It's Monday! What are you Reading? Pathways to the Common Core

For anyone who knows me, they know that I am passionate about teaching reading and writing workshop, reading as many professional books as I can, and staying up-to-date with the latest thinking from the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project.  Ever since I heard that Lucy Calkins was working on writing the Pathways to the Common Core last year, I couldn't wait to get my hands on the book.  The day finally came on Friday when it arrived in my mailbox.  I have read and reread it already over the weekend and know that I will continue to reread parts over and over again.  It is a well-written professional resource that helps to unpack the Common Core State Standards for educators.  Every teacher, literacy coach, and instructional leader should have a copy of this book in their hands to read and discuss together as they begin to embrace the Common Core. 

Pathways to the Common Core is organized so you can choose to read it cover to cover at one time or read individual chapters that focus on the reading, writing, or speaking/listening and language standards.  I chose to read the book in its entirety because I always like to see the big picture first and then reread chapters to strengthen my understanding and focus.  Now that I have read the entire text, I can see how the parts of the Common Core connect to one another and how the skills build upon each other for students. 

I love that we are reminded in the introduction that we have the choice to either view the standards in a negative or a positive manner.  This statement directly relates to the growth and fixed mindsets that we have been talking about so much lately as educators.  We can either choose to complain and gripe about the standards OR we can choose to embrace the standards and use them as an opportunity to lift the level of our instruction in the best interest of students. I choose to embrace the standards and view them as an opportunity to strengthen teaching and learning. 

If you haven't purchased Pathways to the Common Core yet, I highly recommend that you make a visit soon to Amazon or Heinemann!  I'd love to hear your thoughts about this amazing professional resource we now have to help us unpack and embrace the Common Core Standards.

Happy Reading! :)

What Are You Reading?

I love sharing Jen and Kellee's What Are You Reading Monday posts from their website, Teachmentortexts.com!

I have a new female heroine to add to my list of strong role models for elementary age girls after reading Close to Famous by Joan Bauer. Foster McPhee is a twelve year-old girl with a serious reading disability. For years, she struggled to learn to read but by the time the story takes place, she has just about given up and she has learned to hide her inability to read. Through a series of events, Foster and her mother end up in a small West Virginia town among many people trying to realize their dreams. She is endearing, not only because she is a phenomenal baker, but also because she has courage, resilience, honesty, and perseverance.

Tony Wagner's book, The Global Achievement Gap, inspires me to pay attention to the seven skills that students need to learn in order to be successful 21st Century citizens. He lists:

·        Critical thinking and problem-solving

·        Collaboration across networks and leading by influence

·        Agility and adaptability

·        Initiative and entrepreneurialism

·        Effective oral and written communication

·        Accessing and analyzing information

·        Curiosity and imagination

I would suggest that resilience and perseverance should be included in this list and Foster is an amazing character to inspire young woman to establish and achieve dreams! 

Our Lasting Impressions

My seventh grade English teacher crawled across the desks when he read a passage from The Pearl to us. I still remember the passage and the power of the language that John Steinbeck used. My high school Latin teacher taught us that semper ubi sub ubi means always wear underwear. He taught us many more words and structures of Latin and we learned them because he was funny and passionate about his teaching. My third grade teacher kept our entire class after school when the minutes that she tallied on the board that we wasted on transitions added up to sixty. I can still recite the apology letter I had to write to my parents for inconveniencing them because I had to stay after school.

Teachers have power. When I first started teaching I had the quote by Haim Ginott hanging on my bulletin board and I came across this quote again.


"I've come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It's my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or de-humanized."


I have hung it up again so that it reminds me of my daily power. We all make many decisions throughout the day--there’s some ridiculous number of how many decisions a teacher makes in a day that I’m sure I could google and quote, but really, we make much more than just decisions because we make moods and we make memories.

Mel wrote a post this week about mindsets and I hope that students remember that we challenged them to think about themselves as learners. We’ve read them great books and I hope that they remember that they loved books in our room. We’ve been writers together with them and we have allowed each other to critique our pieces, so I hope that they remember that great writing is never really a final draft. I hope that they remember that math has many real life applications and that they really have to know their multiplication facts. And I hope that they remember that they were valued, honored, and inspired as learners. Will they? Some might remember me as relentless or as a tough critic. I think I’d be okay with those memories as well. 

I’m having an especially reflective day today since I attended the funeral of a close friend and we are now driving over eight hours toward Hilton Head. One of the speakers at the service quoted the speech that Jimmy Valvano delivered at the ESPY awards in 2003. (This is really worth the eleven minutes!) The motto for the foundation that Jimmy announced that evening is “Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up.” What an amazing motto to hear this week in conjunction with the conversations we have had and the post Mel wrote about Mindset!


Jimmy also charged the audience with three important things to do every day. Laugh, think and cry. I hope that my students remember laughter and thinking in the classrooms that I share. While I can’t say that I cry every day I do hope that they remember that there have been books and moments when their great work has moved me to tears.

What about you? What lasting impressions are you creating? What do you want to create?

Sharing the Concept of Mindset with Students

Two weeks ago, I wrote a post about attending a Common Core Conference and hearing about the book, Mindset by Carol Dweck. In that post,  I reviewed how Mindset impacted me as a person and as an educator.  After reading the book, I became intrigued by the Mindset concept and began reading articles online about it, tweeting about it, and joining the #educoach chat recently about it. I decided to share the concept of a Growth Mindset and Fixed Mindset with my students.  I discovered this chart in a post about Mindset on the Thoughtful Learning Blog to use as a helpful visual while sharing the two different mindsets.  

Chart from: http://www.thoughtfullearning.com/blogpost/get-smart-become-talented

  

Yesterday during morning meeting, I had the chart up on the Smartboard while I gave real life examples of students who have a fixed mindset and students with a growth mindset.  Then I asked the students to think about which mindset they have as learners and put a thumb up when they could explain their reflective thinking. Students turned and talked to share their reflections with their partner.  Many of my students shared that they considered themselves to be in the middle and found that they have some growth mindset traits while also having some fixed mindset traits.  I was extremely impressed by how mature, honest, and high level their conversations were as they reflected upon themselves as learners.  Some were brutally honest and admitted that they completely have a fixed mindset and gave specific examples to support their reflection.  I asked students to think of a plan to help them work towards turning one or more of their fixed mindset traits into a growth mindset trait.  They turned and talked with their partner to help one another with their plans and goals. 

After their conversations, I had students go off to write about their current mindset and describe their goal and plan of action to achieve their goal.  Here are some examples of their written reflections that I collected:

I will continue to use the words “Growth Mindset” and “Fixed Mindset” in our daily conversations, lessons, and reflections.  I will also hand back their mindset reflections in about a month so they can continue to reflect on the growth they made working towards their mindset goals. 

I’d love to hear your thoughts about sharing the Mindset concept with students/colleagues and how you are helping students/colleagues work towards having a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset as a learner and as an individual.   

Happy Learning! :)

Thursday is App Day! Using Planbook.com

At the beginning of each school year, I create a new personalized plan book binder with lesson templates, sections, and schedules.  Over the years, I have lugged home the plan book binder each day to review and/or revise the next day’s plans as well as have it home with me “just in case” I needed something from the binder.  Last summer, I was determined to go as paperless as possible this year by using my iPad for conferring, planning, and grading.  My search for an online planbook was underway and my search was over when I came across Planbook.com.  This is an online planbook accessed via the web using any computer, iPhone, or iPad.  The cost is $10 for the year and is worth every dollar!

Using this online planbook at planbook.com, I can:

·   Develop custom daily schedules that are color-coded by subject and include events

·   View lessons by day, week, or subject (can also print lessons)

·   Create templates to use for each subject, morning meeting, and/or homework assignment

·   Adjust my lesson schedule by bumping lessons to the next day or extending lessons for more days

·   Share my lessons with Special Education Teacher Melanie Meehan, other teachers, and students if they are absent. This definitely makes team teaching and collaboration much easier.  To share lessons with others, you create a password which is referred to as the "student key" and share the "student key" with colleagues/students you want to have access.  I also like how I can share only certain parts of my plans that are relevant to the viewer (lessons, homework, events).

I now have my lessons at my fingertips at any time of the day and anywhere I am.  With one click, I can now adjust my plans daily to make revisions and changes based on new events, student learning, and the every day disruptions that occur in an elementary classroom.  I also love that I have a digital record of my plans for the year to refer back to for reflection, intruction, and coaching purposes. 

There are many helpful tutorials on the Planbook.com website that walk you through the process step by step.  Planbook.com also provides teachers with a 30 day trial period to try it out before making the purchase for the year.

I’d love to hear about different online systems others are using to help with planning in the classroom. 

Enjoy! 

Beyond My Final Reflection

I had my final Internship meeting last night for the Educational Leadership program I am completing. I handed in my log of the 500 hours I have compiled, my flash drive of the year's highlights, and my six page final reflection. However, my professor went around the table and asked us all to share some of our important learning over the course of the internship. I think that my final reflection needs an addendum--maybe even a sequel. 


I'm including some of my additional thoughts.  When I reread them, it occurs to me that most are as applicable to teaching as they are to building administration.

• Relationships are vital in schools. Everyone at our table mentioned how relationships and culture has either inspired or immobilized their schools.
• Being a leader has lonely moments. There are lines to respect, information to keep, and reasons that shouldn't be divulged. Sometimes emotional issues arise and emotions must remain in check. 
• John Maxwell wrote about the Law of Magnetism and I think about this premise frequently. Maxwell's concept is that we attract people who are similar to us. Therefore, people who work hard attract people who work hard. Guess who people who complain attract? Sometimes, we can't control our groupings in school settings but I do pay attention to who gravitates naturally to each other and to me. I can learn a lot about people and also about myself.
• Egos should remain in the hallway or learn to be patient. When leaders cultivate great ideas and thinking, people will notice the positive culture, although it might take time. In group settings, empowering and guiding others to great ideas may not earn immediate credit. However, when people are excited to be doing the work and proud of their accomplishments, the impact on students will be positive and therein lies the reinforcement.
• Twitter is an amazing resource. The information available is infinite and inspiring. Professional Learning Networks offer theoretical, practical and visionary advice and suggestions. The more that I've shared and offered, the more contacts and and sharing I've received--it's an exponential growing opportunity for all levels of educators!
• Self-evaluation and reflection are critical qualities. A difference exists between lacking confidence and looking at your work critically. How could I have been more effective? Handled a situation differently? What if I had taken a different path? These are important questions to process and explore in a quest for continuous improvement. We are rarely as good as we think we are.

For right now, it's a short list because too much more would be overwhelming for me. I'd be happy to add suggestions as they come in, though. Feel free to nominate some!

It's Monday! What Are You Reading!

I re-read The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch over the weekend, more for personal reasons than for professional reasons. I read this book a few years ago and I need to return to it at least once a year because it contains so much wisdom. Pausch was a professor at Carnegie Mellon and died of pancreatic cancer, after giving his “last lecture.” Many of the chapters and lessons in this book resonate with me as a teacher and as a parent. Here are just some of the highights; there are far too many to try to list in a relatively short post.

·        Life contains two kinds of head fakes. One “teaches people things they don’t even realize they’re learning until well into the process. If you’re a head fake specialist, your hidden objective is to get them to learn something you want them to learn.”

·        Ask yourself if you are spending your time on the right things. Doesn’t this apply to all ages? Think about how this short line changes as we gain life experiences!

·        “Rethink the telephone.” I wonder what Pausch would say about all of the cell phones in our world. Actually, I don’t really wonder. He would emphasize that the more important people are the ones in front of you. How do we teach students the value of inter-personal connections since so much of their worlds are virtual?

·        One of Pausch's chapters dealt with how people can work together effectively. To summarize:

o       Meet people properly.

o       Find things you have in common.

o       Try for optimal meeting conditions.

o       Let everyone talk.

o       Check egos at the door.

o       Praise each other.

o       Phrase alternatives as questions.

These can be found in the chapter called Start By Sitting Together  and it's worth the time to read the explanations for each one.

·        “Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.” I love this line! It goes along with the concept that students should be analyzing mistakes and that they learn best when they understand what they didn’t know.

·        Many of the chapters address the proverbial brick wall and the importance of finding a way through or around it. Within the commonly adopted 21st century skill sets, I have not seen many mentions of resilience and perseverance but these are valuable skills for today's students. I recently came across the video about creativity that emphasized that problems are not solved on the first try. People solve problems and discover creative situations when they persistently look for answers and solutions.

·        Apologizing is a skill and there is such a thing as a bad apology. Don’t apologize with a “but.” Pausch emphasized apologizing with an acknowledgement of a wrong and an offer for retribution.

·        With rights come responsibilities. Pausch called this Communitarianism and the basis of it was that “when we’re connected to others, we become better people.” I think that this is an incredibly important concept in our classrooms!

Thank you to Randy Pausch for so much wisdom in one place and also to Jeffrey Zaslow for helping him to write it. The short chapters of The Last Lecture inspire me as a parent, teacher, and human being.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? The Running Dream

I am the type of reader who can not put a book down when it is one of those books that grabs me in after the first few pages.  Needless to say, I was not very social yesterday with my family for Easter since I picked up The Running Dream  by Wendelin Van Draanen at Barnes and Noble yesterday morning, right when they opened at 11:00.  I first heard about the book this weekend on Twitter and read a review that compared it to Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper which is one of my all time favorite chapter books.  As soon as I heard this comparison, I had to get my hands on The Running Dream.  As I walked out of B&N, I couldn’t wait to read the first few pages so I devoured the first chapter while sitting in my car.  Throughout the day, I read every minute I could because I missed the characters and needed to find out what happened next in their lives. 

Without spoiling the book, the main character is Jessica, a 16 year old who loves to run on her track team.  After a tragic accident, she loses a leg and her whole world turns upside down.  This tragedy, in turn, makes her a stronger person in many ways while going back to school and getting a prosthetic limb. As she faces challenges each day at school, she reaches out to a classmate, Rose, who has cerebral palsy.  This friendship blossoms from the empathy they share for one another because they both want people to see them for who they are and not for the condition they have. Rose reminds me of Melody from Out of my Mind because they both are underestimated by others based solely on their outer appearance.   The characters in this book are powerful and remind the reader that we can all make a difference and that with the right mindset, we can reach our goals in life!

I am eager to read this book aloud to my fifth graders as soon as we get back from our spring break.  They loved Out of my Mind and were full of empathy for Melody and strong emotions for all the characters in that book.  I know they are going to be entranced by The Running Dream and are going to fall in love with the characters as I did, awaiting their every move and decision. 

This book left a last impression on me as a person, I’d love to hear what impression it has left on you or your students. 

Happy Reading! :)

Thursday is App Day- Book Creator

I downloaded The Book Creator last week and it is already one of my favorites for students of all different levels. This app has a $4.99 price tag but it’s definitely worth it! As a Special Education teacher of upper elementary grades, I have several students who are resistant writers. This app has amazing potential to motivate them to write more since the finished product is beautiful, accessible, intuitive, and reflective of their efforts.

Book Creator allows you to import pictures from the iPad or other shared albums and then add as many text boxes as you would like. The app also includes an audio feature so that you can record voices or music. Once you complete your books, you can save them on iBooks or in Dropbox or you can email them to friends for sharing.

 I have been using this app with one of my students with intellectual disabilities and what an incredible tool! We took pictures of this student making various emotional faces and then helped her draft a repetition book. She loved being able to record herself reading the pages and willingly practiced and practiced her Frye words and her fluency, without even realizing that she was doing it. She is also happily practicing pronunciation and sentence structure, skills that she would sometimes prefer to ignore! I kept the first copy that she made and we are working on her fluency for a final copy. This way, she has a writing portfolio that I can reference and document her growth. When she creates a fluent final version, we will connect the iPad to our classroom Smartboard and she will be able to share her book with the class. The rest of the students can’t wait to hear her book!

Other students have been using book creator for writing, as well. One student has created a book of his poems. The program is intuitive enough that he has been able to figure out how to import pictures, change and manipulate font, and include recordings. He has been motivated to write and has produced several poems. Because he is repeatedly reading and listening to his poems, he has been authentically revising and editing his work-ah, the power of a published product! Additionally, he is practicing his fluency through the repeated readings, and this is a skill that we have been working on throughout the year.

I really can’t wait to see future projects students will create. Fourth graders are studying ecosystems and I think they could make beautiful iBooks about habitats. Fifth graders can continue to publish poetry anthologies, as well as have additional project options for their studies about the colonies.

I’d love to hear how others are using this app since it has been around for a year and I’ve only just begun using it in the classroom. Please share!

"My Thinking Matters" Post-it Sheet

Years ago, my back starting to get sore from carrying the reader’s notebooks home and I was tired of losing post-its that I collected from students with their thinking so I created a “My Thinking Matters” post-it sheet.  Using a word document, I drew four boxes to represent post-its and titled the document “My Thinking for…..” The four boxes are blank and waiting to be filled with the students’ thinking!  Sometimes during read aloud, I have students use these sheets to jot down their thinking instead of using their reader’s notebooks so I can easily collect the sheets. 

When I ask students to use the post-it sheets instead of their reader’s notebooks, I ask them to stop and jot four times during the read aloud (one idea in each box) and I give them prompts that address specific skills. I might ask students to write about visualization, character traits, character change, character relationships, lessons, symbols, inferences, or theories.  When I collect the thinking sheets, I use their responses to help me plan instruction in mini-lessons, small groups, and future read alouds.  I also use this sometimes as a baseline assessment to identify the levels my students are at in certain skill areas at the beginning of a unit.  Toward the end of the unit, I ask students the same questions to measure their growth in the skill areas. 
This is a quick way to get a "look" inside students' minds as readers to see which skills they have already internalized and which skills they need to strengthen. 

"My Thinking Matters" Post-it Sheet

Happy Reading and Thinking! :)

Writing about Reading - Reader's Notebooks

When I was in elementary school, I remember the dreaded workbooks that we used for reading.  I hated answering the comprehension questions and I tried writing anything for the answer so I could just get it over with and go out to recess...but my teacher always caught on and I then missed recess to re-do my answers.  I realize now that I disliked the reading questions so much because I didn't understand "why" I had to do it and didn't know "how" it helped me as a reader.  It also was very boring!

As a teacher, I make a point of always explaining the purpose of why we do certain tasks and units of study so students know "why" they are doing it and "how" it can help them as learners and people.  So when I decided to use reader's notebooks in class almost 10 years ago, I made the promise to myself that I would make the purpose clear and encourage students to have fun with their notebooks!

Personalized Reader's Notebook

I am a firm believer that having conversations and writing about reading increases comprehension.   When we give students the opportunity to write about their reading, they are able to try out the strategies in a written form which allows them to process the information and reflect.  Writing about reading can take many forms from writing on post-its to writing in reader's notebooks This is also another form of data to use to informally assess each student and see what skills we still need to teach and reinforce and what skills students have internalized.
  

Students need a consistent amount of time they can depend on to write in their reader’s notebook, but we want to make sure it is not taking up their reading time; we want them to read more than they write during reading workshop.  One way to provide students with a predictable and consistent amount of time is to make certain days of the week "writing days" at the end of reading workshop.  For example, in our classroom, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays are “talk days” when they have conversations with their reading partner and Tuesdays and Thursdays are "writing days" when they write about their reading at the end of reading workshop. They write for about ten minutes and if they don't finish in class, they can continue working on it for homework.  This way, students know they will have the chance to write every Tuesday and Thursday and it becomes a classroom ritual without taking up reading time during reading workshop.  

Reader's notebooks are not just a place for students to write paragraph responses, but also to be creative in how they express and deepen their thinking. Some students create charts in the form of baseball fields, flowers, staircases, basketballs, etc.  For example, I have had baseball fans draw a baseball field to show how they have extended their thinking by writing their original idea on 1st base, revised thinking on 2nd and 3rd bases, and their final thinking on home plate.  While others have drawn a flower with their theory in the center of the flower and their evidence/thinking on the petals.  The list goes on with the creative ways students have used their notebooks to deepen their thinking in visual ways in their notebooks.  Once students are given the permission to be creative, they jump on the opportunity and impress me each year with their originality and how they visually show others how they extend their thinking to higher levels.  This is where the reader's notebook bulletin boards or foam boards come in handy, because students can share  examples of how they are using their notebooks with their classmates.  Then the buzz of reader's notebooks comes alive; students become engaged in writing about reading because they understand the purpose and make it their own.  

It is important to give students specific feedback on their writing about reading.  That way, students know they are writing for a purpose, and they give us more insight into what they are thinking as readers. I collect their reader’s notebooks as often as I can to leave my feedback in the back of their notebooks on post-its.  I also read their responses/charts whenever I can during the school day.   Students enjoy the positive reinforcement and they become increasingly willing to try new strategies!

Reader's Notebook Examples:

                                                            

                                                             

Happy Reading & Writing! :)

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Over the weekend, I finished The Fourth Stall by Chris Rylander. A friend had recommended it as an engaging book for middle grade boys and I would agree with this recommendation. The main character, Mac, and his best friend, Vince, run a lucrative business out of an unused bathroom in the school. The student body knows that these two boys are generally able to provide relatively benign favors--gaining access to an R-rated movie, obtaining a homework pass. However, the pressure and stress level skyrocket when a fourth grader asks for protection against a known hustler who has been swindling students and physically threatening them.

The plot is fast moving and highly engaging with (spoiler alert) a few violent scenes that graphically describe characters being beaten up. There is much more to the book, though.  The Fourth Stall provides opportunities to discuss stereotyping, loyalty, ethical decision-making and the convolution of perceptions and realities. Because there is also an element of crime solving, I found myself constantly predicting and second-guessing my judgments and the characters' assumptions. I also found myself wondering about the plausibility of some of the situations. Working in a suburban elementary school probably shields me from some of the realities in today’s public schools. Would adults on recess duty really not notice a gang beating up a younger student on the outskirts of the playground? Would parents really not question a pair of black eyes as the result of a biking tumble? Would a custodian really facilitate students using a defunct bathroom as an office?

We are always looking for great read alouds and I do think that The Fourth Stall is a high impact book for upper elementary students. Empathy is a critical 21st century skill and this book forces characters, and therefore readers, to examine perspectives and motivation. Another important skill that children must learn is how to apologize and right a wrong. This is a great book for discussing and teaching retribution.