Amazing Teacher Bulletin Boards

One of the things that Castleberry Elementary (and other schools in the district) are becoming known for is our Standards Based Bulletin Boards (SBBBs).  These are bulletin boards that are interactive and that show what the teachers have been working on with the students in their classroom.  As I walk the halls of CE I have the opportunity to see great bulletin boards on display that show the work of students who have followed the teacher's directions, been completed very well, and clearly display the skill that has been worked on by the class in the previous weeks.  Included here is a picture of a very clever bulletin board from the Special Education class at our school.  The thing about this board that first caught my attention was the creative name, "Our Poetree".  Isn't that just great!?  If you could look closer you would see examples of acrostic poems that the students have written.  You can also see that the class has been talking about similes, metaphors, hyperbole, alliteration, personification, and onomatopoeia.  The teachers include explanations as to why a particular selection was added to the board, the criteria the students needed to follow to complete the task, and the TEKS that support the objective(s) being taught.  It is a clear, creative example of one way that our teachers are showcasing the work of students and what is being covered in the classrooms for any passerby to see.  Every month a team of judges visits our campus and chooses the best of the best of our bulletin boards to be showcased at the Central Office.  During the monthly school board meetings, the teachers who have their board show cased at Central Office are given the opportunity to be recognized by the school board and share exactly what their board is all about.

Thursday Faculty Meeting Assignment Regarding LEP Students

It's the new year and you all know what we do during the new year........we make resolutions.  I have a resolution that I would like to make for Castleberry Elementary School.  That resolution?  To help the LEP students find even more success in the classrooms.  This can be a daunting task, but if we take it one step at a time.......if we eat the elephant one bite at a time.......if we don't try and do too much but choose one activity, one skill, one area of focus and master that particular technique we will find success and more thoroughly meet the needs of our LEP students.  So, how are we going to do this?  Earlier this school all of the teachers on the campus received two documents in their e-mail.  Those documents were the Linguistic Accommodations for Each Proficiency Level planning guide and the Differentiating by Language Level Instructional Planning Guide.  These two documents are full of ideas designed to help teachers help their LEP students become more successful in the classroom.  The documents have ideas for beginning, intermediate and advanced students in all four of the TELPAS domains.  I encourage the teachers to choose one or two ideas from these documents (no more than this or it will become overwhelming) and begin to implement them in your classroom.  Once you have mastered the first couple of ideas, choose one or two more that you can add to your toolkit of teaching techniques.  That is how you slowly increase your impact on your LEP students over time.  In order for us to get off on a good foot as a faculty there is an assignment that everyone needs to prepare for.  This Thursday is our next faculty meeting.  At the faculty meeting we are going to share different ideas that you have chosen to use from the documents mentioned earlier in this blog.  Come ready to share.  Better yet, post a comment here that could possibly help inspire others.  Let us resolve together to take more steps in helping out LEP students find success in the classroom.

Using Big Words in Context Helps To Close The Achievement Gap

When I was serving as a 2nd grade teacher in HEB ISD I had an Assistant Principal friend named Michael Granado who loved to use the word cognizant.  He used the word so often and so effectively (within proper context) that I became cognizant of the meaning of the word without even having to look it up.  This one example is a perfect example of how we need to be teaching vocabulary to students in our classrooms.  We need to be using what is known as tier II words (words like verify, superior, and negligent) in our daily classroom written and spoken language in context in varying situations so effectively that students will be able to infer the meaning of those words.  Another example that stands out in my mind comes from a walk through I did in a kindergarten classroom earlier this school year.  The teacher, Mr. Remis, was talking with the students about the attributes of different shapes and using content specific vocabulary like vertices and surfaces.  He was using the terms appropriately in context and these kindergarten students were clearly beginning to grasp the meanings of the terms.  Using specific words in context over and over again so that students intuit the meaning of those words is good pedagogy.  This is something that needs to be purposefully practiced by all educators and will help to close the achievement gap between those students who come to school with big vocabularies and those who come to school with limited vocabularies.

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.