Sunday, October 23, 2016

Inductive Learning

Excellence in Education: Inductive Learning
After visiting with Ms. Ye’s students one thing that stuck with me was students were discovering. They were required to make assumptions or  generalizations that lead to a deeper understanding of the rules of science. Science is about discovery, not following lab directions step-by-step with an end product that many, if not, most of the students already knew would occur. Science, and all learning, should be a cognitive challenge.

So how can we as teachers move away from the the more traditional--and teacher-centric--approach of teaching to a more inductive, problem-based model?

The following strategy works well when we want students to analyze and identify similarities and differences, a high-yield instructional strategy.
Planning
Create a list of words, phrases, items, problems, images, etc. from a reading, discussion, or a unit to be taught. From here on, I’ll collectively refer to these as “examples.” It is often helpful to print these examples on index cards so students will be able to manipulate them easily.

Inductive Learning Activity In Action
  1. Provide students with list or cards of examples.
  2. Students categorize the examples into groups.
  3. Students give each group a label that describes.
  4. Students draw a conclusion, make a generalization or form a hypothesis about the content.
  5. Students group things in a different way.

Other instructional choices to be made:
  1. Do you model the process by showing students an example of grouping and labeling?
  2. Should you set a number of categories you’d like them to group the examples into?
  3. Do you want students working individually, in groups or in a combination of individually and groups?
  4. Can students create their own list of examples to be categorized?

Many of the ideas in this blog came from:
Silver, H., Strong, R., Perini, M, (2007). The Strategic Teacher: Selecting the Right Research-Based Strategy for Every Lesson Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill.
Shout Outs:
Phenomenal reviews for the One Acts.

In case you missed Mustang students in the news:



Need to Knows:

Portfolio Assistance If you have a student who needs assistance setting up his/her portfolio, click here

Technology / Website Permission Request Form http://go.shr.lc/1HovEA6 Please use this form to request use of a website that requires student log-in if the site is not already on the approved list.



Calendar Items
A-B-A-B Week, No School on Friday

October 24
NCAA/Student-Athlete 101, 7-8:30pm

October 26
Senior Jostens Ordering: during lunch
Mid-term Exams (1st and 3rd, semester block classes)

October 27
Faculty Meeting: .MORNING-meeting only
Accessibility Tools on Student Laptops: All Day in Green Room (upstairs) with Bert
Senior Jostens Ordering: during lunch
Mid-term Exams (2nd and 4th, semester block classes)

October 28
Reimaging High School (Optional, 10:30, location to be determined)
Mustang Morning Draft completed by 4pm

November 1
Grades due: 9am
November 3
Sophomore Ring Order: Mustang Morning

Birthdays
None this week

Worth Your Time
Motivating the Unmotivated (Embracing) It gets a little “commercial” at the end, but some good ideas

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Monday, October 10, 2016

Embrace Students' Strengths NOT Their Weaknesses

Excellence in Education: Embrace Students’ Strengths NOT Weaknesses
The other day I joked with Mr. Flaherty about switching positions for the morning. I concluded, “Math wasn’t my thing. It wouldn’t be fair to your students [for me to teach geometry or AP Calculus].”

As I stood on duty, I reflected back on the conversation. In our current system, we often force students to take classes they have little or no interest in; that’s not something we can yet change.

None of us like having our weaknesses emphasized. When they are, we often become discouraged and frustrated. We’re embarrassed. It leads to negative thinking and a fixed mindset.

So how can we best meet this challenge?

Embrace your students’ strengths. Get to know your students’ talents and interests. Use this information to differentiate, specialize and engage your students.

Provide students with choices. Create activities and assignments that provide  many options for demonstrating understanding.

Be specific with your feedback. Feedback should focus on student actions that they control.  Don’t focus on the negatives and uncontrollables.

Seek feedback. Asking students, “How would you improve this lesson?” will help you better understand your students and create better lessons. As a bonus--or perhaps more importantly--it shows students you’re willing to learn, adapt and you care.

Focus on student progress. The student in a Skills English class, doesn’t want to be there. She doesn’t like being a poor reader. A big, red 56% on a returned test is not going to motivate most students in that situation to try harder on the next test. Instead provide the student with an opportunity to retest, with the prerequisite reteaching, so she can see her progress. Even more importantly, use pre-assessments so students can monitor their progress from the beginning to the end.

Keep the bar high. Students sense when we set low expectations, whether it’s academically or behaviorally. Similarly, they know when we believe in them and hold them accountable for their actions and efforts.

When we do the above, our students will surprise us. When we provide students with opportunities to experience success, our students will rise to the challenge.    
Shout Outs:
Although the rain prevented our Friday tailgate, thanks to Ms. Rocco and Mr. DeFrank for organizing and grilling, respectively.  
Thanks as well to Mr. Jones, Ms. Kroese, Mr. Dove, Ms. Dudley, and Ms. McCaskill for attending the Scottsville Community event on Friday.

Great weekends for Monticello’s Band and AVID.  
Need to Knows:

Tech Thursday in the Green Room with Bert: This week Dart Service Desk and Student Help Desk
Portfolio Assistance If you have a student who needs assistance setting up his/her portfolio, click here

Technology / Website Permission Request Form http://go.shr.lc/1HovEA6 Please use this form to request use of a website that requires student log-in if the site is not already on the approved list.



Calendar Items
A-B-A-B-A Week

Community Bond Referendum Forum Tuesday, October 11 @ 6pm

Parent-Teacher Conferences: Thursday, October 20

Employee Flu Clinic October 11, 12-4:30

Fall Music Concert October 13
Underclassmen Picture Retakes: October 17
Fall Senior Meeting October 19 during Mustang Morning


Birthdays
October 10: Samantha Presley, Mike Remchuk
October 12: Jo Ann Harris
October 16: Garry Gibson
Worth Your Time


Fostering Relationships in the Classroom (Embracing Many of us do these things at the beginning of the year, so I challenge you to think about how we can do these throughout the year)

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Sunday, October 2, 2016

Cafe Conversations

Excellence in Education: Cafe Conversations (Embrace, Inspire, Innovate)
After observing Mr. Warren and Ms. Morgan-Thomas’ Collab English students conduct a great  Fishbowl-variation of a Socratic Seminar, I was reminded of a technique I learned called Café Conversation. Café Conversation is discussion strategy that is easily customizable and allows for scaffolding and differentiation.

Planning: The technique works best with open-ended topics, ideas and concepts. When first used, t is helpful for teachers to create a list of guiding questions, but slowly students should be given more freedom at creating the questions and leading the discussion.

The premise behind Café Conversations is that students learn best when they are challenged to develop their own awareness by exploring an idea from different perspectives. For the topic of discussion, select 4-10 different perspectives, representing different attitudes, genders, socio-economic status, ethnicities, etc.  

Student Prep: Assign students a particular “person” to represent. Either provide students with information about that person or have the student research their person. Then students should determine how that person would feel about the proposed issue/event. At either of these two stages, it might be helpful to allow students who have been assigned to the same “person” to work together. It also may be helpful to provide students with a graphic organizer to complete and to have students think of questions they may ask others and such.

The Conversation: You can divide the class into various groups at this time (with each group having 1 of each “person” or you can allow 1 group to perform and use the fishbowl technique. Students introduce themselves and either a student or the teacher poses a question. “Did you hear about (topic)?”

At this point, each student should answer, reflect, debate, ask questions, etc. The conversation should be free-flowing.

Reflection: As always, the learning shouldn’t stop when the activity is over. Students can remain in groups to debrief, placed in new groups, or return to other groups. Alternatively, students can reflect in journal. Some prompts: How did you feel about your participation? Did your view of the issue change throughout the activity? Were you well-prepared? What caught you by surprise?

Possible topics: Pretty much any topic in a social studies classes, current events, dilemmas in literature, taking on the roles of different characters (and how they’d respond to an issue/not necessarily from a book), scientific issues, etc.

How does it lend itself to scaffolding/differentiation: Providing students with different graphic organizers to fill-in and the entire process lends itself to scaffolding. Additionally, how you group the students and assign students to various roles also enables differentiation.

Shout Outs:
Tip of the cap to Ms. Meade and Ms. Stott and their leadership students for a phenomenal Homecoming Dance. About half of our students attended and the decorations were phenomenal!
Additional thanks to those who chaperoned! We couldn’t do it without you!
Need to Knows:

Tech Thursday in the Green Room with Bert: This week Accessibility Tools

Portfolio Assistance If you have a student who needs assistance setting up his/her portfolio, click here

Technology / Website Permission Request Form http://go.shr.lc/1HovEA6 Please use this form to request use of a website that requires student log-in if the site is not already on the approved list.



Calendar Items
A-B-A-B-B Week : We haven’t had a B-day Friday in a long time, so 2nd period B-day teachers you may want to remind students when to eat on Long Lunch Friday.
Vision and Hearing Screening Tomorrow

Parent-Teacher Conferences: Thursday, October 6 and Thursday, October 20

Employee Flu Clinic October 11, 12-4:30

Fall Music Concert October 13

Underclassmen Picture Retakes: October 17

Fall Senior Meeting October 19 during Mustang Morning



Birthdays
October 3: Shannon Hutchison-Krupat, Michelle Kessler , Peggy Smith (cafeteria)
October 5: Tucker Tapscott
October 8: Nanette DeFrank, Kellsey Leopold

Worth Your Time
Talking Across Divides: 10 Ways to Encourage Civil Classroom Conversation On Difficult Issues (Embracing, Innovating...Some great ideas and opportunities for our students, especially those in Social Studies and English classes)  

7 Ways to Refine Your Classroom Management (A podcast on intentional use of teacher time to engage students; it’s 10 minutes of quality ideas...Embracing and Inspiring)


We’re talking Meeting the Needs of All Students at 8pm on #vachat.

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