Flipping success... or not...

                In our faculty meeting, my new principal mentioned a study hall goal sheet that one teacher had brilliantly devised.   I decided to use that idea, too.  At the beginning of class, my study hall students in grades 9-12 must fill out a goal sheet for that day, so they are focusing on their homework during our time together and also building time management and organizational skills. At the end of the period, they check if they accomplished those goals and set new ones for that evening based on their leftover goals.   

That leads me to consider the number of my students in my other classes who did not do their flipped assignments last week.  Two students completed the flipped assignment in one class of sixteen students, and only 58% completed it in another. In contrast, in my Speech classes that are open to all students in grades 9-12, three-fourths of the students completed the assignment. 

Those numbers make me wonder about the correlation between students’ success in a flipped format and their executive functioning skills.     If students are not organized or cannot manage their time well, I am thinking that the “engagement value” of a YouTube video, a SurveyMonkey  survey or choice-related activity, no matter how engaging, will not magically create students who complete and submit all of their work. 

Granted, one reason so many did not complete the work could be because our delivery platform had changed over the summer, and I constructed a couple of tasks in a way that might have confused students who were not inclined to click several times.  But I am wondering if another is that these basic students may have rarely been engaged or successful in the past.  So, they may think, why should I be now  just because the assignment is posted online.

Many years ago when I began teaching general education upperclassmen, I quickly eliminated most homework other than long-term projects.  I found that these students, so used to little success in school anyway, simply did not do homework.  Rather than my failing them all and having them learn nothing, or my trying to swim upstream to create a completely new set of values for them, I simply switched my instructional model to be deeper with less homework.  We worked in class on chunks of text, instead of attempting to tackle it all- which most weren’t reading anyway.  Then we analyzed and interacted in class with the text we had read, and I left the remainder of the text as dessert for those who wanted more.

This morning, I posted a discussion on http://flippedclassroom.org/ to see if there is any research taking place about the success of flipped formats with basic education students.   I think I will also administer an anonymous survey on Monday and Tuesday to find out why some of my students didn’t complete their work on time.  If my survey reveals what I suspect- that they just didn’t care about doing the work for any number of reasons, then next week, I will have to entice them into the flip. If they don’t have the organizational or process skills, that’s an easier fix.

Demitasse, anyone?

I'll have a skinny decaf peppermint mocha, please.

The first few sips of a new approach to teaching are always enticing to me; I love the sweet promise of a new strategy that will satisfy my needs and tempt my students' taste buds. 

Strategies for building on-level literacy skills are my new cuppa.  My challenge now is getting the mix just right as I attempt to recreate it in my own "coffeemaker" classroom.

For the past few years, I have felt great about the strategies I am using to help my high schoolers comprehend and analyze fiction.  But Probst and Beers' new book Reading Nonfiction is making me rethink my semester two syllabus. 

Isn't that always a concern during winter break, when all the standards that we haven't yet taught seem to leer at us from their place on the lengthy list as we decide what MUST be covered before the next high stakes test?

Even though I am comfortable abridging Romeo and Juliet to cover only its most salient and intriguing scenes for my non-readers, I am still struggling with the specifics of my new syllabus.  Hearing echoes of "less is more," I feel a pang of guilt in planning to use only a handful of short stories this semester, supplemented with a few poems and a piece of bi-weekly nonfiction to analyze carefully and for different purposes.  

Why so few?  

I have to find time for independent reading for these students who are not independent readers and who would rather do just about anything except read.  

They must have on-level reading skills to pass their graduation exam next year, so my work this year is critical.  So where am I going to find the time for all this in-class and independent reading?

And grammar review?  

And writing argument and narrative?

Something's gotta give.

Times have certainly changed from when I began teaching almost two decades ago.  In those days, there were no academic standards; we chose what we taught from the textbooks we were given or the beat-up sets of trade books left in our classrooms from the previous teachers.  Some teachers paced themselves to just "get through the book." I could never manage that.  Either way, it didn't seem to matter so much that our students were prepared to pass a particular test.  Students just needed to be able to think, to read, and to write an argument while appreciating good literature.  If they could do that, they could pass a test.

Today, they still need to be able to accomplish those goals.  

But now, they ... and I.. are visibly accountable for seeing that it happens.  

That means I have to be a better barista than I was before.  I have to get the mix just right, taking advantage of each ingredient and using it to highlight its best features for the tastes of my customers.  That means integrating metacognition, specific reading skills that will help students grow, data for tracking, and differentiation to meet the needs of my diverse population. 

Even so, sometimes today with our high stakes pressures, literacy standards, and curriculum maps, we teachers still have to go with our gut as we mix our unique concoctions.  

My gut says that the venti cup can be too much.  

Less IS more, if the mix is right.

And so my students will have a demitasse, thank you very much, but end up with so much more lasting flavor.   

Keeping it fresh

The rapid pace of societal change, Dungeons and Dragons, primary sources, and the notion that aliens could have placed a nonferrous metal tracking devices in the body of an unsuspecting middle-aged woman.  It’s been a summer filled with teaching inspiration, despite my being out of commission for a few weeks with a knee replacement.

I am pondering how best to use this inspiration to motivate my less-than-enthusiastic, new freshmen.  Here’s what I am thinking as August 3 draws nearer:

Elements of video gaming-design, persistence, teamwork,  and mastering levels by simply reiterating their avatars’ adventures with a new life and new knowledge to be more successful- will have a place in my Writing Workshop this year.   I plan to use the unpredictability and fantasy elements of my sons’ vintage D and D books to create writing circles who will craft fantasy narratives from their avatars’ points of view.  Who says there is no time for PBL?  I’d rather have writers who are engaged and learning than robots that just practice test skills.

Learning how Millennials think and behave has caused me to refine some classroom practices to engage more students.   Millennials like to work in groups.  So I’ll be looking for more ways to crowd-source information and report and archive it in addition to using charts, posters, and digital discussions, on Today’s Meet or Canvas.

One way I am appealing to my Millennials’ visual needs is to integrate more images and videos.  Integrating primary sources provides inspiration that they will immediately connect with and be able to write about.  It also supports inference and argument.  The Library of Congress has excellent teacher resources on its website and regional workshops to help educators use them purposefully.  I will be presenting a session on writing narrative from primary sources in Bloomington this week for Indiana Writing Project.

Carving out time for students to think about their lives and reflect on their activities and interactions is another way to engage students.  I need to be sure I am allowing my kids time to think… to process.  After the surgeon removed the mysterious piece of metal that had somehow been lodged in my leg for the past ten years, I needed think time to ponder the possibilities.  And there were many!  Excellent fodder for creative writing.

Keeping it fresh.  Using my surroundings to inspire me for the coming year and new crop of students.  That’s what makes summertime so vital for teachers…  and for students.

A win--win for the Writing Workshop classroom








The Parent Coach Plan

A few weeks ago I read about a technique called "Two by Ten.” The idea was that a teacher should spend a few minutes each day for ten days interacting one-on-one with his or her most problematic students, not nagging or scolding, not even necessarily discussing school issues, but just talking.  The results reported were impressive: Troublesome students suddenly became more cooperative in class and acted out less.


To me, this is a clever way to connect with our male students without their risking losing face by becoming "buddy-buddy" with the teacher, as Ralph Fletcher suggests can easily happen in his book Boy Writers:  Reclaiming Their Voices .  Embed this strategy inside a writing or reading conference, where a secondary male student doesn't feel singled out amongst   his peers, and we have a win-win for all involved. 

Now, granted there would have to be some discussion of school-related issues; after all, it is a literacy conference. But that conference excuse, if you will, permits the conversation to go in another direction, perhaps a more personal one or one that is more human-centered and less educational goals centered.  And ultimately, it allows teacher-student conversation to turn to a more individual level.  Individual conversations are the foundation of building relationships.  And relationships often foster learning… and cooperation, says Professor Raymond Wlodkowski, author of the “Two by Ten” model.

Most of us are probably familiar with the premise: Get to know your students for better classroom management as espoused by Harry Wong and many others.  We  use interest inventories and other techniques to know our students.  We informally greet students at the classroom door each period and take a disruptive student into the hallway to ask what is going on instead of calling him out individually in front of his peers. But sometimes keeping 32 students - including several rambunctious boys- on task and learning can be a challenge.

It seems to me that in a class modeled on Writing Workshop principles, teachers can integrate “Two by Ten” quite easily without changing too much in our classroom practice.

One consideration I will need to make is my current seating chart where students are grouped into pods of fours.  I imagine that a student would be less likely to have a longer discussion in front of his three other group mates, so I may need to adjust my seating practices. 

If students were seated in three double rows, I could scoot up to each student on the aisle to ensure a little more comfort as we chat.  I imagine that the class seeing me roll on my mechanics' stool around the room and chatting with several students one-on-one, as I already do, would keep the sense of routine normal. The only difference would be the students I chose to talk with each day and the length of time I stayed chatting.  My normal philosophy is more One-Minute Teacher style to touch base with as many students as possible.  But this may not be the best use of my time. 

Spending another minute with problem students may be the investment that pays the most dividends for the entire class.

The circus has opened

My apathetic seniors.  My listless, sleepy crew that dutifully meanders into the classroom on Green Days, but only as close to the 8:20 bell as possible without being tardy.  My likeable slugs who rarely have their materials with them, who still haven’t gotten used to getting out their writer’s notebooks to answer the prompt written on the board every day since August 4, and yet who still gnaw at me to find a way to connect to them.

We have ditched July’s carefully crafted plan to appeal to popular culture with a Gothic unit and have shifted to the outdoors as a theme.  Anything related to outdoors, the one place most of them would rather be than stuck inside my concrete block walls, even though I have painstakingly plastered them with motivational posters, student work, inspiring quotes, class-generated anchor charts, and pictures of famous writers.   They couldn’t care less.

This week, like other hopeful highly effective teachers, I used the data I had collected from their pre-assessment to divide the pack into three smaller, more manageable groups, so it’s not so easy for them to snooze in the back.   And like a savvy teacher, I even remembered to document my use of data as evidence for my future evaluation.

Each group had a poem connected to the outdoors and a student whom I immediately proclaimed the expert in the group based on his 100% score on the poetry terms pretest. 

The gasps and groans commenced.  “How’d he get so smart?”  “ A hundred percent!”  “Are you kidding?” 

We had already done a model together with Elizabeth Bishop’s“The Fish.”  Three reads, a la Cris Tovani, and deeper each time: Once for what it says; once for what it means; and a third time, more deeply, for why it matters.  The why it matters part stumped them. Why would anyone care about an old battered fish and some fisherman/woman- they couldn’t decide- throwing it back?  Most of these kids had done that lots of times. 

Then Kim quietly offered a thought:  “It’s about respect.”

Heads turned.  Sleepy eyes opened.  “What are you thinking?” I asked her.

She elaborated, albeit tentatively: “It’s about respecting something. Even though it’s ugly and old, it can be beautiful.”

I nodded and smiled at my star.  Then we dug into the poem for evidence that would support Kim’s idea.  A few other stars found it while their peers nodded and smiled and copied down the evidence.

Later, as they read new poems in their groups, their interest fizzled with the third read.  Why does it matter to be “acquainted with the night?”  Why does it matter that “The Negro Speaks of Rivers?”  Why does an old root cellar matter?

Summoned to each group by the ensuing moans, I offered a little background about the poet or asked about the era in which he lived or suggested a part to reread.   Heads tilted and eyes shifted as students began thinking.  

Suddenly, the room changed.   It had come alive, as students blurted out ideas.  Higher order thinking ideas.  Ideas that connected a theme to the poem.  It was as if some worker had thrown the switch that illuminated each bulb in a random sequence around the three circles.  The circus was open for business!  Some students went back to the text, exclaiming that they had found evidence.  Other students gaped in amazement, then quickly jotted down notes. Everyone was engaged and amazed at their performance as a group.  They could analyze poetry!

http://hearingvoices.com/special/2006/circus/

 

All my carefully-crafted discussions about themes and characterization and conflict from the Gothic unit that had fallen flat now suddenly had impact and relevance in poetry, poetry about places these kids would rather be, and places that they know.

The circus is open! 

Now my new challenge: Keep the future acts exciting, the cotton candy deliciously fresh, and the timing just right to reach ever amazingly new heights.  That’s my ringmaster’s job.

 

http://hearingvoices.com/special/2006/circus/

 

 

 

 

Batter up… to the podium?

About fifteen years ago, I joined a church softball team.   My position was right field, the spot long-coveted by weak players who pray the entire game, dreading that a fly will veer so far toward the right field fence that the center fielder will not be able to dash over and snag it for the team.

No, I was not athlete.  I hadn’t played ball since I was in elementary school and could be talked into shagging baseballs out in the cornfield for my older brothers.  But I decided that my daughter who was taking Algebra II again needed to see her mom fail at something.  And what could be more public and humiliating than to fail at church softball, in front of people I would see on a regular basis and who would sympathetically cluck at me, rather than curse, when I struck out or jogged breathlessly to first base if the impossible actually happened and I hit the ball?

 

Probably like most people, I had spent the majority of my adult life engaged in activities and interests where I showed some proficiency.  And that expertise is what so deflated my daughter as she struggled with a subject she was not naturally gifted in, even though she was a “gifted” student.

I remembered my softball days today as I began searching for Socratic Seminar articles on overcoming the fear of public speaking for my handful of anxious students.  The tips in each article were essentially the same as those in the student text, so of not much help.  I cannily switched my search to YouTube, but with little success there, either.  I found ads or motivational TedTalks by coaches who clearly worked with highly proficient players.

That’s when I remembered another anecdote about my daughter. 

A few months ago, she shared with our writing critique group how she sometimes pauses the “Perfection Tape” that plays in her head when she begins a new piece:  She tells herself to create the worst piece of writing she possibly can.  Once that is on paper, the revisions come easily.  She has given herself permission to do a poor job; therefore, in her mind, it is acceptable as a first draft.

Her strategy is like when I tell my students to circle words they cannot spell.  It gives them permission to get the content onto paper and ignore conventions for the drafting stage. 

That’s when I had it:  I will schedule time for my Speech students to give the worst speech they can imagine.  Maybe we will even come up with a rubric for it. We could take the official speech rubric and negate it in as many ways as possible.  Then each student will have two minutes to try to outdo each other in the worst speech possible, as their first speech.  Of course, it won’t be graded, but it will allow them to mess up… and in a huge and public way, and with an appreciative audience.  Their second speech is bound to be better, now that they will have done their worst.

If it turns out the way my softball experience did, it will be an opportunity for nervous students to realize that even though we can sometimes look silly and inept, we can always improve.

Flipping success... or not

 

                In our faculty meeting, my new principal mentioned a study hall goal sheet that one teacher had brilliantly devised.   I decided to use that idea, too.  At the beginning of class, my study hall students in grades 9-12 must fill out a goal sheet for that day, so they are focusing on their homework during our time together and also building time management and organizational skills. At the end of the period, they check if they accomplished those goals and set new ones for that evening based on their leftover goals.   We talked about it as a devise to build their "Executive Functioning Skills."     Check out this freebie on TPT.

 

That leads me to consider the number of my students in my other classes who did not get their flipped assignments done last week.  Two students completed the flipped assignment in one class of sixteen students, and only 58% completed it in another. In my Speech classes that are open to all students in grades 9-12, three-fourths of the students completed the assignment. 

Those numbers make me wonder about the correlation between students’ success in a flipped format and their executive functioning skills.  If students are not organized or cannot manage their time well, I am thinking that the engagement value of a YouTube video, a Survey Monkey  survey or choice-related activity, no matter how entertaining or useful, will not magically create students who complete and submit all of their work. 

Granted, one reason so many did not complete the work could be because our delivery platform had changed over the summer, and I constructed a couple of tasks in a way  that might have been confusing for students who were not inclined to click more than twice.  But I wonder if another cause is that these basic students may have rarely been engaged or successful in the past.  So why should they be now just because the assignment is posted online?

Many years ago when I began teaching general education upperclassmen, I eliminated most homework other than long-term projects.  I found that these students, so used to little success in school anyway, simply did not do their homework.  Rather than their failing and learning nothing, or my being angry  every day or trying to swim upstream to create a completely new set of values for them, I switched my instructional model to be deeper with less homework.  We worked in class on chunks of text, instead of attempting to tackle the full text- which most weren’t reading anyway.  I left the remainder of the text as dessert for those who wanted more.  I used this same approach with success more recently in a school with higher poverty and where there was more trauma and drama in students' lives.

This morning, I posted a discussion on Flipped Learning Network  to see how others are using flipped formats with basic education students. Please join the conversation to share your successes and challenges with this population.

 I think I will also administer an anonymous survey on Monday and Tuesday to find out why some of my students didn’t complete their work on time.  If my survey reveals what I suspect- that they just didn’t care about doing the work for any number of reasons, then next week, I will have to entice them into the flip.

If they don’t have the organizational or process skills, that’s an easier fix.