Student Discourse - Let's get them talking!

Yesterday I participated in a great webinar from the ArizonaDepartment of Education about student discourse in STEM courses. From the webinar and the discussion that went with it, I have formalized some of my thoughts into some classroom forms that I want to share.

First, is the discourse reminder cards. I’ve made these so I can attach them to student desks and notebooks so that they can always have a “cheat sheet” for engaging in academic discourse.

Second, is the Think-Pair-Compare recording sheet. When students are first learning the Think-Pair-Compare procedure it can help to have some extra structure and accountability. This form is designed so that each student can have a quarter page to use, or print them back to back and add them to student binders so they can have a running log and self-assess their growth in using this strategy.

Hopefully these will come in handy for you. If you have suggestions for how I can make them even better, please feel free to email me, I’m always trying to improve!

Recently I watched a short from RSA Animate about Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us. I wanted to apply it to my classroom and I wanted to remember that I should revisit these ideas and keep them in mind in the long term so I thought I would share them. 

First, let's start with the video...

My take-away from the video was to look at my students' motivation in four parts...

When I look at the idea of purpose in the classroom I think of real world application. I have been exploring lessons from Dan Meyer and Robert Kaplinsky in order to bring more purpose into my classroom. I think the idea of purpose speaks to the notion that we should be building more connections. Starting with something as little as the determinant. Instead of just plugging in numbers and more numbers, it's important to refocus students on why it is important to find the x-intercept to begin with, and what it can mean in an application. In attempting to build purpose in the classroom I think I will build more connections to the big picture of what math is all about.

As the video points out, the idea of profit has very limited applications. I don't think that means that we can't use it at all, I think we just need to use it strategically. There are some simple tasks we ask students to do, copy notes, take out their materials when they come in, put their materials away when they leave - simple tasks can be rewarded with praise/stamps/stickers/candy and the idea of profit as a motivation can be useful. 

The concept of mastery building motivation is something I have seen first hand this year. As part of the move to Standards Based Grading I have begun to incorporate more Assessment for Learning into my classroom. One of my favorite tools is a bar graph with all the standards for a unit, or semester, that students fill out when they receive feedback on assessments. Students chart their own progress and identify their own areas for growth. I've seen an increase in tutoring attendance and more motivation to make up the missing knowledge and skills after a test, and it's been great!

Finally, the idea of self direction in the classroom. This can take on so many forms, I needed a list!

• Can students choose their own seats? Or if you need to assign groups, can they choose their own role in the group?
• Can students choose how they study for a retake? Maybe it's YouTube, maybe it's a text book or a resource book, maybe it's doing a worksheet with a friend, maybe it's one on one help from you?
• Can students choose how they organize their work? Maybe one student uses a composition book and a pocket folder but another uses a binder?
• Can they choose how they solve the problem? If I need to teach three different methods maybe for an assessment they get ten problems and choose two to solve using each method? 

Having some autonomy within the necessary boundaries in the classroom can be a good way for students to feel like they are a part of the process and not just on an assembly line, I think that's why it is such a motivation builder.

As I write this, I'm printing out the picture up above for the cork board over my desk because I think these ideas are not a one and done, instead I think we can use them as an ongoing assessment of our classroom practice. 

I'm convinced, every teacher should try Twitter!

I've started using Twitter this year and I have fallen in love! I am still learning and I know that next year I’ll do even better, but I just had to share. And if you’re worried about using your private phone, don’t worry, you can just use the computer, no phone required!

Step 1: Create a Twitter Account

If you already have a personal one, make a professional one, it’s a good idea to tie it to your school email anyway. If you want to use your phone make sure to setup your mobile settings.

Here are a couple of videos to help you get started…

Real Quick

Now What?

Step 2: Tell your Parents

Send home a notification, or even better a permission slip, and let parents know that you’ll be using Twitter. Anytime you have interactions with students outside of regular class time it’s best to let the parents know.

Here is an example of what I shared with my parents…

Parent Letter

Step 3: Tell your Students

Give students a chance, in class, setup a Twitter account if they don’t have one. You can use a computer or a phone to follow Twitter, but a phone is nice because you can get updates in real time. Help students get started and find you on Twitter.

Step 4: Tweet!

What could you tweet about? Here are just a few examples to get you started, things that help students and parents to know about:

- Check out this YouTube video about today's lesson...

- Don't forget to write your paragraph tonight!

- Test tomorrow, make sure you study!

- I'll be out sick today, work on page 23 in the book.

- The electricity is out at school, stay home today and read a good book!

- Don't forget, baseball game tonight at 5pm!

Wasn't that easy?!?
So I hope you will try Twitter! Remember that not every student will check their tweets so it can’t be the sole method of communicating an idea, just an additional method to support your pre-existing communications. But boy what a support!

First Days of School

The first days of the year can serve multiple purposes for student and teacher, if they are approached intentionally. For students, this is a time to find out how they will be treated by a teacher. Will they be heard and valued? Or will they be treated like a line in a grade book? Focusing on building relationships with students in the very first days of school can let them know that you care about them and give them a reason to keep coming back. For the teacher, these days can be used for what I call data collection in disguise. Students come to us with Funds of Knowledge, things they know how to do and things that will motivate them to learn more. As teachers, if we can better understand what makes our students tick, we can go a long way towards building relevance in the classroom to improve motivation and learning. Below are a few ideas for ways to get the year off on the right foot.

• In the book, Closing the Attitude Gap, Baruti Kafele discusses the masks that students wear each day to face the world. One important aspect of building a safe place in your classroom is helping your students take off these masks when they come to school. My husband, and fellow teacher, John Burkhart used this idea to create an opening day activity. Discuss the idea of masks with your students. Then ask each student to create a two sided mask. On one side, what do they show the world to get to class safely every day, on the other side, what are the things that they see as their talents or abilities that they want to be free to share in class. When students finish their mask, ask for volunteers to share their masks and discuss them.

• In the book, Teach Like a Pirate, Dave Burgess shares his activity for the second day of school. Students enter to Play-Doh on their desks and they are asked to create something that represents them and then share it with their group or the class. This activity lets students see that your classroom is a fun environment and they are valued members, while giving you some insight into your students' interests. Your local dollar store is a great source for inexpensive Play-Doh or modeling clay.

• The Jar of Life is a presentation introduced by Franklin Covey that can start a discussion about time management and more importantly, the things that really matter to your students. The teacher facilitates the presentation and asks student volunteers to add things to the jar. Then, after the presentation, students work in small groups or partners to make a tree map of what would be their stones, pebbles, and sand in their lives and then they share out with the class as a whole.

• What did you do this summer? It’s a simple question that we all ask our fellow teachers when coming back to school. Why? Because when you care about someone you want to understand their experiences and what makes them tick. So it only makes sense that we would also ask our students. One of the amazing teachers that I work with, Kathy Fett, has created a way to support students’ language skills while they share their summer experiences that I like to call, Through My Eyes. Students are given a piece of paper with sunglasses on it and asked to fill in the sunglasses with what they did over the summer. Many students will struggle to answer the seemingly simple question, “What did you do this summer?” if they are not given time to collect their thoughts or given a visual support to help communicate what they would like to share. This fun activity provides both of these important scaffolds without making them obvious to students.

• The scavenger hunt activity, Find Someone Who..., is a classic way to get students working together and breaking the ice. Each student is given a worksheet that looks like a bingo board. Students travel around the room and find peers that fit the descriptions in each square. I like to tell students that they can't have any names repeated and they are the only ones that can write on their paper. This way they have to talk to at least 12 people and they cannot just hand off their paper along the way. When you collect the sheets at the end of the day you have a great source of information about your students. This activity can even be made into a pre-assessment by asking questions about your content area, for example, "Find someone who can explain the scientific method.

• Creating a Time Capsule is a fun way to bookend the year with your students. Have students complete a simple survey about their current interests. On the back of this paper I have students write a letter to their future selves about what they hope to accomplish this year. Then collect the papers and you have another great source about your students' interests. Keep the surveys and at the end of the term have them repeat the activity, then give back their original. You can even have them create a double bubble Thinking Map to compare and contrast their past and future selves.

• Sometimes the first days of school can be overwhelming for students. Especially towards the end of the first week when they have been inundated with new information and new people.  At times like these I like to focus my bell-work on helping students to relax and breathe. That's when I bring out my Getting to Know you Pages. Students enter to calming music and dimmed lights with instructions to complete the page on their desk silently. I give students five to ten minutes to sit quietly, think about things that make them happy, and color. Yes, color. I know that it's high school but sometimes we all long for simpler times. I've found that students sometimes like to have a little taste of years gone by in their class, and these pages fit the bill perfectly. After students have had a chance to relax and complete their pages I have them share out with their groups and ask for volunteers to share with the class. And once more, we have more information about how to make our classroom activities more relevant to student interests.

• You may also want to consider helping students identify their own learning styles. Odessa College in Texas has an inventory that students can score themselves to find out if they tend to be Visual, Auditory, or Tactile learners. This activity can help students in the Assessment for Learning process and it can help you to plan lessons that address the needs of students. Alternatively, you may want to use a personality test if your focus is on learning which students might work best together. Or maybe, do both!

These suggestions are just a sampling of the fun you can have getting to know your students and understanding how to make your classroom relevant to your specific classes. For even more ideas you could visit reslife.net or search for terms like "ice breakers" and "team builders" - students will think their fun, and you'll have the chance to build relationships through relevance. 

Dual Language - Bilingual Education

I know it's been a while since I've posted anything new, but I've been busy!

This year I've been taking courses at ASU as part of the TELAC program. The program is designed for content area teachers to improve their teaching for English Learners. It's been quite an adventure this year as I've had a coach/mentor working with me in my room to improve my practices, and even done my own research on strategies to improve student vocabulary learning. 

I'll be presenting my findings along with my fellow teachers on April 19th at ASU. I'm really looking forward to it because I have had the chance to examine student perspectives about learning activities and it's been quite meaningful for me. I'll post my work here too of course when it's complete!

I have also found through my research that it is difficult to get good print resources for my students that focus on math vocabulary. One of the strategies that was the focus of my research is to have students analyze information about vocabulary terms that they find in both print and digital sources and synthesize their own definitions from what they have found. The only stumbling block is finding quality Math Dictionaries in print. I've setup a project on Donors Choose so that I can start collecting resources to improve the activity for future students, and I'm hopeful it will get me to the next step.

This is a word card created by one of my students in our project.

This past weekend I had the chance to present the needs of my students at the ASU Dual Language Conference. One of the challenges that ELs (English Learners) face is that the current law in Arizona often results in a loss of Math, Science, and Social Studies instruction in the early grades because they spend four hours a day learning English. Some of the schools here are piloting programs in which parents sign waivers so that the school can have a bilingual approach and teach students both English and Spanish along with Math, Science, and Social Studies. The goal is for students to leave Elementary School fluent in two languages as well as getting a chance to learn the important content they will need to do well in High School. These programs have a lot of potential for our students and I was happy to have the chance to highlight their impact on long term student success.


I'll share more with you soon! But for now it's back into my world of linguistics!

I wanted to share this video because it really struck me. We talk a lot about instructional shifts and changes with the Common Core but I liked the way that this presenter illustrated these shifts with concrete examples.

There are some really great ideas to be taken from this video and I hope it will inspire you like it inspired me!

Mathematical Practices

I'm currently taking an online course about the Common Core mathematical practice standards and I came across a resource that I wanted to share. Inside Mathematics is a great site that will help you understand what the standards mean, specifically at your grade level, and give you ideas and examples (including videos) of how you can better include the standards into your classroom. I liked this site because it had examples of actual teachers using the suggested strategies which made it much more user friendly.

I always spend the first week of school getting to know my students and practicing low stress skills like vocabulary. I would like to use that week next year to teach them about the Common Core mathematical practice standards. I'm thinking of the week as an in-service training for my students. We are currently implementing Thinking Maps and AVID on my campus so I figured that I would spend my first week getting to know my students by teaching them about these focus topics for the year.

Well, it's back to class for me, so I'll send you more good things soon!