Some Rules Stand the Test of Time

These rules stand the test of time -- in fact, we’re almost positive they were hanging on classroom walls when we were BHS students. Classroom expectations like these have been an essential part of teachers’ classroom management plans for decades, and even centuries. The rules on this list are all things we expect from our students, and from one other.

It’s no secret that the world of education is changing and will continue to change as we respond to the evolving demands of the world beyond school for our students. According to the World Economic Forum, “By one popular estimate, 65% of children entering primary school today will ultimately end up working in completely new job types that don’t yet exist.” Problem solving, collaborating, and communicating are the norm in classrooms these days and are skills much more vital than fact regurgitation or rote memorization.

As we change and adapt our teaching and grading practices to prepare students for these new workforce demands, however, we recognize that the time-tested rules for student behavior are a constant. We report how students meet these expectations differently, but the expectations are still there. And just as we model these behaviors and expect our colleagues to “put forth effort” and “be courteous” in our interactions with one another, we strive to model the 21st-century skills that we expect from students in our interactions with colleagues as well. We expect to problem-solve, collaborate, and communicate with our fellow teachers, all in the service of providing the best possible educational experiences for our students.

We see this from BHS teachers every week during PLC. We know that not all students learn at the same pace and that some might need more help. We also know that we have a moral imperative to help those students. While those who fell behind in the past might have stayed behind, today we courageously guarantee that we will prepare all of our students for that evolving world beyond school. We problem-solve, collaborate, and communicate about the data we collect from students so that we can intervene when we need to and help them achieve the high levels of learning they’ll need to succeed in the ever-changing future.

Still though, those top 5 classroom rules will not go away. The same expectations for behavior will be present, whether it’s 1850 or 2050. We will always want students to be punctual and prepared, to participate and to be polite. With the work that you’ve done with the new behavior rubric, we’ve gained the ability to report with more clarity than ever before how students are doing in regards to those rules. And for many parents, that is the information they want first. We are so grateful for your feedback and input on the behavior rubric and how it is implemented. Likewise, the hard work that you continue to do during PLCs allows us to communicate more clearly about what students have learned. With your problem-solving abilities and collaboration, our ability to communicate with families about both behaviors and academic skills will continue to evolve. Thank you!

These Cool Things We Found

Google Classroom Updates

You may have already seen the update to Classroom that allows you to build a quiz from within the app instead of having to create a separate form and then attach it. Google has also announced two new features that are in beta testing now: a locked mode for students taking quizzes so that they won’t be able to navigate away from a quiz screen, and an updated gradebook. You can read more about all of these features here, and you can sign up to be part of the beta testing at the link here.

Instructional and Summarization Strategies
Education guru Robert Marzano has identified nine instructional strategies with high effect sizes on student achievement.  We have attached examples of activities you can do within each of these strategies in the infographic below.

Instructional Strategies Map

At our last PD, we pulled from the extensive resources of your collective expertise to create a world map of instructional strategies. It turned into a fantastic collection of ideas that you can consult when you are looking for something new to try in your classroom.

Engagement Wheel
Yes, this was in last time, and you can read more about it at this link. Who wants to try it with us?

Hey You! Get Off My Lawn: The Perils of Lecturing Like It’s The Good Old Days

It may sound cliche for us to say this, but students in 2018 are much different from the learners of our day. And before you start labeling us as crotchety old curmudgeons complaining about those unruly whippersnappers who have no respect and play their music too loud, we’re talking about kids we went to school with during the late ‘90s and ‘00s, not the 1950s style learner from when McPartland was a student. Even back in our day though, we were pretty darn good at the, “We just sit there and take it” style of learning. We didn’t grow up with the immediacy of cell phones like the learners of 2018 have. We had to wait for people to return our phone calls instead of texting us back right away. We wrote physical letters to each other on paper and had to wait for the mailman to bring a reply. And when we didn’t know something, we had to wait until we had access to an encyclopedia, or at least until our class’s day in the computer lab, to find out an answer. So when teachers gave lectures to share information with us, we were okay with it. How else were we going to find out this stuff? The students we serve today aren’t as used to waiting. They want their information, and they want it now. What’s more, they know how to access the information they want -- they’re much better “self-sufficient researchers” than we ever were (Briggs, 2014). They literally can’t wait to learn.

It seems then, that what worked all the time back then may not work now.  Let’s not even discuss McPartland’s 1950s style of learning. Those guys walked uphill both ways. So, today’s blog is all about how to make your lecture more engaging.

First of all, we want to be clear in saying that lectures are not inherently bad. We all have pieces of our curriculum where we know we have to do a certain amount of explaining, telling, instructing directly, imparting knowledge -- whatever you want to call it. However, we also know that just because we are standing at the front of the room telling students everything we know about a given topic, that doesn’t mean that they are actually learning it. So what can we do? How do we match this type of instruction where we know students need to absorb what we are telling them with the sense of immediacy kids are used to in the rest of their lives? One possible answer is to give them chances to interact with this information sooner and more often. Instead of waiting until the end of a lecture to check for understanding, building in more frequent opportunities for students to process the information they’re hearing by summarizing it, discussing it with a neighbor, asking questions about it, representing it visually, etc. increases engagement and the likelihood that they’ll remember that information later on.

Here are some strategies you might consider:

Chunking your Lectures: The claim that the average attention span for students is 10-15 minutes is up for debate. However, researchers have found some validity in the idea that students’ attention exhibits a “waxing and waning pattern” during instructor lectures (Bunce, Flence, & Neiles, 2010). In their study, they observed “attention lapses occurring more frequently as the lecture progressed” and that “by the end of the lecture, lapses occurred about every two minutes” (Bunce, Flence, & Neiles, 2010). The implications for us as teachers are to 1.) frontload our lectures at the beginning of class and 2.) “chunk” our lectures into segments interspersed with a variety of student activities. Tech. tools like Pear Deck or Nearpod can help build lessons like this (see our super cool video below), but simple actions like a Turn and Talk, quick write, or conducting a quick poll to check for understanding every few minutes can be just as effective.

Note-taking: In her popular Cult of Pedagogy blog, Jennifer Gonzalez writes, “Whether it’s taking notes from lectures (Kiewra, 2002) or from reading (Rahmani & Sadeghi, 2011; Chang & Ku, 2014), note-taking has been shown to improve student learning. In other words, if we want our students to remember more of what they learn in our classes, it’s better to have them take notes than it is to not have them take notes.” Note-taking not only helps students retain what they are learning and become actively engaged in a lecture, it is an important study skill for them to learn if they plan to pursue post-secondary education. We need to remember, though, that not all students actually know how to take good notes and that when given a choice between whether to take notes or not, many will opt out. Gonzalez suggests explicitly teaching note-taking strategies like Cornell notes and building in time for students to revise, add to, or rewrite their notes. Collaborative note-taking is another good strategy to try; see how one teacher gives students different roles to fill as they complete a set of notes as a class over one of his lectures.

Engagement Wheel: Dave Sladkey writes a blog where he refers to a tool he calls the engagement wheel quite.  His message: Be intentional about planning for student engagement. The engagement wheel is a way to reflect on an hour of your day that you have taught and try to give it an engagement score. The higher the score, the more engaged your class was.  The engagement wheel measures what your students are doing.

How to use the engagement wheel

1. Choose a class period that you have recently completed.  It could be just a one hour segment of your day to reflect on.
2. Count the total number of spokes (pie pieces) that are true for that class period to determine your student’s engagement level.
3. Do this over a number of days and determine an average engagement level for your class.

Using the engagement wheel can tell you what you do repeatedly when planning lessons or not at all. You can also have your students give you feedback on the engagement wheel to see where they stand with their engagement.  

Whether it’s seeking a clear picture of whether students are engaged during lectures in the first place or incorporating strategies to increase that level of engagement when you present information, we hope you’ve found a couple of new tools to add to your box. Or, you could go back  to talking about how things were “when I was your age” and yelling at kids to get off your lawn.

This Cool Thing We Found

Pear Deck is a neat add-on in Google Slides for adding engagement and interest to the slideshows that you might use when you lecture. It lets you insert short answer and multiple choice questions along with opportunities for students to draw on the screen or drag and drop symbols to spots on the slide. Check out our informative video about Pear Deck!

Teacher Feature

This month we are featuring English teacher Cassie Alber. She sat down for a Q & A about how she works to engage students.

Tell us about something that you’ve done that you believe has been impactful in the classroom for students?

This year when I introduced Shakespeare to the students I decided I wanted to make it more engaging and make them want to read Julius Caesar. So last week I "killed" all my students. Using the last lines of characters before their deaths, I handed each student a quote. They then had to interpret Shakespeare's words and decide how they would say the line and act out how the character dies. Some students had a lot of fun with it jumping off chairs, falling on "swords", "hanging" themselves, etc. At the end of the period all of the students were laying on the floor dead.

With my juniors in AP Lit, we had a snowball fight! They have a lot of literary terms they have to learn in order to prepare for the AP exam. As we looked at poetry, the terms were daunting. So to help them learn them, I provided a Quizlet, Quizizz, and Kahoot, but I wanted it to be fun too. One day I gave them half sheets of paper with the exit ticket printed on one side, but had them flip it to the blank side and pick one of the terms and write only the definition. Then I had them crumple up the paper, played music and had them throw paper around the room for a bit. When the music stopped, they had to grab the nearest snowball. Then we went around the room and read the definitions and tried to figure out which term matched the definitions. They struggled. So then we played 25000 pyramid so that they could internalize the definitions more with word association. It has made a huge impact on their learning.

How did you see their learning grow from the lesson?

I think that they were able to make connections and understand that vocabulary is something they will encounter their whole lives. This gave them a different method for learning the words that made it more tactile and verbal than just memorizing flashcards.

What would you tell yourself (if you could) about being a first-year teacher?
While being a first year teacher can be exhausting and challenging, it is rewarding too. You get to discover who you are as a teacher, you are able to make mistakes and no one will really blame you, and you get to do it all over again next year and it will get better!

Nerd Alert! The Top 12 Cool Things We Found at ITEC

Last week we attended the annual ITEC (Iowa Technology and Education Connection) Conference. It’s one of our favorite days of the year because we get to nerd out about ed. tech. with all of the other ed. tech. nerds in the state. A few things spoke to our nerdy, nerdy hearts, so we decided this would be the perfect place to share them with all of you nerds. All of these are on our website as well.

12. Canva is a tried and true tool for graphic design that students can use to create posters, infographics,and more. Canva is a great tool to introduce to students if you are tired of having them give slides presentations to the class. Have them use Canva to create an advertisement for a concept in your class, to build social media posts for literary characters or historical figures, to construct one-pagers to review class content, or to complete any other creative idea you come up with!

11. Classroom Screen is a nifty tool that puts a dashboard for you to project at the front of the room where you can add a variety of widgets that make your job easier as a teacher. For example, you can add a random name generator, a timer, a sound level monitor, quick QR codes to sites you want to send students to, exit polls, and more.

10. Emojis in Education is a website from educator Tony Vincent that contains a host of ideas for incorporating emojis into your teaching. At first glance, this could seem like fluff, but Vincent has a ton of great ideas for using those ubiquitous little smiley faces and other symbols to do things like conducting exit polls, creating vocabulary games, or even just helping to organize your Google Drive by adding images in the title to make it easier to find the file you’re looking for.

9. Insert Learning allows you to insert instructional content into any web page. You can easily scaffold text with questions and media that help all of your students be more successful learners. Insert Learning is very similar to Actively Learn, except that it allows you to use internet sites for students to read instead of just pdfs or Google docs.

8. Metaverse is the easiest way to make interactive content without requiring programming for students. It lets you build super easy and quick augmented reality (AR) experiences for your students (think Pokemon Go). This could be a fun way to conduct a pre-assessment, have students explore information before a unit, or create a scavenger hunt review. Even better, have your students build the AR environments as an alternative method of presenting information to the class. It gets your whole class up and moving and incorporates elements of coding as students create their Metaverse experiences.

7.  Flippity lets you make any Google spreadsheet into a game easily!  Flippity has TONS of games such as jeopardy, hangman, random name picker, scavenger hunts, etc.  Check out all the options as a list won’t do it justice.

6. Soundtrap is a fun way for students to collaborate and make music anywhere, with anyone, anytime. Students can record their creations directly with any device, explore the collective extension of loops, connect an instrument, or use one from the program. It is an awesome alternative to Garage Band that you could use to have students create podcasts, music for video projects, or even just a quick audio exit ticket.

5. Peardeck Extension allows you to make interactive presentations and formative assessments to engage every student in your room, every day. Peardeck works with your Google suite so that your Google slides become interactive, effortlessly. You can also choose to turn on student-paced mode to allow students to work at their speed in the classroom or at home. Students can also share anonymous answers on the projector screen to spark debate, make every opinion be heard, and discuss common misconceptions.

4. Classkick is a tool for teachers to make presentations and lessons more interactive.  Classkick allows you to assign points to slides, gives you tools such as map markers, and has interactive ways to give formative assessments as you are presenting your lesson.  It would be an easy way to “flip” your lesson while still getting feedback if you needed to work in small groups.

3. Next Vista for Learning and / or Classhook are two good sites that have videos you can use with your students in class. Next Vista for Learning specializes in student-made content, so if you are looking for inspiration for an upcoming video project or need stellar exemplars to show your students, this is a fantastic resource. Classhook has videos related to a wide variety of school content from pop culture sources. Both databases are searchable by content area and are fun ways to hook students at the beginning of class.

2. Spiral is an easy way to give fast formative assessments to gauge what the whole class is thinking. It allows you to create and share collaborative interactive presentations; it also allows you to turn any public video into a chat. You can use this for student assignment help outside of class or as a student portfolio as well. If you are looking for ways to make lectures more engaging, check out this site.

1. Google’s Applied Digital Skills Lessons Google has ready-made lessons from their free digital curriculum.  Students progress at their own pace so that you as the teacher can give individualized attention. You can track student achievements through the site, and it also allows for group projects to incorporate teamwork.  Some topics that have pre-written units include if-then adventure stories, programming, marketing, business, money management, project management, communication, and current events. This can be a great tool for sub plans and / or supplementing your current curriculum.

Teacher Feature: Shannon Lumley

Shannon presented at ITEC this year on how to use 3D pens to aid student learning. She showed conference attendees how the use of 3D pens can help students visualize concepts through a hands-on approach. Over the past few years, Shannon’s students have used the pens to create 3D models of a variety of science concepts. Stop in sometime, and she will show you the creative ways her students have applied this tech. tool in her classes.

The Dark, Evil Vortex of Late September, October, and November

DEVOLSON

Every year, we post about DEVOLSON, the Dark Evil Vortex Of Late September, October, and November. It’s that time of year when things begin to look bleak. It is a loooong haul between now and Thanksgiving break, the days are getting shorter, the weather’s getting cooler (and wetter, apparently), we have marathon days of parent / teacher conferences, and our stress levels are starting to ramp up. During DEVOLSON, you might see yourself described in one of the DEVOLSON Bingo squares below:

Photo credit: We are Teachers

Jill: Like blogger Love,Teach, I’m a big fan of bottling up my emotions during DEVOLSON until I reach a breaking point and have a meltdown. This happened last week when I found myself crying on the couch at Tom Hanks yelling for Wilson to come back to him (he was his best friend!) and then comforted myself by eating half a tray of chocolate chip cookies. I realized that I might possibly maybe potentially need a healthier outlet for my stress, so I’m working on carving out more time in the morning to walk on my treadmill instead. I also often find myself unable to sleep at night during DEVOLSON as I make list after list in my head of things I need to get done the next day. But why? There’s nothing I can do about the stack of papers on my desk at 2 in the morning, and my lack of sleep makes it a lot harder to cross things off of that list the next day. Instead of stewing about my to-do-list, I’m going to try making a different list in my head when I’m trying to sleep -- a list of things I’m grateful for and bright spots that happened to me during the day. For example, I have super fun coworkers that keep me energized, an amazingly supportive family, and I get to see world-class teaching in action every day as part of my job.

Lindsey: DEVOLSON…. It’s bizarre because my husband started calling me a name that was very similar to this. I began my Sunday night routine of stay up until 3 a.m. binge eating chips and playing Mario Odyssey until the wee hours to cope with the fact that I needed two or three more of me.  It was brutal -- heck, ask Bradley as he got to endure most of this. So what did I do? I started balancing the really important things in life and ensuring I was hanging with people who would be builders and not breakers. I asked myself if what I was stressing about would actually make a difference in student learning.  I started finding help through flipped lessons and stations to in fact make two of me. I also did a lot of reflecting. I used to be an accountant, and I was so bored. I don’t want “bored.” So, I became a little more grateful and instead of seeing the “work,” I tried to look for the good. I asked for help. Guys, ask for help!  My husband is already pretty great, but I asked more of him, of my co-teachers, and of my students.  They got to do more of the heavy lifting instead of me. Anyway, eventually my dog died and I got meds (see large picture above desk). No but really, I did get help to help me balance out what was important, which was family and finding that passion in an everyday job that has its ups and downs.

Break your DEVOLSON by finding healthy coping mechanisms like exercise or new hobbies. Look for bright spots. Find your builders, remember your passion in this very challenging yet rewarding job that you will never be bored in, and be grateful!  I know your students are -- even the ones who didn’t show it immediately.

Remember that during this time of DEVOLSON:

Give-away time! Earn yourself a chance to be entered into a drawing for a new purple G2 pen and something else by commenting below about your mechanisms for coping with DEVOLSON.  Also bring your bingo card up if you complete it for a delicious snack, because clearly you need it

THIS COOL THING We FOUND: DECK.TOYS

Deck.Toys is a versatile tool you can use for blended or flipped learning, independent practice at a station in your classroom while you work with others, gamifying a lesson, or even as a different method for hosting a Breakout Edu. Deck.Toys essentially lets you create a map or game board for students to travel through, and you can post different learning activities along the way. It has eighteen different games that students can play with study sets you create, including matching, sequencing, sorting, Wheel of Fortune, pictionary, jeopardy, and more. You can also upload slideshows, YouTube videos, and embed other web content into the different activities on your board.

Deck.Toys is now added to the website under technology.  We are starting to build the other subjects more, so check back for resources.  See it in action in the video below:

TEACHER FEATURE: Leshia Anderson

Leshia has been a teacher for many years, most of which have been spent in Boone. Former students are very grateful for what they learn from Leshia, because she does such an amazing job of balancing games, language instruction, and speaking in her classroom.  She involves all of her students in her day-to-day lesson planning and is never afraid to continue to learn.  She has recently been pushing herself and her students in using more formative assessment data to make decisions on student learning.  She has been using Quizizz along with researching other forms of formative assessment to use in her classroom.

Introvert English Teacher Meets Extrovert Math Teacher

Jill & Lindsey: As we come to the close of our first full month of the 2018-2019 school year, we could not be more excited about all of the phenomenal things happening in classrooms and in PLCs, and we could not be more grateful for all of the amazing people that we work with. We are particularly appreciative of the chance we've had to talk with teachers individually about how we can best support each of you with the type of feedback that works best for you, the resources you need, and the strengths you are willing to share with other teachers at our school.

Image used courtesy ProProfs.com

Jill: Lindsey and I are also learning a lot about each other's individual strengths and how we can build on our different backgrounds as we work to support you as coaches. For example, I am an introvert with a background as an English teacher. Lindsey is clearly more extroverted than I am, and it's been so much fun to have her energy and humor nearby as we bounce around ideas.

Lindsey:  Yes, I am an extroverted prior Math teacher. Apparently, Jill believes that apostrophes and grammar are important. I have no concept of why we would spend a whole slew of time editing when we could be manipulating data. My whole goal right now is actually to screw up as much grammar as possible.  So, if you have read this far, get ready for a whole bunch of awful English. No judgment necessary - I know I'm terrible at it!

Jill & Lindsey: One of the things we heard from many teachers in our initial conversations with you was a desire to more easily keep track of resources, tools, and strategies that we share. To help organize all of the materials we might find, we've created this website where you can read through our coaching blog posts or skip straight to sections that are more relevant to what you're looking for, whether that is technology, instructional strategies, or resources specific to your content area. We'd love your feedback on this format -- we're always looking for ways to improve as coaches and how we communicate with you.

THIS COOL THING THAT WE FOUND:

Jill & Lindsey: We have posted our first tool available to you under the instructional strategies section, a post from Alice Keeler on writing essays and giving feedback on Google Slides.

This resource is cool because it shows how you can give students feedback on specific sections of their writing while they work. For instance, if a student is working on their conclusion, that is the only section they share with you. You can give them video feedback, drag bitmojis, add pictures, etc. Then when the student is done with all of their sections, they can send their work to a Google Doc with the click of a button.

We'll cross-post cool things that we find on the other resources pages on this site so that they will be there in perpetuity (this is Jill's word, but you already knew that). 

TEACHER FEATURE: Kaylee Grote

We decided to feature Kaylee in this post because of the great work she's been doing in matching her formative assessments to her biology learning targets. Kaylee realizes that before giving a summative assessment, she wants to make sure she has had a chance to do a quick formative check of her students' understanding for each learning target and that she can provide an opportunity for feedback and reteaching if she needs to. She is a perfect example of a teacher putting the PLC process into action -- well done, Kaylee!!

TEACHER FEATURE: Ben Henson

Ben's also been doing some fantastic things with his orchestra students that we wanted to feature. He has been working hard to help his students draw connections from the music they play to art, literature, and history. For example, one piece has a clear link to the Edgar Allan Poe short story "The Tell-Tale Heart." After examining a series of rhythms together as a class, Ben helped his students see how their increasing tempo mimics the quickening beating of the narrator's heart as he becomes more and more panicked and paranoid. In another example Ben led his students in a discussion of a work of medieval art and connected music history to their current piece as they learned how different musical intervals historically conveyed different ideas and emotions. The students realized that the intervals and themes from the work of art they were discussing were present in the piece they were playing. Ben is collaborating with Jane Dupuis and her students to help make the connections they draw even stronger throughout the semester.