Not Just Knowing, but Knowing When!

One of my favorite things to do is coach my daughter, Gracie, and her team of sweet friends. The funniest thing happened this year at one of her games. I had been trying to teach her how to block out and get a rebound. I modeled how to use your rear to push the defense out of the way. She practiced with me and she told me one day, "Mom, I am really going to try to block out during the game!".  I couldn't help but snicker when I glanced out at the floor and noticed her "using her rear to block out" as the girl she was guarding was dribbling the ball down the court! LOL! Well, she had learned part of what I intended to teach her, but bless her good intentioned heart, she missed the part about WHEN to block out! This story reminds me of what we have noticed with lots of our hard-working 4th graders recently. The 4th grade ELAR teachers have really been helping them think through and have good conversations about editing and revising lately. The last couple of weeks, several of the students will be working on comprehending a passage, and begin to try to edit and revise the passage they are reading. Bless them! They have the content they need, they just aren't sure when they need to apply that specific content! These are a couple examples of how important it is for our kids to not only know the information, but also know when to apply that knowledge!

 One of the big initiatives on our campus the past couple of years has been Priority Maps. Creating these big picture documents for our units has become a part of what we do at Reeves. I know this has helped us understand our content and better present it to our students. Thinking about how Ervin compares the organization of the standards to a filing cabinet really resonates with me. We have discussed many times about how important it is for our kiddos to know which drawer to open when!

How many of our student's brains probably look like a pile of paper/files all thrown together, with no organization? How many students have NO CLUE which drawer to put different pieces of knowledge into? I have been thinking about this a lot lately, which has led to a light bulb moment for me! This is why our anchor charts and conversations are so important when it comes to new content! If students know what specific genre we are reading or writing and are able to connect it to what they already know about...it's SO MUCH EASIER for them! In Math, if the students know what prior knowledge and vocabulary to pull from to get them started, they are MUCH LESS OVERWHELMED!

 

Here are a few strategies to help students know what drawer of prior knowledge to pull from:

1. Frame the lesson WITH THE SUBJECT. I know that framing our lesson is something we do consistently, but maybe it’s a good idea to even talk about what specific subject we are starting! (This makes me think of how our students had such a hard time with 3 Act Task at first, because they all went to inferring instead of Math thinking!) Maybe this would be a quick, helpful thing for those little guys!
2. Refer to/or build ANCHOR CHARTS for new concepts. As we frame the lesson, even just a quick reference and turn and talk to help students pull the correct background knowledge could be very helpful!
3. Take the time to help them make the connections. If we slow down and help them see connections between genre, stimuli, vocab, etc. it could help us save time in the long run!

I know that we are ALWAYS strapped for time, but I firmly believe that if we will take the time to support students in this way, we will see DRASTIC improvement in their learning! I have started to commit to spending the time up front to make sure students know which "drawer" (genre) we are in before I dig deep into my guided reading lessons. I have seen my student's confidence soar and their understanding increase tremendously, just by doing this one thing! I wonder if spent more time on this if we would see that maybe students are holding on to more information than we realize? Maybe they just weren't sure when to use it!

Three Act Tasks

Three Act Tasks have TAKEN OFF on our campus! It’s so great to see and hear all of the real-life problem solving our kids are doing and how much fun they are having doing it!

Here is the checklist, in case you would like a refresher:

 

Three Act Tasks

Thinking about math in a real-world task (in an engaging way)

Act One:

The class discusses a high interest video or picture of a real-world situation.

What did you notice?    What are you wondering?

Act Two:

The class identifies the information needed to answer a mathematical question about the situation.
What's the problem we want to solve?   What information do we need to be able to solve?
Partners work together to solve

Act Three:

The problem is resolved and students share solution strategies.

 Here are a couple of things we have learned:
Framing your 3 Act Task is important to keep the kids thinking about Math!

• You can even frame all 3 acts
• Example:
• Act 1-We will notice and wonder, focusing on the MATH in a picture/video.
• Act 2- We will think of a MATH question to solve that goes with the picture/video. We will decide what information we need to solve the MATH problem
• Act 3-I will pick a MATH tool/strategy to solve and be ready to share my thinking 

It’s a Lesson Cycle, WITHOUT the Mini-Lesson!  With 3 act, you don’t have to teach ANY content! You present the video/picture and then start the conversation!

 Let the kids decide where it goes! If we can keep them in a Math mindset and then allow them to generate the questions, as well as what information is needed, this is SUCH a high level of embedding those process standards!

 Challenges are good, but take time! It is best to let the kids take over and struggle through figuring it out! It’s a great time to FACILITATE and just ASK GOOD QUESTIONS! Be prepared that this type of learning structure requires lots of thinking/collaboration time! Of course it depends on the level of question, but you may want to plan more time than you think you need!

 Differentiation is built in! When partners/groups finish solving their problem, all you have to do is say...is there another problem you could solve with this information?

Fight like Tatum!

Our district theme this year is "BE AWESOME EVERYDAY". When I think about someone who truly lives the meaning of these words on a DAILY basis, I think of sweet Tatum. Tatum that was just playing basketball with Gracie's little team in October. Tatum that was shining like a star on that court. Tatum that was just a typical 8 year old girl. Tatum that was diagnosed with osteosarcoma and is now fighting a battle no child should ever have to fight. Tatum that is the strongest and most inspirational person I know. She is touching the lives of SO many people by showing us how to make the most of our circumstances and FIGHT for life. She lives her life not fearfully, but courageously. Her positive attitude and unwavering faith are uplifting. Tatum not only lives by this theme, but inspires others to do the same.

How do we learn to fight as awesome as Tatum does?

Let's start by turning to good old Webster for a solid understanding of the word...

ˈôsəm/

adjective

adjective: awesome

1. extremely impressive or daunting; inspiring great admiration, apprehension, or fear.
2. "the awesome power of the atomic bomb"

synonyms: breathtaking, awe-inspiring, magnificent, wonderful, amazing, stunning, staggering, imposing, stirring, impressive;formidable, fearsome, dreaded;informal mind-boggling, mind-blowing, jaw-dropping, excellent, marvelous;literary wondrous;archaic awful

Those are some big, and powerful words. Inspiring words. Words that when tied to "BE" and "EVERYDAY" could be hugely powerful! What if we did a tiny little piece of something awe-inspiring every SINGLE day? What if we added all of our daily "being" up to make something absolutely breathtaking? I'm not saying that we will conquer the world in a day, a week or even a year. Masterpieces don't just happen, and certainly not overnight. Just as Tatum knows her fight won't be easy, or short, but still doesn't give up. Let's duplicate her "I can anyway" attitude to regenerate awesomeness!

 As I skim certain synonyms of awesome such as fearsome, awful and dreaded, I realize that those words may not be as misplaced as they seem, particularly in Tatum's case. Maybe it is a piece that makes sense once you complete the entire puzzle. How often does something completely life-changing happen without lots of discomfort, hardships, failures and hard work? Just because we commit to be awesome everyday doesn't mean that it will always be easy. Like all jaw-dropping accomplishments, look behind the scenes and find a person or people that feared, dreaded, but eventually persevered into making a masterpiece. After all, facing weeks and weeks of chemotherapy, amputation, and spinal surgery doesn't stop Tatum!

The more I think about this "be awesome everyday" phrase, I find examples that happen every single day at RH!  The awesomeness in tirelessly adding every little piece to our lessons to make it more engaging and increase learning! The awesomeness in finding any little pocket of time we can to identify and meet needs of those individuals that are struggling. The awesomeness in spending our after-work hours communicating with parents to develop that trust and team approach to help their child (or grade papers, or make SMART files, or answer e-mail, or...the list goes on and on...). The awesomeness in telling that student that thinks he is a failure, that we know he can do it (and he is just one step closer through this mistake). The awesomeness in wiping the tears off of the little girl's face that is being made fun of for her clothes and smell. The awesomeness in making that tough phone call to CPS through our tears of wanting to protect that baby from what she endures every week. The awesomeness in encouraging and empowering our co-workers that we spend so much time with everyday. The awesomeness in teaching our students that they can be anything they want to be. The list could go on and on. RH staff, you are doing your part of being awesome everyday. So, when we are in the awful, dreaded "chemotherapy" times, we need to recognize and remember that it is those seemingly small, but hugely meaningful, daily acts that are slowly fighting for us to build the best masterpiece of all.

The coolest, most inspiring part of our career as educators is that we are part of developing kids to be awesome! At Reeves-Hinger we don't take that responsibility lightly. I am reminded over and over how much our staff shares this vision of being awesome for kids! It's an amazing blessing in my life to work with so many truly AWESOME educators who truly do AWESOME things everyday to empower our students to become AWESOME!  Let's keep showing our AWESOMENESS through any and every trial that comes our way! Let's make sure we see the awesomeness in our daily work that molds our students into masterpieces. We can use Tatum's contagious inspiration to keep going when we have a rotten day or don't feel confident. We can think of her strength through all of the challenges brought her way and know that if she can fight her battle, then certainly we can fight ours. Thank you Tatum, for teaching us so many life-lessons. We pray that we can fight like you, and we can't wait to see how God will continue to use you as one amazing masterpiece!

#tatumtough #fightliketatum

Making a Plan Makes a Difference

"Where does all of our money go?" That's the question my hubby and I kept asking ourselves a year ago when we were living paycheck to paycheck. Now, only a year later, we are able to live off of 75% of our income, have money saved for emergencies, and are even contributing to our retirement and the kids college funds. One thing made that difference: now we have a plan! Every month we take time to talk about our budget, write down a plan, and stick to it. This reminds me of the process that helps students become successful problem solvers.

Problem Solving involves LOTS of thinking and planning, and then a little bit of solving, and then hopefully some more thinking about reasonableness. We help our students when we spend time having them practice the thinking A LOT. Here are some ideas that I have seen that really help students:

• Think about important vocabulary from the standards, like joining, separating & comparing and composing & decomposing (even use motions to help them remember the meanings).

• After they are able to describe what is happening in the story (we are joining boys and girls to find total students), then talk about what operation goes with that vocab word. “If I'm joining would that be adding or subtracting?”
• Remove the numbers until kids have thought through the problem and are able to tell you a "word number sentence" (number of books on each shelf x the number of shelves = total books)
• Talk about the differences in the operations (Joining can be adding or multiplying, but I know to multiply when my groups have the same amount, or are equal.) and have them "DIG" on each operation.
• Subtraction is when you take things away from the total, or separate things. When I take cookies from the cookie jar, it has less cookies.
• Instead of only having students share different ways to solve a problem, see if they can share/explain how they knew what operation(s) to use and/or why an answer is reasonable or unreasonable.
• Have them find some text evidence to show how they know what to do and why their operation fits. (Example: it told us how many blue flowers and how many yellow flowers and it's asking for the total flowers, which tells me I am going to add them together to figure out how many yellow and blue flowers there are all together.)
• Justify for reasonableness: thinking after solving to make sure your answer makes sense is important. Kids struggle with this, so the more we practice, the better! A great way to do this is by using estimation (rounding or compatible numbers). It's also a great time to bring in a tool to help them think about reasonableness. For example, if I'm doing 24x8 I could think about money. 24 is really close to 25, which is the value of a quarter.  My answer should be around 200 because I know that 4 quarters equal $1 and 8 would equal $2, which is 200 cents.
• Model this thinking aloud (for understanding the problem, the operation, or reasonableness) when you are doing the "I Do" (mini-lesson) to give them ideas of how to think deeply about story problems.

Just remember to always value and encourage the time our students spend and NEED to make a plan! This up-front work will make all the difference!

 

Curing Cancer

Did anyone get to watch 60 minutes on Sunday night? Holy cow! It was completely fascinating!! Apparently at the Duke Cancer Research Center they are getting amazing results with their latest cancer treatment trial. The treatment consists of injecting the polio virus into brain tumors in order to remove the protective shield that causes the cancer to be invisible to the immune system. When the virus breaks down the shield, it awakens the body's immune system so that it begins to fight the cancer. Isn't that absolutely AMAZING!?!?

As I think about the level of thinking it would take to even begin to figure this out, I am reminded of the importance of our job as educators. We are invaluable in this world. Our job, I would argue, is of the utmost value and importance. As teachers, we mold little human lives. We mold them by modeling life. Modeling how to treat others with respect and love. Modeling how to handle every situation that may come their way. Modeling how to be a problem solver and a thinker. Who would have believed someone that said, "I think injecting polio into this cancer patient's brain tumor has a chance of curing them."? Not a soul in the world in which my generation was raised. Thinking back to my years growing up, I have to be honest. Growing up in a one-way philosophy educational generation was discouraging for me. I vividly remember my inability to show my knowledge and capability through choosing the "one right answer". I was one of those kids. One who frequently ALMOST had it, but not quite! One who didn't think quite like everyone else in the box. Oddly enough, I was usually pretty confident in my thinking and could provide adequate and even thought-provoking evidence when prompted. The problem was, I was just never prompted. Hence the reason I grew up believing the lies. The lie that I was dumb, as I felt defeated trying to train my brain to fit "in the box". The lie that I would always barely be mediocre despite hard-core effort. The lie that my evidence and thinking didn't matter. The lie that some people just got "it", and I would never be one of those people.  I now know that the sole person telling this lie was the same person looking back at me in the mirror. The dilemma was though, I didn't have the confidence to come to that realization until I entered adulthood. Having a career that not only accepts independent problem solvers, but heavily relies on them, has taught me that there is more than one way. Teaching on a growth-mindset campus has proven to me that my thinking, as well as ALL other's thinking, does matter and often times is another way to answer!

Reeves-Hinger has changed my life for the good in so many ways. One of the best parts of our job as RH teachers is that we learn truths in our profession that we can often apply to our personal lives as well.  A giant scoop of hard work, a heap of resilience, and a pinch of a determination is the recipe for truth. This recipe excites the senses enough with a small taste of improvement, that it leaves a never-ending craving for progress. Some people define these ingredients as grit.

Grit is something inside you that drowns out the lies that you aren't good enough. Everyday I get to witness inspiring teachers using these same ingredients to cook up confident, persevering, problem-solving students. I believe with all my heart the direction we are headed is going to be ground breaking! We are not there YET, but we continuously work our way up that hill, one step at a time. Each step getting us closer to YES! Along the way (and I believe most importantly) we can ensure our students don't believe the lies, but instead know the recipe for truth. We can change lives now simply through ensuring our students know the truth and motivating them to be the best at whatever they choose to be in life! This encouragement paired with teaching them to problem solve as a valued thinker, could create a life-changing generation. Armed with these tools, who knows what this generation will be capable of...curing cancer may just be the tip of the iceberg!

Put Me In Coach!!!

Torture, defined by Gage (my 8 year old), is staying on the bench during the ending of the closest game of the season. He could hardly stand watching his team barely loose their only basketball game this year. I wouldn't really say he "sat" on the bench after fouling out...it looked more like he was dealing with ants in his pants as he attempted to keep off the court. His passion for the game paired with countless hours of practice to improve his skills gave him such an excitement to play! What he would have given for the coach to somehow turn around and say "get in there Gage!" My wish is that our RH students will feel the same excitement, pride and anxiousness to show off all they have learned when they take the STAAR this spring. More importantly, I pray that the same enthusiasm for learning continues their entire lives.

Just as teachers make all the difference in their student's years, coaches play an important role in their player's seasons. They have the ability to jump in, side by side with their players and help them improve their practice. Great coaches not only know how important it is to practice, but they make the most of it. Successful practices happen when coaches take time to learn what each player does well and praise them for that effort. Also, they focus on each individual's weaknesses, giving specific feedback and encouragement until they see growth to celebrate!  Practice doesn't make perfect, but practice does make progress. A coach knows how to prepare the team for the game and ensures that each team member is ready before throwing them out on a live court. Playing games over and over is not preparation for game...but lots of practice is. Assessing kids over and over is not preparation for a test or life-long learning...but lots of teaching and learning is. As teachers, it's our job to support our kids over and over through practice, without jumping right into assessment. In practice when we miss, foul, or throw the ball away, there is no penalty like in the game. Instead, these mistakes are followed by targeted advice and then "let's try it again!" to build stamina, skills and allow growth from mistakes. This strategy develops confident players who are prepared to play the game.  They aren't just equipped, but readily anxious to put their hours of sweaty, hard work to the "test". Fueled with the belief in their ability to learn, grow, even fail, they ultimately experience the pride of accomplishment from hard work paying off.  

Most importantly, a coach has the possibility to do much more than teach fundamental skills. An effective coach transforms their player's work ethic, beliefs, and goals, eventually affecting the rest of their lives.  Teachers have the equal opportunity to transform futures. In fact, I would bet that an overwhelming majority of coaches and teachers chose their career based on this very principle. This time of the year it is easy to forget that dream. It's easy to forgot the importance of practice, practice, practice. It's easy to forget to encourage, encourage, encourage. It's easy to slip into testing, testing, testing. It's easy to forget that there isn't only one right tool, one piece of proof, or one way to solve. It's easy to forget that STAAR is just a test. It's easy to forget that we are a part of molding small human beings. It's easy to forget that these little lives look to us to show them what life is about and how they should handle it. It's easy to forgot what's important.

As we are on the downhill slide of the year, let's remember to keep practicing and adjusting before we throw our players in the game! I am hopeful. Hopeful we will see our student's enthusiasm for learning shine through on the STAAR. Even more hopeful that we will remember why we do what we do. The MOST hopeful that we will influence the future by developing children that look at challenges in life and say "put me in coach, I'm ready to play!" 

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: