Term 4 Week 2: Literacy and meditating

Reading and Strategies for Literacy


In our classes we should try to use reading strategies every time that we ask our students to read. This article defines seven strategies of effective readers and gives ideas about how we can teach each strategy.
Teach the Seven Strategies of Highly Effective Readers By: Elaine K. McEwan (2007)
To improve students' reading comprehension, teachers should introduce the seven cognitive strategies of effective readers: activating, inferring, monitoring-clarifying, questioning, searching-selecting, summarizing, and visualizing-organizing. This article includes definitions of the seven strategies and a lesson-plan template for teaching each one.

Literacy may have stolen brain power from other functions by John Timmer
The human brain contains many regions that are specialized for processing specific decisions and sensory inputs. Many of these are shared with our fellow mammals (and, in some cases, all vertebrates), suggesting that they are evolutionarily ancient specializations. But innovations like writing have only been around for a few thousand years, a time span that's too short relative to human generations to allow for this sort of large evolutionary change. In the absence of specialized capabilities, how has it become possible for such large portions of the population to become literate?

Professional Reading

• How Meditating Helps with Multitasking
• Improve Your Knowledge Daily - Good leaders are constantly seeking knowledge and new ways to learn, writes Art Markman. "There are no shortcuts to having high-quality knowledge, but effort spent learning new things effectively repays itself handsomely in the long run," he writes.

Term 4 Week 1: e-learning, promoting respectful schools and revision strategies

What’s on

World Teachers’ Day is celebrated on 28 October in New Zealand and Australia and internationally on 5 October. I think we definitely need to celebrate ourselves so treat yourself to something nice on Friday!!

Professional Reading

September’s Educational Leadership Magazine “Promoting Respectful Schools” is now in the library and able to be issued. Some of the entries are also available online so I have provided links. It has the following feature articles and columns:

• Bullying—And the Power of Peers - Philip C. Rodkin. This research synthesis explores who bullies and why and what educators and children can do to prevent bullying.
• What Students Say About Bullying - Stan Davis and Charisse Nixon. Kids speak out about which interventions ease or escalate the situation.
• Stepping Back from Zero Tolerance - Judith Browne-Dianis. Harsh disciplinary practices can have severe consequences for students.
• What's So Hard About Win-Win? - Jane Bluestein. Strategies for creating an environment that respects both adults and students.
• Confronting Racial and Religious Tensions - Stephen Wessler. When violence threatens, how do administrators provide outlets for tolerant listening?
• Respect—Where Do We Start? - Marie-Nathalie Beaudoin. Creating a supportive school culture starts with fostering a positive culture for teachers and staff.
• Building Safer, Saner Schools - Laura Mirsky. How restorative practices promote respectful behavior.
• Putting a Face to Faith - Charles C. Haynes. Face to Faith dispels stereotypes and helps students better understand their own and others' religious values.
• Breaking Silences - Robert A. McGarry. A plea for stopping homophobic name-calling and hate language.
• Learning from New Americans - Bill Preble and Carlton Fitzgerald. Inviting students new to the country to speak about their experiences builds their confidence and helps fellow students enlarge their perspectives.
• Looking Out, Looking In - Debbie Pushor. Rethinking how we talk and listen to families yields significant returns.
• Discussions That Drive Democracy - Diana Hess. How to teach students to talk about controversial issues in civil and productive ways.
• Life Lessons from the Philosophers - Scott Seider and Sarah Novick. Attention to respect has played a pivotal role in this school's superior academic achievement record.
• Letters to My Younger Self - Emilie Shafto. A college senior reflects on her life as a struggling 2nd grader.
• Commentary / The Threat of Accountabalism - Phillip C. Schlechty. Focusing only on improving test scores is a misguided school reform.
• Research Says… / Bullying Is Common—And Subtle - Bryan Goodwin. Many students bully to gain social status.
• Art & Science of Teaching / The Perils and Promises of Discovery Learning - Robert J. Marzano. Discovery learning works best when teachers prepare students and offer assistance along the way.

I especially liked this column entry by Carol Ann Tomlinson - One to Grow On / Respecting Students which focuses on how powerful it is for teachers to respect their students (as opposed to wanting to be respected oneself). Tomlinson writes that teachers who respect students:

• Understand the power of beliefs in shaping their practice. They rid themselves of any covert persuasion they may have that kids who are like them in race, economic status, language, beliefs, or motivation are somehow better or smarter than those who are unlike them.
• Believe their work can make previously unimpressive students shine—and can raise the ceilings of possibility for impressive students.
• Teach students how to grow academically and personally.
• Enlist students' partnership in creating a classroom that dignifies each person within it.

e-learning: Professional Reading & strategies

• How to model technology use in the classroom - Veteran teacher Heather Wolpert-Gawron offers 20 tips for using and modeling the use of technology in the classroom. Teachers should involve students in setting up new technology, use digital tools -- such as document cameras, videoconferencing and interactive whiteboards -- throughout the school day and use tech-inspired vocabulary, even when talking about offline activities, she writes.
• Google for Educators: The Best Features for Busy Teachers - An article which explores user-friendly google tools which will keep you and your class inspired, inventive, and organized. I can see that giving students time to explore these tools within your subject context could keep juniors on-task and interested in learning as the term and year comes to an end.

Revision Strategies:
As senior and junior exams are coming up here is another handy revision strategy: Boggle - This strategy helps students to review material and develop their own individualised study guides.

Revision Bites - I put together some revision bites for junior form teachers to go over with their form classes a few years ago. If you have time you may want to go over some of the ideas with your classes - they are relevant for seniors as well.

Term 3 Week 10: Differentiation, blunders, brains and alots

Professional Reading - Differentiation

Five Hallmarks of Good Homework by Cathy Vatterott
Homework shouldn't be about rote learning. The best kind deepens student understanding and builds essential skills.

6 wild ideas for ideal schools
Education columnist Jay Mathews shares six examples from his readers of schools that work. Among them is an example submitted by ASCD's Katie Test of a public high school that focuses on students' academic and emotional needs. Students at Quest Early College High School in Houston have wellness plans, speak regularly with educators, begin taking college-level courses in their first year and complete community-service projects. Mathews notes that the six schools highlighted by readers focus on close teacher-student contact, collaboration and projects.

Early Achievers Losing Ground
A US study shows that many top students are losing ground as they transition from elementary to middle school and middle to high school. Researchers with the Thomas B. Fordham Institute said the findings raise questions about whether federal education policies aimed at helping low-performing students are harming those who are high achievers. "We've been making good progress for kids at the bottom and for poor and minority kids -- that's important," said Michael J. Petrilli, executive vice president. "It just can't be the only thing that we do."


Other Reading

Twenty of My Biggest Teaching Blunders by Todd Finley
We teachers make 0.7 instructional decisions per minute, according to research summaries by Hilda Borko and Richard Shavelson. We make them in contexts that shift from hour to hour in overstuffed portables with finicky projectors, after grading, without enough time to collaborate, without enough information and with too much. We look confident when we’re not, look enthusiastic during second period when demoralized by first. We speed up for the majority when a few need us to slow down. We make decisions about what’s important on festive days and during dark ones, such as 9/11, when raw grief and disorientation filled America’s classrooms like hurricanes of ash...

This is your brain on YouTube
Neuroscientists found a way to peek inside people's brains with MRI scanners and create images of what they see. Researchers showed subjects a succession of YouTube clips, and were able to create watchable, recognizable versions of the clips based only on data gleaned from the scans. "We are opening a window into the movies in our minds," said study leader Jack Gallant

The Alot is Better Than You at Everything

This is a funny, interesting blog post by a true stickler for the English language. Fellow sticklers will enjoy

"Any subject can be made interesting, and therefore any subject can be made boring." --Hilaire Belloc, French-born British writer and historian

Term 3 Week 9: Thinking as well as Thunking

Professional Reading
Competent Learners @ 20
The Competent Children Competent Learners study has tracked around 500 children in the Wellington region from just before they started school, to age 20. It has looked at the impact of early childhood education and then later educational experiences and time use out of school on children’s development. It has monitored the development of skills such as reading and writing, and also attitudes such as perseverance and curiosity. When they returned to the participants at age 20, the researchers looked at how the young people had got on with NCEA. They looked at the impact of earlier school performance, engagement in school and their experiences of learning.
Some key findings included:

• More than half those with low performance at age 8 went on to gain NCEA Level 2 or Level 3. That means that children’s support from teachers and parents, the learning opportunities they had in and out of school and their interactions with teachers, parents and peers, enabled them to make real progress.
• Those who gained NCEA Level 2 did not necessarily have higher levels of mathematics, reading, writing or logical problem solving at age 14 than those whose highest qualification was NCEA Level 1, or who did not gain any qualification. But they did have higher levels of perseverance, communication, social skills, curiosity and self-management.
• The period from age 10 to age 14 appears to be a time when it is particularly important for teachers and parents to watch for signs that children are turning away from school and learning. This applies as much to high performers at school as low performers. It was clear how deeply memories of school at this time can colour later attitudes to learning.

Thinking Strategies
Provide Models, Examples and Nonexamples

Similar to expert craftsmen teaching their trades to apprentices, teachers can model thinking and problem-solving skills to their students.
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Modeling can take several forms in your classroom:

• Thinking aloud regarding your cognitive processing of text (e.g., sharing with students how you make connections between what you know and something that you've read in the text or how you figured out what the author was inferring)
• Demonstrating or showing your students explicitly how you would complete an assignment (e.g., writing a summary of an article, taking notes, constructing a graphic organizer, or giving a speech)
• Showing first-rate complete examples of a work product (e.g., a summary paragraph or graphic organizer) as well as substandard nonexamples that help students differentiate between a good one and an unacceptable one
• Acting out, role-playing or developing simulations. See the instructional aid: A Simulation for Mitosis (or Meiosis) on the adlit website.
• Explaining, telling, and giving directions are essential teaching moves, but unless they are accompanied by various types of modeling, the likelihood of struggling readers achieving success is small. Never assume that because students have spent year in school, they have been explicitly taught or have somehow figured out on their own how to do what you want them to do.

Ideas from adlit.org

General Strategies
Teach like a Champion Technique Eight: Post It - Be sure your students know your objective for the day by posting it on the board

What Does a Great Lesson Look Like on the Outside? - Here's What Your Students and Evaluators Should See in Your Classroom.

Term 3 Week 8: Thunks

Everyone is flat out with marking and other school activities so this week's PD bite is short and fun. It is about "thunks".

"A Thunk is a beguilingly simple-looking question about everyday things that stops you in your tracks and helps you start to look at the world in a whole new light." http://www.thunks.co.uk/

Want examples?

• Is there more future or past?
• Is black a colour?
• If I switch the lights off does the wall change colour?
• If you are caught in a thunderstorm will you get wetter if you run to shelter or if you walk?

They are a great way to get students thinking, which is one of the key competencies of the New Zealand Curriculum, and could be used as "Do Nows" or plenaries. Once you've modelled a few thunks, the students will be able to write their own to share with the class.

 

The independent thinking website has lots of ideas about thunks, as well as other cool stuff. They even have their own Youtube channel.

 

It's all about supporting and motivating students to think independently.

Term 3 Week 6: Literacy and revision.

What's on this week and next

• 1st - 30th September - Save our Sight Month
• Thursday 8th September - International Literacy Day -this year's focus is literacy for peace.
• 11th -18th September - Conservation Week - "We Love You New Zealand"
• 11th -18th September - NZ Frog Week

Literacy Resources:
This Canadian website (Literacy Gains) has a section which provides subject-specific literacy examples and resources. For example in the Language/English section there is a unit which teaches students about metacognition and how it is useful before, during and after reading. There are resources for:

• The Arts
• Business Studies
• Career Studies and Cooperative Education
• Classical and International Languages
• Computer Studies
• French
• Geography
• Health and Physical Education
• History
• Language / English
• Library
• Mathematics
• Religious and Family Life Education
• Science and Technology / Science
• Technological Education

General Strategies
Teach Like a Champion - Technique Seven: The Four M's. Teaching objectives need to be Manageable, Measureable, Made first and Most important.

As senior exams are coming up here is another handy revision strategy: Text rendering- This strategy enables students to collaboratively construct meaning, clarify, and expand their thinking about a text or document.

Term 3 Week 5: e-learning and a great revision strategy

What's on this week and next

• 1st -30th September -  Save our Sight Month 
• 8th September - International Literacy Day

Professional Reading - e-Learning 
Use a Web Site to Help Manage Your Classroom - the ideas in this article are easily adapted to the Ultranet.

Video: Teachers and Principals talk about using google docs

e-Learning Strategies

• Classroom Guide: Top Ten Tips for Teaching with New Media
• It's not exactly a strategy but Youtube have introduced Youtube EDU. For a brief summary of what it offers read the edutecher review.

General Strategies
Teach like a champion - Technique 6: Begin with the end. We all know we are required to plan in order to teach.  Successful teachers plan in a way that puts the end result first.

Revision Strategy: Summarisation Pyramid - This strategy helps students look at different kinds of essential elements of the material to be summarized.