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Don't Underestimate Good Organization Skills 

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Don't Underestimate Good Organization Skills 

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With all of the different steps and factors that go into lesson planning, it is easy to become overwhelmed and unorganized. Luckily, there are dozens upon dozens of resources out there for teachers looking to bring some order to their lesson planning. While you're working to stay within the frame you've created for your lesson, this helpful organizational tool will assist you in staying on top of your planning process.

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Do you ever wonder what other teachers use to organize their life? In this video, I discuss my curriculum binder and how I use it to organ

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Effective execution of a great lesson goes beyond excellent planning. After assessments are chosen based on the topic and particular student needs, figuring out the best way to carry out a thorough lesson plan requires creativity and innovation on the part of the teacher. This is the portion of the process during which teachers take the main idea of the lesson and boil it down to the details. Think about it as a piece of fish. The bones represent the lesson topic and the way you decide to frame it. The flesh, however, is the meat of the lesson. These are the details that come together to complete the main idea. This is the fun part! In Chapter 3, the authors of the text highlight many ways to incorporate reading and writing assessments into any content area such as previewing passages, brainstorming, and quick writes/extended personal writing. Working within the frame that you have established through the preliminary portions of your planning process is the final step of effective unit planning. Below is a link to one of many web resources that provides lesson ideas, activities and tips for parents, and opportunities for professional development.

For more information about this website and other great web resources, check out my blog at secondgradesensei.blogspot.com!

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Not your everyday calendar, here you can find important events in literary history, authors' birthdays, and a variety of holidays, all with related activities and resources that make them more relevant to students.

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Not your everyday calendar, here you can find important events in literary history, authors' birthdays, and a variety of holidays, all with related activities and resources that make them more relevant to students.

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Blogger Bill Ferriter highlights some important factors to consider when formulating and presenting desired learning outcomes. I enjoyed reading this blog post because it brings our focus back to what should always be at the forefront of our instructional purpose: student-centered learning. When students understand what it is that they should know at the end of a particular lesson or class period, it allows them to be more confident and intentional in their acquisition of knowledge.

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One of my all-time favorite throw-downs here at school happened a few years back when my principal-who I respected and enjoyed-insisted that we post learning goals on our boards for every class period. "Posting goals," he argued, "keeps students informed about exactly what it is that they are supposed to be learning in class each day."

And you know something: He was right. Experts from Rick Stiggins and Larry Ainsworth to Bob Marzano have proven time and again that engaging students in their own learning by posting objectives in class is a practice worth pursuing.

The problem was that our principal had decided on a particular format for posting learning goals that didn't make any sense to me. Known as SWBAT objectives, we were supposed to write statements that described what "Students would be able to do" in measurable terms. Now, the math teachers didn't have any troubles at all. They instantly started posting objectives that looked like this:
"The students will be able to divide two decimal numbers with 80% accuracy."
For us language arts and social studies teachers, though, the process wasn't nearly as clean cut. The first challenge was that our objectives aren't always the kinds of objectives that you can learn in one class period-and more importantly, it's difficult to measure some of the open-ended objectives that comprise our curriculum.

So the members of my learning team who chose to play along would have confusing objectives like this posted on their boards:
"The students will be able to self-select reading materials with 80% accuracy." OR "The students will be able to make meaningful contributions to classroom conversations with 80% accuracy."
These kinds of statements didn't make sense to me or to my students, so I didn't play along--and I got in trouble for it! I'll never forget the first time that one of our assistant principals came in, observed one of my best lessons of the year, and left me a note with nothing else written on it than, "You need to start posting your objectives daily." I called it a "Parking Ticket," tore it up and forgot about it.

My frustration level peaked, though, when my principal called me to the office over the whole deal. "Bill, what's the big deal?" he said, "Writing the objective on the board will take you ten minutes.

"Just do it, huh?"

Never being a Nike-kinda-guy, I decided- with my principal's permission -to do as much research as a could about posting objectives in class. "As long as you find some way to post objectives in your room, Bill, I don't care what it looks like. But I am going to expect you to come up with something."

What I quickly found out didn't surprise me at all: Most assessment experts argue that it's not the act of posting objectives that has a positive impact on student learning.

Instead, it's the act of posting objectives in student friendly language that matters.

Consider this quote from assessment expert Rick Stiggins:
Explaining the intended learning in student-friendly terms at the outset of a lesson is the critical first step in helping students know where they are going...Students cannot assess their own learning or set goals to work toward without a clear vision of the intended learning. When they do try to assess their own achievement without understanding the learning targets they have been working toward, their conclusions are vague and unhelpful. (Stiggins, Arter, Cahappuis & Chappius, 2004, pp. 58-59)
So I started working to polish a system for identifying essential outcomes and posting learning targets in student friendly language. For me, that involved a few steps:

Deconstructing my standards: It's amazing how complex state standards really are! Oftentimes, one standard can include several different skills that students are supposed to master. Don't believe me? Then check out this standard from my social studies curriculum:
Objective 4.03: The learner will examine key ethical ideas and values deriving from religious, artistic, political, economic and educational traditions, as well as their diffusion over time, and assess their influence on the development of selected societies and regions in South America and Europe.
This one standard expects students to do a thousand different things, doesn't it?

They're supposed to examine ethical ideas and values that derive from religious, artistic, political, economic and educational traditions. Then, they're supposed to examine how these traditions have changed over time. Finally, they're supposed to assess how these traditions have influenced the development of Europe and South America.

Each of those skills require different styles of instruction and different methods of assessment-and written as is, there ain't a twelve year old in the world that is going to be able to figure out exactly what it is that they're supposed to learn!

Creating I Can Statements: Student-friendli-fying deconstructed learning targets for me began by writing I Can Statements. Rick Stiggins, among others, push I Can Statements because they are worded in a way that encourages students to measure their own learning. Consider the following deconstructed learning target from my social studies curriculum:
202.3: The learner will evaluate the impact of changing distribution patterns in population, resources and climate on the environment in South America and Europe.
Written as an I Can Statement, it would look like this:

202.3: I can judge how changes in population, resources and climate effect the environment of South America and Europe.

Which do you think my twelve year old students will understand better?

Defining a specific task: Once I'd deconstructed my standards and written I Can Statements, I decided to define a specific learning task that parents and students could use to measure their mastery of content. This defined learning task was added to the end of each I Can statement. Here's an example:

202.3: I can judge how changes in population, resources and climate effect the environment of South America and Europe. This means that I can make predictions about what might happen to the environment in places where populations rise, resources fall, or the climate changes.

Defining a specific task has even helped ME with my planning and instructional delivery. Now, when working with an objective, I know exactly what kinds of activities to engage my kids in because I've detailed the specific outcome that they are supposed to achieve.

Communicating with parents and students: The final step in the process for me has been to create unit overview sheets detailing the specific learning targets that we're focusing on for each unit. These unit overview sheets go home at the beginning of each new topic of study, allowing parents to keep up with what we're studying in class.

They're also included in student notebooks and are referred to constantly in class. There is a place for students to record the scores of classroom assessments and to rate their own mastery of learning.

Here's an example:
Download Ecosystems I Can Statements_V2
Now, I won't lie to you: This entire process has completely kicked my behind! In fact, I've been working at this for the better part of two years now. Crazy how long it takes to revise and edit an instructional practice, huh?

I've read constantly about assessment, looking for new ideas about communicating standards to parents and students. I've muddled through two incredible curriculums, deconstructing standards. I've debated with colleagues about the learning targets that are the most appropriate for each unit that we study, revised my tracking sheets and unit overviews a dozen times, and reminded myself every day for the past two months to write objectives on the board.

I've started to revise my warehouse of lesson plans to align with individual learning targets and begun to design assessment questions for each I Can Statement. My next step will be to start recording student learning in my gradebook by I Can Statement so that I can start tracking mastery at the learning target level. More than once, I've wished that all of this work had been done for me at the Central Office level. "Why in the world do they give us objectives written in language that we can't even understand?" I've complained.

"Who's got the time to deconstruct and rewrite their curriculum before they even start to teach it?"

But now that I've gotten this far, I'm proud of what I've accomplished. I now post objectives every day, knowing that my kids will understand them-and knowing that my assessments and instruction are aligned with required elements of the curriculum. Parents seem to appreciate having something tangible and concrete to hold on to, and students can actually tell ME when THEY'VE mastered their own learning.

So whaddya' think? Does my process make any sense? What should I do differently?
Work cited:
Stiggins, R., Arter, J., Chappuis, J., & Chappuis, S. (2006). Classroom assessment for student learning: doing it right-using it well. Upper Saddle River, NJ : Pearson Education.

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One of my all-time favorite throw-downs here at school happened a few years back when my principal-who I respected and enjoyed-insisted that we post learning goals on our boards for every class period. "Posting goals," he argued, "keeps students informed about exactly what it is that they are supposed to be learning in class each day."

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The authors of the text suggest that creating student-friendly objectives is the key to framing a topic in a way that is appealing and attention-grabbing. Topics should be age-appropriate, of relative interest to the student, and consist of coherent parts. The video below provides teachers with steps that we can use to appropriately and adequately frame a lesson topic.

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Ensuring that students are engaged is a tough but necessary task for teachers hoping to maximize their instructional time. In this article entitled "5 Ways to Give Your Students More Voice and Choice", author Rebecca Alber suggests that teachers should act as facilitators of the learning process and incorporate strategies such as using think-alouds and inquiry- based learning to encourage student engagement.

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The idea of co-constructing knowledge with students can be a scary thing for many of us teachers. The age-old role of teacher as orator, director, sage has been handed down for centuries, and most of us grew up as students looking to teachers in this way. It's hard to shake.

Co-constructing knowledge means giving up the myself and them role of teacher and students and fully embracing the wonder and journey of us.

The first step we have to take is becoming familiar and comfortable with saying "I don't know" out loud to our students. Maybe that sounds silly, but it's a huge step for many of us. I remember the first time I said it: My 11th-grade students asked me a question that completely and utterly stumped me. I was about to tell them what I sort of knew or thought the answer might be, but instead I just said, "I don't know."

We all just sat there in the silence of those three words.

Then I said, "Who knows something about this that they can share?" A few students shared some ideas and thoughts they had about the topic. I followed their comments with, "Who wants to find out more?" Several hands went up.

Two educational theorists who inform my thinking about co-constructing knowledge are Vygotsky and Freire. Both saw learning as a social act in which teachers and students dialogue and create knowledge together, rather than teachers filling the students with content and information as if they were empty vessels.

Yes, it is true that teachers need to be the ultimate decision-makers about a lot of things. This is not proposal to share authority and control with students. Consider it instead an invitation to take a step to the side and see what can happen when we shift our perspective and delve into some experimentation.

In The Classroom

I'd like to propose five ways to get that ball rolling in transforming the learning space you share with students into a place where you serve often as facilitator and guide-and when needed and necessary, as presenter or instructor.

1. Stuff we want to know about: Brainstorm an ongoing class list of stuff they want to know about and are interested in-a phenomenon, an event, or a law, for example. If you are a science, math, or history teacher, you can ask that it be about your field, but I also encourage you to have it be about anything (and then you can find connections to content later). Inquiry is a skill all teachers should build regardless of content.

2. Task force teams of inquiry: Let teams form (or help with this) and ask each team to select a topic from the brainstorm list. Their mission is to explore, research, and present on that topic. If you're thinking that's too much valuable class time off the curriculum or content, find a way to connect it to the educational standards your school follows. (Reading, writing, speaking, and listening are involved here, so turn to those Common Core anchor literacy standards.)

3. Assessing their needs and wants: We should never underestimate the power of the five-point Likert scale as a quick, quantitative measure to see where students are. You can create several statements for a unit of study to gauge student interest first, and then their understanding and experience with the content, materials, activities after.

Consider including a couple fill-ins and evaluate the responses for patterns and repetition. Use both the tally of numbers from the Likert and the fill-ins to inform your planning. You can say to students, "I tallied the numbers and there were twelve 5s and eleven 4s, so that tells me _____ is very important to most of you. We are going to explore that next together. However, in ranking how well you understood writing a thesis statement, the majority of the class selected 1 or 2, so we're going to spend some time reviewing and practicing thesis statement writing." With anonymity, students tend to be more candid and honest, so make including a name on the survey optional.

4. Think-alouds: Model for students your learning as you read aloud an article on a current event or a topic of study. For example, as you read, pause, asking questions and making comments and connections to things you already know or even things you've explored as a class. Have students do the same with a partner, then eventually in groups of three or four.

For high school students, I like Kelly Gallagher's Article of the Week, which he uses with his students. Building the prior knowledge of students is also part of our job-and not just knowledge about the content we teach, but also about the world.

5. Project options and self-grading: Think about how these two sentences sound: "You will have several projects to choose from" and "You will create a trifold poster...." They might remind us that no matter the age, we all like to have choices, especially when it comes to demonstrating our skills and abilities.

So offer up plenty of options in types of projects and also collaborate with your students in creating a criteria chart for each project. Having more of a stake in the work, students can use the criteria to grade themselves in the end. Be sure to include an opportunity for them to also do some reflective writing on why they've assigned themselves that grade. Learning tends to stick better when we reflect.

Less teacher talk and more student-centered learning makes for a happy, healthy, and productive learning environment.

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5 Ways to Give Your Students More Voice and Choice

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The idea of co-constructing knowledge with students can be a scary thing for many of us teachers. The age-old role of teacher as orator, director, sage has been handed down for centuries, and most of us grew up as students looking to teachers in this way. It's hard to shake.

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When choosing a topic, VA educators often refer to the Standards of Learning provided on the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) website to assure that their instruction is aligned with the assessment that students will see at the end of the year. Along with specifics regarding testing requirements, you can find sample lesson plans, blueprints for the test, and other resources to supplement your instruction. This site is the first stop in choosing a topic that is both state-aligned and engaging for students.

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VDOE :: Standards of Learning (SOL) and Testing

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Testing and Accountability description goes here.

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                                                Unit Planning - Beginning, Structuring, and Focusing            

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                                                Unit Planning - Beginning, Structuring, and Focusing            

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As the old adage goes, "when you fail to plan, you plan to fail." Effective unit planning sets the tone for the classroom and provides the foundation for student success. In the "Looking Ahead" section of Chapter 3,  the authors suggest that there are three major steps in the unit planning process: Choosing a topic, framing the topic, and working within that frame. This padlet will guide you to some helpful resources that will assist you in each step of your planning process.