Anchor It!

Anchor It!

"How can we make this simpler? Will our kids EVER get there? There are SO many holes!" these are a few of the things that have been running through our minds this year with the new Math standards. R-H is always up for a challenge...and this one seems to be a VERY large one! I have been racking my brain the past few weeks for something that may help our kids begin to understand at the level of these new standards (not to mention THEN taking them to the level of the process standards!). I started to think about things in my life that have been challenging and what has helped me succeed in those encounters.  I wanted to learn how to make my husband's family's famous home-made pumpkin rolls. I had to develop lessons with the process standards. Even when I was stuck teaching my son how to play the new, very complicated game my mom bought him. All of these things I eventually figured out, despite the initial thought that I would never get there. In fact, these are all things I can now do pretty quickly and even without a lot of extra time or thought now. How did I get there? Well, now that I think about it: it was all through an ANCHOR of some sort. A recipe, a flow chart, an instruction manual, or any other kind of “cheat sheet” that allowed me to get through it the first few times and then eventually learn how to do it independently. I wonder if we provided our kids some “ANCHORS” if it would help them rise to the challenge of the new standards? What if they had a poster that was created during the mini-lesson, or a chart in the room that we added new tools to as they were introduced, or even a Math journal where we helped them create their own manuals to refer to? We could even include our "concrete, pictorial and abstract" right there on the poster. Possibly it could be the model part of the mini-lesson (I do), or they could create posters in their groups during the learning application (we do), or what if we could even have them create something in their journals as a closure (you do). Which ever piece we use it for, I feel that the key will be that we come back to it and add pieces as we learn more and that we promote for the kids to actually USE it, over and over as a scaffold until they are ready for independence.   Would it make it easier?  I really don’t know the answer for sure, but based on my personal research I don’t think it would hurt! Maybe it’s worth a shot to give them some accessible “anchors” to help them teach themselves how to meet their challenges. As I was writing this post, I started noticing so many ANCHORS in classrooms around our building and thought it may be helpful to share some ideas:



Taking the Time to Ask and Listen

 

Walking into Gentrie's room exhausts me as she always finds a way to make a much larger mess than what one would expect possible in such a short amount of time! Today I came into a view even worse than the usual situation; I saw every blanket we have in the entire house covering every inch of her bedroom floor. On top, more play kitchen utensils then you have seen in your life! Although, "AHHH! Why do you always have to make such a mess, Gentrie?!" is what first came into my mind, I paused to breathe. Instead of yelling, getting upset, being annoyed or even asking her to start cleaning up that instant (these would be my gut reactions)...I decided to ask her a question, calmly. "Gentrie, what are you doing?" That's when her precious blue eyes, and jelly covered face looked up at me and said "Surprise!!! I made a picnic for you mommy! I love you!" Boy was I glad I didn't scream because I would have ruined it, while crushing the sweet heart of my baby girl. This was such a precious moment that I would have missed out on if I wouldn't have taken the time to ask and listen.

  It's SO hard to make the time to ask questions and really listen to kids, both at home and at school. At school, we feel pressured to "teach" them everything on the IFD, get grades, develop relationships, fill holes and gaps they have, prepare them for tests, and the list goes on and on. These things are like the "mess" that is so hard to look past!
    Many educators and administrators have been talking about the importance of higher-level questions. This got me thinking about how questioning correlates to formative assessment, specifically during the learning application. I had read an article last year that gave some really great open-ended questions to ask students. I wrote them on a little piece of paper and stuck them in my badge. This little "cheat sheet" has come in handy as I am discussing things with kids (any grade, any subject), particularly during the learning application. So often we talk about the "closure" as formative, which is a huge piece and highly important. But, I have come to realize that using these questions during the "we do" (learning application) part and really listening to the kids thinking is also a very important type of formative assessment. It often allows us to address misconceptions, teach it a different way and sometimes even extend it based upon their level of understanding. It's a BIG piece that helps us see why it's so important to have that part of the lesson be the longest (which is always a challenge for me!). And as an added bonus, we get to create those moments with our kids that help us develop relationships that truly make a difference in their lives. I hope I can make a habit of looking past the mess to ask and listen more often!

Here are the questions I wrote that day, along with a few more I "stole" from Ervin Knezek:

What do you think?

Why do you think that?

How do you know?

Can you tell me more?

How many ways can we…?

What if we…?

What happens if we change…?

I will stick a "cheat sheet" of these questions for you in your box!  I hope it's as helpful to you as it has been for me!
Happy Friday!

Forming with Formative

Why do we always forget what the first 2 weeks of school are like? Maybe it's like childbirth, the sleepless nights of having a newborn, and the joys of parenting a 2-3 year old...God blurs our memory so that we will be sure and do it again! The past two weeks have been a whirlwind!! Despite my best intentions and efforts, these weeks have been very far from my perfected plans! Forgetting about and then showing up 30 minutes late to football practice with a very upset 8 year old, arriving a week early to Awanas, and managing to make all 3 kids cry hysterically within the same 2 minutes: this is just a glimpse into my week.  One night as I rushed to the store for dinner groceries, I got a little ANXIOUS and thought..."I don't need to make a list. I'm sure I will remember everything I need!" Of course, I got home with only 5 of the 7 items I needed for supper! It got me thinking about formative assessment and the beginning of the year. As I helped a sweet friend get her brand new class up and going, I was reminded about how hard starting a classroom is each year. The pressure to dive straight into the curriculum is hanging over our heads, we are barely staying afloat, and the to-do list continues to grow with very few things being checked off. Not to mention, our bodies have reached complete EXHAUSTION!!! What happened to summer!?! As tempting as it was to cram in that next lesson, I had to stop and remind myself how important it is to "create my list before running to the store". Sure, at the time it seems like I'm saving time grabbing groceries, and skipping a step to have dinner on the table a little sooner. It's only when I notice the missing ingredients that I come to the realization that I have actually made the simple task of making dinner that much harder and more time-consuming! I wonder "Why didn't I just make the list so I could be in my pajamas cooking, and not dragging a fussy 2 year old, exhausted 5 year old and annoyed 8 year old BACK to Wal-Mart!?!?" All of that to say, we:

GO SLOW NOW, so we can GO FAST LATER

Those things that seem so simple but eat at your time, like:

• remembering to signal kids and WAIT until you have everyone's attention before starting
• thanking them for their undivided attention
• practicing, practicing, practicing over and over again until kids have it down completely
• taking time to create clear expectations and procedures
• overly noticing positive behaviors
• having them "try again" if it's not perfect, and then "trying again" and "again" until it meets highest expectations
• picking and mastering a few cooperative learning strategies that can be your "go to"
• ensuring every student knows their expectations throughout the day, including TRANSITIONS (in and out of the classroom)
• *****DEVELOPING RELATIONSHIPS!!!

These things are actually MORE important than any curriculum, especially right now. We all know that, so WHY is it so hard to STOP and formatively assess how they are doing with these behaviors and expectations? WHY does it feel like our clock is ticking away?!? WHY did we plan so much for this week?!?! I felt these struggles this week, as I am sure many of you did! After reflecting, I think we there is one word to describe it: ANXIOUS. So, as I was attempting to hone in on the above list, I had to breath and remind myself that if I didn't "make the list now", then it would be wasting time later going back to "get the ingredients" I forgot!
Therefore, as we focus on formative assessment this year at RH, let's start with
FORMING our classroom through FORMATIVE...

ASSESSING              REFLECTING               ADJUSTING

that is focused on making sure our classroom culture, environment and expectations are exactly where we want them! It will save you "a trip to the store" later!

Pulling it All Together

Our intervention team, administration and teachers have had lots of inquiries about Reciprocal Teaching this summer. At RH this year we saw a very positive difference in our student's comprehension skills when they became familiar with this strategy.
First of all, I want to point out that this is not "one more thing" or "something NEW". This comprehension strategy is found right in your IFD in the TEKS. Reciprocal Teaching just suggests that you put the standards together to get students to use multiple comprehension skills all at once. So, really it's just putting all of the Fig 19 standards together (just like so often the spaghetti of ELA brings many standards into play at once). Basically, Reciprocal Teaching is just a fancy name for doing just that. In fact, when looking at the processes, Ervin Knezek promotes this in ALL subject areas: USE AS MANY PROCESS STANDARDS AS POSSIBLE.

We have gathered and posted lots of resources about "The Fantastic/Fab 4" (Reciprocal Teaching), so I thought it may be helpful to put all of the resources together for campuses/teachers that are interested in learning more.

To save you some time from searching the archives of the blog, here are links to the previous posts on this topic:

http://www.rhscramble.blogspot.com/2013/08/reciprocal-teaching-after-looking-at.html

http://www.rhscramble.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-fab-four.html

http://www.rhscramble.blogspot.com/2013/11/reciprocal-teaching-continued.html

This is a video of a book club conducted by our AMAZING interventionist, Leslie Stoker, with a group of 4th graders. This gives you a good picture of what level of conversation students familiar with this strategy are able to have. Thanks Leslie for allowing us to share and learn from you!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k23R1wzCY4

 

Why > What! Getting Our Students to "Own It"!

After attending the Lead 4 Ward K-2 conference in Irving, I had the privilege of reflecting on my learning with some amazing teachers from R-H! We collaborated about all the great things we learned at the conference and determined which pieces we wanted to share with our staff. It's funny how much more I learned through a few hours of discussion about the presentation, than I did during the professional development itself. I feel like it was a chance for us as learners to have a "learning application" after we were presented with new information (the mini-lesson). This, among many other instances this year has turned me into a FIRM BELIEVER in the "Lesson Cycle". I know our intervention team has learned SO much about this process of teaching by getting to be apart of it and learning collaboratively with our PHENOMENAL teachers at Reeves. We have seen GREAT SUCCESS when we structure our instruction in this way. THANK YOU SO MUCH teachers for opening your classrooms to our team! 
Here is a brief summary of the 3 parts of the "lesson cyle":

• Mini-Lesson: A brief direct teach that is focused on the targeted learning objective. We are sure to include our "frame" to help students know exactly what they will be learning and expected to do at the end of the lesson. 
• Learning Application: This is where the "PLAY" comes in that Irvin talked to us about during the conference. A time for the teacher to be in the "Power Zone" for those "Frequent Small Group Purposeful Talks". Getting students to think about why they think something is HUGE. If they can prove their thinking we are creating some life-long thinkers! If they can OWN IT, then it is really meaningful to them. The WHY is more important than the WHAT. We know that planning in specific guided questions can be helpful, but sometimes our open-ended guided questions really promote the PLAY:

• What do you think?

• Why do you think that?

• How do you know?

• What would happen if....?

• Let's change this and see what happens?

• How many ways can we...?

• Can you show me another way? 

  

   

• Closure: This is our formative assessment to "check on the student learning". This is a quick way to assess or see which students have reached the learning objective. This is quite possibly the hardest part of our lesson cycle, but is the most crucial in my opinion. Kim Beth Buchanan gave the analogy of a bus: We can keep driving the bus, but if we don't have any students on it, what is the point of continuing? 

 

A couple of the common "thorns" from our feedback on the training were:

1. grading

2. one answer on STAAR

I hope that with our conversations around grading focusing more on the IFD, this will make more sense. If we dig deep into our standards, we will get better at deciding what and how to assess. Math, of course is much easier as we can tell if they answer correctly and can justify their answer thought process. ELAR, we may just have to make a general rubric we can use throughout the year to help us decide on the "non-skill based" standards (inferring, summary, etc.) Something that may be SUPER helpful is to bring our "closures" into PLC from time to time to talk about how we should "grade" them and what it looks like when they do have it.
One thing that is tricky about the difference in Math and ELAR is that:
Yes, in Math there is very OFTEN one right answer. There are many different ways to reach that answer, but it is usually ONE answer.
ELAR is a little more complex (as we well know)! Pretty much the only time there is ONLY one right answer is on a multiple choice test (which is crumby that the state decides to assess in this way). Everyone has a different way of connecting, comprehending, and thinking about texts. It doesn't mean that only one way is right, it just means that the more you understand your WHY (own it!) the better you learn. We can also reach our answer in very different ways as well (just as in Math). Don't get me wrong, there are OFTEN times when students are way off in left field and their thinking needs to be "guided". I am certainly not a believer in thinking every single thing a student says is right. Very regularly, we have to help them reach the correct level or range of thinking. This is why the learning application time is HUGE. We are able to help "guide" them through our questions thinking appropriately about their text.  If we allow them to think up front and then have a great discussion about how some answers are BETTER (not just RIGHT) and WHY, it will be much more meaningful than giving them an "quick way to circle and not think" with multiple choice. 
***I just hope that I personally get better at listening to their WHY before I decide they are wrong! 

Questions to think about:
How does this way of teaching prepare students for the real world?
In our day to day lives, how often is their one right answer (I can only think of very FEW examples)?
Which part of the lesson cycle promotes this type of thinking the best?
How does this add crayons to their color box and challenge a growth mindset?
What simple changes can we make to enhance deeper, more applicable learning?
What specifically could your PLC do next year to help "purposefully plan" certain things to ensure we promote PLAY?
How much time are we spending in the learning application piece?

BALANCE!

It was January (time to set a resolution). As I reflected on the past year, I decided I would take my good friend Jerilynn's advice and try a new kind of resolution. One that would be more meaningful, one that would have purpose, one that would stick, one that would make a difference...and it was just that...ONE. One word. My favorite part of this "one word idea" is that it is a way to reflect, connect and set a very simple, yet powerful goal that would ideally affect all areas of my life.

Choosing my one word didn't take long as I reflected on the busyness of the past year, the demands of being a full time educator, mom of 3 and wife: BALANCE

Obviously, it was a word I needed to focus on to make improvements in my life. Soon after I had chosen the word, it started to come up in different ways daily!

For this post, I will focus on writing about my most recent connection to the word: 
BALANCED INSTRUCTION

As a campus, we have discussed and improved comprehension instruction, problem solving, conceptual understanding, and digging deeper. We have learned so much about this type of thinking and how to get kids to a deeper level. Our work over the past couple of years has obviously been worthwhile and certainly not something we want to stop!  However, we have to remember not put all of the weight on one side of the ship, or else it may completely tip over!

For our ELAR instruction, we need BALANCE. Balanced Literacy!

 

*Writing

*Word study 

*Shared reading 

*Independent reading 

See this instruction guide for more details:
Balanced Literacy Overview 

It may depend on your grade level, class, etc. but all of these components should be covered in weekly lesson cycles. 

 

For Math instruction, we also need (you guessed it!) BALANCE. 

• Computation Skills (including Mental Math) 
• Problem Solving 
• Conceptual Understanding 
• Mastery of Math Facts 
• Common Formative Assessment

Here is a link to review Balanced Math components:
Balanced Math Overview 
Thank goodness we have our very own "Easy Button":The IFD!!!

 

 

 

 If we are working closely to ensure our students have access to the curriculum that is specified in this document, then we are right on track! We have done so much productive work this year learning how to dig deeper into the IFD, but just like when we have our kids "dig deeper", it takes time! The good news is...we are so much further along than we were last year! The challenging news is...we need to take the time to continue comprehending our IFDs to help us find the right BALANCE for our students. This is one of the biggest steps in ensuring success for our students!

 

Questions to consider:

How well does your team know your IFDs? 

Why is balance so important?

Why do some components take more time to teach than others and how do we plan accordingly? 

How do we get our students to not only know the standards, but be able to apply them? 

How could formative assessment help with balance? 

 

So it sounds like I am adding an additional FOCUS word to help with my primary word: 

IFD 

(Ok, so I realize it is an abbreviation for three words, but three words doesn't go with my story! :0)!!) 

Test Prep=More than One Answer?

I thought Brandi's tweet went perfectly with this post! 

My favorite part of my job last week was getting to have lunch with one of the most amazing educators I have ever met. Gayla Wiggins, from Lead4Ward is brilliant! She is one of those people that makes good instruction seem so simple and make so much sense at the same time. Every time I have the chance to visit with her I try to soak up every minute and reflect on every word! Here is what I have been thinking about after discussing state assessments with her:

It's so hard to understand that the best way to prepare students for a multiple choice test, is to encourage them that there is not "one right answer".

When we ask our students to truly comprehend, think and connect to their reading it will and should look very different for each student.  The same is often true with problem solving. That is why it's crucial to model many different ways to comprehend and connect with text, or solve a problem.  Even better...we can allow the students to share their thinking. Every time I stop myself from doing the thinking and talking long enough to give students the opportunity to think and share... I am completely AMAZED! Those little boogers sure can "out think" me when I allow them the time and the chance!
When you think about even adult readers and problem solvers, we all comprehend, think and connect very differently as well. I love that the many different thoughts and connections we have as adults allow us to collaborate, learn and come up with much better solutions than what we would independently. It seems only fair to give students the same opportunity! There is so much to learn and enjoy from finding personal connections all around! It is what connects us to each other, the world and the power of meaningful thinking!
I would love to hear your thoughts:
Why would instruction that promotes more than one answer better prepare students for state multiple choice assessment?
How do we create readers that are deep thinkers?
How do we create math students that understand not only HOW to work a problem, but more importantly WHY they are working it that way?
How do we encourage students to learn which strategies help them comprehend and problem solve?
How do we promote personal connections that show students the benefit of thinking deeply?
What should the teacher/student thinking and sharing ratio look like?

Digging Deeper with Inferring

This comic helps us to think of how our students sometimes feel when we ask them to infer. 

We could understand this comic (which is a very small amount of text), but only after using different strategies and having conversations with others to help us understand.

Let's think of this when we ask our students to read text that may not seem complex to us but could be very challenging for their growing minds. 

2 things we discussed that will be SUPER helpful in guiding our kids to think deeper:

1. TIME-it takes ALOT of time to be able to think through a complex inferring prompt. Ensuring the kids have plenty of time to reason through and think about it will help them gain confidence and take time in their independent reading to think reasonably. 

2. CONVERSATION-Just like adults, our students need to be able to talk about concepts that are hard to grasp. If they are able to hear others' thoughts and pair them with their own (along with text evidence), they are much more likely to have a thoughtful, more targeted response.

Here are some BRILLIANT thoughts that our PLCs came up with from the Inferring Training on Monday:

 

Quotes from Tanny McGregor's Comprehension Connections book (the chapter on Inferring):

“Reading is important-read between the lines. Don’t swallow everything.”

-Gwendolyn Brooks, poet

“You can’t tell any kind of story without having some kind of theme, something to say between the lines.”

-Robert Wise, filmmaker

“What I like in a good author isn’t what he says, but what he whispers.”

-Logan P. Smith, essayist

Justify with Uncle Si!

Focus on JUSTIFYING for REASONABLENESS is going to be HUGE!

This part of the standard is identical K-4:
Justify his or her thinking using objects, words, pictures, numbers, and technology.
Justify
STUDENT THINKING
Including, but not limited to:
• Objects
• Words
• Pictures
• Numbers
• Technology
Use
LOGICAL REASONING 

When I was searching for this standard, I typed in the word "Justify" on the VADs and found that it was listed this many times:

• Kinder-4 times
• 1st-3 times
• 2nd-7 times
• 3rd-12 times
• 4th-11 times

We will make an Uncle Si poster for anyone that is interested.

Maybe we could have it as a quick 2 minute morning routine? Or maybe it could be added to 1 question on the daily review? Brainstorm ideas with your group about how to use this in your current IFDs. Please SHARE any ideas that you have!
We can make sure to let Si be RIGHT every now and then so that the kids really have to think and justify whether it is reasonable or not.
The hard ones to come up with are the ones that aren't easily identified as wrong, which is of course what was hardest for our kids on STAAR.
Here are a couple to help get us started:
-A clock that has the minute hand right but not the hour hand (or other way around)
-A number sentence that is SOLVED but using the opposite operation:
 20-15=35 or  12x6=2
-A number that is represented with based ten blocks but with the place value switched:
l l l l . . .
34
Here are some more ideas from the Math meeting this week:

It's not just for Math!!!
Thanks to Mrs. Whitaker I realized that this could work for any subject, just as a tool to get them to think deeper:
Examples for ELA:

-I can spel Jack!

-I predict that Jack and Annie will be in the dinosaur age.
 

-The mushers were required to possess these items during the race or they would be disqualified.
synonym for possess:
own
We would hope the kids would say NO because just because you own something, doesn't mean it is in your possession. And just because something is in your possession doesn't mean that you own it.