Persevere Through the Pushback - Some Cool Ideas From Students

         It's my second year teaching grade 7 and this assignment is quickly becoming one of my favorite. It's a novel study of The Miracle Worker by William Gibson. The premise of the assignment is simple: Design Your Own Project. I give them the rubric and go over the details of what a level 4 could look like, but they have to come up with their own way to meet the criteria. One thing I believe I have improved at over my career is designing better, more useful rubrics. I like to have multiple bullet points within each category as it helps give more accurate and specific feedback. Although I'm always open to feedback or criticism of my rubric if you have any comments or suggestions.  Here's what level 3 and 4 look like (designed for the Ontario Language Arts Curriculum)

         Now, this is where things get both interesting and frustrating, resulting in some of the best conversations I have with my students about their work. I'm dealing with grade 7's here, so most are not totally independent in their academic pursuits. Precisely why I believe this project is useful - it's a step in the right direction for teaching creativity, problem-solving, and independence. This is where, as the teacher, you have to persevere through the push-back. Many students will despise this process. Some of the comments I've heard: "Arg, why can't you just tell me what you want me to do?"; "But how do I get a good mark?" "I'm not creative". Push on, guide them, discuss their ideas, help them think of ways to give it more depth - in the end, I've received some of the best and most creative projects from my students. Some of which also opened up new and awesome ways I hadn't thought of to integrate technology. Here are a couple of my favorite ideas from this year:

Dinner Table Symbolism with Google Drawing:

If you know the story of the Miracle Worker, you know that several very important scenes take place at the dinner table. This student decided to use her new-found knowledge of Google Drawing to create a birds-eye view of the dinner table. Each object on the table is symbolic of a character - when you click on it, it links you to an analysis of how and why that object symbolizes the character.

Digital Board Game with Google Drawing:

Again, google drawing is so simple, yet can be so useful with a little creativity. After a lot of conferencing and discussion with a student who had "No ideas", he's now creating a digital board game with questions, trivia, videos, and images to show his knowledge of the characters, conflicts, themes, and plot.

Layered Cake:

As with the others above, this idea isn't entirely original, as I've seen projects online of a similar nature. The idea is that they create a cake or pie, with each piece representing a different character. I loved the idea but wanted to make sure she provided enough depth to meet the level 4 criteria. During our reading of the play, we focused mostly on the conflicts each character was facing, as well as the theme of communication (every character grows and evolves in their ability to communicate). We had some great conversations about these issues which led to her adding layers to the cake - each character has a piece and within each piece are multiple layers.

Despite the initial pushback I got from a lot of students, the perseverance was worth it. Through this project, my students were able to practice many of the skills outlined in this article about the 12 Skills Students Can Work on Now to Help Them in Their Careers Later

Some Tools and Ideas I Learned From AMLE Conference in Philadelphia (Part 2)

So awesome to see a great American City while meeting, collaborating, and being inspired by educators from all over the continent. Here's Part 2 of takeaway's I got from AMLE last week

Speed Sessions

      These were short 15 presentations done at a roundtable. Great way to pick up some new ideas and learn new tricks to add to my toolbox. Here's some new resources I learned about and am excited at finding ways to build these into my lessons. 

• Autorap - turns speech into a rap. Could be a lot of fun and help kids work on literacy
• Vocabulary.com - vocabulary and literacy games. Useful for anyone, but really excited to get my ESL students this resource. 
• Gameonlearning - More literacy games to help build vocabulary and literacy skills.
• Freerice.com - This is so cool, and apparently legitimate. Vocabulary questions that range from really easy to very difficult; for every question you get right 10 grains of rice will be donated through World Food Programme to help end hunger. 

Classroom Management Begins With Teacher Self-Management

  Another speed session by David A. Shepard. There was long handout from this session with all kinds of ideas and considerations for classroom management - unfortunately I can't find it on the website now. Here's two key things I took away:

• Rather than negatively stated classroom RULES, there should be positively stated Procedures/ Expectations. His handout had the following checklist in regards to the Procedures:

1. There is a clear set of positively stated procedures used in my classroom (5 or less)
2. These procedures are prominently posted in my room
3. I review the procedures directly or indirectly at least once a week
4. There is a known set of consequences (+ and/or -) for the administration of these procedures
5. I follow through with these consequences fairly, consistently, and persistently all year

• David had small tickets that could be handed out to students for different reasons. The first was a STOP sign: (I forget exactly what his said, but it was something to the affect of this)

As Dave noted, you can discreetly hand out these tickets when someone is misbehaving, that way you don't have to stop the lesson and always be addressing students with negativity. I do wonder how long this ticket would have any value or affect. I showed my wife, who teaches a grade 4 class with some particularly challenging boys, and she just shrugged and said "my kids wouldn't care, they would just rip it up". I suppose it all comes down to the fair and consistent consequences for misbehaving.

Conversely, You should also have a star ticket for when kids are doing well. I am going to try this with my grade 7's. Not sure how it'll go over, but I'm willing to try new ideas.

Integrating NonFiction Language Arts Strategies Cross Curriculum - Tara Breeden, Cassie Farrish

       The main idea was about implementing Signposts to help students dissect a piece of writing. Here's a link to the Signpost Annotations for NonFiction. They also suggested going to TeachersPayTeachers.com and searching signposts, as there's some free downloads for your classroom. 

       One activity they did that I enjoyed and have already implemented into a Science lesson, was Possible Sentences:

• Give students a list of vocabulary from the text and have them write sentences that use the words. It's a good way to get them engaged in the text and then curious to find out if their sentences match at all what the text is actually about. It worked quite well for me - I'll be making this a common practice before my science lectures.

Digital Citizenship in the classroom and Beyond - Lindsay Middleton; Shannon Siegler

Another informative session with some good resources I picked up. The main takeaway: Digital Citizenship should be in everything you do, not just a unit or lesson you teach. Here's some useful resources:

• Digital Boot Camp - lays out skills and goals to implement
• Common sense media - lots of great resources:
• News Literacy Project

Redo and Retakes, Rationale and Myth Busting - Rick Wormeli

It goes without saying that Rick's talk was awesome. Again, it was great to realize that most of what he had to say already aligned with my own beliefs and practices. Here's a few takeaways that'll help shape my practices;

• Kids need multiple tries to get something right. Some many more than others. As Rick noted: A child is attempting to ride a bicycle, and the bike falls over. Another child, learning to walk, loses her balance and lands on her bottom. A baby’s green peas slide off his spoon as he moves it toward his mouth. How do their parents respond? Good parents don’t say, “You fail, you’re not able to meet bicycling standards,” “I’ll develop a rubric for walking without falling,” or, “We need a Common Core curriculum to help you keep your food in your spoon.” ….[They] simply say, “Try again.”           - Richard L. Curwin, Education Leadership, ASCD, September 2014, p.38

• Yes, there's an argument that it's important to teach responsibility, why should students get a second chance - life doesn't always work like that. No, it doesn't, but sometimes it does. Plus, we're talking about middle school students. The most important and useful thing we can do is give them the skills they need to succeed. Developing skills requires you to FAIL (First Attempt In Learning)
• Have students submit a short proposal for a Redo on an assignment:

Mr./Mrs./Miss ________________________, 

I understand…. 

I need assistance in…. 

I suggestion the following four steps for me to take in order to learn these content and skills: 

Sincerely, _______________________

• Can redo sections or part of a test, part of an essay if they messed up a paragraph. If they messed up the theme they need to redo the whole thing
• Is it chronic or occasional problem with student needing Redo? There's a difference and your response should be different.

That's all for now. There was plenty more going on, but there's only so much I can take in and implement into my class. Thanks for reading, follow me on twitter @GP_Connors

Some Tools and Ideas I Learned From AMLE Conference in Philadelphia (Part 1)

           Last week was my first experience at an Association Middle Levels Education Conference, and it was certainly a worthwhile trip. Being only my second year teaching at the middle school levels, it's awesome to have an opportunity to learn and add some tools to my tool box. There were some amazing speakers and plenty of great sessions to teach and inspire. Here are some of the things that I learned an look forward to implementing into my classes

Kim Cambell's Presentation  - If You Can't Manage Them, You Can't Teach Them

One of many amazing keynote speakers, Kim Cambell's talk gave me several new ideas to consider and apply:

• Formal Time vs Informal Time: This one I applied immediately. Discuss and enforce the difference between formal and informal time. Formal time requires a stricter set of procedures and expectations. Speaker in charge, raise your hand if you have a comment. Be very clear about what formal time procedures are, have them permanently displayed somewhere, and be very clear about when the class is operating on formal time. Informal time obviously still has procedures and expectations, but students recognize this as when they can move around if needed, engage in discussions with their classmates etc... These are basic classroom expectations that I've always had, but this gives it a very clear on and off switch, making it easier for students to understand and follow. 
• 10 x 2: Visit with a tough kid for two minutes for 10 days in a row. Experts say behavior will begin to change.
• Student Greetings: When standing at the door greeting students as they enter your class, pick a different kid each day to join you to welcome kids to the class
• Water to help De-escalate: Whether there's an actual physiological effect or just a needed brain break, I don't know, but would love to learn more about the science behind it. Regardless, the point is: water can help bring down Cortisol levels (when a kid is elevated)
• Authoritarian vs Collaborator Styles: Being a straight authoritarian style teacher is likely not going to work - at the very least it won't create a healthy teaching and learning environment. Good classroom managers are collaborators, but great ones have one other thing: not afraid to be authoritarian when needed. Recognizing when and how to be authoritarian is something I'll need to work on, but it's good to know that this is in fact sometimes needed.

Kristine Gibson - Write to Learn: (check out collinsed.com for more information into their program)

Some very practical ideas about various types of writing that can be used in the class. Rather than re-type everything (and likely break copyright laws), I'll just provide the link:  http://collinsed.com/approach/five-types-of-writing/ 

This breakdown of the types of writing really helped me realize all the missed opportunities in my lessons. As a Language Arts teacher, of course I focus on developing students writing skills through Type 3 and 4 Writing tasks/assignments. However, this session got me excited about all the places and ways I can incorporate more Type 1 and 2 writing tasks into my lessons - not only for Language Arts, but my Science class as well. This should help improve literacy and engagement. 

Rick Wormeli - 21st Century Homework Success: Principles; Practicalities and Products

Another professional level speaker, Rick was funny, engaging, and could inspire like no other. You can follow him on twitter at @rickwormeli2. Again, out of fear or breaking copyright, I'll just say google this guy. He's written books and published loads of material. 

It was great to see that most of what he had to say about 21st Century Homework already aligned with my own beliefs and practices. None the less, here are the key points I felt were worth noting, and further inform my own classroom practices:

• Homework should be practice for something they already learned in class. Unless they’re practicing correctly, they’re making things worse. Homework should be given when the teacher decides more meaningful practice is needed.
• Purposes of homework: Practice, Interactions, Application; Extension; Preparation - NOT to learn the material
• Kids need rich life experiences to make insightful connections. Ie: less time doing homework, more time in clubs, teams, exploratory activities.
• No homework should be the default, when you do give it there has to be a good reason for it.

That's it for now. Be sure to check out Part 2 of this post for more great things I took away from this conference.