Booting up for the New School Year

Though a new pair of boots are essential for the school year, that’s not what I’m talking about here!

 

Aren’t words fun!! I led a three-day workshop this week that started out being called “boot camp”– but after some discussion, the week-long session was retitled with the words Professional Development–a decision which better described the educational thoughts that were being shared there and the need of teachers to take part in training. That got me to thinking about words, of course, and the multiplicity of meaning…for words, for realities, for actions. Anyway, I digress….read on as digress in yet another direction….booting up for the new school year…and I don’t mean putting on my fatigues….I hope no teacher feels that way!

This week’s seminars and workshops shared classroom strategies with 4 -12 teachers that offer collaborative learning experiences and enhance students’ sense of independence. Moving away from direct instruction, we were developing stations that would allow the students to work independent of the teacher on various aspects of their content knowledge and skill building.

We also addressed reading and writing strategies…and I was emphasizing the need for mental models that allowed students to construct their thoughts in ways that reflected the individual nature of their connections and inferences. There are numerous ways to introduce and develop mental models. The easiest with the least technology demands are teacher created masters, but those just aren’t much fun for kids, nor do they allow students to be constructivists about their own way of knowing. Using technology, Word offers easy incorporation of hierarchy charts…just click on insert and there you go…change box shapes, change colors, redirect arrows, all kinds of opportunities for making and remaking connections.

And better yet, if you can, use online technologies for engaging mind maps. Traci Gardner of NCTE blogged about this very subject this week, so rather than me reiterate her fine work, go ahead and read Traci’s blog. She provides a variety of web sites that can fill your specific classroom and student needs.

I don’t know about you, but I always looked towards late summer with torn emotions: excited to get back into the classroom but sorrowful that the summer break was coming to an end. Even now, as a professional development provider, I feel that same sense of duality. Rested from a Door County Vacation and energized through summer classes and new reading, I look forward to sharing ideas and experiences with a new set of teachers. But I must confess, I will miss lazy mornings and long lunches sitting on my porch with the Golden Retriever at my feet and Joe, my black tom, curled up in my lap. 

 

 

 

Wikipedia: a teaching resource

I am enhancing a workshop that I share with teachers on the classroom use of Wikipedia. Now, you may be surprised at this, but I still encounter teachers who don’t even know what Wikipedia is!! That is shocking, but I value these teachers because anyone who takes the time to attend a workshop on a topic they know nothing about clearly is a learner! I will also note that more and more, when I ask who allows Wikipedia to be used by students for early stage research, more and more teachers are raising their hands.

Anyway, the point is, I found a blog entitled Traffic Statistics for Wikipedia Articles that links to a site, Wikipedia Traffic Statistics, showing the top 500 Wikipedia articles and the number of visits to each of those site by year. From that site, you can visit the actual site…then I suggest you go to the discussion tab and click on that tab to see how reputable the site itself is. Of course, you will see sites that a teacher would never take a student to…however, there are some excellent sites on the list…like Speed of Light which is rated as a “featured” article in Wikipedia which means it has been “peer reviewed” by an editorial board and found to be reputable and even valuable to the field of physics in the accuracy and importance of the information offered.

There is much to learn about Wikipedia and there are many ways that all content areas could be using it to engage their students and increase learning!!! I have been giving a two-hour workshop on using Wikipedia to teach the skills of Critical Literacy. There is so much there, that my workshop will be expanding to a full day to incorporate reading comprehension, Critical Literacy and writing….mulitple literacies using emerging technology!!! I almost put this baby to bed before further investigation. If you are interested in Wikipedia, check this blog out, right here on WordPress: The Way Things Work. And then go to Larry Sanger’s (founder of Wikipedia) new online encyclopedia, Citizendium. The plot thickens and my curiousity is peaked!!

 

 

High School Challenge: Challenging Schools to Challenge their Own Thinking!

Attended a two-day seminar in Bloomington, Illinois this week–the High School Challenge. The event was sponsored by Coalition for Illinois High Schools, a medley of twenty+ educational groups, among them the Illinois Principals Association. The keynote speakers were top-notch: Debra Pickering from Marzano’s think tank in Colorado and Dr. Douglas Reeves, founder of The Leadership and Learning Center. They were an interesting mix….Pickering provided practical examples and Dr. Reeves quoted research complete with citations. More than that, the topics they addressed are real concerns for teacher and administrators in Illinois and around the country.

The focus seemed to be on grading, though topics like vocabulary and gender gaps were part of the discussion. Both speakers addressed some of the minutie that teachers continue to preach and test, and both speakers addressed the challenge of meeting the needs of diverse audiences. Pickering and Reeves both drew on personal stories of their children and how different siblings can be and learn. Part of that discussion comes from Reeves research on 90/90/90 and the myths that low SES and minority kids are destined to perform at levels significanly lower than white middle class kids.

Both speakers offered workable solutions to the current A, B, C, Dilemma. Grades, as they are used today, demoralize some students while giving a false sense of intellectual security to others. Students who both 1) know how and 2) are willing to play the game of school can probably earn grades that will get them a diploma and maybe even garner them college entrance. But the fact of the matter is that most kids today are taking remedial classes in their freshman year either in English, math or both! What does that say about high school math and English?

Part of the discussion over the two day sessions dealt with methods classroom teachers can and should take to not only to more effectively evaluate, but to teach through engagement! Assessment should be a tool for engagement, not the dreaded testing situation that it has been made to be, not just because of NCLB, but through the epochs of testing as we knew it ourselves. Tell me, honestly, who ever looked forward to a test. The greatest concern I usually had was whether the teacher would test over the material that I had studied or would h/se pick some obscure fact or perhaps something not so obscure, but equally out of my reach because the information didn’t resonate with me. Twenty years later, that is my own children’s nightmare before testing. We just don’t learn. (kinda funny, isn’t it…we want our kids to learn what we think is important, but we don’t learn what research and past practice shows us is detrimental to achievement!)

In my last few years of teaching, I worked with a team of teachers on an “integrated curriculum.” We worked as a team incorporating literature, social studies, and science. Amidst that, we ensured that essential vocabulary was taught and that various ways of knowing were actively addressed. And get this…we had NO tests. All grades were based on projects and those projects offered choice both in their composition and in the lengths students chose to go in proving their mastery of content and skill. They were motivated…most of the time. And that, I must say was the finest hour of my teaching, partly due to the results but mostly due to the comradery of teachers and students. We were all learning and we were doing it together.

Back to the “High School Challenge…” One of the ideas I took to in grading was not to list grades in the book by test or quiz and the date, but by what the assessment measured…and that made me wonder why we couldn’t change our grading so that instead of having a composite score for an assessment, why couldn’t we write better assessments that truly measured what we had taught and break our grade books down into those goals rather than dates. Then, in any given assessment, we may be able to measure the students’ level of proficiency that way….once they were proficient in the skill or the knowledge, then move on…or at least they could. One way we lose kids is through repetition. They get tired of making the diorama or learning about the Battle of Gettysburg or defining a simile. Every content area is guilty of redundant malignancy.

Just a few thoughts….

 

 

Engaging Students with Gross but Informational Texts

I spent the last two days in Edwardsville, Illinois with Janet Allen sharing in how to engage students and teach vocabulary. Yes, I said engage students! At IRA, I ran into a colleague and friend who said, “If I hear the word ‘engage’ one more time, I’m walking out!” Obviously, she doesn’t get it. If we cannot get a kid’s head or heart into what we are trying to teach, we cannot teach. The lessons that hit home the hardest and last the longest are those attached to belly-laughter or tears.

Part of our talk in the last two days has been about effective teaching and that requires that we not only get kids’ fully “into” what is happening in the classroom, but also providing them a variety of vehicles that can drive their learning home. Janet promotes using a variety of texts for both purposes. Here is a list of some middle and high school “must reads” for read alouds and shared reading Janet shared:

The Copper Elephant  by Adam Rapp

The Joey Pigza books by Jack Gantos:

What Would Joey Do by Jack Gantos

The Joy Masoff Collection

Oh Yikes! and Oh Yuck!

The Kathleen Krull series: Lives of Artists, Lives of Muscians, Lives of Atheletes, etc.

Lives of the Artists: Masterpieces, Messes (and What the Neighbors Thought)

 Food Rules! The Stuff You Munch, Its Crunch, Its Punch and Why you Sometimes Lose your Lunch! By Bill Haduch

 Suggested Independent Reading for Girls:

Lurlene McDaniel—stories that engage adolescent girls and have have heavy science vocabulary

Sometimes Love Isn’t Enough

The End of Forever

Last Dance

The books of Paul Janeczko

Should I or Shouldn’t I???

Okay, I wrote a poem and it’s not my first. I have written many poems and so have you, I am sure. But the question is, since I have a blog, should I post this poem? The reason I consider posting this poem on this site is because I read it last night at the IRA Poetry Olio, the focus of yesterday’s blog. What in the H—heck, come on…. is “olio”? Well today, I was informed that is an Irish stew; I digress, in that I am going to now unveil this poem. My caveat is that I only wrote it over the last couple of weeks which means it is still in the cooker: 

Six feet–six inches of monochromatic black

slowly shares painful memories of the past:

“Don’t remember kindergarten;

first grade neither.

Remember fourth and fifth;

a cacophony of teacher cursing.

“Then Chicago Public became my past.

Beyond the city lay my future,

In the School of an Open Heart.

“I remember Junior High:

Caring Teachers

Shared Direction

High Expectation.

Teachers who talked to us, not at us.

Teachers who guided with questions

And helped with homework.

“Yet, here, too, was cacophony–

Not of teachers cursing

But of students pained by

stress

poverty

ignorance.

“Eventually, teachers without immunity to local disease

Fell victim to epidemic attitude.

“Teachers, please hear me–

 I who don’t remember kindergarten or first grade.

I who hear only cursing when I think on years

evoking spelling bees and field trips in your minds;

Hold conversation with your charges; build antibodies to local disease.

Tell jokes and laugh; relieve yourselves of pain.

Call me by name: Marvelle.

 

Make New Friends and See the Old… I mean the Longtime…

I have had a great week at IRA. Each morning, I walk through Centennial Olympic Park undisturbed by traffic or bustling people on my way to the World Congress Center. Sometimes, as I walk through this well-kept community space, it is hard for me to imagine the size of this city.  Today, on my way back from convention meetings, I stop to watch the children and fountain frolic together, playing and toying with one another. A few minutes later, the fountain’s tenor changed from a child’s water wonderland to choreographed dance that mesmerized children and adults alike.

I met more people today. If you’ve read any of my other blogs this week, you know that I have been making the acquaintanceship of many interesting and thoughtful people. But today was especially fulfilling! Can you imagine out of some 25,000 teachers from countless points on the globe, I ran into an old a longtime friend from college days that I hadn’t seen in years. It’s not that we live that far apart, but our lives don’t intersect as frequently now as in those days gone by. Marilyn asked me if I was planning to attend the 14th IRA Poetry Olio–something I had never attended but felt compelled to visit.

I have got to tell you that was an experience. There were four or five professional poets who did interpretive readings and groups who set poetry to music. My favorite was probably Dead Poets , a group of three gifted musicians who interpret classic poetry (Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Langston Hughes among others) to music. Some of the tunes and ‘tudes are reverent and others, well, let’s say they take some poetic license. But all of their work is meant to bring positive attention to language and poetry.

Flocabulary, another group that kids would love performed a scene from Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. Their approach to langauge is meaningful and memorable in a modern sense. I wish I were back in the classroom so that I could share them and Dead Poets with the kids in my community. Their website has music samples, lyric texts and primary source documentation.

Day Two at IRA

Georgia World Congress Center, the host of this year’s IRA Convention, is as expansive as the ideas about literacy that we are sharing with teachers, researchers, and educational publishers from around the country and the world. The message of this year’s workshops is not about the conventional teaching of reading with a focus on strategies or silent sustained reading or text based writing as in the past. Rather, this year’s focus is on conversations that engage thinking noting that only through thinking can students really acquire and retain knowledge, or learning.

So I thought that was pretty cool. I have always believed that kids need to be allowed to talk through their reading and share their reactions rather than complete worksheets that ask for regurgitation, superficial responses or literal text information. I spoke briefly with Kathy Collins Block about her work in setting two process goals to improve comprehension—this too is essential to active thinking. We are always multitasking, sometimes without even being cognizant of the complexities in the tasks we are processing. And today’s students are stimulated by the very act of multiprocessing.

It’s been a good day…learning and laughing with Harvey Daniels, Stephanie Harvey, and Anne Goudvis in their presentation, ”Active Learning through Inquiry and Investigation”; engaging in a new poetic genre, “Practical Poetry” and feeling hope for my latest passion: incorporating wikis and blogs in the improvement of reading comprehension and response!  Harvey Daniels has a great sense of humor and a knack of pulling out the most apropos cartoons that simultaneously convey message and lighten moods. Though this is not one of the cartoons he used, I thought this was good. Where can you go to get cartoons to bring humor to classroom and faculty meetings? Just google: political cartoon, educational cartoons, and on and on. Some require permission and some don’t.

What else…raise the bar! Stephanie Harvey spoke of using nonfiction texts that are above your students’ reading levels to engage them in important issues. In order to get kids to question texts, there must be something controversial and / or interesting enough to question. That may require that teachers use topically current events—and those texts often scaffold the reader’s comprehension through pictures, captions, graphs, etc.  

Frank Serafini, in a separate presentation, echoed the thoughts of Harvey Daniels and Stephanie Harvey. He, too,  emphasized that the more controversial the text, the better it was for teaching. A point well made–when are we most engaged with any idea….when we are trying to convince people to see things our way. As Serafini said, “What is there to discuss in Brown Bear, Brown Bear? Where is the controversy or the surprise?” To engage kids in reading, there must be purpose for the reading and that purpose has to be more than a Friday quiz!

The emphasis is shifting from text to text talk and that talk includes connections through personal response, something teachers rarely have time to illicit in today’s high stakes testing environment. the message is, “Take the time. The learning payoff is greater than that of test prep!”

On a personal note, I made a number of new friends in the last twenty four hours: Melissa and Kevin with National Geographic; Jackie from Phoenix with Weekly Reader; Associate Professor Alice Klos from St. Cloud State University; Harriet and Taylor from Jackson Academy in Mississippi. Jackie and I talked at length about job satisfaction which I connected to another topic that in on the educational rise: caring. We must care about our students, but as teachers, we need to feel cared about ourselves. And that then goes to the community and administration. In order to make this whole educational structure nurture learning and humanness, we must begin to care about one another: students and teachers. It is not a one way street. Taylor and Harriet, reinforced this theme. They teach at what I infer to be a very caring school. They repeatedly credited administration as being supportive and that, let me tell you, is not something I always hear from teachers. We need to care more about one another, not only in the school setting but in the setting of life. And I found that all of those who have gone out of their way to strike up and engage in coversation with me over the last few days have had that sense of caring….humph, could I conclude caring is the nature of teachers?!

 

 

Literacy on my Mind

I arrived in Atlanta yesterday to attend the IRA (International Reading Association) convention. From the first leg of my journey, good omens flew with me. Although initially ticketed to fly from my home town to Chicago and there catch a connecting flight to Atlanta, I became a benefactor of fate due to unscheduled maintenance on the initial flight. Because of that, I was put on a non-stop flight to Atlanta (good omen #1) and having safetly & swiflty arrived in Atlanta, I struck up conversation with an equally social gentleman (good omen #2) while patiently waiting for the downtown shuttlealongside twenty other reading pilgrims. I was blessed on Saturday afternoon to make the acquaintance of Richard Hodges, author of numerous articles, book chapters and books and cited by others in support of seemingly successful literacy programs, such as Sitton Spelling. My 2008 literacy pilgrimage was off to fine beginnings with stimulating and engaging conversation that included all the elements of a memorable exchange: personal connections, theoretical discussion, pedagogical implications, practitioner application and more personal connections!!

Today, serendipity again had its way, and if you’ve read some of my previous blogs, you know how I appreciate the role of serendipity in my life. I had registered for a Sunday seminar last fall, probably the first week of IRA convention registration and of course chosen a topic that was relevant to where i was in that moment (but frankly, I had forgotten what that “thoughtful” choice had been. I can’t overestimate how satisifed I was with decision months ago: “Students Have Rights, Too: Creating Literary Experiences that Place Learners” first was the title of my full day seminar. The speakers and the researchers that spoke told stories and shared findings that validated the research I have been conducintg since January on caring in the high schools and resonated with my pedagogy as practitioner in the selection of culturally relevant texts and activities for contemporary youth.

I have spent most of my teaching career creating relevant, engaging lessons that connect across curriculum and beyond the schoolhouse doors. And that means advocating for appropriate text selection that reaches beyond the cannon. Well, today, I had the opportunity to hear Alfred Tatum speak about that very topic. However, he put a great twist on those words: “Don’t advocate for texts; advocate for kids!” His point was that Shakespeard is dead; he needs no advocators; our kids are alive, but dropping out right and left; they need advoactors. However, Tatum does not want a “waterd down curriculum” so don’t get the idea he wants Shakespeare out of the schools–rather he urges teachers to make the text choices relevant to the audience–have a real reason you choose Shakespeare that goes beyond “that’s the way it has been done here.”  

You may ask, “Why the excitement” and “Where is the serendipity?” Over the last several years, I have been narrowing the focus of my research for the completion of my dissertation and in the course of that academic winnowing, I have used Dr. Tatum’s work as a resource. In the last two months, I have been part of a professional learning community (some people may call them a committee) in an Illinois school district that is studying Tatum’s latest book and reflecting/projecting ways his theoretical framework could be applied in their educational settings.

If you are interested in the happenings at IRA, keep me posted in your reading regimen. I am anxious to share what is happening here. I sense a shift from previous conventions as I look forward to sharing the evolving nature of effective and relevant teaching with you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On-line Databases of Student Performance

Attended a great meeting today that offered an overview of several student achievement databases. Illinois Interactive Report Card once held the spotlight in online tools for comparing academic performance, but there are a growing number of intriguing and user friendly sites giving that NIU site a run for the money! Let me offer you an introduction to some ”up and comers…”

School Data 4 All was one of the impressive sites we explored. Our presenter, Jennifer Ross, President of School Data 4 All and Director of Education Policy and Initiatives with the Illinois Business Roundtable, did a great job. She knows all of these sites inside out!! What makes this site different is that rather than just looking at schools and districts, this service tracks your students. There is a fee for access, but with the access fee you are also provided with data input and programmers who will also track student data on nearly all of the standardized tests offered: Explore, Plan, ACT, PSAE, ISAT, ITBS, and on and on. Moreover, it will track this data for as many years as you have the numbers, backwards and forwards. Taking all of this into consideration, the fee is not only reasonable fee, it is a downright steal! I’m not going to quote prices because I don’t want to get them wrong, but we’re talking in the hundreds of dollars and the fee is based not on enrollment, but on physical buildings and/or the configuration of your district based on the state report card. Currently, the only views available to the public are those for WorkKeys, but this makes some sense since the site is developed to help you track individual students as well as compare districts with similar and varied demographics.

I’ll sound like Randy on American Idol, but “Check it out!”

NCEA has a national resource that allows you to compare your school and/or your district’s performance against other districts–the difference between your district’s performance and top districts’ performances they label as the “opportunity gap.” Interesting euphemism. This site also offers Best Practices organized five themes. Within each of these themes, the district, the school and the classroom are addressed. Beyond that, you can search for schools with similar demographics of your own school and find out what they are doing to meet the needs of students and AYP.  It does more than that. You can also set your school up for a survey or Best Practice Audit that I understand is free or nearly free. If you go to the audit page, you’ll see Self-Audits and note that those are closed to public viewing. I understand these audits are brief.

Brief being a relative term…the NCEA audit can be completed in a matter of minutes…that compared to the lengthy process of conducting a Survey of Enacted Curriculum. This link goes to a great PDF file that give an overview and visual representation of the survey results. I really like thhis tool–at least what it provides! The cost is low; charged per teacher for completion of the survey, so you can make decisions regarding what you want to focus on and choose your teacher respondents accordingly. It is graphically appealing; it conveys much information with map like graphics. However, I understand that it is a bit time consuming, but then, the information is both deep and broad concerning what really gets taught in a classroom compared to what the district expects to be taught and on top of that, overlays student achievement. Lots of information. More on that in another blog.

 

 

 

 

 

The Personal Commitment of Technology

Technology and personal commitment–sounds like an oxymoron! But, I had a pretty cool experience this last week that evoked all three of those terms or responses. I was doing a workshop at Rock Island High School a week ago, showing teachers how easy podcasts can be to make using Gcast. In preparation for my demonstration, I even made a podcast while they were entering into the presentation room and finding their seats. I started the workshop by playing the podcast…I was impressed at how the room feel silent as they heard my voice ring out through the district’s audio system, announcing that the “We are here at Rock Island High School today to learn how technology can help us differentiate instruction…” And then I moved from having them listen to a podcast to demonstrating how easy one can be to make–even with a cell phone. And so, I offered my cell phone to a teacher and we fumbled together to make that happen….but it flopped!!! And I was frustrated and tired–remember, I had just returned from Africa, gotten home late Saturday night and here it was, Monday. Well, you may know the feeling….when it comes to technology, hope for the best but have a backup plan. I showed them some existing podcasts that I had made and then moved to another cool tool I have written about before, VoiceThread, a digital storytelling web tool that I truly believe has exceptional potential for reaching learners and providing literacy and learning experiences.

So, you are asking, “Where does the personal commitment and technology come together here?” Several days after this debacle (a bit of an exaggeration, but when you are in front of the room!!!), I received a personal email from Garage Band apologizing for the difficult I had experienced. The email went on to explain that the transmission was not being read as an MP3 and on and on with explanation and regret!!! 

I’ve tagged this entry “caring” because I felt cared for, even though the recognition of my struggle came several days later, I was amazed that the the seemingly impersonal tool I was using to demonstrate connecting with kids came back to connect with me.

I was back at Rocky this week and feared I might get booed off the proverbial stage, but instead, several teachers expressed their curiosity about how podcasts can work for them and kids. One teacher that particularly touched my heart was a special ed teacher who had not taken much interest in technology outside of his personal use. He now sees a real advantage that could be placed in the hands of his kids…to express through audible words the learning that they are unable to show as fully in a written text.

Rocky Math and Reading teachers collaborate on a unit of differentiated instruction.

English and Math Freshman Academy teachers meet weekly to develop upcoming units and lessons.

Susan and Yolanda are working on a R.A.F.T. assessment for The Odyssey.