the classroom like this one will hit several targets at once.  Many of our students come to us with very little background knowledge, and this is a brilliant way to begin building that for the big learning.  But even more importantly, it allows our strugglers an opportunity to feel successful by participating in writing and discussing the topic in a non-threatening way.

Can you turn around Monday and use this strategy?  Many of you can!  Let us know what your plan is or what you have done in the past to make a strategy like this work for you.  

Happy Thanksgiving!

Not everybody learns by reading and writing

That title seems like a "duh" kind of statement, but it hit me this morning as I was running (exercising my very weak kinesthetic) just how true this statement really is.  Two things happened to me this week that emphasized this to me.

First, I was working with this really great group of sixth graders Monday morning.  It's a group of five, and one of the five struggles - even in the small group setting.  She appears off task at times, and her answers come more slowly than the rest of the group as she is furiously scribbling her half-right answers on her white board.  I've come to reserving slots in my questioning just for her to be sure she is able to apply the skills we are practicing.

This week we were working on reading and writing multi-syllabic words - both real and nonsense (we use nonsense words to practice the skill without using words that they've memorized).  After a while of working vowel teams on our white boards, she started to shut down on me (or so I thought).  She capped her marker and just looked at me.  I decided to see what was going to happen next, so I went on to the next word.  Do you know what happened after that?  Once I asked her how to spell the next word she did it no problem!  Reading and spelling the words was so much easier once we got that marker out of the way!

On Wednesday while getting ready for work, my six-year-old son followed me around the house talking my ear off.  This child is highly interpersonal and rarely shuts up once he gets going.  He started talking about word problems, and of his own accord, told me he wanted to make up word problems.  For the next thirty minutes as I was putting on my makeup and flat ironing my hair, he and I went back and forth.  He totally got me on this one, "Zander makes three strikes in a row.  How many more strikes does Zander need to get a 300?"  The boy loves his bowling, and I (being the non-kinesthetic) know nothing about how many strikes it takes to get a 300.  Talk about lacking background knowledge!  I got the problem wrong with my answer of five.  He was happy to shout, "INCORRECT!" to me and ask me to try again.

What strikes me as funny here is that at our October parent-teacher conference his teacher expressed concern about his not completing his "math cards" (those don't sound like any fun) and that he needed practice on his word problems.  All done on paper.  Well, okay, but yet he just spent thirty minutes going back and forth doing word problems with addition, subtraction, and division AND a few were multi-step.  All in his head and with great stamina.

So is it realistic to try to keep our kiddos accountable aurally (by listening) and orally (by talking)?  Heck no!  I know that there are many of you out there with thirty plus students in every class, seven periods a day.  Not possible.  But consider doing some of the following to help some of your interpersonals and aurals out (I'm actually going to throw our musicals in there for a fun connection because so many of them are also aurals):

• Ask them to partner up and give each other answers so they can write down each other's answers.
• Ask them to create questions to ask each other in class.
• Have them read out loud with a partner or in a small group.
• Listen to music while they are completing independent work (Take caution in the type of music you choose.  My kiddos love my George Teleman, Paul Cardall, or Peaceful Holidays station on my Pandora.)
• Listen to text on CD or online.
• Teach them to study by talking to themselves (repeating things out loud and answering to themselves or others).
• Record themselves on their phones or a computer and listen to it afterwards.

Using some of these quick tips along with other discussion strategies in your classroom and emphasizing them outside of the classroom will give those interpersonals, aurals, and musicals exactly what they need to feel more like they're accepted as learners.  You'll find that as you bring attention to their preferences and strengths they will be more likely to take risks and exercise them in your classroom to grow.  Have you had any success with any of these strategies in your classroom?  Share those with us in the comments below.  

Admit Slip: 3-2-1

Exit slips are common practice in many classrooms and so are daily "bell ringer" activities.  I never thought to put the two together, however, until I got to hear Dr. Janet Allen talk about this practice this morning at the Secondary Reading League's Day of Reading Pre-Conference.

Last February I blogged on building background knowledge using a really cool activity called Observe, Infer, and Question.  In this activity, students looked at a visual and made observations.  From the observations, they recorded inferences based upon their background knowledge, and then finally the asked questions based upon those observations and inferences. The entire process spanned over an entire class period.

Dr. Allen's strategy is this exact activity, but in the form of an exit slip and at the beginning of a lesson rather than the end.  Here's how it works.

• As students walk in the door, give them their Admit Slip: 3-2-1 sheets or index cards (one per student).  
• If you copied a sheet for your students, you can put the picture(s) and/or graphic(s) on it.  For even easier implementation, project the image on the front screen so you don't have to make copies of it and just give your students index cards on which to write.
• Students first task is the 3.  Write down three details about the image (observe).
• Their second task is the 2.  Finish this sentence:  I think . . . Then finish this sentence: I also .think . . .  Both sentences should be based from the details they recorded in the first task (infer).
• Finally, the third task is to write one question based from the details they recorded and/or the inferences in the second (question).  

Once students complete the Admit Slip, you can do a variety of different things with them.  You can collect them to see how much background knowledge each student has on the topic if it's new.  You can begin small group discussions with this information.  You can have an entire class discussion.  Students can share in small groups or with the entire class.  They can also keep their admit slips in an interactive notebook (see my amazing colleague's blog on those right here) or someplace safe so that they can return at a later date to see how much their initial reactions have changed.

Whatever you decide, know that in all content areas, students see visuals and graphics, which means that every content area should be able to use something similar to this strategy.  It would work especially well in geometry, science, and art where content is linked so heavily with visuals.  Think of the possibilities!  How could you use something simple like this?  Share with us in the comments below.  

Pick Two and Possible Sentences - applying vocabulary knowledge and writing

This week's strategy I learned while attending my colleague Ann Eifler's session at the IRC Conference in Springfield back in October.  Since attending this session, I've used it several times in different contexts and have loved it each time!  Here's how it works:

• Decide what your goal is for the activity.  You can do this as a pre-reading activity where you use a combination of words the students will know and may not know or use it as a post-learning activity where you're asking students to apply their knowledge of their newly-learned vocabulary.
• Decide how you want your students to record their sentences - white board, pen/paper, large paper with markers, or electronically.
• Make a list of words you want to use for your students.
• Have students work alone or in partners to match words up that would likely be found in the media (text, video, electronic media, etc) together.  
• Ask students to create sentences with their paired words.  If you're using this as a pre-learning activity, remind students to use this as a way to predict how these words will be used.  If you're using this as a post-learning activity, tell them that they should try to remember how these words were used before pairing them up so that they can create sentences that effectively communicate what your students want.
• Share out with the class or post them around the room.
• If you used the activity as a pre-learning activity, revisit the sentences after learning and reflect on misconceptions with your kiddos.  This is a GREAT way to teach them how to use mistakes and misconceptions as a learning tool.

I thought I had taken pictures of their work, but after looking through my camera, I can't find them, and since I'm writing from home I don't have access to student notebooks this weekend.  If I think of it I'll post some examples on my Facebook page so you can see them. I used the writing activity as a post-learning activity where I was expecting my students to apply their knowledge of vocabulary they had learned.  They wrote really fantastic sentences and showed me that they owned those words.

Feel free to share ways you have used or can use this strategy in your content area in the comments below.

You Ought to Be in Pictures – Using the Visual to Strengthen the Linguistic

I had a wonderful conversation with a colleague a few days ago about student strengths, and since this conversation, I’ve been hypothesizing all sorts of things about the way our kiddos behave in the classroom.  I don’t have to tell many people this, but according to the Birmingham Multiple Intelligence Test, one of my highest intelligences is musical/rhythmic. I don’t get to use this intelligence much in the classroom, however.  This year, I’ve been illustrating the use of our intelligences to my students by bringing up my lack of kinesthetic intelligence.  To clarify, I hate exercise and anything associated with it.  I don’t learn by doing, and I hate moving around.

But I’m forty.  And if I plan to live a long time, I need to get moving.  So in January I started running.  The only way I can get myself moving – be it outside or on a treadmill – is to blast music at just the right BPM into my ears for the entire run.  And so I did.  It’s been ten months since I started, and I ran over two miles this morning.

My point is – I used my musical intelligence to pull me through my weakness in my kinesthetic, which is strengthening every day.  This made me start thinking about the number of kiddos we have who can’t do their homework unless they’re listening to music.  It’s not all of them, but many of our students have a musical/rhythmic strength that may pull them through the trials of not being linguistic or mathematical/logical. 

Today’s strategy uses visual to strengthen linguistic.  So many of our kiddos are visual learners, that if we don’t use that to our advantage, we miss out on a huge opportunity to strengthen other areas!  This particular strategy is one outlined in the Project CRISS manual as You Ought to Be In Pictures and can be used in any content area.  Here’s how it works.

Choose a picture or cartoon for the students to view either on the projector or photocopied.  Depending on your objective of the lesson, give your students instructions as to how to use the picture.  You could choose to have them:

•  Answer questions based upon what they see.  If you are using the picture at the end of a unit, perhaps they need to use what they’ve learned to help them answer those questions.
• Caption the picture using information they’ve learned.
• Caption the picture using specific words that they’ve been studying during the unit.
• Describe what might be happening in the picture based upon what they’re learning.
• Notice specific things in the picture and write about it.
• Write a narrative about what is happening in the picture.  

Some examples of how this could be used are below.

•  Language arts – Caption the photograph using specific words or a part of speech correctly.
• Social studies – Caption the photograph knowing what you know about life in a specific time period.  Use three of the vocabulary words we have studied.
• Science – Write a narrative about what is happening in the photograph, now that you’ve conducted an experiment that looks similar to it.  Use these three vocabulary words in your narrative: ___, ___, and ___.
• Health – Look at the graphic and write a narrative about the way that the respiratory system works using your vocabulary correctly.  Be sure to include all parts of the system.
• PE – Use the photograph to help you write a narrative about a person teaching a seven year old to play this game for the first time.  Be sure to include the rules that the person would have to learn in order to not get hurt.
• Math – use the photograph to write a word problem based upon what you see.  Solve the problem and explain what you did and why.
• Music – Use the photograph and the piece of music we just learned to write a short story.  Bring them together using what we learned about the meaning of the piece.
• Art – Use the photograph of this artist to write a story about what is going through this artists mind as she is creating.  Use three of the words we have learned in this unit to explain the process of her creation.
• Woodshop/Life Skills - Use this photograph to explain why this person got hurt.  Include safety tips that we learned this week and how you know the person in the photograph didn't follow the rules.

It takes a little creative thinking on your part, but you can tie photographs in anywhere for your visul/spacials and use them to help your students strengthen their other areas of intelligence.  Keep in mind that the writing is going to be really hard for some of them - especially if they're not accustom to writing in your content area.  Stick with it, though.  Make them write once a week, and they'll start expecting it.  They know when it's "pacers" day in PE - whether they like it or dislike it - they come to expect it.  They can come to expect to write weekly, as well, in any content.  It just takes practice and determination on your part.  I know that it's not just your kiddos whose boxes are being shaken up a bit - its yours too, but you'll get used to it, and some of you may actually enjoy the change of pace!  

How can you use this type of activity in your content?  Share your ideas with us in the comments.

Document Based Questions – using multiple medias to inquire

I know I’ve mentioned my favorite book on non-fiction strategy guides before – Guiding Readers through Text: Strategy Guides for New Times by Karen D. Wood, and today I’m going to mention it, yet again.  While attending the IRC Conference in Springfield, one of the presentations (again, a Mundelein HS presentation) mentioned the use of Document Based Questions (DBQ’s – of course there’s an acronym!).  With Common Core expecting our students to pull evidence from multiple medias and with all of the rage in the expanded definitions of what “text” is, I figured it would be a good time to bring this book up again and demonstrate how this type of activity could be used effectively in the classroom.  

Because the teaching of history lends itself well to this strategy, I’m going to use a history example.

• Decide on a goal or objective for the lesson.  Consider an essential question such as How did conflict contribute to the fall of the Roman Empire?
• Demonstrate how to create questions from the essential question.  For example, What conflicts occurred during the Roman Empire?  What caused the conflict?  What happened because of the conflict? Did the Roman Empire become weaker because of the conflict? If so, how/why? Etc. 
• Choose three (or more) different medias (text, video, web, audio, electronic media, etc) that present information answering the essential question.  Using medias of different perspectives or that have different purposes could be an interesting twist to this assignment.  Part of the Standards for the 21st Century Learner require us to teach students how to peel relevant and reliable sources out of the vast pool of information available.  For multiple leveled students, provide more than three, and allow students to choose (or guide some to choices that might meet their needs more effectively).   Text books could be used in this step, but don’t leave them to be the sole information provider!
• Teach students how to organize their information for reading – you can start with providing an organizer, but remember that our ultimate goal is to create independent information seekers.  Modeling how to create your own organizer may be more effective.  Above is an example of what a handwritten organizer might look like.
• Demonstrate how to highlight text and jot down notes in the organizer so that they can be reviewed later on. 
•  Allow students to work independently (or with a group of 2-3) to complete their reading.  Meet with groups while they’re working, clarifying where needed.

One question you may ask is whether you can have one student work on pulling information from each media and then share the answers with each other.  This will obviously be a shortcut they'll consider immediately as well.  My answer is always the same - Consider your objective.  The shortcut would mean a different objective.  It's absolutely one possible way of getting this assignment done in a shorter amount of time.  It's also a way to ensure that your kiddos are all accountable for something.  But if your objective is to truly have your students work together while practicing speaking and listening and to glean important information from multiple sources, then my answer would be a solid NO.  

Once all information has been gathered, ask students to go back to the essential question and discuss the answer before putting together a final answer, complete with documented information from the three (or more) medias.  It's obviously your choice how you expect students to report, but you could have them submit a final answer on notebook paper, have them write it on poster paper and hang it up in the room for discussion.  You could also have them construct something to report out to the class without a "formal" piece of written work.  Or each student could be responsible for documenting the information and submitting it.  Again, consider your goal and your learners.  

Obviously, not every strategy lends itself to work beautifully to every content area, but if you step back, there are places in many areas where it could really be effective and engaging for your learners.  Science, health.  Even music, PE, and art might be good places to use an activity like this to support the standard of using multiple medias to draw conclusions.  How can you use this activity in your classroom?  Share your ideas in the comments below.

Make information stick with magnet summaries

It's amazing how much useful information one can retrieve from one session at a conference!  This week's blog stems from the same session from the IRC 2014 Conference as the last two I have written.  The strategy is magnet summaries, which also happens to be a CRISS strategy. Double score!

Magnet summaries can be used in a variety of contexts, which is what I love about the strategies in the Project CRISS manual.  They're all very adaptable.  Here's how this one works:

•  Give each student an index card or half sheet of paper.  On the "front" have the students write the topic you want them to summarize.  For example, if you're teaching students about variables in math, write variables on the front of the card.  
• After the initial lesson, have students go back to their notes (maybe do this in partners to keep your interpersonals happy) and find four words that stick out as being key words connecting to the word in the middle (one or more will probably be another vocabulary word, which should help with information transfer).  When talking about variables in math, you might have words like constant, coefficient, operator, and equation.  

http://hs-englishliteracy.wikispaces.com/file/view/
strategy8.JPG/250740026/703x521/strategy8.JPG

• On the back of the card, students can expand their words into sentences.  Depending on the writers, you may choose to let them freely write their summary based upon the five words on the front of it, OR you may want to give your students a frame.  The frame might look something like this:

Today's lesson explains [topic] by talking about ______, ______, ______, and ______.  [Write one sentence explaining each of the four magnet words or combine them into a few sentences if they easily connect.] It is important to know this because ___________________. 

The picture to the right is one way a student could write a magnet summary if you were allowing them some freedom in their writing or if you have very comfortable writers.  One thing that I liked about the session I attended at the IRC Conference is their attention to reflection, which is not included in the example above.  The last sentence in the frame above in red addresses the reflection.  Students need to justify why the information is important.  This does two things - it validates why the information is being taught and creates a reason to connect the information to either new information, past information, or student's lives.  

So think about the next lesson you plan to share with your students.  How can this strategy be adapted?  Could you add it easily?  Could you use it as a formative assessment?  Share your ideas with us in the comments below.  

Applying vocabulary - More than just writing sentences

Teaching vocabulary is tricky and can sometimes become monotonous if you don't change it up.  Often, we want to present vocabulary to students before reading, but then what?  Well, when I was at the IRC Conference a few weeks ago, I was reminded of this really simple, yet super effective activity.  It is called Interact with Vocabulary. Here's how it works.

After you've introduced vocabulary and have established definitions and examples using a technique like the Frayer model, it's time to apply the information.  Pre-write questions to ask.  Try to connect the vocabulary to your students' lives.  For example:

1. Name one thing that happens unintentionally in the hallways at school. [general Tier 2 vocabulary]
2. Why is the system of checks and balances important for you as a citizen of the United States? [social studies]
3. What is one reason you would measure perimeter of something? [geometry]
4. Why would one need quick reaction time? [health]
5. Name one popular song that would sound better piano rather than forte. [music]
6. What is an example of a network that teenagers may use every day? [computer tech]
7. Give an example from school of convection. [science]

Not every vocabulary term has practical life application, so you could also write your questions in perspective.  For example:

1. If you were a constructivist artist, which medium would you prefer and why? [art]
2. As a tyrant of a Greek city-state, what is one job that you would do well and why? [ancient history]
3. You are planning to build a bookshelf.  What tools should you plan to use, and why? [woodshop]

The next decision you'll have to make is how to have your students interact with their vocabulary.  If you're a teacher who needs proof of accountability, try the following ideas.  I'm an advocate for the interpersonal (social) student, so you'll see that these all include discussion:

• Type up the questions in a worksheet and have them record the answers from their discussion so that all of the group members has a copy.  Everybody's answers should match.  Share out as a class or conference with each group as discussions progress.
• Give each group a copy of the questions and have them discuss and record on a large piece of poster paper (more for your visual and kinesthetic students).  Share out with the class or conference with each group as discussions progress.  Post answers around the room after discussions.  
• Put up poster paper around the room and have the students carousel each of the prompts.  Give students forty-five seconds to a minute at each station.  
• For my digital-teachers, use Google docs and have all groups contribute to the same document in different colors.  Monitor what students are writing and conference with groups as misconceptions emerge.  Print a copy for each student.  

The title Interact with Vocabulary immediately indicates that more will be happening than just reading definitions.  Using student schema to learn, is a sure-fire way to ensure longer retention, but its also a great way to assess whether a student truly understands that meaning of the words.  But just as important is the idea that we should be choosing applicable vocabulary.  Educating our students is not just about taking words from a text book, it's about applying them.  It's our job to be sure that the words apply.  

What challenges do you see in using a strategy like this one?  Share those with us in a comment below. 

A Cornell Notes Comeback!

On Thursday I attended a session at the Illinois Reading Conference in Springfield entitled Success in Science Through Literacy Strategies.  The four presenters Katie Giambeluca, Jamie Moderhack, Melissa Sethna, and Alyssa Wiltjer were all from Mundelein High School.  After spending some time with them both in the session and with some Mundelein teachers later on that evening - and after attending a subsequent session the next day with another set of amazing teachers from Mundelein (blog to follow in the future), I am convinced that Mundelein really has it going on out there, and I want to see and hear more!

http://caren-iannelli.blogspot.com/

One thing I found interesting in the few days I've been here in Springfield is the number of times that Cornell Notes have been referenced (or Two-Column Notes for my Project CRISS friends).  I find this amusing because Cornell Notes never seem to really go away!  After doing some research, I discovered that they got their beginning in the 1950s - obviously an oldie but a goodie, and they have withstood the test of time!  Even more interesting is that I have heard about this strategy three times in three different sessions in reference to science instruction.

Regardless of the content, Cornell Notes can be used effectively as a note taking and study strategy.  Your read/writers would use this most effectively because there are no limitations on how lengthy your notes can be.  Those of us who are linguistic tend to like limitless possibilities for writing.  BUT, they're also a really great setup to keep students organized AND a very useful tool for studying.

Here's how they work.

1. Have students split their paper into four sections as shown above to the right (kind of like a capital I but off center).
2. Give students a purpose for reading (or watching a video or participating in a discussion or activity - however you plan to deliver information), and have them write the purpose on the top of the paper.  For example, watch the video to gather information on how climate patterns have changed over the last one hundred years.
3. Instruct students to jot down notes or draw pictures/diagrams (for our visual students) in the big right hand column.  The notes/pictures should connect to the purpose (skip a line between notes).  Notes should not be in full sentences and should/could be abbreviated as much as possible.
4. After note-taking is completed, students should go back and read their notes, pulling out key ideas, names, dates, and vocabulary. These can be listed on the left in the skinny column.  Also, any questions students may still have about the material can be written in this column for future inquiry. This entire step can easily be done in small groups so that our interpersonal students get their chat release and so that all of our kiddos can process and grapple with what the key points really are.
5. Finally, as a group or individually, on the bottom of the page, have students write a few sentences, summarizing those key points listed in the right column.  Again, this could easily be done in small groups.

Once the note taking process has happened, students now have beautifully constructed notes that can be a fantastic study tool for something like a twelve minute study.  Students can approach studying their Cornell Notes like this.

1. Reread your notes in the bigger right hand column, looking for specific examples or details that might be important.
2. Look at your key ideas on the left, and ask yourself if you really understand them.  If not, how can you help yourself understand them?
3. Reread the summary.  
4. Do this for a set amount of time (eight minutes for eighth grade, six minutes for sixth grade, etc.) every day up until the test or quiz.

No matter if you know them as Cornell Notes or Two Column notes - the premise is the same - this type of note taking strategy is useful in any area that a student would need to record information to be used for studying at a later time.  Once your students have gone through the process, have them reflect on themselves as learners and how the practice of organizing their notes in this manner has benefited them.  Be prepared to hear how much students found them to be seriously beneficial.  But also be prepared to hear how difficult they were for some.  Remember that no strategy works for everybody, and our job is to shine a spotlight on what might work for each of our students as individuals so that they can begin to feel control over how they organize and take their own notes.  Our job is to create independent learners, and this is a perfect tool to put into their hands.

What kinds of successes have you had with Cornell Notes?  Share those below.

Reciprocal teaching for continued independence across content areas

I’ve kind of avoided this topic over the last few years, and I’m not sure why – maybe because initially it seems like a labor intensive strategy to teach.  It really isn’t, though.  It’s meaty, hearty, sound teaching, and once your students get the process, your job gets a little less exhausting.  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – Work smarter, not harder.  We already work hard enough.

One of my all-time favorite books for tackling content-area learning (reading or not) is Guiding Readers Through Text: Strategy Guides for New Times (Wood, et. al, 2008).  The books is organized beautifully by chapters on different learning guides, and one of them is the reciprocal teaching guide, which tends to make the entire process easier.  I’m a firm believer in the idea that we never want to make our students dependent on an organizer or a guide, but to start them off on it, give them the guide and then eventually have them begin creating their own.  Unfortunately, Wood, et. al seems to be the only author group that has created the organizer that I love, and it is copyright protected in their book, so I can't copy it and throw it up on this blog for you.  But I have taken the time to create one similar so that you can get a visual of what one might look like as you read through its use below.

The reciprocal teaching guide begins with a little background information on the media you want students to tackle, and then spots for the following items: predictions about the media based upon whatever you gave them as a background knowledge activator or a preview of the text, confirmations of those predictions, and evidence from the passage that support those confirmations, a place to write down questions about what the student is learning, and the answers as the group discusses the questions.  Finally, on the bottom of the page there is a place to write two or three ideas that the student thinks are the most important and wants to share with the group.  The group will then decide together which piece of information is most important.

Here’s how I would use it in the classroom:

• Put students into groups of 2-3.
• Give them the Reciprocal Teaching Guide.
• Do a background knowledge activating or building activity.  If you are using text, have students do a quick preview of the text and point out features that will help them with the process (subtitles, graphics, vocabulary, etc.).
• Model the steps as the students go through the guide the first time.
• Students in the group should discuss and decide upon predictions.  Guide them in making their predictions the first time through.  Use features of the media to help predict.  This will also help you to choose media that will allow them TO predict.  Without the ability to predict learning, students can't begin to build purpose independently.  
• Instruct students to make their way through the media in small chunks (paragraph by paragraph or another way if not using physical text), stopping after each to discuss whether there was evidence to support any of their predictions and writing down any questions they had about the section.
• As students write down their questions, encourage them to discuss the answers and write down what they discussed, showing they had managed to clarify the information.  
• After the reading is over, have students individually write down three of the most important ideas in the passage.
• Groups should share their ideas and decide on one idea that they thought was the most important.  They should write that one down at the bottom of their notes.

So after all this, can you see why using an organizer at the beginning might come in handy!  This strategy is so versatile, though.  I mean, it can be used with media in any subject, be it a text book or an article – even a piece of music could lend itself to using a reciprocal teaching guide!  You could use it with a video or an entire lesson, but keep in mind that you want your students to do the working so that you can monitor and observe what is happening with their learning. 

The harder you work up front of the classroom, the further from your students you become.  You cannot observe and monitor while you’re doing a song and dance up front, so try to put your kiddos at the front of their learning and see what they can come up with.  You may find that you don’t have to get up there at all and that you can teach them from the back of the room instead.

Can you think of ways you can use this strategy in your own content area?  Share that with us in the comments below.

A plea for your visual learners

This week I accidentally discovered something about digital text books and visual learners.  I love it when this happens because it reminds me that there is still so very much to learn about the way we teach and the way our students learn.  Two things happened on the very same day that created new understanding for me.

I had a teacher contact me asking if we could meet.  She was using a new text book (online), and more students were struggling with the text book than not.  We set up a meeting during lunch the very next day.

The period before we met, my eighth graders were working on a vocabulary matching activity (for my kinesthetics and aurals), and I overheard one of them saying, "That can't be the definition!  It was longer than that."  Now some teachers would call that lazy.  What? Measure the definition, but heaven forbid you read it!  I would call that visual.  But it never dawned on me that some students (especially those who are reluctant to take reading risks) might rely on their visual perception to compensate for their reading challenges.

After the eighth graders left, I warmed up my lunch and headed down to the sixth grade pods to meet with my colleague.  She was using a brand-new online version of a text book, and she reported that many of her students were having difficulty with the text book.  As soon as she opened the online text book, my eyes popped out of my head as I (me, the read/write linguistic person) tried to make sense of the portion of the page I was seeing!  Talk about inconsiderate text!  I was blown away by the difficulty, and we discussed possibly doing a lexile test to see what the level of it actually was.

As our discussion progressed we talked about different ways to help the kids break down the text to help them to make sense of it, but before we had gotten very far, the bell rang.  As I walked out the door, she handed me a hard copy of the text to look through, and we made plans to continue our discussion the next day.

Later on that day, I had a chance to sit down and look at the hard copy of the text book.  I opened the cover to the same chapter we were discussing, and I was shocked to discover how considerate the book actually was!  The page was laid out so nicely with a few pictures, nice headings, nicely organized and clearly marked sections.  And each section was only two pages long!  I couldn't believe the difference in the way I felt looking at the hard copy versus looking at the online version - and I'm not a visual learner!

After I went home that night, I started processing the two separate incidents, and my mind began to put together some very interesting questions that I would LOVE to research more.

As an experienced reader, I (even though I am not really visual) need to see where my reading begins and ends.  I need to see how it is organized so that I know what questions I can answer in my head and make predictions about what I will be reading.  The digital format of the text didn't allow me do this easily.   When we logged in and clicked on the section of text, it was just there.  I wasn't motivated to turn a page to see when the reading ended or eyeball the page to see how many sections were in it and how they were organized because all I saw was probably half the page, if that!

How can we teach our students how to read non-fiction text if they can't eyeball the page?  It seems to me that our publishers are trying to accommodate us with a "digital format" but to just put a paper-copy into a digital format isn't working for our kiddos!  They can't use their strategies to read it, which means we have to take extra steps to show them how.  Here are some ideas when making an attempt to tackle digital text books:

1. Know what your purpose for reading is.  If the entire selection doesn't have to be read to meet the goal, please don't make your risk-avoiding students do any more risk-taking than they already are.  
2. Offer hard copies for kiddos who are not reading risk-takers or to those who prefer it.  Chances are, they need to see the entire page visually and need to have a page to turn - and all for different reasons, but many for our visual and kinesthetic learners.  You may have to insist that some kids use the hard copy and explain that you are interested in seeing if it makes a difference in their learning.  
3. If you absolutely have to use the digital text, start teaching them how to zoom in and zoom out.  REQUIRE students to zoom out to take a look at the entire selection required for reading and consciously analyze it for structure.  Use a strategy/organizer like the THIEVES organizer that forces students to preview the entire selection before reading.
4. Teach students how to maneuver the online text.  There are features on the computer that cannot obviously be used in a hard copy of the text.  If you're going to make them read the online version - teach them how to pin sticky notes to it, highlight text, and click on video links, and then REQUIRE them to use those features until they become automatic.  
5. Don't ask them to answer questions that can be found directly in the text.  There may likely be a search function.  Once your students discover this, all bets are off - nobody will be reading that text.  
6. Create purpose for reading by looking at the beginning of each section for goals, objectives, or purposes.  Then teach kids how to organize notes.
7. Do these things over and over and over again.

Please don't misunderstand this blog post to be anti-digital-text - there certainly is a time and place for digital text.  But understand your goal, where your students are, and what you really need to do to get them from where they are to where you need them to be.  And don't be afraid to seek out colleagues for additional suggestions!  Chances are, more of us are struggling than you realize!

Feel free to add suggestions below for additional ideas on how to tackle digital text.  Happy reading!

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.  

Make things bigger for those who like to move

As promised, I administered the VARK learning styles assessment today to my three groups of students.  They delivered exactly as I had expected - highly visual and kinesthetic, and one of them even had the audacity to score a zero in the read/write category!  Thankfully, I've been in this business long enough to know that this is exactly the type of kiddo who would struggle with reading, and that is why I placed her into my intervention reading class.  She and I giggled about it today.  She was so far on the other side of the scale, that she really was highly kinesthetic and nothing else.  That's hard to do!

So I started thinking today about these kiddos.  The ones who need to move.  And I researched it a bit tonight to see if others had the same thoughts about it as I did - make everything BIGGER.

Face it, public school is confining and restrictive.  We expect our students to walk in, make their home in their one little desk in a row or a "table", walk down the right side of a hallway, and act like miniature adults.  But some of them are just not ready for all of that.  They need to move and shake.  Adolescents - especially the boys - are like mini-firecrackers, ready to explode at any minute with all of the energy they've saved up.  How can we work with this in a traditional classroom?

Kinesthetic learners need to move.  Even the act of writing is better than just sitting, and they certainly do not have time to listen!  But what if we made it all bigger?  What if those kiddos who were kinesthetic were allowed to write on larger pieces of paper or small white boards where their entire arms moved and the other one was busy holding the paper or white board?  What if we allowed them to draw things on these pieces of paper where they were making larger, loopier, gestures rather than simply writing.  What if we created word sorts and matching activities where both of their hands were moving - or what if we made those sorts larger so that they had to put them on the floor to manipulate them?

Just yesterday I noticed my eighth graders glazing over at about one o'clock (late lunch on Monday), so I made them get up and walk across the room to answer a question.  Kind of a big deal to answer just one question, but they were awake afterward, and it gave my kinesthetics a duly needed break.  

So when the ants-in-your-pants kid looks like he's ready to vibrate himself right out of his seat, think quick, grab a large piece of paper and some markers and sit him in a spot where he has a little bit of room.  Ask him to do whatever you're doing - just bigger.  Chalk on sidewalks works really well, and so to those white boards that you can keep at their desks.  I know they're distracting, but you're going to get better attention from the kinesthetics (and the visuals, for that matter) if you give them white boards and colored markers.

What other things can you make bigger for these kiddos?  How can you appeal to their kinesthetic side in a more effective way?  Share your ideas with us below.