Super Sentences

You should see the changes that are happening in the classes here at Castleberry Elementary.  One of the biggest changes I have seen as I visit the classes on a daily basis are the use of “super sentences”. The students are using these sentences more and more as they share their thoughts and ideas with their teachers.  The one or two word answers are being used less and less and sentences that are extended with the word because or that answer the question why are becoming more prevalent.  The force behind this big change?  Expectations.  The teachers are expecting more complete answers from the students and the students are becoming more accepting of the fact that teachers are going to ask them to expand on their answer.  This question and answer practice that is happening is going to reap huge benefits for our students both now and into the future as they continue to learn how to better express themselves with these super sentences that are quickly becoming the norm.  In short, students are beginning to become better thinkers.  When people think new ideas are formed.  When new ideas are formed powerful, wonderful change begins to happen.  Keep thinking everyone!

Monitoring and inferencing - important reading comprehension skills

I was reading a snippet of an article this last week and came across an idea that I thought was important to pass along about struggling readers.  Reading is more than decoding - it's figuring out what the writer is trying to communicate to you.  Pretty basic, right?  Then let's move on.  This article stated that after students learn to decode there are three things students struggle with the most:

• The meaning of words - or vocabulary
• Not noticing that they don't understand what they are reading, or failing to monitor their understanding
• Failing to make inferences

I feel that reading teachers do a very good job of teaching vocabulary, so let's leave that alone.  What we need to focus on is monitoring (pausing, evaluating, and thinking about where the text is going), and making inferences (using personal background knowledge coupled with what the author is saying to make meaning).  I remember the first time I helped some fourth graders effectively monitor and make inferences about what they were reading.  We were reading the book Hatchet and were in the passage where the plane the young man was attempting to fly was crashing into a lake.  After reading the passage the first time I asked them about what had just happened in the story.  They couldn't answer my questions.  They were just reading the passage because I told them to read it.  Their only goal was to get to the end of the passage.  So I decided to build some background knowledge and started to ask them about times they had seen planes flying in the sky and what would happen if one of those planes crashed into a lake.  After building some simple background knowledge, that most of them had some idea about, I gave them the assignment of reading the passage again with those pictures in their mind and then to draw a picture of what they had just read.  The difference in their understanding of what they read was amazing.  Students made comments about being able to see what the author was describing in their minds.  Some students said it was like a movie had turned on in their head as they read.  This was all done because we took the time to talk before we read the story about experiences they were already familiar with that were found in the story and connected that with what the author was writing.     

So I encourage teachers, of younger students especially, to specifically talk about the main ideas authors are presenting in stories before you read the story for the first time with your students.  As Harry Wong encourages, share with the students what you are going to be doing before you do it.  Ask them questions about times they might have experienced or seen something that relates to the topics found in the story.  Then tell them that today you are going to read a story that has to do with the topic you all just talked about.  It's ok to do that as we are teaching students to construct meaning.  We need to show them how to relate to stories just as we model for them how to do mathematics problems.

#cisdedchat questions for October 29, 2014

Hey all, just to kind of prime the pump for this weeks #cisdedchat I am posting the four questions in advance.  I think that it is important to always reflect on and remember why we do what we do.

Question #1 - Why did you choose teaching/education as a career?  Why did you want to become a teacher?

Question #2 - How do you "recharge your batteries" as an educator?

Question #3 - What is the number one encouragement you would give to a new teacher?

Question #4 - What is the best advice that has ever been given to you by a mentor or friend in regard to teaching that would help inspire us all now?

I hope that these questions will help to inspire us as we move along in this school year.

The practice of shadowing students

This last week I read an article that really caught my eye and made me think.  A teacher who had recently been promoted to an instructional coach was given the assignment of shadowing two different students for two days.  This coach had to do everything that the students had to do.  Here are some insights this coach walked away with:

1)  Students sit all day, and sitting is exhausting.

• Have you ever sat through a day long professional development?  How did you feel at the end of the day?  Exhausted, right?  I encourage you to look at your style of teaching and track how long your students just sit and get.  Our students need to be actively involved.  What CISD is doing with the instructional rounds where we are decreasing the amount of teacher talk time and increasing the amount of student talk time is right on.

2)  Students are passively listening 90% of the time.

• We need to help students make important contributions to their classes on a daily basis.  Brief high-impact mini-lessons followed by engaging checks for understanding is definitely the way we as educators need to be headed.  Again, I truly believe that the problems of practice that the instructional rounds are addressing is moving CISD in this direction.  Creating high level questions and having the patience with the students for them to process the questions is vital to students making critical connections with the material we are presenting to them.

3)  Students feel a little bit of a nuisance all day long.

• Here is another experiment for you to run in your classroom.  Count how many times the students are told to be quiet and pay attention.  It is hard for adults to sit and pay attention for as long as we ask students to sit and pay attention.  Again, get them involved in productive ways.
• Also, how do we respond to students when questions are asked about something that has just been explained?  Gentle answers go a long to developing great relationships of trust and respect.  Sarcasm, impatience, and annoyance create barriers between people.  I encourage you to dig into your wells of patience and love.

Please do not look at this as indictment to how teachers teach.  That is not the goal.  The goal is to improve our practice of teaching.  If you have a nudge of guilt tugging at your mind right now, some changes might need to be made.  I just encourage everyone to honestly look at how you are engaging students throughout the day.  All of us have areas where we need to improve.  Myself included.  If you would like to read the article yourself you can go to this link  A Veteran Teacher Turned Coach Shadows Two Students for Two Days - A Sobering Lesson Learned.  Enjoy.

Edchat Musings

This week I just wanted to share an overview of ideas that were shared in the cisdedchat this last week.  It was very important for me to go back over this information, especially as an instructional leader on the campus.  All of the ideas that were shared there are practices that need to implemented in the classrooms in order to meet one of the goals for this year, increasing the quality of the responses of our students. 

These are the ideas that jumped out to me as I read through everyone’s responses.  First, trust needs to be built so that students feel safe even trying to answer questions.  Second, teachers need to learn to let go of the control of the classroom.  Third, students need to be shown models and given tools that will help them answer with more complete answers.  Fourth, use technology, a medium that students are very comfortable with, to help them learn how to share their opinions and respond to other people’s opinions.

So, the question for us is, how do we go about accomplishing all of this?  I don’t have all the answers, but I do have some ideas from my own experience and from what I have seen teachers do in their classrooms that could get us going in the right direction.  So, here are some ideas to ponder.

#1 – Building Trust – How do we go about building the trust of students?  We need to start here by building their confidence.  Educators can take a huge step in the right direction of building the confidence of students by being clear in what needs to be accomplished.  Once students clearly understand what they are supposed to be learning in the classroom they will be more confident and trust teachers and each other more as they make attempts to answer questions.  Anchor charts, solid introductions and reviews to lessons, and wise teachers leading discussions that grasp even the smallest seed of understanding in a student and expanding on it will help to build this confidence and trust.

#2 – Letting go of the control of the classroom – Long gone is the stand deliver model of teaching.  Here to stay are the strategies of questioning, collaborating, and flipped classrooms.  One of the best lesson I have recently seen had to do with a teacher wanting students to understand the idea of multiplication.  Instead of the teacher telling the students what multiplication was, she lead the students in a discussion that helped them discover what multiplication was.  With each idea that was shared in small groups and then with the class at large you could see more and more light bulbs coming on over the heads of the children.  Teachers are more and more becoming facilitators of discussion.

#3 – Models for students to give more complete answers – As we all know students love to give one word or two word answers.  So the question is how do we help them improve in this area?  Two suggestions.  First, as I saw beautifully done in a first grade classroom I visited this last week, encourage the students to answer in super sentences that include the word because.  Don’t let them answer with short answers, but teach them to answer more completely.  Second, put up anchor charts around the classroom that will help the students answer with higher level questions.  Teach these sentence starters to the students much like you would teaching them how to use math and reading centers.  Baby steps are key here.  Don’t do everything at once.

#4 – Use technology – As we all know many students are very comfortable with texting, blogging, and communicating very effectively with technology.  Obviously, we all need to use this to our advantage.  There are many different ways that technology can be used to encourage students to share their opinions.  One way that the district is giving to the older students in the district is gaggle.  How can teachers use gaggle to their advantage in helping the students.  I would love to hear examples to all of this.  Please share.

I hope this is helpful to people.  I am just sharing ideas that I have been learning and that I think can help us all improve our craft as educators.  This blogging thing is really helping me to begin to share my opinions, and as I think through the things I am writing about I am questioning ideas, doing research to come up with more complete ideas, and learning.  I hope that I can benefit others by passing on some of my simple observations.  Have a great week everyone.  TJJ

Drafts - A powerful tool for the iPad

I am constantly trying to improve myself as an administrator.  One of the tools that is helping me achieve this is my iPad.  There are several apps for the iPad that I have started to use that truly does make my job easier.  The most powerful app that I have started to use recently is an app called Drafts.  When you first open drafts it doesn't look like much, but once you start to use it you will see how it makes many of your day to day tasks easier.  I use this app to document meetings I have with students, parent phone calls, and ARD meetings to name a few.  It is very helpful with tasks that you do over and over again by allowing you to create templates that can be filled out with a few key strokes rather than retyping complete e-mails.  For example, whenever I assign a child ISS I have a template that I have created with Drafts that allows me to quickly communicate with the office about who the child is and how long they will be serving.  All of this documentation and communication is accomplished through Drafts being linked to e-mails addresses, Evernote and Dropbox (for documentation), as well as Google Drive Actions and specific URL actions.

Let me give you a very specific application that I have just recently learned to use.  At my school I am responsible for all of the Speech ARDs.  I like to take my own personal minutes during the ARDs and found myself retyping the same things over and over again at each ARD meeting.  It was so time consuming recreating this document at each meeting.  I decided to use Text Expander and Drafts to help me with this time waster.  In Text Expander I created the document, giving it the simple title of aard.  I linked this document with Drafts and in Drafts simply typed in aard on the main screen and hit return.  Presto, the document came up and all I had to do was fill in the specific details that had to do with that ARD meeting.  The date, time, permanent participants and outline of the form popped up.  Then I linked this form in Drafts with the specific ARD folder I had already created in Evernote.  Once the ARD meeting was complete all I had to do was choose the particular destination that I wanted the meeting minutes to go to and off it went to that location.  

I encourage you to check out Drafts.  It is a powerful tool that can be used for many different tasks that administrators and teachers alike need to do each and every day.  Thanks needs to go out to Justin Baeder at the Principal Center for bringing this tool to my attention.  Check out his on-line professional development for administrators and teachers at Principalcenter.com.  You will not be disappointed.

Bloomin' Apps

Since the district that I work for, Castleberry ISD, has as a goal this year of increasing the rigor of the teachers teaching and to increase the level of student work through a better implementation of the New Bloom's Taxonomy, I am constantly on the look out for different ways to put Bloom's Taxonomy in front of the teachers.  It is really not that difficult to find anything on Bloom's Taxonomy since all you need to do is type into the search line of any search engine "Bloom's Taxonomy".  When you do so a plethora of choices pops up on the screen.  All one needs to do is take the time to wade through the material and find something that will help them understand this way of classifying questioning strategies.

Today I would like to introduce you to a web page called Kathy Schrock's Guide to Everything - Bloomin' Apps.  On this webpage you will find  many different ways to look at Bloom's Taxonomy. Many of the presentations here can be downloaded and made into posters that can be placed on the walls of classrooms.  Two presentations that really caught my eye are lists of apps set up in a Symbaloo type of lay out that gives you app choices for different elements of each level of Bloom's.  One presentation is set up specifically for iPad use, while the second is set up completely with web 2.0 suggestions.  This would help us meet iPad implementation, web 2.0 implementation, and Bloom's implementation (killing 3 birds with one stone).  You can checkout this very beneficial Bloom's Taxonomy web page by clicking on this link -.www.schrockguide.net/bloomin-apps.html

Nudge mail

Have you ever had an e-mail that you are going to need in the future but do not want it to clog up your in-box until you do need it?  Well, I have an answer for you that I have started to use over the last couple of months.  It is called nudge mail.  Here is how it works.  Let's say that you get an invite to a birthday party on September 27th.  You do not really need that information right now but don't want to archive it and want it out of your inbox (I know most would just put it in your calendar and be done with it....but this is an example!)  The quickest thing I can do is nudgemail it to myself at a later date.  So, I would forward the e-mail to nudgemail.com by putting this in the to box.......sept25@nudgemail.com.  This means that on September 25 I will receive a reminder e-mail about the birthday party on the 27th.  After you send the e-mail nudgemail will send you a reminder e-mail as notification that they received it.  Now you can forget about that invite until it pops back into your mail box on the requested date.  This is very reliable and saves me a lot of time regarding things that I do not need until a later date.  Try this out by choosing an e-mail, forward it to nudgemail for the next day and see what happens.

Does anyone else have any time saving ideas like nudgemail?  Please share those ideas and help us all become more productive.  Also, if you try out nudgemail let me know how you liked it.

Using Twitter better

One of the goals with this blog is to help people become more tech savvy so that we can use all of this material we have at our fingertips in the most beneficial manner possible.  Over the last several months I have wanted to become more adept at taming the wild bird know as Twitter (don't let that simple, friendly looking symbol they use fool you).  So I started reading some articles on how to use Twitter better and here is the first one I would like to share with you.  It is titled How to Compete with the Tweet Elite and is filled with ideas about how to use Twitter better.  Subjects covered include retweeting so that the originator of a tweet can see that you retweeted their post, modifying a tweet so that you can add your own small comment at the end of a post, and pinning your favorite tweet to your profile page so that visitors to your profile page can see what you are thinking about right now.  I know this is a small step in the right direction, but everything we can learn about the technology that has been created for us to use to socialize and learn from each other is beneficial.

What are some Twitter use ideas that you could share to help us all use Twitter better?

Discovering Opportunity Through Building Partnerships

     In Chapter 11 of Eric Sheninger's book Digital Leadership - Changing Paradigms for Changing Times he talks about 5 different ways to create partnerships with organizations outside of the school walls so that authentic, ongoing, awesome learning experiences for students could continuously take place. The five partnerships he suggests that we take advantage of include:

• University partnerships
• Have university classes taught in the schools.  This will help plant dreams of moving on to higher education.
• Experiential learning partnerships
• Work on fostering relationships with organizations like Audobon Centers, Botanical Gardens, and The YMCA.  Look for experts in different fields that help maximize student learning.
• Intra-school partnerships
• Look for ways that schools can share resources through cooperation and communication.  Look for ways that this can be done in your own district and world wide.
• Corporate/Community partnerships
• Look for perrenial partnerships that will last.  The idea is to find partnerships where the roots between the school and organization can run deep.  Develop only those partnerships that will last.
• Mental Health Partnerships
• Find mental health organizations that come alongside the school and offer programs that will help meet the needs of students who are struggling with mental health issues and, for the older students, drug abuse.  We need to be willing to share space and instructional time so that these struggling students can be given foundational help that will allow them to perform better academically.

     The other idea that Sheninger presents in this chapter is that of learning to leverage social media.  Share what is being done at the school and in the district through Twitter, Facebook and other social media outlets.  This could help lead to strategic relationships, authentic learning experiences, professional development opportunities, school recognition, professional recognition, and an influx of  opportunities for superior educational technology to be brought to our school and district.

     Our school and district need to decide exactly what it is we want to become known for in this diverse and ever expanding world of education.  What is going to be our brand, or what do we want to be known for?  What partnerships with organizations outside the school walls do we need to find so that this brand can be developed so we can give the students outstanding learning experiences?  These are all questions worthy of being asked and answered.

RealTime Board

Over the last couple of hours I have playing around with a new application, to me, called RealTimeBoard.  This is a program that could be useful in a number of ways.  One way I can see teachers using it is through collaboration with lesson planning.  Administrators or teachers could use it to collaborate and work on specific projects that need to accomplished.  It can also be used to help create and carry out presentations.  It is basically an electronic whiteboard that can be expanded as much as you need it to expand.  There are specific templates you can choose from that will help you get started.  Just be ready for a lot of experimenting and watching of short videos to help you learn how to effectively use this product.  I encourage you to take a look and share any ways that you feel RealTimeBoard could be used on your campus, with your team, or in your classroom. Let's learn from each other.  CE, be ready to see this being used in a faculty meeting soon.  TJJ

ASCD Conference June 27-29

This last several days I have been at the ASCD Summer Conference at The Gaylord Texan in Grapevine, Texas.  It has been a very good conference over-all.  On the Saturday of the conference I went to a presentation on something called TPACK which is a new way to understand, plan for, and assess curriculum-based technology instruction.  Basically it helps give the teachers a way to find appropriate technology tools to support what they are teaching after they plan what to teach.  There are two basic questions that teachers are encouraged to ask before they choose the technology they will use with the lesson.  The first questions is, what are you wanting to teach?  The second question is, what are the curriculum goals?  Figure this out first and then find the materials, the technology, that will most clearly help with the teaching of the lesson(s).  This material was developed at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia by Judi Harris and Mark Hofer.  Go to http://actvitytypes.wm.edu/ and find all of the activity type charts for the different areas of the curriculum that will help you start making smarter technological pedagogical decisions.  They can also be found at #how2tpack.  Check it out.  And oh, BYOD teachers, this is what we will be using this year to help plan out even better BYOD lessons.

Hope your summer is going great!  TJJ

Reflecting on the ISTE National Educational Technology Standards for Administrators

Boy do I have a lot to learn about being and educational technology leader. 
On a scale of 1-5 in relation to NETS*A this is how I have currently rated myself.
1) Visionary Leadership I am a 2 (beginning)
2) In digital-age learning culture I am at 2.5 (we are working hard at creating a digital age learning culture at CE)
3) Excellence in Professional Practice I am 2.5 because we are promoting and facilitating the use of technology practices on the campus.
4) Systemic Improvement I am at a 2 because we are looking for people who are tech savvy and are striving to maximize technology use and media-rich resources on our campus.
5) Digital Citizenship I am at 2.5 - because we are promoting appropriate use and are supplying equitable access to digital tools and resources.

I have along way to go.  But that is ok.  Everyone has to start somewhere.  I now have standards that I can strive to meet and to measure my growth.  I will begin to focus mostly on the local level of my school, but want to expand to a more global level of influence as time goes on.

Issues, Problems, Crisis

I was talking with a friend of mine the other day about how he became the leader that he is today.  During the course of our conversation he shared about three different types of leaders.  The first type of leaders are people who are visionary and look way out into the future.  The second type of leaders are the ones who see with more limited vision and see down the road only far enough to keep them from getting in trouble with their superiors.  The third type of leaders are those who are near-sighted and only have time to react to one situation after another, after another.  He shared with me that the visionary leaders deal mainly with issues.  Because they are looking down the road they see what is coming up and make effective plans that will keep the issues from becoming problems.  The limited vision leaders are still somewhat effective, but they are constantly dealing with problems.  They are finding themselves having to make hurried decisions and creating plans or taking steps that are not completely thought through.  They are skilled at steering away from crisis, but it does begin to wear them down after a while.  The near-sighted leaders work in crisis mode a lot of the time because the problems were not addressed soon enough.  These near-sighted leaders rarely plan and quickly burn out because they live in a reactive panic mode all the time.  My friend shared with me that you only ever want to live in the area of issues so that the problems and the crisis rarely occur.  I, for one, truly desire to be not only that type of leader, but that is how I desire to live my entire life.  So here it is put in very simple terms; look down the road of life and identify as many issues as you can and begin to plan how you will address them.  By doing this you will avoid problems, and surely avert many a crisis.  This is really not only for leaders, it is for anyone who wants to live an exceptional life.

Growing a BYOD program

This first year in our new building has had a multitude of firsts.  One of these firsts that has been near and dear to me has been the BYOD program.  Motivation and inspiration for this program started at the end of the 2012-2013 school year with a BYOD program that did not take off at all.  I needed to reflect on why it did not take off and make a solid plan for what needed to be different for 2013-2014.
     The first thing I did was to revisit the flow map that had been put together for the BYOD programs for CISD.  Honestly, everything that I needed to plan was found right there.  I also played the part of a thief in this planning stage and stole a lot of ideas from AV Cato.  After plugging in dates for the parents meeting, monthly meetings with teachers, when the newsletter was going to go out, and when the whole program was going to be evaluated, I started to create the letters that needed to go out to the parents.  Long story stated succinctly, I was bound and determined to be completely ready for this program to take off successfully.
    There were three people who joined me in this endeavor - Mrs. Stapp from 3rd grade, Mrs. Harper from 4th grade, and Mr. James from 5th grade.  These were the three teachers who were the BYOD teachers for their grade levels.  Some of the problems we encountered this year were dealing with the many different platforms the students brought to us and getting everyone signed into our district network.  After these problems were overcome many wonderful learning experiences took place.
     One of the main things we are going to do this next school year is to have a day at the beginning of the year that is going to focus solely on teaching everyone how to sign on to the network.  This will alleviate frustrations on teacher and student levels.  The second thing we are going to do differently is add 2nd grade and find more teachers in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade who desire to be involved with BYOD program.  We are looking forward to great things happening in the BYOD program at CE next year.