I will never pretend that technology can do what we do. Teaching is best left to teachers. But learning? That belongs to students. Study Island, although it cannot teach a student on its own, can help students learn the skills and knowledge we teach. In my conversations with teachers about online tools like Study Island, I have encountered two strategies that seem particularly effective.

The Kujawski Plan
Geometry teacher Zina Kujawski—in every way a mathematical thinker—has such an elaborate Study Island plan for her students that it deserves a name: The Kujawski Plan. Here’s what she does: Keep reading »

Check out what’s going on at Rose High. The following paragraphs are teachers’ responses to the question: what was your best teaching experience today? They were accumulated over only a few hours.

My first period class (I’m sooooooooo proud of them) have learned how to love and affirm a particular student in the class and, as a result, have developed a higher level of tolerance and understanding for one another…. (I believe, too, that it’s part of because of how I treat the particular student)… D— has become very dear to our hearts…. his theatre nickname is “D-fresh”….  and; when he comes in the room the entire class heartily greats him (he comes in a little late each day, and we’ve usually started)… they cheer, call his name and applaud…. You should SEE his face light up!!!!!  It’s awesome!!!!!   And it has really helped his self-esteem and his willingness and ability to participate!!!!!  What more can we ask for?  Everybody wins!!!

Today, my 9th graders settled down and participated successfully with our daily grammar mini-lesson.  When I said, “Praise…” ( I stopped before I said “God”),  they said, “ You sound like Mrs. Moore; she says ‘Praise.’”  I felt that was a great compliment.  Then they did their practice work quietly so that I could conference with individuals and do so me one-on-one review of the tricky “lie-lay”  verb forms.  It was a great day.

In 4th period we disected raw chicken wings. We are covering the muscular system and students were able to identify the skin, muscle, fascia, tendons, ligaments, joints, and parts of bones from our last unit on the skeletal system such as the medullary cavity, red and yellow marrow, spongy bone, &compact bone. I think seeing it up close and personal helped them understand how muscles and bones work together to produce movement.

A student, B,  who has skipped my class often and whom put his head down during the quiz the first 15 minutes of class, settled down, raised his head up the rest of the class, and was the lead responder to questions during 4th period. He answered questions a lot of the others could not figure out.

Today we started a new chapter in Spanish I.  A student that I’ve had trouble with getting interested in the language (usually falls asleep during class, forgets his materials, skipped class a few times, and missed a few other days for OSS for other classes, etc.)…well, he’s actually trying to get more involved in class.  He normally “zones out” during the new vocab practice, saying the words aloud and writing down the new vocabulary, but he actually participated.  I’ve had one-on-one discussions with him over the past few weeks, encouraging him to stay involved and just put forth some effort.  I feel like I touch “at least” one student today and I’m headed home pretty happy!

Teaching Civil War battle tactics: army maneuvers and flanking movements. Took US history class to the Commons to simulate a frontal attack. Then, put one line perpendicular to the other and set them in motion. Best way to show how maneuvers in battle and flanking battle lines is always what battlefield commanders try to do. Frontal attack is always brutal – high casualties. Flanking demonstration shows how the compromised line RUNS instead of fighting. Students get to see how battles are won – make the other side run. Also did the difference between rifled muskets vs. smoothbore muskets. Demonstration plan was to show the difference between the two. After explaining what rifling is and how it works, take students outside and have an athlete throw a basketball and a non-athlete throw a football. Football wins every time in distance and accuracy.

I told my Algebra classes that if anyone would make up a rap/song about the ‘rules’ learned in Chapter 8 about polynomials I would add 5 points to their test grade. I have offered this before in previous years but no one has ever taken me up on it…until now. P__ B__ wrote a rap in a matter of minutes. She included vocabulary we learned in the chapter as well as what my student’s call ‘Mrs. Moore lingo’. I encouraged her to partner with another student who is very good at ‘beat boxing’. ( I really don’t know if that is the correct spelling or words:) but it’s when a person makes a beat using sounds made with their mouth) J__ G__ is very good at it. They stayed after school Tuesday and planned to stay again today to finish it up. With a few tweeks it will air on Rampant Report (thanks to Johnny Armstrong!)on Tuesday…now maybe Wednesday. Praise!! Learning is actually fun!!!!Who’d have thunk it??!!

Conclusion: Rose High is a great place to learn.

90%
Ninety percent is a solid B if you’re a student, but if you are a teacher in Pitt County School, 90% is A+ territory.

Last year the county began training all teachers in Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol. Within the SIOP initiative, they identified two particular goals: SIOP objectives (content and language objectives) in every classroom and 90% student engagement.

What it’s not
Ninety percent student engagement might be difficult to define, so let’s start with an antonym. It doesn’t mean that 27 students have their eyes open, while the other three drool on their desks. It doesn’t mean that for 83 minutes of a class period students listen to a hearty lecture on parthenogenesis.

90% Engagement in Culinary Arts
In culinary arts, where students learn the ins and outs of working in a professional kitchen, 90% student engagement often means that students spend the vast majority of a class period working in the kitchen. In Chriselyn Beresheim’s class, students wear white coats and scrub-in like culinary surgeons. They roll green fondant for elaborate birthday cakes, peel ginger for ginger carrot soup, view videos before trying new cooking techniques, and scrub pots clean, singing, talking and laughing while they work.

Ms. B’s students are as engaged as any class I’ve seen all year—90%, without a doubt. But what about that other 10%?

The concept of student engagement suggests that students are sometimes actors and sometimes receivers in their learning. If they are 90% engaged—90% actor—then they are, presumably, 10% receiver (and hopefully not 10% snoozer). This 10% might be the most important 10%. Without it, students don’t know what to act upon. If they don’t receive information about the safe preparation of chicken, somebody goes home with salmonella. At the same time, if they don’t act on their knowledge about preparing poultry, then, eventually, somebody still goes home with salmonella.

From an Education Expert
Years ago paideia pedagogue Mortimer J. Adler argued for this ratio in instruction: 15-20% Socratic seminar (students engaged in discourse about texts), 65-70% coaching (students producing while teachers guide them), and 10-15% didactic (teacher talks while students listen).

It’s not that easy
Ms. Beresheim’s class can only cook about half of their days; the rest is content heavy. And it really is heavy, just like any biology or world history class. The challenge for Ms. B is the challenge for every teacher: how to achieve a high rate of student engagement and still cover all that info? That, I believe, depends on the teacher, the course, and even the students.

Here are few things to try as you consider this goal of 90% engagement:

• As you plan ask your students, “What can my students do with this information?” How can they apply it? How can they reprocess it? What can they create with it? We aren’t talking about projects for the sake of pretty walls here. We’re talking about making your content stick in kids’ brains.
• Gather data. Better yet, invite me into your room to gather data. Tally the minutes students are actively engaged and the minutes they are receivers.
• Split your lesson plans into columns. Rather than listing only what you will teach, use one column to list what you will do and another to list what your students will do.
• Ask me about brain-based instruction. We can work on some strategies to keep kids’ minds moving without leaving the content of your course behind.

Not possible, you say!
I won’t disagree with you. Ninety percent student engagement, unless you defy your SCOS/OCOS, seems like a pretty lofty goal, but working toward it might pay off in student learning, which is the point of this whole thing to begin with. I’d love to collaborate with you in pursuit of the 90% goal. E-mail me: flinchm.rose@pitt.k12.nc.us.

Ukraine\’s Got Talent 2009

Yesterday I watched this amazing You Tube video of the winning performance on Ukraine’s Got Talent 2009—that’s right, Ukraine—and immediately thought of art teachers Steve Donald, Mary Tucker, and Randall Leach. I wondered how our art teachers might use the video with their students; however, the video IS on You Tube and, therefore, NOT accessible at school. Of course, if you are at school and clicked the link above, you already know that. Not only could they not show the video to their students, but I couldn’t even show it to them without sending them a link to watch at home. No fun.

The same has probably happened to many of you. You find some cute, clever, inspiring video to introduce a concept or add humor to your instruction, and, what do you know, you have no ability to show it to your students. Proxy programs get blocked. You Tube has no download feature. You’ve got nothing. Keep reading »

The study referenced in this article indicates that binge drinking–and not even the scary binge drinking in which some of our students engage–hinders normal neural development in teens.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122765890

No wonder Alg. II is so hard!

My students always had to ask me when they could change seats, then wait another week before I actually changed them. I treated it as an inconvenience, a waste of class time. Plus, it messed up my system for distributing papers.

But changing students’ seats is beneficial, and there is a good time to do it. Instead of waiting for the end of a grading period, change your seating chart each time you begin a new chapter or unit. There’s actually a good reason for it Keep reading »

New Year, New Semester
The custom of every New Year is to commit ourselves to a resolution. That’s why the gym is so crowded in January. When I wrote my new year’s resolutions for 2010, I made sure I set professional goals, too. One of them was to continue writing this blog.

In the spirit of the New Year, and with the imminence of the new semester, perhaps it is time for all of us to set new goals and make new professional resolutions. Maybe your New Year’s resolution will be to try a new strategy in the classroom. Keep reading »

Speaking Silently
Watching the beginning of Mike Lupo’s American Sign Language class is a cool experience; I’ve never seen so much discussion with so little noise. I guess that’s the nature of sign language.

What was really cool was seeing students communicate in sign language for thirty minutes. Mr. Lupo signed questions about students’ Thanksgiving activities, and students responded in sign language, demonstrating knowledge of vocabulary, sentence structure, and other concepts an outsider like me wouldn’t readily perceive. The goal was basically to get the students to communicate in the specialized language of the course.

Isn’t that what so much of our content instruction is about? If our students can talk about poetry in the specialized language of the poet—or something close to it—then haven’t they developed some level of competence in that field? And if a student can talk about physics in terms of mass and force and newtons, then haven’t they become, in some slight way, junior physicists? And if they can’t communicate in this language, have they really learned what they need to know?

Mr. Lupo’s class was a clear reminder to me of just how much we broaden our students’ understanding of the world by broadening their vocabulary, whether in American Sign Language or in the specialized vocabulary of another content area. On the more practical side, students cannot succeed on end-of-course tests without competence with the language of the subject. Check out some of the phrases they might encounter on EOCs:

• “y varies directly as x”
• “initial upward velocity”
• “amino acids are synthesized into proteins”
• “evolved from a common ancestor”
• “equal access to public recreational activities”
• “special interest groups”
• “factor of production”

So what?
That’s a tough question. I think the answer is that we must think like language teachers (sounds like SIOP training, doesn’t it?). If we want to assess our students’ comprehension of our particular areas of study, then we have to assess their communication skills in that field. More specifically, we have to incorporate into our instruction writing tasks that require students to communicate in the content and the language of our fields. Answering “C” on the multiple choice test is not enough.
Next time you find yourself talking in the language of art, music, economics, grammar, ecology, or geometry, and your students are responding in the same language—or something like it—know that they are learning. That’s what foreign language teachers like Mike Lupo do every day.
If you want any ideas for teaching content vocabulary, just ask.

flinchm.rose@pitt.k12.nc.us

It’s that time of year: bake holiday cookies, shop for holiday gifts, wish for the arrival of holiday break, and frantically review for exams.
With only four days between holiday break and our first exam day, most teachers will soon be starting to review, if they haven’t started already. A lot of teachers make review a regular part of assessment. Ms. Byrne puts questions from past units on tests and quizzes. Mr. Hill has been giving mini-quizzes to help him determine what his students need to review and to hold his classes responsible for all information taught throughout the semester.
If you plan on putting together some kind of in-class review activity, let me know; I would be glad to help. I can help you create interactive lessons on the Smart Board, or get you started with CPS clickers. I can even help you figure out what to review to best prepare your students for their exams.
Please don’t hesitate to ask me to create something FOR you or teach something WITH you.

I am spending my third consecutive day in the auditorium of St. James Church learning about Thinking Maps. Actually, I am being trained to be a trainer, which means I have one more strategy I’m begging you to try.

So who’s ready?

First, let me say this: I doubt 120 high school teachers are going to jump at the chance to sit through hours of training. I know us better than that. I’ve got a different proposal—read on. Keep reading »