October 18 Crumble - Power teaching and its alignment with the P&P of Project CRISS

My best planning times are usually the most inopportune times when its virtually impossible, dangerous, or ridiculous for me to write down my ideas.  I used to tell my former principal that I planned most of my PD while I was sleeping - which used to make him laugh, but this is a true statement!  Generally when he would spring a PD on me four days before the show was supposed to go on the road, I'd stress about it for a day, go to bed, and then wake up at 3 a.m. with a plan that I would have to get up and jot down so I could sleep again.  A few weeks ago, in the car on the way to work, I'd been stressing about a presentation that I had agreed to do with a colleague at the Day of Reading Conference on November 2, when I had a brilliant idea!  Of course, I was driving . . . so I did what any teacher would do, I grabbed my phone and hit the voice to text button and sent her the entire plan in a voice text, which came out sort of the way I had intended, but she got the idea (although apparently I thought that we should introduce whole GRAIN teaching instead of whole BRAIN teaching . . . ).

So yesterday during a working lunch with her, I embellished on my thought - which included the idea of introducing Power Teaching to our audience.  Not surprisingly, I had completely forgotten that I had even texted that to her.  I love technology for this reason - how many ideas of mine would have flown out my open car window that morning had I not had the option to voice text her?

I digress . . .

A little over a year ago, a respected colleague of mine introduced me to Power Teaching - one of the most engaging and entertaining ways to present, in my opinion.  This video is a brilliant illustration of a few of the fun and engaging strategies. 

Want more?  Just google Chris Biffle and whole brain teaching, and you'll get a ton of fantastic ideas as to how you can make these strategies work for you!

So after discussing the idea of power teaching with my colleague yesterday, I started to realize that the bits and pieces of information that were being "taught" by the students to each other were similar to what Project CRISS has called the 3-minute-pause.  The idea of this strategy is to break up a lesson into smaller, more manageable chunks so that our kiddos can process it and then reset for another stretch of learning.  I really wish I was better about writing down important research and backing it up with evidence like we expect our students to do because my rule of thumb has always been "one minute per grade-level" - so for a sixth grader, the manageable chunk of time they can "sit and get" is about six minutes, a seventh grader can sit for about seven, and so on.  I'm pretty sure I didn't just make this up, but I can't find the research to back it up.  In a behavior management document published by the University of Carolina, it is reported that kids can usually pay attention for their age +1, which would be about twelve minutes for a sixth grader, thirteen for a seventh grader, and so on.  My experience has been that it depends on the topic and the kids, and I'm sure that most of you would agree with me on this one.  Notice that for middle school, none of those numbers are even close to forty-nine, which is our current period length, so our job is to break up that time so that we can make the most of the instruction time we have with our kiddos.

CRISS's three-minute-pause is a longer time frame than the power teaching model with a more in-depth look at the content, but the idea of breaking up the content is the same.  CRISS values the idea that students should restate what they've learned, similar to Biffle's power teaching, but CRISS specifically asks students to make connections with the content, ask questions, or identify something that was particularly interesting to them.  Using a combination of power teaching and the three-minute-pause could be pretty powerful if planned and implemented well. 

Whatever your time specification - know that once your kiddos start to sign off, there is no more learning going on, so the more often you can get them to engage in the content, process it, discuss it, apply it, write about it, and reset - the more content they will internalize.  Biffle stops so often that my head starts to spin after about three minutes, but his illustration is one for teaching teachers how to use the strategies, and it is truly effective!  You have to make them your own.  What I love about his teaching method is the predictability of what is expected along with the validation that quick pace and discussion are important for learners at the middle and high school level.  Its classroom management and content management wrapped into one strategy, and it is beautiful.

Reaching our active learners

June has moved surprisingly quickly, and my promise to myself to blog twice monthly has already been abandoned - at least professionally.  I've been writing for myself personally, but that wasn't my original intent for the summer.  Thankfully, I have some friends and family members who are heavy thinkers and debaters, and I have had two very interesting articles shared with me within the last few weeks that I figured would make excellent blog topics.  Both, in fact, align nicely with the classes I am taking this summer and with my experience with Project CRISS.

The first article was posted by my cousin, a naturalist, certified nurse, and set to start her doctoral degree in nursing this fall.  I have a lot of respect for her as a mom, a nurse, and a friend.  Our connection to the article stems from our experience with highly energetic sons who currently attend Waldorf and Montessori schools.  The 2013 article is entitled, "Stop Penalizing Boys for not Being Able to Sit Still in School."  The end.  

Just kidding.  But the title does kind of sum up the article, doesn't it?  Jessica Lahey, author of the article, begins with a narrative reflection on her pile of discipline slips from this last school year, noting that the names on the slips were heavily male and generally written due to little success in grabbing the attention of the boys, not due to lack of effort (in other words, they were doing something other than pay attention).  Lahey connects her discovery with reports in a book called Reaching Boys, Teaching Boys: Strategies that Work and Why.  Basically, the book discusses that our current education system is failing boys.  An over-generalized statement, but I'd say a fairly accurate one when you compare the number of boys versus girls who find themselves sitting in student services or struggling academically.  

I remember a few years back when I read Engaging Tweens and Teens: a Brain Compatible Approach to Reaching Middle and High School Students by Raleigh Philp (2007).  This book was one of the most refreshing books I have ever read on how to hit middle schoolers because it explained WHY we needed to use certain strategies, not just "strategies that work".   For those of us who need the full equasion, this book fills in those gaps left wide open by other works that just present a collection of ideas.  My Project CRISS  manual plays a similar role.  The manual presents a wide variety of strategies and examples under philosophy umbrellas with brief narratives that discuss brain research, whereas Philp's book fully explains the brain during adolescence with a few general ideas for teaching.  Both books compliment each other, making it easy to work with a combination of ideas from both.

 

Lahey's article continues with a set of disturbing statistics taken from the Journal of Human Resources (see below).

 

 

Now, let me just throw out a disclaimer right now before I get a bunch of hate mail from my respected colleagues.  I feel like this report is over-generalized and a little over-the-top.  However, the truth is, friends, that when I walk into student services on many days, I see a higher percentage of boys.  When I walk into our classes designed to support our struggling readers, I see lots of boys.  When I see our detention go-ers gathered outside the office after school?  Boys.  Higher percentage of suspension?  You guessed it.  Boys.  Most of the conferences I attended this year for students whose teachers were struggling to motivate them to do much of anything?  Boys. 

 

Boys. Boys. Boys.

 

Philp quotes multiple studies that report glaring differences between male and female brains.  In his chapter on brain mapping he touches on testosterone levels in males and although he never says, "This is why you may have trouble grabbing the attention of boys," the evidence is pretty clear.  "Men have as much as twenty times more testosterone in their systems than do women" (Kastleman as quoted in Philp, 2007).  "Testosterone levels correlate several behaviors such as competition, self-assertion, and self-reliance. This makes men typcially more aggressive . . . "  Philp goes on to discuss the idea that men rely more on their sense of doing to help them learn and don't necessarily put much emphasis on their sense of hearing (which he goes on later to say is more of a female trait). 

 

Take this information and line it up to Lahey's article on our boys' behavior and academics, and do you see where the problems lie?  Not to mention that our teaching staff is heavily-female!  This is like a morphed Venus & Mars nightmare!  What can we do to figure this out and get our tough-to-reach population of kiddos on track for this coming year?

 

Lahey asked this question also.  What she found was a study performed by Dr. Michael Reichert and Dr. Richard Hawley in 2009, called Teaching Boys: A Global Study of Effective Practices.  One of the end products of this study was a composite list of guidelines for lesson creation that over 2500 surveys showed as being effective strategies for reaching boys.  After looking at this list, my first response is, "Well, that's just good teaching," but I have to remind myself that every teacher needs reminders and thought-provoking challenges.  And our staff is no different.  But I'm also looking at this list and smiling widely because Project CRISS oozes from each line. 

 

 

The Project CRISS manual and training includes ideas such as transforming information into visuals, organized writing, pattern puzzles requiring motor activity, group work, problem solving organizers, metacognition, and discovery.  Cracking open that manual when planning each lesson may encourage students (especially boys!) to participate more than we realized - and the strategies aren't earth-shattering or difficult to implement.  They're just good teaching!

 

What's really nice about all of this is that we now see why some boys struggle with our system of education.  We see that even though we'd like to point fingers at outside circumstances, the fact remains that these students are ours to educate.  What are we going to do?  Recreate the wheel?  I hope not!  But throwing in some fully-engaging activities daily will keep your difficult-to-reach students more engaged.  If they're more engaged, the chance of a struggle becomes less.  How many behavior problems do you have when 100% of your students are engaged in a project or activity?  Very few compared to when students are required to listen to a lecture or instructions, participate in a teacher-directed question session, or watch a documentary video.  When total engagement happens, trouble decreases, teacher-student relationships change from negative to positive, and teaching becomes more effective. 

So as you are resisting thinking about the 2013-2014 school year, consider some of those highly engaging strategies that you can recall.  Consider how you can include reading, writing, discussion, and reflection in every lesson.  And when you're stuck, look to your colleagues for support.  I know for a fact that we have some hefty thinkers and problem solvers on our staff with creative minds and the drive to reach every student.  I'm certain we can pull together to create a more motivating environment for our kiddos this coming school year. 

Happy 4th of July, all!