New Year's Eve

I'll admit: I'm usually fairly calm and collected, but tonight I find myself with a deep pit in my stomach and am almost too nervous to blog.

A long time ago, a favorite English teacher told me that writing is never finished, only published. I feel the same about preparing for the new year. I do not feel done preparing and thus I do not feel prepared, but I can't imagine what more I could have done to get ready!

I'll just conclude with a quote from my neighboring 4th grade teacher, Ms. R----.

"Ready or not, here they come!"

The Vocab Plan - 1.0

So, I shared my excitement for my vocabulary plan with other teachers in 4-5-6. They like the idea and want to adopt it, but thought that 50 words/week might be a little astronomical. I didn't want to lower my expectations. After a conversation with Mrs. AB (Master Teacher, Ret.) it was realized that we could start with 30 and amp it up if the kids prove themselves capable. So here, for your enjoyment, is the Plan. Comments are very welcome.

Much thanks to "Bringing Word to Life" and "Teaching Vocabulary to Improve Reading Comprehension," from which I derived many of the activities.

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4-5-6 Vocab Plan – 1000 New Words!

This program is designed to use 20-35 minutes per day, ideally occurring after recess. The words can be drawn from the OCR selection vocab, the OCR selection, and graded/leveled high-frequency word lists. Effectively, this will become my workshop.

Monday – Intro – The 30 Words of the Week
1. Students see just the word (copy to first side of flashcards) and a visual
representing the word
2. Students guess what it means (orally) using affixes/roots, etc.
3. Students see the word used in a sentence, make a second prediction
4. Students are given a useful definition and a Spanish synonym (finish
flashcard)

Homework
Students draw their own visuals onto flashcards and complete 2 activities using all 30 words

Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday – Build Meaning, Play With Words
1. (10 min) skill building lesson on words (roots, affixes, context clues, etc.)
2. (25 min) Using a different set of words each day, students play with meanings of 10 words.
a. Early in the year – Activities are done whole-class
b. Later in the year – Students run activities in small-groups

Homework
Students complete 2-3 activities using 10 new words + 5 review

Friday - Quiz and Cumulative Review

1. (15 min) Students take a 15 question (10 new, 5 review) quiz and correct
2. (20 min) Students review past weeks’ words

Homework – General Review Activity

Activity List

*and why! : They key to all these activities is not simply that students complete them, but that they are pushed to explain their answers. That’s why, after modeling them early in the year, students should conduct the activities themselves in small groups.

O: Oral, W: Written, TPR: Total Physical Response

• Match my word (O/W)
Teacher/leader gives a single near-synonym word, students race to match, can lead to powerful chants

• Which one? (O/W)
Students are faced with a usage question centering on two words:
Who watches a ball game? “Spectator” or “Inspector”

• Tea Party (TPR)
Students group and introduce their words, forming word “cliques”
“We’re the tired clique, all our words have to do with people who are sleepy, bored, or worn out.”

• Spectrums (O/W)
Students arrange words on a given spectrum:
How much energy would it take to run, race, ride, walk, slide, eat?
How happy are you if you are gleeful, cheery, frowning, miserable, joyous?

• That Could Be Launched (O)
When I saw a word, you say, “That could be launched!” (or not)
Alternatives: Eaten, Used in Class, Sold for $$$, Worn, etc.

• Favorite Word (O/W)
Students pick one each week, applaud for it and explain their reason.

• The Motions (TPR)
Students design and memorize motions that relay the meaning of the words, recalling them on cue

• Have you ever? (O/W)
Have you ever been exhausted?
Answers start – “Yes, I was exhausted when… “

• Charades (TPR)
Students act out words for each other while teams try to guess.

• Finish my thought…. (O/W)
They asked the virtuoso to play an encore because…

• Pictionary (O)
Students draw words for each other in competitive race.

• Frequent Contact (O/W)
Students sort words into three columns, based on their connection to a word from within each section. E.G. “Teenager, Rock Star, Astronaut” or “Teacher, Tailor, Spy”

• Buzz! (O)
Teacher/Leader starts telling a story, when the student knows what the word is, they raise their hand and say “Buzz!”

• Graphomania! (W)
Students generate their own words using roots and compounds


General Review

WordFinder – Find our words in new stories

SortSortSort – Using massive word wall – From parts of speech -> synonym/antonym

StoryBuilder – Use as many words as possible to make a story

“I Spy” / “5 questions” – Students quiz each other with Yes/No questions to figure
out mystery word

Make Word Posters – Trees of root words (photo) or prefix-families, etc.

Crossword Puzzles – Can be made online

Strong Differentiation, Not Perpetual Triage

This comment is so discussion worthy that I’m going to move it up here…

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"...I feel that the strides made in the accelerated class came only by stripping the remedial class of the models of progress and success needed to maintain their motivation."

The accelerated students deserve to be fully challenged to learn as much as possible, as quickly as possible. They do not attend school to serve as "models of progress" or to help other students "maintain their motivation." While it is unfortunate that the remedial students failed to progress, it is unacceptable to impede the more advanced students in order to help the remedial ones.

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As one of the school’s GATE (Gifted Ed.) coordinators and, even more so, as a former GATE student, I have to recognize a deep sympathy with this comment. Saying that it is “unacceptable to impede the more advanced students in order to help the remedial ones,” is a laudable goal, a perfect world of differentiation where all students are moving their fastest all the time, but it is not my world, at least not yet.

Push a novice teacher far enough and they will admit that they are constantly performing a sort of educational triage, a bell-shaped investment of our time and focus that seeks to better as many students as much as possible and consistently under-serves the outliers. As we get better at our craft, we develop systems and strategies that let us be in three places at once. In a brilliant lesson, for example, the Master Teacher delivers great, brief instruction to the whole class and enraptures the middle masses in purposeful practice, while the s/he flies off to challenge the top and then carefully re-teach the bottom. I know this is possible, I’ve heard a number of real teachers talk about really doing it. But it requires a vast foundation of class culture, resources and time that new, less-skilled, or lazy practitioners just don’t have.

Leveling offers an easy out, a short-cut, around this challenge. However, I've come to appreciate that it is our short-cut not the students’. Rather than simply providing access to an advanced curriculum for our successful students, we must see that we are trying to ease the intense demands that strong differentiation places on our practice. When the effects of such an effort are consistently positive or at least neutral towards student performance, it is fine. When it results in the widening of achievement gaps, it quickly becomes “unacceptable.”

We cannot (and I can no longer) pretend that students, even 4th and 5th graders, do not see the labels we fix on them with leveled classes. We should not assuage our discomfort by telling ourselves that they already know who is smart and who is not. It is one thing to suspect you're a dunce, it is quite another to have your teacher pin the badge on your chest.

Nor should we reassure ourselves that this is some sort of necessary evil. We have chosen to teach in these extraordinary situations, where a 5th grade class might easily have students at five grades of reading and math, and these are our challenges not the kids’. Triage is for the incompetent and insecure. Even if we are “in the trenches,” it should not be an institutionalized practice.

For me, the real solution comes in more time for math. The only way for me to offer my struggling students both the grade-level education they deserve and the remedial education they need is by increasing their time for math. Before school, after school, there's easily two more hours in every day. So until I learn to differentiate with the best of them, I'll be sacrificing my sanity and sleep, but not my students' self-esteem.

A Tale of Two Classes or is it all in the STARs?

The Tests came back. My take is that the sharply contrasting results are a double-edged sword, a fanfare of encouragement for what was done well and a vicious indictment of our mistakes.

In January, we leveled the math classes; one became an accelerated math class and the other a remedial one. One class gained, on average 24 scale score points (5-10%) but the other class lost, on average the same amount. More meaningfully, 15 students in one class gained a rank (below basic -> basic, etc.) and 12 in the other lost one. The accelerated class moved 8 students onto grade level and 3 students from proficient to advanced. (Satisfying our AYP!) The remedial class saw 8 students fall from below basic to far below basic. (Reducing our API!)

Across both classes, the average student who improved did so by almost 50 points, but the average student who declined did so by the same amount!

Looking at my own role, I would say I particularly praised 5 students this year. 3 of those students lead the improvement column with the fourth only two more behind. J---‘s scores rose by 137 points, C---‘s rose by 118 (35%!!!), E---‘s rose by 81, G---‘s rose by 70, and R---‘s by 48. On the flip side, I memorably allowed myself to get frustrated with 4 students. They lead the decline column even more consistently. M---‘s scores declined by 87 points, V---‘s scores declined by 76 points, D---‘s by 65, and F----‘s by 58. G----, whose conspicuous removal from my math class was covered in Mama knows best, lost 43 points. (He lost 56 points in ELA, declining from Advanced to Basic!)

Certainly, I can see a very positive way to view these results: The students who benefited from the accelerated class did so because they were finally able to move at a strong pace and cover all the material for this year. The students who declined did so because the gap between their abilities and the test is only getting bigger, not because they were devastated by being lumped into the Dumb Class. My praise and frustration could also be seen as symptomatic rather than causative or perhaps it only sharpened ascents and descents that were already underway.

Critically, however, I cannot avoid the consistent mapping of praise and put-down onto student performance. It is a far more consistent indicator than anything else I can see or remember. I feel as though I can now quantify the effects of calling one student “Professor” and losing my cool with another. And I don’t like it. Likewise, I feel that the strides made in the accelerated class came only by stripping the remedial class of the models of progress and success needed to maintain their motivation. It is not acceptable to bring 50% of our students up to par; the mission of TFA is not "One day most children..."

I take away from this analysis some deep misgivings about leveling but a tremendous belief in the power of praise. I’m now spending some of my time in Phonics land reading “Tribes” and trying to figure out how to create a more praise-full classroom. Comments on all this are particularly welcome.

Open Court! Let my children read!

When AB was in Phonics land… let my children read…
Oppressed so hard he could not stand… let my children read…
Come down, lit’rates, way down to Phonics land…
Tell old trainer: let my children read…

I’m back in the anti-classroom, the Professional Development training hall. This week I’m learning all about my district’s scripted reading program, Open Court. I seem to have spent most of today writhing in my chair, as the trainer made supposition after assumption about research that I simply cannot agree with.

Open Court and the research backing it up seems to be trying to convince me that actually reading is rather unnecessary for the purpose of becoming a better reader. What kids really need, we’re told, is simply explicit, direct instruction on the process of reading. “Effective teaching” they like to call it, as if what those-who-dare-oppose-Open-Court are doing is obviously “ineffective teaching.”

Apparently, students only need to read about three times a week, the rest of the time they should be filling out worksheets and listening to me talk about how good I am at reading. When it comes to actually encountering literature, I’ve been told that exposure to a variety of texts is incidental, something best left to the haphazard world of homework and Done Early assignments. Instead, we should use our precious instruction time to read and reread the same (unapproachable, dull, culturally irrelevant) Open Court text, building “fluency.”

Fluency is the desired product of learning phonics, it is the ability to “decode” written words into supposedly comprehensible speech. Its mechanical nature is exemplified in the fact that we measure it in words-per-minute. Fluency-pushing researchers notice an inarguable correlation between fluency and comprehension scores but then forget the tenet of statistics : correlation is not causation. Seeing the supposed-success of fluency, they seem to assume that a lack of knowledge about the inner-linguistic-workings of the English language (phonemes, morphemes et al.) is really why Johnny can't read.

That’s. Just. It. Yes, my students are low in fluency (as well as everything else) but it is not fluency that holds these kids back. It is not a lack of appreciation of the schwa sound that keeps my children from understanding the newspaper. It is the fact that even those who decode the word devious don’t know what it means.

Take Juan, for instance, from my class last year. Juan decodes words at the rate of 100 per minute, only about 20% below the average child his age. Surprise! Juan has only been here in the U.S. for two years and he doesn’t understand more than 30 of the words he decodes. Juan decodes passages brilliantly without ever trying to comprehend the sentences coming out of his mouth.

Does Juan need more phonics? Does he need to know about consonant digraphs, schwas, and r-controlled vowels? No, no, no. Juan needs vocabulary and Juan isn’t going to get vocabulary reading the same incomprehensible story over and over and over. The same is true for the vast majority of kids in my class. They need to words, words, words not skills, skills, skills. Following the adage, we are teaching children to fish but never taking them to the water!

Good readers read, not decode. They spend time with stories, characters, and thus words they love, not those they hate and cannot begin to understand. I’m convinced that my kids are never going to become good readers until we let them read. Besides, with or without phonics, students who aren't allowed books can't read.

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P.S. I’m trying to create a massive vocabulary program for my class next year, with goals of learning 50 words a week and covering our ceiling in a massive word wall. Anyone with advice, activities, or word lists is most invited to let me know.

Back to the Trenches...

Back to the Trenches…

2 weeks, folks, 2 weeks.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what’s going to change in my classroom next-cum-this year. Here’re a few:

Plans, Plans, Plans

Last year, I had 3 days to set-up my classroom, long-term plan, and familiarize myself with my curriculum. Needless to say, pretty much all I did was get butcher-paper on some walls and Xerox some diagnostic assessments. This year I have plans. Plans, plans and more plans. I’ve planned out every week of the year for math, science, social studies, writing and English Language Development. I’ve got plans for the process of introducing roles and groups, I’ve got plans for my running program, I’ve got plans for our 50-word-a-week vocabulary program. Yep. Good thing everything in 5th grade generally runs according to plan.

Structure and Systems

I needed my one-year of being nice, loose and affirming. A one-year nod to the ideal world where all children learn because they know it’s what’s good for them. This year they will learn because they will be swept up in such vast systems of classroom and school culture that they will have no choice. Last year I was a swan leading my ducklings along the quiet pool of knowledge. I guided them because I was more beautiful, much bigger and could squawk louder. This year, we are on a small boat in the roaring rapids, with my hand on the rudder. Go ahead, kiddy, jump off and swim on your own. I dare ya.

Fun

I’ll admit: Last year, I didn’t do nearly enough to make coming to school fun. I was intimidated by the curriculum and was always striving for the TFA power-word “relentless.” I forgot that it’s the breaks in monotony, the field trips and game days, that really make the kids love school. So this year will have more field trips, more games, more time outside, more science experiments, more movies and music, more art. You know…more being kids. Don’t tell the district.

More, more, more

No more pretending that an hour a day of math and three hours a day of English are going to catch anyone up. Our kids need more. Not more of the same, either. Don’t tell my union, but I’m offering three more hours a week of reading and two more of math. We’re going to read whole books, put on plays, run businesses and map the school. My kids are going to realize that they can do Shakespeare and that Math Rules the World.

Consistency

I know that my students need variety and that I must constantly continue to improve my practice. However, now I have a vision of what I want my classroom to look like at the end of the year and I know what I need to do on Day One to get there. I am certainly still open to mid-year changes in systems and pedagogy, but hopefully it will be more of an exception than the rule.

10 Characters

Don’t worry, starting next week, I will be back in my classroom getting ready for the year and the posts about professional development will cease. Before that though…

First, credit where credit is due. I am currently taking a training at an un-named private Jesuit college in the Bay Area that has been, for the most part, excellent. We have been treated like professionals and given lectures with references to Plato and Lysistrata. We thought and talked about the interpretive rhetoric we cast into our teaching of history. I learned some new history and gained a valuable perspective on how I understand it! That pure academic part of my brain hasn’t purred so contentedly in a year. It is possible, folks. Even the food has been good.

Today, however, we took a break from the quality and spent a whole eight-hours pretending to be our kids, all in order to learn a teaching practice that could have been well-taught in an hour and a half. Glue, scissors, and markers were involved, I’ll leave it there.

All this time did afford me the chance to spy on my fellow teachers and I’ve decided that teachers in professional development trainings can be categorized into the following 10 types.

Sincere Sally – Sally believes that this training will transform her practice. She sits in the front row, nods constantly, takes avid notes, and is the first to “Shhhh” or glare at talking teachers. Sally’s are generally good, save for their willingness to shield bad instructors from righteous criticism.

Prickly Paul – Paul is a 20-year veteran or newbie-know-it-all. Either way, he’s not happy about being here and doesn’t see the worth of this training. He comes late, refuses to participate and sits in the back in order to whisper criticism to his fellow teachers.

Eccentric Emily – Probably well–meaning, Emily asks questions and offers comments that make you think, “This person is allowed to teach children?” She generally wears teacher-clothing gone to a horrible extreme and leaves you worrying about just how far from her you really are. You guiltily spy her sitting alone at lunch but nonetheless eat with your own teacher-clique.

Happy Harry – Always glad to be here, Harry goes through even the worst trainings with a smile on his face. You might complain to him afterwards and he’ll completely agree with your frustrations, but still keep on smiling. Often friends with Sincere Sally, they form that front-and-center table of do-gooders who make you feel bad for not participating like you were told.

Busy Brenda – Brenda has way too much going on to be stuck at this training. Because she’s so much busier than any other teacher, she believes it’s okay for her to grade, plan, or balance her checkbook during the sessions. She haphazardly tries to keep pace with the class but inevitably asks a question that flagrantly reveals her lack of attentiveness.

Dumb David – David just doesn’t get it. You don’t understand how someone so slow can keep up with students. You feel bad for judging a colleague’s intelligence but geeeez. Dumb David’s come in two species: introverted (only revealing their confusion during group work) and extroverted (heralding their misunderstandings with loud and awkwardly timed questions.)

Cash-Cow Charles – Fashionably dressed and always on his cell-phone, Chuck is a young teacher whose tax bracket makes these trainings more lucrative. He lives for his night-life and thus doesn’t mind twiddling his thumbs all day to make the stipend.

Sleeping Sarah – Five minutes into the training, Sarah is well on her way to nodding off. She’s friends with Charles and they were out late last night. Every once in a while, she’ll drink some coffee and show her true colors as another character.

Talking Terry – Terry loves to talk. In participative trainings, she’s that one, with her hand constantly in the air and with a suggestion or anecdote to follow every point. Non-participative trainings drive her wild, she whispers constantly and explodes with pent-up loudness during breaks.

Wise Wanda – The teacher we aspire to be. Wanda is funny, quiet, and as attentive as will be productive. She gives sage advice and interpretations when it is polite to whisper in your ear. Best of all, she manages to be at the front of the buffet line without uncouthly racing out the door.