Embracing Students Through 2 x 10 and Listening Passage Preview

Excellence in Education: Embracing Students Through 2 x 10

This strategy came to me via Ms. Stacks via Mr. Warren. I believe it was originally from Dr. Allen Mendler.

It’s a technique used to connect with and embrace students, especially tough ones. It’s pretty simple, take 2 minutes a day for 10 consecutive days to engage the student in a personal conversation. Try to avoid talking about school, and definitely avoid anything negative about school (missing assignments, poor test grades, etc.). It’s also important to avoid anything else that might bother the student (for example, several years ago I was trying 2x10 with a student, “Frank,” and I was asking him about his weekend and his brother. “Frank” seemed to be shutting down even more despite my best efforts. The technique wasn’t working until, when near the 10th day--it was probably after the 10th day, “Frank” finally broke and told me that he wasn’t living at home anymore and was essentially homeless. In other words, I had been bringing up all the things that were causing stress for him, but even then, he saw that I was trying and eventually shared his personal story with me.

• Like any conversation, it should be a two-way conversation but make it mostly about the student.
• Listen
• Respond
• Make the student believe that he/she is the most important person in the world

Give the technique a try with one of your most difficult students, someone who you feel you haven’t connected with yet.

In 2 weeks, I’d love to hear how it’s made a difference.

Intervention Strategy for Reading Fluency : Listening Passage Preview

I think Popcorn or Round-Robin reading should never be used in class but I know there’s value to having students read aloud, either whole-class, in groups, with peers or with a teacher. This is a great strategy to help students practice so they can read aloud later.

1. Sit with the student in a quiet location (alternatively this could be done in small, similar groups or with a stronger reading partner who the student feels comfortable).
2. Say, “We’re going to read together. I’ll read first and you’ll follow along.”
3. Read aloud for a couple of minutes and then state, “Now, it’s your turn to read the same part out loud. If you come across a word you don’t know, I’ll help you.” If you’re working with a small group of students they can chorally read.
4. Stop for student errors or if he/she hesitates for more than 3 seconds (wait for the entire 3 seconds no matter how hard it is). Correct the word and have the student correctly read the corrected word.
5. Continue reading until the passage is finished.

Need to Knows

Positive Referral Link : http://go.shr.lc/1XRoeub

DART (Dr. Huneycutt) form : http://goo.gl/forms/PBK9CZNZ5C

Technology / Website Permission Request Form http://go.shr.lc/1HovEA6

Shout Outs

Nurse Tomlin for acting quickly and responsibly to a significant student injury and Ms. Campbell for being a calming and reassuring presence for the student.

Dr. Huneycutt for volunteering to serve as our DART representative.

Calendar Items

Tonight’s #vachat at 8pm is being hosted by Wade Whitehead, a member of the state’s SOL Innovation Committee. Should be a great conversation and it’s an opportunity for you to voice your opinions to someone who can make a difference.

November 10: Blood Drive

 PowderPuff Game

November 11: 10th grade Career and College Expo at UVa (9:45-11:15)

11:00-11:30 - 1st Lunch (9th, 11th, & 12th grade students who eat 1st lunch)

11:45-12:15 - 2nd Lunch (All students who eat 2nd lunch and 10th grade students that eat 1st lunch)

12:30-1:00 – 3rd Lunch (All students who eat 3rd lunch)

November 12: Dodgeball Tournament

Birthdays

A long stretch without any birthdays….

Worth Your Time

The Secret Sauce: The Right Way to Teach the Teachers

Sometimes Misbehavior Is Not What It Seems

Seven Homework Assignments That Guarantee Learning and the Secret Sauce That Makes Them Work  Purely coincidence that 2 of 3 articles have secret sauce, and full disclosure: I occasionally blog for this site.

Classroom Operations that Enhance the Ability for Students to Grow

Excellence in Education: Classroom Operations that Enhance the Ability for Students to Grow

Earlier today, I was asked, “How do the students here differ from the students at Kettle Run?”

The first part of my answer was pretty simple, “Students are pretty much the same. They adapt to the surroundings.”

This brief conversation with Coach McDaniel got me thinking. Learners are adaptable. After all, they have to adapt to four different teachers and four different sets of rules, norms, and guidelines every day. Most have no trouble adjusting. But what about those who do have trouble adjusting and need classroom procedures that can help students?

Here are a couple of classroom operations that help ALL students and convey “We Embrace our Students, Inspire Learning and Innovate Opportunities.”

Establishing a caring classroom environment with high expectations

• By greeting each student as they enter the classroom, teachers can ensure they have personal contact with each student
• Using cold call or other questioning techniques to convey, “I expect each of you to learn and will help you when you don’t know the answer.”
• Posting visual cues to help students attend to the task at hand. These can be temporary (e.g. steps to the assignment) or more permanent (e.g. how to take Cornell Notes)

Time is valuable:

• Students enter the class with a do now/bell ringer that engages them before the bell even rings
• Spare moments at the end of the class are used for review, formative assessment, or teacher-student conversations
• Anchor activities or tasks to which students automatically go to when they complete an assignment result in all students always learning
• Routines for collecting work, handing out papers, posting homework
• 3 before me: When a student has a question, require students to ask 3 other students before asking you.

Recognizing Student Growth

• Celebrate student growth by asking, “Could you do that at the beginning of this class?” and creating an environment where students affirm one another

By establishing routines like the above, students become more autonomous. As teachers, we cannot attend to the unique needs of all of our students all of the time. It’s with confidence that I say the teachers who have used the above routines, or ones like them, have classrooms that support and challenge their students (the above ideas come from so many teachers that it would be irresponsible for me to associate them with just a handful of teachers).

Need to Knows

Positive Referral Link : http://go.shr.lc/1XRoeub

Normal bell schedule for this shortened week.

Shout Outs

Thanks to all who participated at Making Connections and especially those who presented: Mr. Jacoby, Mr. Weaver, Mr. Warren, Ms. Orme, Ms. Deegan, Mr. Trent, Ms. Lantz, Ms. Dudley, Mr. Bredder.

Calendar Items

November 4, 5: English Writing SOLs for students who were absent

November 5: Long-lunch faculty gathering to discuss switch to A/B schedule for 2016-7 (forum)

November 11: 10th grade Career and College Expo at UVa (9:45-11:15)

11:00-11:30 - 1st Lunch (9th, 11th, & 12th grade students who eat 1st lunch)

11:45-12:15 - 2nd Lunch (All students who eat 2nd lunch and 10th grade students that eat 1st lunch)

12:30-1:00 – 3rd Lunch (All students who eat 3rd lunch)

Birthdays

November 4: Lori Rocco

November 5: David Glover

November 6: Hannah Bailey, Yulanda Hatchett

November 8: Dawn Anderson, Trey Roberts

Worth Your Time

Students Can Learn from Their Mistakes, if We Let Them

10 Engaging Google Drawing Activities for Classes

10 Fun-Filled Formative Assessment Strategies

Discovery Learning

Excellence in Education: Combating Student Burnout Through Discovery Learning

Learning should not be a sit and get experience (full disclosure: I never mastered this as a teacher). Students should be able to participate as individuals and teams in making decisions about their learning and they should be afforded the opportunity to discover and learn based on their prior knowledge.

So one of my pet peeves is when in science classes labs are nothing more than following directions. That’s akin to doing a puzzle with someone telling you where each piece goes--easier but not at all fulfilling.

So when I walked into Mr. Parks’s biology class the other day, I was excited to see students doing labs that required inquiry and resembled the scientific process. Students were gathering data through experiments followed by making hypotheses to better describe and understand what was going on. Finally, students interpreted the data and made conclusions. And yes, often their original hypotheses were wrong (and that’s a good thing)!

Later in the week I ventured into unfamiliar territory for me: Ms. Rowanhill’s AP Physics class. Now in all honesty, I have absolutely no clue what they were doing despite several students clearly articulating their experiment to me. But here’s what I did see and I do know. First, collaboratively students recognized a problem, tested various solutions, searched for relevant information, developed a strategy and tried the strategy. Again, sometimes the solution worked but more often they failed. Along the way, the students discovered something unattended and not accounted for (something even Ms. Rowanhill didn’t know about one of the pieces of the equipment used for the experiment).

As I left the class, the students “argued” about who made the discovery.

While the focus of this entry was on science, I think it pertains into inquiry learning that we can all aim for:

1. Students explore and problem-solve
2. Students are engaged and interested in the process
3. It’s okay to be wrong. Students can learn more from a difficult process and focus shouldn’t be on the end product.
4. Feedback was provided in a variety of ways--sometimes by peers, sometimes by the teacher but often the experiment itself provided feedback to the students.

Need to Knows

Positive Referral Link : http://go.shr.lc/1XRoeub

Shout Outs

From Ms. Seale: “A huge thank you to Garry Gibson for his help on Tuesday retrieving my emails! (you saved me)”

Calendar Items

October 27, 28: Writing SOL NO Mustang Morning

October 30, November 2, November 3: No School for Students

November 2: Grades and special education progress reports due

Connected Educator Month is wrapping up:

Teachers can earn a minimum of 5 recert points if you document participation in a CEM event and/or connect your teaching to CEM Themes. If you’re “connecting” be sure to let Bert know!

On Monday’s #vachat (8et): Tech’s Role in Our Schools with Brad Currie

Birthdays

No birthdays this week.

Worth Your Time

America’s Smart Kids Get Left Behind This is one of those articles that challenges a lot of what we do and how we do it. It’s a conversation starter and not one that I necessarily agree with.

Google Classroom: Making a Copy for Each Student Alice Keeler is must follow on Twitter and if you’re using Google Classroom--or want to--her website is one you should always be reading

Plickers

Idea for  Education: Plickers

Plickers is a great tech tool that is a little bit different from some other tools like Socrative, Formative, Kahoot! and others used to gather real-time data that can be used for formative assessment.

Plickers uses a teacher’s device and a series of QR codes that you print out for your students to create a student response system. After downloading and printing a series of cards, each student is assigned one card. Each card can be turned in any of four orientations (A-B-C-D).

When you have a question for students to answer, you simply ask each student to hold up his/her card in the correct orientation (just like using a whiteboard) and quickly scan the cards. A bar graph of the student responses is instantly created.

Some advantages to Plickers:

• Because each student code is unique, students don’t know who got the answer right or wrong. This non-competitive aspect might be a nice/needed change-of-pace.
• You can create a demo or saved class. Demo classes are quick and easy. A saved class means that you take the time to create a class and assign each student a card. The latter allow you to see how each student responded to the question.
• Only 1 device (yours) is needed
• Scanning is easy. Essentially, you just take your device from one side of the room to the other. You don’t need to scan each individual card.
• It works great with Cooperative Learning Strategies such as Thinking Pairs, Numbered Heads Together, Showdown and more.
• Great for formative assessments and pre-assessments
• Provides you and your students with timely feedback enabling them to gauge their understanding
• Can easily be used for “concept-testing” where students commit to an answer before learning, making the students more engaged and curious about the outcome (the lesson)

http://youtu.be/bejiz2HzUz8:  For more info on Plickers

Need to Knows

Positive Referral Link : http://go.shr.lc/1XRoeub

SBIT, RTI, Special Education and 504 Presentation to be viewed : http://zapt.io/tf2eac9f

Have you joined Monticello’s Faculty and Staff Remind Account? It’s easy to do so: Text 81010 with the message @mohsstaff and follow a couple of directions! It’s quick and easy!

If you haven’t donated $10 to our social committee, we’d love for you to make your donation to Ms. Hatchett.

Shout Outs

Thanks to everyone who made PSAT testing and CWRA testing go as smoothly as possible. We appreciate everyone’s flexibility! Particular thanks to Ms. Pryor, who organized the CWRA tests; Mr. Johnson, who organized the PSATs; and Mr. Jones who handled all the necessary accommodations.

Ms. Rocco’s efforts at organizing our tailgate and cookout led to a great night for all who attended.

Calendar Items

October 21: 1, 3 Midterms

October 22: Faculty Meeting (am and pm),2, 4 Midterms

October 23: End of Marking Period, make-up midterms

November 2: Grades and special education progress reports due

Connected Educator Month is underway:

Teachers can earn a minimum of 5 recert points if you document participation in a CEM event and/or connect your teaching to CEM Themes. If you’re “connecting” be sure to let Bert know!

On Monday’s #vachat (8et): Diversity in Our Schools

Birthdays

October 19: Jim Huneycutt

October 20: Terry Tomlin

October 22: Jeremy Dove and Paige Pippin

October 23: Josh Flaherty

Worth Your Time

10 Questioning Strategies to Differentiate Instruction

Not “educational” but worth watching and maybe sharing with your students : This homeless man will change your perspective YouTube

7 Reasons to Empower Students to Self-Assess