It's Not Over 'Til It's Over

Yup. It's mid-May. State-testing is just about wrapped up. Educator evaluations are being finalized. June, and, with it, the end of the school year, is literally right around the corner.

It can be hard to stay motivated and engaged at this time of the year, for students and teachers both. But we must, mustn't we? After all, there are still weeks and weeks left of learning (don't shoot me; I'm just the messenger, y'all!).

If you're having difficulty holding onto a feeling of excitement for the classroom right about now, maybe it's time to throw caution to the wind and try something new. It might be just the thing to give you that burst of energy and enthusiasm to carry you forward until that last bell rings.

The great thing about trying something new now is that you know your students SO well at this point. It can be tricky to "experiment" earlier in the year, especially when you're just getting a handle on who's who in your classroom. But if you try something out now, with students you know well, you may feel comfortable enough with it in the fall to begin the year with it!

So, if you're interested, think about the following possibilities:

• Maybe you've never felt quite comfortable with -- or never even tried -- a workshop format with your students. Why not try it out now?
• Perhaps you know you should use formative assessments more often to inform your instruction, but the day-to-day life of a teacher has slowed you down and distracted you from this. Now could be a great time to play around with it a little more.
• Maybe you find yourself using the same ol' activators and summarizers you always use -- or maybe you find yourself having strayed away from these valuable tools. Now could be the time to learn about some new strategies to use at the beginning and/or the ending of a lesson.
• You've always thought about trying to tier a lesson, but you're just not sure how. Now's a great time to learn more about this, especially with your knowledge of your students!

The possibilities are endless! If you'd like some guidance and collaboration, you can always contact your district's friendly instructional coach. *wink, wink.*

The Exit Ticket of the 21st Century

I love exit tickets. I think they are a simple, quick way to check for student understanding during or at the end of a lesson, and, through some simple, quick analysis, can inform further instruction. So, please know that in no way I am advocating we say good-bye to the exit ticket.

Instead, I'd like to offer up a new way of thinking about exit tickets, in case you want to tap into some technology and mix it up a bit. I often recommend teachers vary their ways of checking for understanding and their activators and summarizers, because I think variety can keep students engaged and invested. So, "modernizing" the exit ticket is just one more tool to add to the ol' toolkit. 

I can't take any credit for this idea -- I stumbled across it via the following blog from Edutopia. Check it out by clicking here. Heads-up: you may or may not agree with everything this blogger states (check out some of the post's comments for some interesting debate and extensions to the ideas). But, the ideas included about using some digital exit tickets are worth some thought. If you've got the digital means and access, why not try some out and see how it goes? I'd love to hear from anyone who's either interested in doing this OR who tries it out and can report back on how it went.

The Whip-Around

I just finished discussing ideas for checking for student understanding with a teacher I'm coaching and, of course, found myself bringing up one of my all-time favorites: the Whip-Around. I believe I blogged about this particular strategy last year, so it may sound familiar to those of you who are loyal readers. But, trust me -- it bears repeating. The Whip-Around is a great way to quickly and easily check for understanding (and you know how much I love CFU) and use that check to inform instruction.

[I must give credit where credit is due: I first learned about this strategy while reading Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey's awesome book, Checking for Understanding: Formative Assessment Techniques for Your Classroom -- I highly recommend it!]

Here's how it works:

1. Ask students to write down 3-5 things (the amount will probably depend on where you're at in the lesson) in response to a particular question. For example, if I'm teaching Lord of the Flies and we're on chapter 4, I might ask students to list 5 attributes of William Golding's writing style (especially if analyzing writing style is an objective of the unit).
2. Once students have completed their list, ask all students to stand. 
3. Now, call on a student randomly (or not randomly -- you may have certain students you want to make sure you touch base with directly). Ask the student to share one item from his/her list. 
4. Once this student has shared his/her one item, ask the rest of the class to check to see if they had the same item on their list. If they did, they should place a check mark beside it. If they did not, they should add it to their list.
5. Proceed in this fashion. Once all the items on a student's list have been shared (either by that student or by another), that student may sit down.
6. Continue to call on students until all students are seated.

A couple really important things have happened here. One -- students have had a chance to self-monitor their understanding a bit; they were able to add to their list items that they initially had not included. Two --you've had a great opportunity to check for understanding and to potentially adjust your instruction accordingly. As you were listening to students share their list items with the class, you may have realized that there were 2 or 3 things that no one brought up that you feel are really important for students to understand. Now, you can address those things with the whole class -- and maybe even check for understanding again, with a different method (I told you I loved CFU!!).

The Whip-Around works great as a summarizer to a lesson, but it can also be an effective activator when used to review as a class something learned the day before. You can even use it as a way to check for understanding during class -- perhaps 15 minutes into a content-heavy power point presentation.

Try it out and let me know how it goes!
(Watch out -- you might love it so much you get whiplash . . .)
(Sorry, that was a pretty bad joke.)

The First Days Are Critical

“The First Days Are Critical.” This is a chapter subtitle from Harry K. Wong and Rosemary T. Wong’s famous The First Days of School (2005), a book that every new teacher was handed in the first district I ever taught in. While in retrospect I calmly agree with this advice, when I first saw it in print as a brand new teacher, I was horrified. Horrified because I didn’t read that particular chapter until the second week of school, and I thought for sure all hope was lost.

I said that in retrospect I agree with the advice, and I do. However, I also think we need to pay attention to the book’s title, The First Days of School, emphasis on days. Plural. Now, as I type this it is officially the fourth day of school in the district where I’m an instructional coach. So, my advice is – don’t despair. Don’t despair if you haven’t set up all your expectations, procedures, and routines just yet. Believe it or not, we are still within the first days of school. Now is the time to dive in to some critical work that will help shape up how your classroom runs for the entire school year.

(Note: Sometimes we don’t get off to a wonderful start with our procedures, routines, and expectations. I’m here to tell you that, although it is honestly much easier to begin such work at the very beginning of the school year, you can establish such things at any time during the school year. But that’s a story for another blog post.)

So, what types of things should we be focused on establishing during these first, critical days of school?

Procedures & Routines

Now is the time to establish with your students how they will pass in homework, where they will sit – or stand – during certain portions of class or of the school day, how transitions during a lesson or between lessons will function, how they should interact with one another and with you, how they should participate in class….

But my biggest piece of advice is not what your procedures and routines are, but how you teach them to your students. Yes, I think you need to teach these to your class, not just tell your class about them. This means you need to discuss the purpose of routines and procedures with your students, model behaviors for them, practice (and practice, and practice, and practice) using a gradual release of responsibility structure. All too often, we tell our students what the routines and procedures are, and then briskly move on to the content we’ll be teaching, expecting that they all understand the routines and procedures and can follow them perfectly. We wouldn’t expect this kind of super-quick mastery of content knowledge, so why do we expect it in other areas such as this?

Discipline

I’m going to let you in on a secret: if you establish really strong procedures and routines, you’ll deal far less with discipline issues. The same goes for having strong, detailed lesson planning: if you’ve thought out your lesson, ensuring that, within it, students have opportunities to actively engage with the material and if you’ve anticipated any potential bumps along the road, you’ll again deal far less with discipline issues.

But even in the most ideal of classrooms, every now and then a discipline issue may crop up. If it does, it will behoove you to discover ways to deal with consequences without stopping the instruction and learning that’s occurring in the classroom. Often when dealing with a discipline issue with one student, a teacher can lose focus on the lesson, and can find him- or herself losing precious time engaging with this one misbehaving student. Finding ways to avoid this trap are key. Are there non-verbal cues or signs you can give to this student? Can you use teacher tools like proximity to send a message without stopping your instruction?

Consistency is Key

With procedures and routines, and with discipline when it pops up, we must be consistent. Sometimes this is easier said than done. Sometimes being consistent requires a lot of effort and attention to detail on our parts, and some days it just feels easier or more manageable to slide away from the systems we’ve created. Avoid this temptation! Our students need to experience consistent procedures and routines, or they will very quickly get the message that these structures are not really all that important and they’ll begin to stop adhering to them. Which will most likely bring up some discipline issues, or at the very least, waste some of our precious classroom time.

The Structure of Lessons

Establishing a structure to your lessons that both you and your students can depend upon can really enhance the learning that occurs in the classroom. Will there always (or, at least, quite often) be an activator that will either review previous learning or that will scaffold students towards new learning? A summarizer that will help both you and students assess their comprehension of that day’s lesson? A workshop structure for particular parts of the day that will always allow time for direct instruction, gradual release, work time, and debriefing?

None of these suggestions are made with the intent of a stale classroom where everything is the same, day in and day out. Mixing things up can often engage our students’ minds and interest levels. But there’s a LOT to be said for consistency within the structure of our lessons. It can keep us teachers on our toes, determined to stick to a structure we know works, and it can be very helpful for students to know what to expect and to establish a pattern for learning. Rather than “mixing up” the entire structure of a lesson in order to allow for some variety (it is the spice of life, after all!), try instead, for example, to vary the types of activators and summarizers you use (don’t get too stuck in the “ticket to leave” rut, but explore some other options).

All of the above suggestions are really quite broad, aren’t they? 

If you’re looking for more detail on any of the above, including specific examples and suggestions, let me know. I’m happy to dedicate future blog posts to this, or to provide one-on-one coaching in these areas.

Enjoy these first days of school!

Good Things Come in Threes

     Okay, okay. Yes, I have also heard that celebrity deaths come in threes as well, but I just figured this was a more chipper way to think about the power of the triumvirate. Who wouldn't rather be optimistic? Spring is in the air, the days are getting longer...let's focus on the positive, people!

     This week I'll be sharing with you my top three takeaways so far from a new book I just started reading yesterday (I only got to page 42, so I'm sure there's much more to come!). It's by the dynamic duo of Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey and it's entitled Checking for Understanding: Formative Assessment Techniques for Your Classroom (2007).

     Here we go:

Takeaway #1

     We should all be learning from our colleagues, the physical education teachers. When it comes to formative assessment, they've got it down. Think about it: a physical education teacher teaching her students how to play badminton "would not wait until the final score of a match to determine whether the athlete understood badminton" (Fisher & Frey, p. 12). She'd be watching her students in action throughout the unit, assessing who needs more training in skills like arm and trunk action, working with students who didn't have effective strokes yet, perhaps coaching them individually or in small groups while their peers continued to practice. But how many of us in other content areas sometimes wait until the final test of a unit to determine whether our students understand the content? 

     Let's take a page from physical education teachers' playbooks. Let's try to consistently observe our students in action, whether that action be working out a complicated math problem, writing a thesis statement, or drawing a landscape. Let's get right in there with them, in real time, while they're in action, and conference with them, coaching those who need it. According to so much of the research that's out there, we'll see stronger performances on our summative assessments.

Takeaway #2

     Whip it good! Here's a really cool idea for a summarizer that lends itself to checking for understanding in a group setting and to formative assessment. Fisher and Frey call it the "whip around" (p. 34). Here's how it works. As a closure activity at the end of a lesson, the teacher poses a question or a task requiring students to make a list of at least three items (i.e., what are three things you learned about this character today? what are three examples of transition metal elements from the periodic table?). When they're done, students stand up (I love it already! So many of our students really need this kind of physical opportunity). The teacher then randomly calls on a student to share one of his ideas. The rest of the students listen, and check off any items on their own lists that are said by another student and sit down when all of their ideas have been shared with the class, whether or not they were the one to share them. The teacher continues to call on students until no one is left standing (Fisher & Frey, p. 34).

     Here's how this assessment is formative. As the teacher listens to the ideas being shared, she can determine "if there is a general level of understanding or if there are gaps in the students' thinking" (Fisher & Frey, p. 34). If there are said gaps, then teacher knows what information she will need to review to make sure her students understand it. 

Takeaway #3

     Last but not least, how about a little scaffolding talk? Fisher and Frey (2007) break down three types of scaffolding teachers should use when a student is unable to respond to a question the teacher has asked him or her orally in class. (I love it already, because I am a huge fan of "sticking" with a student if he or she can't answer a question. No need to abandon them; these are great opportunities to teach them and to build their confidence!) Here are the three ways to scaffold in this situation, according to Fisher and Frey (pp. 39-40):

• Reception scaffolds: Direct the student to information necessary to formulate an answer ("Look at the graph on page 252 of your textbook").
• Transformation scaffolds: Provide a way of structuring the information to help the student develop an answer ("How does the largest bar on the graph on page 252 of your textbook help you to find your answer?").
• Production scaffolds: Provide the student with a way of producing an answer ("Use the largest and the smallest bars from the graph on page 252 of your textbook to compare the amounts used").

     Instead of just asking the entire class "Does everyone understand this?," getting a few nods from some students, and moving on, we need to think about the multiple ways to really check for understanding. The above three are just the start! If you work in the same district in which I'm an instructional coach, and you want support with this, let me know.

(Did you notice how checking for understanding and formative assessments can lead right into differentiated instruction? I'm going to throw in a shameless plug here to conclude: For those of you who teach in the same district as me, I'm offering a summer workshop on differentiated instruction. Sounds fun, right???)

Aha Moments

     Thank you, Oprah, for coining the term "aha moment." Otherwise I wouldn't have quite the right phrasing to describe this week's post. Yes, readers, this post is dedicated to sharing three "aha moments" I have had this week while conferencing and collaborating with some of the teachers I work with as an instructional coach. Sometimes when I observe a class, or have a discussion with a teacher about issues he or she is experiencing, an idea will just occur to me -- a new way of looking at something, a fresh perspective, an aha moment. (Side note -- this is why I think that, as educators, we need to watch each other teach more often and we need to have more and more open discussions with one another about issues in our classrooms, because often it is through these experiences that new ideas will come to us!)
     Here we go . . .

Aha Moment #1

     Lately I've worked as instructional coach with several teachers who are having difficulty getting their class's attention -- a problem all of us have experienced, for sure. We've talked about using quiet signals and about which quiet signal will work the best. The answer is that no one quiet signal is "the best." Truly this is the case since, if there were said magical signal, we'd all be using it. Here comes the "aha" -- it doesn't fully matter which quiet signal you use (whether it's clapping a pattern, ringing a chime, a call and response, etc., etc.). What matters is . . . drum roll, please . . . specifying your expectations for students. What should they do, specifically, when this quiet signal occurs?? I'd venture to say most of us (including myself before this particular aha moment) simply assume that of course our students know what we want from them at this quiet signal moment. But have we been explicit enough? Have we said, while practicing the quiet signal, "Students, when you hear this chime (or insert alternative quiet signal here), your eyes should be on me, and you should be absolutely silent. This means you are ready and are waiting to see what the next set of directions or what the next transition will be"? Have we posted these expectations in our classrooms? I think students need for us to be this explicit. Why leave it to chance that they just inherently know what the heck we're talking about?

Aha Moment #2

     This aha is sort of tied to a memory of mine. Lately, I've also been working with several teachers on using summarizers at the end of a lesson. Mainly, we've discussed avoiding falling into a rut with these summarizers. Tickets To Leave are great, but do students start becoming numb to them when they see them too often? My aha moment answers a resounding "yes." And I'll tell you why. While discussing repetitive summarizers with one of these concerned teachers, I was visited by the Ghost of In-Service Workshops Past. In a former district of mine, we teachers would be given a 3-2-1 exit slip at the end of each in-service. Reflecting on the workshop, we were to write 3 things that had interested us, 2 things we still had questions about, and 1 thing we could immediately start using in our classrooms. The first few times this type of exit slip was used, we all dutifully and thoughtfully filled out the 3-2-1 reflection. However, this went on for years. And years. By the time we had been filling out 3-2-1s at the end of each and every in-service workshop for four or five years, no one was being all that reflective or thoughtful about it anymore. Honestly? It was boring. It was old. We were tired of it. I can't help but think that students who are presented with the same summarizer day after day start to feel the same way. Aha! Variety is the spice of life!

And Finally . . . 

Aha Moment #3

     Lately, several teachers have lamented to me about students who repeatedly call out during a class discussion or during a question and answer session. This has frustrated all of us from time to time. And we know as teachers that this is not a good behavior to encourage in the classroom. It's unfair if only certain students' voices are heard, especially since these students are being heard due to behavior that can be interpreted as rude or inconsiderate of others. This is not the lesson we want to teach our students about how to be heard in life. But, what to do, what to do? And then it hit me! Get into the habit of asking questions by asking students to raise their hands. For example, instead of phrasing your question as "What is the main character struggling with in this paragraph?," phrase it as "Raise your hand if you can tell us what the main character is struggling with." Seem too simple of a solution to be true? Ah, my friends, but I've seen it work! With the latter phrasing, students are following the main direction being given to them, which is to raise their hands if they know the answer. With the former phrasing, no such direction is inherent. Another point for explicitness!

     I realize, having just written all of the above, how vital a tool reflective writing is. If I did not have this blog, this outlet for sharing my thoughts of the week, would I remember and retain these aha moments? Or would these realizations (simple and "common-sense-y" as they may be) slip my mind eventually, causing me to consistently struggle with the same issues? Reflective practitioning works, readers! Jot down those ahas!

     No more posts from me until I resume work during the first week of January. Happy Holidays, readers, and to my fellow educators out there -- have a lovely vacation!

Reunited . . . and It Feels So Good

     This week I had the good fortune of being reacquainted with a dear, old friend: the summarizer. I'm working (in my instructional coach capacity) with a lovely teacher who is currently looking into establishing some new routines for her classes, including expanding her end-of-class routines. What a great goal! Fun fact: Did you know that, according to most of the brain-based learning research out there, what students retain the most from a class is based on what they did during the first five minutes and the last five minutes? Bring on those activators and summarizers!

     So, in the hopes of helping out the afore-mentioned teacher I am working with, I went straight to my Research for Better Teaching handy-dandy little spiral-bound text of summarizing goodies, aptly named Summarizers: Activity Structures to Support Integration and Retention of New Learning.  What a lovely reunion we had, this book and I. I had forgotten how many great, easy, practical ideas were to be found within its pages. And so, in the spirit of giving, for this week's post I decided to share with you some of the book's best. Yes, readers, even though I just became reunited with this old flame, I am sharing it with you. Some things are so great, you just cannot keep them to yourself.

     You may also find that these ideas are a bit of a reunion for you as well. Sometimes what I love best about stumbling across an old resource (Shhh! Don't tell my Summarizers book I called it "old!") is not the fact that I am necessarily learning anything new, but the experience of thinking, "Oh yeah! I remember doing that (or something quite like it) with my students once and it worked really well. Now why the heck did I stop doing that?" So, I hope the following ideas from my newly-reunited-with-me book will either make you remember something you used to do with your classes and want to be reunited with, or present you with some new and helpful ideas.

     Here we go:

ABC

Easy as 123. Simple as do re mi. ABC. 123. Baby you and me girl. This easy-to-do summarizer might just have you and your students singing like The Jackson 5, too. Here's how it works (or one variation of it, anyway): Each student pulls a letter of the alphabet out of a fishbowl and then creates a summary sentence about the day's topic starting with the given letter (for example, if a student pulls a "B," then they must write a sentence summarizing the day's lesson that starts with the letter "B"). If you still have those pesky couple of minutes left before the bell rings that are starting to cause you to panic because you already started the summarizer and kids know class is over and they're done and they're going to start packing up -- aaaaaagggghh!, then you can always have students share their sentences in alphabetical order. OR, you could start class the next day by having students share, which would serve as a nice reminder before your new lesson begins.

Inside Outside Circle

Sorry. No song to go along with this one. Here, each student is asked to prepare one question (and corresponding answer) about some aspect of the day's lesson. Then, students form inner and outer circles, with the inner circle facing the outer circle, so that each student is paired up with someone. Pairs take turns asking their questions of one another and helping each other if necessary in answering the questions. When this exchange is over students exchange question cards. Then the inner or the outer circle moves three people to the right, students face off and begin a new round. Hey -- and you don't have to worry about that pesky last minute of class sneaking up on you.  Just keep the circles rotating as long as you need to!

Luck of the Draw

You feeling lucky, punk? (Whew! I'm glad I squeezed in a pop culture reference for this one after my failure to do so with the last strategy! Redemption is mine!) Okay, so Luck of the Draw is designed to ensure that each class period will begin with a quick summary of what happened in and was important from the previous class. All student names are on cards in a container. At the beginning of class, the teacher pulls out a name and announces who has won the Luck of the Draw. This student will begin tomorrow's class with a summary of today's class. This kills a few birds with one stone (I love using that expression, but it's just so gruesome!). First, it allows you to check an individual student's understanding of a lesson. And it also leads to a quick, prepared summary for the next day's lesson to begin with. In addition to reminding everyone of what was accomplished the day before, this ensures that any students who were absent the previous day are given a quick heads-up on what they missed. Some suggestions: Provide the Luck of the Draw winner with a summarizing sheet to fill out that asks for "what we did," "the most important things we learned and should remember," and a list of homework assignments. The student can also attach any handouts to be given to students who were absent that day. Also, the teacher I've been working with came up with the great idea to not return the student's name to the container, thereby ensuring that eventually every student in the room will have his or her name pulled.

     I hope you enjoyed these three ideas. (***Did you notice how none of them involved a lot of teacher prep?***) There's plenty more where that came from. Want to know more, and teach in the same district as me? Then, shoot me an email or call my office -- let's explore summarizers together!

In the interest of citing sources, here's the citation information of this fun book:

Saphier, J. & Haley, M.A. (1993). Summarizers: activity structures to support integration 

     and retention of new learning. Research for Better Teaching, Inc.: Acton, MA.