 Mark Hicks. Pogo. Discovery Education Clip Art Our standardized testing, the MAP, is over for our students and teachers. Deep sighs of liberation can be heard reverberating through the walls of our buildings. Our teachers have accomplished a great deal this year. Together, we have embraced change and actively created positive change. It feels so good to be a part of school that bases it's decisions on what is best for kids and has created a school family that is tight-knit and nurturing. Our teachers have come together in an effort to improve student achievement in such a way that students were saying that they had never felt more relaxed before the MAP test or more prepared. You can't ask for more than that. No matter what the scores reveal come fall, we know that everyone gave their all to implement learning in such a way that students could be successful. We increased our rigor, discussed curriculum issues, and we used our state's standards as a guide as to what students should know in their grade level. These are just a very few of the things we have changed or improved. Are we where we want to be as far as improving ourselves as educators? No, we have a lot of growing to do. We are up to the challenge, in fact many of our teachers relish the challenge. So, in short, we are taking what is a bad NCLB situation and turning lemons into lemonade by changing in ways that we believe will educate our students the best. With our positive mindset concerning instruction and learning, I can't wait to see what next year brings. In the meantime, the testing season is not over, we have End-of-Course exams next week for high school students and the Stanford 10 for our K-2 students. I hope those students experience the same positiveness that our MAP testing students demonstrated. One thing is for sure, the entire district is supportive and cheering them on. Now, if you would like to hear something joyful, here is the beautiful sound of students enjoying a well-deserved break after our MAP testing was completed. I don't know a teacher who could listen to these sounds and not smile. ;) Add Comment Standardized Testing is a State of Mind 04/03/2012
 Mark Hicks. Real Pencil. Discovery Education Clip Art It's that time of year when the count down begins in schools to the day when standardized testing begins. Examiner's Manuals are being read, standards are being drilled, test prep is in full swing and tensions are high. While we can't do anything about the testing requirement, we can try to alleviate stress for ourselves, and more importantly for our students. First, let us address that the classroom tone and attitude concerning testing is set long before the month it is to begin. While test scores belong to the individual, I have found that to lessen test anxiety and promote a student-centered classroom, it works well if it is addressed as a team. We adopted the "We Are All in This Together" approach. Our motto became: "We are only as strong as our weakest link." We encouraged each other and when someone was weak in a subject or objective we all worked as a team to assist their learning. Having a support team during learning goes a long way in alleviating test anxiety. I thought I would share a few things below that have worked for me and my students to help bring out their best efforts while easing their anxiety. In the Fall: I believe that if students are taught core subject matter and how to think along with inquiry-based learning opportunities in order to flex their thinking abilities throughout the year, it eliminates last minute cramming of material and skills that create stress. Part of my first day of school speech would include telling students that one of my primary goals was to guide them in such a way that they could be presented any problem or assignment and be able to problem-solve and reason out an answer(s) on their own, as well as, justify or explain their answer. As I mentioned above, we begin talking about the test in the fall when the previous year's scores are released. I cannot not stress enough the importance of talking to each child privately about their scores. Many times the scores are discussed with parents during conferences, and the student is left out of the loop. I like to discuss the scores with each child and talk about their Achievement Level and how far/close they were away from being up in the next level or how far they scored in Advanced. We discuss goals for the year based on their performance. I create a poster with a bar graph of the Achievement Levels called, "If We Had Been a Team Last Year" and it shows how our classroom scores are dispersed throughout the Achievement Levels. I circle the top two levels, Proficient and Advanced and write "Our Goal". This poster hangs in the front of the room as a reminder and incentive all year until testing time. We refer regularly to our goal as a class and each child knows their private goal and where they are on the bar graph because of our private discussion. During the Year: Knowledge is power. Teach students about foundational items. They will take this knowledge and use it to exceed your expectations.
Caliri, Jamie; Duck Studio. Fallon Worldwide. United Airlines Commericial. "Dragon." 2006. Soyeon Kim; Duck Studio. United Airlines Print Ad. "Time to Fly." 2006 Songs: I'm sharing the following song, although I haven't used it in the classroom, I can definitely see it's potential to encourage students. Music and songs are great ways to build team spirit, and boost moods and attitudes. The video below is using the song, One Shining Moment by David Barrett to show the highlights of the 2012 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. The NBA has also used this song for the last 24 years in the Final Four clips of the championship team. Here is a link to the lyrics to One Shining Moment, which beautifully fit to encourage students. To take this idea even further and personalizing it, a video clip montage of the students working hard all year would bring the idea of their hard work paying off home in a huge way. The bottom line is we can't change our states' testing requirements or regulations, but we do have control over our classroom attitude and students' perception of the assessment. Plus promoting a positive testing state of mind can only bring out the best in our students during assessment time.  Microsoft Clip Art Years ago, I used to give a presentation called, Graphic Organizers: Teaching Above & Beyond Simple Recall. The gist of the presentation was the importance of moving students from dependent learners to independent learners and using graphic organizers with students in order to encourage them to think above simple recall. "The principle goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done - men who are creative, inventive and discoverers." ~ Piaget This is the type of life and learning experience I always wanted to offer my students. I wanted them to have the chance to carve new paths and travel down unfamiliar roads. Whether they chose to be a leader or follower was up to them, but at least they would have options if they had the cognitive skills to choose their direction and to make that decision for themselves. Using graphic organizers opens a door for students and allows them to think things through in an organized way. When explaining graphic organizers I kept it simple and narrowed it down to four main purposes. Graphic organizers can help with: 1. Addition of details to information 2. Explaining and contrasting of two or more concepts 3. Visualizing an image of material to be learned 4. Associating new material with past knowledge I introduced graphic organizers to students using the following increments:
a. Teach Students When & How To Choose Graphic Organizers b. Labeling Graphic Organizers Appropriately There's a time and place for using graphic organizers. With that in mind, take things a step further than just providing graphic organizers for students to complete. Give students real power and teach them about the types of graphic organizers, their purpose and their level in Bloom's Taxonomy. Here is an example of a chart I used with my former students. Scroll down the page to see the organizers listed in categories. This flowchart from Enchanted Learning would be a good resource for older students in choosing the appropriate graphic organizer as well. When students know the types, their purpose and their cognitive level, they can use graphic organizers effectively to increase their higher level thinking. Here are some methods or tools students used when creating graphic organizers: Hand-Drawn Graphic Organizers. Getting in the habit of thinking and planning with graphic organizers helped them immensely when it came time for standardized testing. Answering those questions in the boxes on the MAP (Missouri Assessment Program) were not as daunting when they recognized the opportunity to use graphic organizers and which ones to implement for their purpose. Microsoft Word - Students would use the Draw tools and shapes or create a table and type in their criteria and information. We also used Inspiration, which our district purchased and Bubbl.us, which is free. Now there are many free tools similar to Inspiration that students can use: Some free online options are: Cacoo Diagramly Grapholite MindMeister Popplet Mind42 The second sub-step and an added benefit of teaching students how to create their own graphic organizers is that it definitely teaches them to label their graphic organizer correctly or even to remember to label it. It also allows for a variety of graphic organizers to be used. In addition to graphic organizers my students would also create rubrics and scoring guides in matrix form using Rubistar. This helped them learn to read a matrix, which can be confusing to students. Rubista has a wide variety of rubric projects. After choosing one to fit our project, students would type in their name and zip code. Then they would choose the criteria they wanted to include. They clicked Submit and there was their rubric! Instead of saving this into the Rubistar program, students would highlight the rubric and paste it into Microsoft Word and modify to fit their needs and print. They also created scoring guides and rubrics using Microsoft Word. The whole idea is that students learn so much more deeply when they are creating their own learning and assessment tools. Mrs. Lisa Foster's Fourth Grade class had a special visitor on Wednesday, December 14th, librarian, Marilyn Woolard, manager of the Naylor branch of the Doniphan-Ripley County Library. Mrs. Woolard came to read the Chris Van Allsburg story, "The Polar Express". Mrs. Foster's class is also enjoying Polar Express activities to correlate with the story.  Here are some additional Polar Express Activities for some Christmas learning fun: The Polar Express Jeopardy Game The Polar Express Read by Lou Diamond Phillips at Storyline Online Chris Van Allsburg site This Cape Girardeau teacher has comprised these Polar Express lessons for different grade-levels. The Polar Express Activities - Busy Teacher's Cafe The Polar Express Activities & Games The Polar Express Activities & Lesson Plans Polar Express Resources - Teacher's Mouse Pad Ride the Polar Express The Polar Express Teacher's Guide Polar Express Train Ticket Polar Express Math Problems - MathStories.com Kindergarten Polar Express - SMART Exchange Polar Express Shape Book Polar Express Word Search Little Giraffes Polar Express Activities Veteran's Day Program 11/11/2011
Yesterday was our Veteran's Day program produced by our Music teacher, Brittany Williams and our students. I am so proud to be a part of a school district that honors our veterans and those men and women currently serving our country. Here are a few pictures from a few parts of our program. New Teachers and Quality Teaching 09/25/2011
This past week I was honored to be a presenter at the New Teacher Assistance Workshop at Southeast Missouri University. There were about 100 new teachers from southeast Missouri school districts in attendance. This workshop satisfied the state New Teacher Assistance Program required for the PC 1 Certification. These teachers listened to presentations throughout the day concerning different topics pertinent to new educators. The topic of my session was Quality Teaching is the Key to School Improvement. Since my session was an hour in length I narrowed my topic down to a few key areas that I feel are important to being a quality teacher. These areas are: Classroom Management, Teachers as Learners, Rigor & Depth of Knowledge, Creativity and Data Analysis & Collection. While I don’t claim to know everything, I was happy to pass along a few tips or ideas that have worked for my students and me and who knows, perhaps there might be an idea here that even a veteran teacher could take away. I began with classroom management because it is the backbone of instruction and something that cannot be glossed over if a teacher wishes to have a classroom atmosphere conducive to learning. My personal classroom management style is one that I call seamless or invisible. I believe in taking the time to make sure that students thoroughly learn procedures and expectations so that our classroom can function productively and autonomously. I recommended ideas to the new teachers from Rick Smith’s book, Conscious Classroom Management. One of the many ideas I learned from Rick when he spoke to a group of S.T.A.R.R. ( (Select Teachers as Regional Resources) teachers a few years ago was to use rubrics to curb behaviors. It makes perfect sense, we use rubrics for assessing other concepts, why not behaviors? For instance when it was necessary for my students to line up to go to another destination in the school building, I would say, “Show me a 1 Line” and hold up my hand to indicate the number 1. They would line up facing forward. To get this rubric started with my students I asked them to model a “1 Line”, with 1 being the perfect line. I took a picture of the “1 Line”. Then I asked them to show me a “2 Line” with a couple students facing the back of the line and I took a picture. Then I took a picture of students modeling a “3” and “4 Line”. From then on, all I had to do was to hold up my hand to show the number 1 and students would know what I meant. I didn’t have to say anything. This rubric idea also worked with other classroom areas. I used it for messy desks and took pictures of different stages from messiness to neatness. Students loved the modeling of behaviors and no one could ever argue that they didn’t know how to behave well. In fact students began to police each other. Having procedures in place allows teachers to have student-centered classrooms, literature circles and reading groups with ease and makes room for doing fun things while learning like playing music for transitions. I love music and played it throughout the day. When we had our silly moments together sharing a joke or funny story, a simple tug on my ear meant that we were to get back down to business. Many procedures are silent actions like that which students understand. Classroom management cannot be underestimated, particularly; if you want to have an engaging, student-centered learning atmosphere. The next subject I talked to the new teachers about was the importance of being a learner. I advised them to make time to learn and expand their thinking about the field of education. I encouraged them to be a teacher who does more than just study the textbook to learn the material to pass along to students, but to do as we tell students to do, take their learning into their own hands. Students need to view their teachers as learners. I love the following quote by Todd Whitaker, “A GOOD teacher has a love of teaching. A GREAT teacher has a love of learning.” I explained to these teachers the power of Twitter, a PLN and that they could be a part of a group of learners from across the globe and have access to the best professional development. I shared some of my PLN’s resources that could help them as new teachers, such as; Cybrary Man’s site and Hashtag page, the Educator’s PLN website, Lisa M. Dabbs’ New Teacher Bootcamp and new teacher chat (#ntchat). The third theme I discussed was rigor and Depth of Knowledge. NCLB requires that states choose an alignment tool and Missouri uses Norm Webb’s Depth of Knowledge or DOK. I displayed a version of my DOK poster that I created for my former fourth grade students. Once I learned about Depth of Knowledge, I couldn’t help but think how powerful it would be in the hands of my students if they, too, understood the levels of rigor. I taught them the four levels and soon they had an understanding of rigor in assessment questions that they had not had before. The transformation in their understanding was phenomenal. Students typically think about assessments in terms of them being “hard” or “easy.” “Hard” meaning they didn’t know the answer and “easy” meaning that they knew the answers. Learning DOK helped them think about the complexity of questions and how much thinking was required. I showed the new teachers how I taught my students the three different question types and how to write questions. Students who can write complex questions about a topic or subject can also answer questions about that subject. I showed them an example of a couple of the first questions my students wrote about a chapter in Missouri history. I explained how I soon began choosing students’ questions to use on our assessments. This practice was powerful in many ways from students learning questions types and the way to answer questions differently to thinking about writing good questions to the positive self-esteem of having their questions used on an assessment. I also discussed the importance of moving away from traditional study guides where students look up short answers and fill-in-the blank-style questions only to regurgitate the answers on a similar test. I encouraged them to teach note-taking and making students responsible for their own learning for it is the students’ education. I also touched on the matter of Creativity and allowing students the freedom to think and use their imaginations. I showed them one of my favorite commercials from Sherwin-Williams where paint sample cards morph into all types of things. I always think about the creative minds that came up with that idea. Many of the jobs our students will have do not exist yet. If these new teachers stay in the profession for thirty years it will be around the year 2041. Can you imagine the jobs that will exist in thirty years? Students must be prepared to be able to think creatively and to be problem-finders and solvers. I reminded these teachers that it’s important to model thinking and to show students that it’s ok to change your mind in the creative process and that mistakes are important learning opportunities. The final area I discussed was the importance of Data Analysis and Collection. In these days of accountability there is no lack of data available. I urged these new teachers to do something with their classroom data, as well as, their state assessment data. Many times data is collected, filed and forgotten. In order to determine students’ strengths, weaknesses and to assist them in improving skills, teachers have to analyze data and then make a plan about how to go about assisting students. Data has no value if it’s not used to help teachers and students’ improve. I suggested using Google Docs to maintain their classroom data, and LiveBinders to collect and store classroom resources. I showed them a sample of how to collect reading data for students in grades K-6 and explained how powerful data over time for a student could be. As the session closed, I expressed to them what an awesome responsibility and honor it was to be a classroom teacher. I advised about the importance of how a word from them could change a student’s life and how rewarding it is to have a student return to you years later and tell you that you made a difference. There’s so much I wanted to tell those bright new teachers about the education profession, but that would have taken much more time than an hour or a few hours. I know they will learn just as many of us have that it’s the best profession in the world, with benefits that far outweigh the stress and along the way they will learn as much as their students do.  Created by Pam Lowe using photo at Photo8.com As a teacher and a learner, I’m fascinated with the process of creating and the changes that take place along the way to the creation or final product. It’s something an artist, writer, and dreamer understands. It’s easy as teachers to concentrate on making sure that students learn facts and information. This type of learning involves recall, and that’s only one facet of being a learner. There’s a place for recall in learning because there are facts and information you just have to know; such as multiplication facts and the alphabet. There’s also a big ol’ creative learning phenomenon to experience. There comes a point when we need to inspire students to ask themselves, “What am I going to do with my knowledge?” In Sir Ken Robinson’s talk about “Collaboration in the 21st Century”, he believes that we need to make innovation a habit. We can teach students the writing process and give them a topic, but as Robinson says in the video, we cannot begin to know what they will write or the thoughts they will have while in the rough draft process. It’s this phase of learning that we must begin to shift toward to encourage the creative process. As teachers we need to share and model our creative processes with students. We need to show examples of our writing and explain how our ideas started out in one direction and ended up in another. We need to point out how we made changes along the way. In my spare time I like to paint and draw. I can honestly say that not one piece has ever turned out as I had pictured in my mind’s eye before I started a project, because I made changes, and creative decisions along the way. Last night I decorated a cake for a young girl turning 16 years old this weekend. Below are the pictures of the final products. The birthday girl wanted a purse cake and loves pink and purple. Those were the concrete ideas. In my mind, I had the cake pictured as having leopard-spotted trim. As the cake and the accessories evolved, white beads seemed to tie into the color palette better. While creating the perfume bottle, the original thought was to make the bottle taller, but as I was sculpting the fondant the shorter bottle style evolved and the idea of naming the perfume after her came to me. I knew I wanted to include the number 16 in the accessories. I made the purple numbers and decided that it needed a little punch and included little pink flowers dots. It’s this kind of thought processing that needs to be taught and modeled for students. And then step back and give students control of the process while they create.      Students need to take their knowledge and use what Robinson calls, “applied imagination” to create. Understanding that changes and modifications are natural in the thinking process will help students to realize that they can create and they can accomplish great things. Students need to know that it’s ok if something tried doesn’t work and that; in itself, is a learning opportunity. Creative students are autonomous learners and problem-solvers. They become adults who welcome challenges and won’t let set-backs and roadblocks stop them in their endeavors because they will know it's all a part of the journey. Isn't that what we all want for our students, for them to love the learning process and enjoy the ability to make decisions, revisions, and problem-solve? It’s seems to me that is our ultimate goal as educators. Engaging Students with Literature 09/01/2011
Welcome to our new curriculum resource site, called Curriculum Road. I will be sharing and posting about resources, and ideas concerning learning for K-12. Some days it will be an elementary resource, other days it may be a high school or K-12 resource. I hope you find the resources here helpful. If you are a Facebook user, you can also "Like" my Master Learners Resource page and receive different resources daily. This is a component of my Master Learners site for teachers. Today I want to share a video from Annenberg Media about how students can engage with each other over literature. This video is of Ms. Latosha Rowley's fourth/fifth grade multiage classroom at Indianapolis Public Schools Center for Inquiry. Although this example is of an elementary classroom, this type of engagement should take place in the K-12 classroom and in all subjects. As you watch the video, Building Community (It's about 19 minutes long) realize that these types of discussions require ground rules such as respecting each other and others' ideas. It takes time to build a community of learners, and create student-centered learning, but it is so worth the effort. Some things to think about: Sometimes it's familiar and easy to use whole-group discussion when discussing stories and literature. As you watch the video think about your students and how you could promote small-group discussions. How will you decide when you should participate in a group discussison and when you should just observe the exchange of ideas and thoughts? Do you use rubrics for assessings discussions, projects and writings? When thinking of beginnning classroom discussions you may want to get your feet wet with Literature Circles. Our class called them 'Book Clubs'. When I began using Literature Circles with my students, I used the Literature Circle Jobs at MrColey.com. Each job details what is expected of each student participating in the literature circle. This is a great way to get started and allows students to learn what is expected in discussion and how to ask those higher level questions. After a period of time, I moved away from the jobs to allow students more freedom in their discussion in order to grow as thinkers. On his Literature Circle page, Mr. Coley explains how he set up his circles and how he assigned points for each job. I divided my literature circles by ability and students drew jobs out of a basket each week. They could not be the same job twice in a row. I also included a Peer Assessment for the discussion to go along with my observation assessment. We created wikis for reflection of each group's story, but this could easily be done with writing journals. We kept all of our job assignments in a folder for each group as well.  Students engaged in their Book Club. To learn more about using student-centered discussions in K-12 classrooms, Stephanie Harvey and Harvey “Smokey” Daniels have written a new book called, Comprehension and Collaboration: Inquiry Circles in Action. Here is a video overview at Heinemann Publishers. For more Food for Thought, check out Scott McLeod's Mind Dump: Questions That Will Transform Classrooms. |  Pam Lowe
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