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100+ Fun Questions of the Day for Students to Use All School Year

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Who would win in a battle: a bear with fins or a shark with paws? Nothing quite starts an exciting morning conversation like trying to answer that one! If you're a teacher, you can greatly appreciate how a fun question of the day for students can help light up a room full of students, especially when they go back to school.

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Some of What We Model in our SLIFE Training

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Some of What We Model in our SLIFE Training

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LINK: TO COPY THIS SLIDE DECK

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https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EXcJCJ9VZfXPswDqvCOL6f3sjt_Q56qQ/view?usp=sharing

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Desk-size version of IDK Poster.  [Link below]

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Desk-size version of IDK Poster.  [Link below]

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https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VLU0Ylnb6dK3YQGJ42_kp_WVTPmRQVks/view?usp=sharing

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Small Notes on the Side by the Applicious Teacher!

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Getting kids excited about annotating text is a challenge. Using SNOTS not only helps students annotate text, it’s engaging and fun.

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FIVE TIPS for a STRONG START in the Newcomer Classroom

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FIVE TIPS for a STRONG START in the Newcomer Classroom

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Top Tips for a Strong Start in the Newcomer Classroom

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ALL THINGS KAHOOT Blog post (Use Link Below)

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ALL THINGS KAHOOT Blog post (Use Link Below)

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https://salvac.edublogs.org/all-things-kahoot-go-beyond-the-quiz

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Link for Dr. Salva's Dissertation: https://salvac.edublogs.org/persistence-of-slife-dissertation-by-dr-carol-salva/

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Reach out to us to bring Sediltz Education Training or Consulting to your District

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LINK: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1H-UiNeooRoBf8WU7DGxkufAIJAjWdu6rrldj5PZYIxQ/edit?usp=sharing

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4 min video Chorally Reading Objectives &  Social Contracts. Secondary students and teachers reflect. 

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4 min video Chorally Reading Objectives &  Social Contracts. Secondary students and teachers reflect. 

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Secondary Math Reviewing Objectives and a Social Contract

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These elaboration stems can help create a culture of conversation.  Coach students into using them with each other in small group conversations.  Teachers can use them to push the thinking of even the highest students.

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Comprehensible Input Demo for Language Rich Classrooms Training

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http://bit.ly/ML_Summit

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Running helps refugee learn English

When Emanuel Galdino arrived with his family from Ethiopia during the final two weeks of sixth grade at Spring Forest Middle School in 2016, he did not know how to read or speak English, or understand the American culture.

As part of Spring Branch ISD's English as a Second Language (ESL) program, he was helped tremendously by teachers at the school when he began seventh grade. He especially credits Carol Salva and Katherine Dierschke for their care and attention to his growth and adjustment.

At the end of seventh grade he had made great strides, but he was still not comfortable speaking much English. He was encouraged to join the Family Point Resources (FPR) Speed running club to have more interaction with English speakers.

Finding common ground through training and competing with peers was a catalyst for Galdino's English-speaking improvements. He also joined the Spring Forest Middle School Track team.

He is now a junior at Stratford High School and has excelled in Cross Country and Track, coached by Shawn Siemers.

"Emanuel has an unbelievable work ethic," Siemers said. "He completes every rep, every mile at exactly the right pace in every single workout. He leads by example, and also encourages his teammates to match his effort level in practice and in a race."

In the past year, Galdino has medaled in several events at the district, regional and state levels, including a third-place finish in the 1600-meter race at the UIL 6-A State Track meet. Here is a list of his 2020-2021 accomplishments:

Cross Country
1st place District 17-6A, 1st place Region 3-6A, 31st place UIL 6A State

Track
District 17-6A meet: 3200m (1st place), 800m (1st place), 1600m (1st place)
Region 3-6A meet: 3200m (1st place), 800m (2nd place), 1600m (3rd place)
UIL 6A State meet: 3200m (4th place), 1600m (3rd place)

When asked what it takes to be an excellent runner, Galdino laughed and said, "Lots of practice, don't have negative thoughts, and don't quit."

This "don't quit" mindset was recognized earlier this year by several news organizations when Galdino won a Cross Country race wearing just one shoe after it was accidently dislodged from his foot by another runner (see photo above!). He completed running more than 2.5 miles over rocks and uneven ground and won the 3.1-mile race with a time of 15 minutes, seven seconds.

"He refuses to lose," Siemers said. "He is one of the most competitive athletes I've ever coached."

Galdino plans to continue running cross country and track during his senior year at Stratford High School. He hopes for an athletic scholarship to go to college.

And if there is a career that involves running, that's where Galdino hopes to land.

Submitted by Becky Wuerth, SBISD Communications
becky.wuerth@springbranchisd.com

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spring branch independent school district

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Featured News - Spring Branch Independent School District

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Running helps refugee learn English When Emanuel Galdino arrived with his family from Ethiopia during the final two weeks of sixth grade at Spring Forest Middle School in 2016, he did not know how to read or speak English, or understand the American culture.

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https://www.6seconds.org/2021/03/16/5-sel-check-in-activities/

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180 days of estimations

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Link: https://seidlitzeducation.com/seidlitzslife

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Instead of IDK poster for Virtual Classrooms

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Instead of IDK poster for Virtual Classrooms

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Seidlitz, J., & Perryman, B. (2011). 7 Steps to a Language-rich Interactive Classroom: Research-based Strategies for Engaging All Students. Seidlitz Education.

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LINK: https://sites.google.com/view/ell20/distance-learning/no-tech-activities-for-dt

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Structured Conversations in Zoom

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Four Ways to Help Students Feel Intrinsically Motivated

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Four Ways to Help Students Feel Intrinsically Motivated

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by Larry Ferlazzo

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(This is Part Four in an ongoing series responding to specific teacher questions related to remote learning. You can see Part One here, Part Two here, and Part Three here.) Note: In addition to a recent 11-part series and videooffering advice to educators making the transition to remote learning, and a video offering advice to parents (along many more upcoming related posts-look for a multipart series at the end of this month in which both teachers and students will be reflecting on their first five weeks of distance learning), I've begun a series of short posts responding to specific questions from readers.

Part One dealt with Overcoming Apathy in Remote Teaching.

Part Two was on Five Ways to Boost Student Participation in Remote Learning.
What are ways to keep student engagement up? How do we motivate reluctant learners to continue learning in a virtual environment?

This post is not the first, nor will it be the last, response to that question.

Today, I'm sharing my own thoughts. ...
The four elements of intrinsic motivation
I have spent a lot of time thinking and reading about student motivation, as well as trying to help support the development of intrinsic motivation among my students. I've written three books on the topic, with another on the way. Katie Hull Sypnieski and I also worked with Ed Week to develop four related videos earlier this year: Everything You Wanted to Know About Student Motivation, But Were Afraid to Ask. Finally, earlier this month, I made another video for Ed Week sharing some tips for teachers to maximize their success in distance learning.

Most researchers have identified four key pieces essential to the development of student motivation:

1. Autonomy: having a degree of control over what needs to happen and how it can be done;

2. Competence: feeling that one has the ability to be successful in doing it;

3. Relatedness: doing the activity helps them feel more connected to others and feel cared about by people whom they respect; and

4. Relevance: the work must be seen by students as interesting and valuable to them and useful to their present lives and/or hopes and dreams for the future.

Here are a few ideas on how to apply each of these qualities to a virtual learning environment:
Autonomy
"Choice" is the operative word here. The more student choice, the greater sense of student autonomy. Many teachers are applying this concept virtually through the use of choice boards. An online search of that phrase will yield umpteen (a scientific term :) ) examples. They are basically a list of various learning tasks, often a mix of online and off-line ones, that students can choose to do. If you don't want to do a formal choice board, you can do what I'm doing-asking my English-language-learner newcomers to spend at least 15 minutes a day on one of three sites where I can monitor their progress: Brainpop, Raz-Kids or English Central.
Competence
I'm enforcing a rule in my virtual teaching: If it takes longer than 15 or 20 seconds-or more than two or three sentences-to clearly explain what I want students to do, I forget about it or modify the assignment. This rule functions as a double-check on me to increase the likelihood that my students will be able to be successful completing the task. In addition, I try to keep in mind what web developers talk about when they say the user experience has to be "frictionless." In other words, whatever assignments or links I place on Google Classroom should only require one-or, at most, two-clicks before students are at the page where they should be able to do the assigned work.
Relatedness
Having positive relationships with students is everything! Especially when it comes to virtual teaching when students really don't have to connect with you if they don't want to! We must do everything we can to cultivate a desire among students to want to connect with us. Of course, that's going to be pretty difficult if you were not able to develop a positive relationship with a student when he/she was actually in your physical classroom, but it's not impossible. I reached out several times immediately following our school's closure to a student who had offered some major classroom- management challenges during the year. My contacts with her were focused on how she and her family were doing. In the course of that texting, I received one that said, "Mr. Ferlazzo, I want to take this as an opportunity to apologize for my past behavior in class." As I said in my Ed Week video, we need to lead with love, not with lessons.

Helping students connect with their classmates is another way we can encourage student intrinsic motivation. Yes, an occasional video conference call "check-in" can be nice, but what I have found more helpful is having students do projects with partners of their own choosing. Being able to work in small groups of their own choosing and at their own times is clearly one of the reasons four-fifths of my International Baccalaureate Theory of Knowledge students are on schedule with giving their end-of-the-semester Oral Presentations.
Relevance
I have taken my usual thematic schedule of topics that I always cover at the end of the year with my English-language-learner newcomer students and thrown it out the window. Instead, I have asked them for a list of topics they would like to learn about, and they've identified ones like the coronavirus, getting a job, and immigration laws, among many others. Hey, it's easy for me to teach vocabulary and grammar, and create speaking and reading opportunities, in just about any topic they choose. Why not?

It might be harder to do that in some classes, but it seems to me that most teachers can create space for students to identify things they want to learn that they are interested in or which will help them achieve their own goals and dreams. Just ask!

The last thing I'm trying to do (and, believe, me, my students would agree) is hold myself up as a motivation genius. I've had my share of teaching flops and I will, for sure, rack up a whole lot more of them over these next two months.

I just figure it would be good to keep in mind what doctor's say about doing no harm between now and summer, and trying to apply these four motivation principles can help us all be successful in achieving that goal.

Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.
Just a reminder; you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via email or RSS Reader. And if you missed any of the highlights from the first eight years of this blog, you can see a categorized list below. The list doesn't include ones from this current year, but you can find those by clicking on the "answers" category found in the sidebar. Look for many more questions-and-answers in the future!

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Four Ways to Help Students Feel Intrinsically Motivated to Do Distance Learning (Opinion)

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I share four ways to help students feel intrinsically motivated to participate in virtual learning, including by teachers' developing positive relationships with students and by creating opportunities for small-group independent work.

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Success for SLIFE WEBINAR for TransACT (Literacy Focus) right here:

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Success for SLIFE WEBINAR for TransACT (Literacy Focus) right here:

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https://bit.ly/36hqxRc

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Seidlitz Ed WEBINAR on How to Set Up Newcomer Classroom with Authentic Learning

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Seidlitz Ed WEBINAR on How to Set Up Newcomer Classroom with Authentic Learning

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https://youtu.be/hhevOLO3P60

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Kahoot WEBINAR for ELs in Distance Learning

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Kahoot WEBINAR for ELs in Distance Learning

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https://youtu.be/gNg8Bx_V5p0

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Kids don't need the teacher to assign leveled reading.  Older kids can do it for themselves here: https://www.newsinlevels.com/

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Video of SLIFE Reading Letter from Teacher.

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Video of SLIFE Reading Letter from Teacher.

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LINK: https://youtu.be/vrn5RCsR-zg

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AWESOME HIGH LOW READERS at  https://www.sdlback.com/

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7 Months in US Schools

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Recorded Spring 2015  7 months in US Schools  What Motivation Can Do%21

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http://salvac.edublogs.org/videos/ My blog has many videos of examples (and non examples) that support what we did today!

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How to include ANY child in grade level writing

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How to include ANY child in grade level writing

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(NABIL 4 months later)

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carolsalva1@gmail.com
Twitter.com/MsSalvaC
Blog: salvac.edublogs.org
Facebook.com/SalvaBlog

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Learn More about the Techfugees effort here: https://techfugees.com/

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7 Steps to a Language Rich, Interactive Classroom

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7 Steps to a Language Rich, Interactive Classroom

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https://www.smore.com/06vy6-7-steps-interactive-lang-class

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SUCCESS STORIES  for working with SLIFE
LINK:-->https://padlet.com/carolsalva1/SIFESuccess

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RESOURCES for Standardized Assessments and ELLs

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RESOURCES for Standardized Assessments and ELLs

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Collection by Larry Ferlazzo

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My column in Education Week Teacher this week will respond to the question "How Should The "Next Generation" Of Standardized Tests Treat ELL's?" and I thought a supplementary list like this post would be useful.

This list is a bit of a Hodge-podge, and includes resources on legal details on ELL testing requirements and research on the effect of standardized tests on ELL's. This post does not include materials related to standardized language assessments - you can find that information at The Best Resources For Learning About The "Next Generation" Of State Testing. Information on preparing ELL's and other students to actually take standardized tests can be found at The Best Posts On How To Prepare For Standardized Tests (And Why They're Bad).

Here are my choices for The Best Resources On ELL's & Standardized Tests:

The Educational Testing Service publishes Testing Accommodations for English Language Learners: A Review of State and District Policies.

High Stakes Testing: Issues, Implications, and Remedies for English Language Learners
is a very important study by Ronald W. Solórzano. Unfortunately, unless you have access to SAGE, it costs $25 to purchase it. In the paper, he concludes:
...that high stakes tests as currently constructed are inappropriate for ELLs, and most disturbing is their continued use for high stakes decisions that have adverse consequences.
ELL Assessment: One Size Does Not Fit All is a commentary from Ed Week.

Performance Assessments for English Language Learners comes from the Stanford Center For Opportunity Policy in Education.

Common-Core Test Experts Explain ELL and Special Education Supports is from Education Week.

What Do We Do if We Suspect That Our English Learners May Not Pass Standardized Assessments? is by Carol Salva.

Accommodations for English Language Learners and Students with Disabilities: A Research-Based Decision Algorithm is from Smarter Balanced.\
This Is An Excellent Piece On The Pitfalls Of Over-Analyzing ELL Standardized Assessments
Feedback is welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to consider subscribing to this blog for free.

You might also want to explore the 770 other "The Best..." lists I've compiled.

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The Best Resources On ELL's & Standardized Tests

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My column in Education Week Teacher this week will respond to the question "How Should The "Next Generation" Of Standardized Tests Treat ELL's?" and I thought a supple...

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Instead of IDK (STEP #1 of Seidlitz 7 Steps)

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Instead of IDK (STEP #1 of Seidlitz 7 Steps)

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May I Ask a Friend for Help?
Would You Please Repeat the Question?
Could I Have Some Time to Think?
Where Could I Find More Information About That?
I'm Not Sure, But Something I DO Know is...

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Newcomer Class - How to Start

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If you're teaching an ESL or Newcomer class... you'll love this show!

I wrote a blog post about this last year so I'm reprinting that below. I'm also including a youtube video on my top tips for starting the school year. This video is 30 min long and goes through my top tips in more detail.

Sarah had already read the blogpost below when we spoke so we are going over the things in that video and also some of her ideas for classroom management. In our conversation I learn about the PAX Good Behavior Game program for classroom management and self regulation. It's great hear her passion for this program and her strong sense of how to partner with students to create classroom norms.

THANK YOU, Sarah for your willingness to come on the show. I love your heart for English learners and I'm excited for you and the kids this year!

I'm always scared at the beginning of the year! I worry that I won't be able to meet all the needs of my new students. I know this is silly because faith in them and high expectations are the two things they need the most. And we have that covered!

Also, many newcomer teachers agree that we have the most grateful students in the building. That is worth remembering if you are feeling nervous.

So no need to be scared! But still, I like to be sure I am setting up a classroom culture that honors each child and maximizes every instructional minute. Here are my non-negotiables for the beginning of the year... and oh! We do these with a lot of native language support to ensure comprehension and allow the students to reflect freely about these important topics:

Social Contract Created by the Students

It's critical that none of the norms are created by me. But I usually have to ask them to be more specific than "respect." I might offer examples and non-examples such as tossing books at each other or laughing at someone who is taking a risk. These are the questions we use which were told to me by someone who attended a Flippen Group training, Capturing Kids Hearts.

How do you want to be treated by your peers?

How do you think your peers want to be treated by you?

How do you want to be treated by your teacher?

How do you think your teacher wants to be treated by you?

Also, Dana Baker Larrick offered me these ppt slides that I used with my 2nd year students. Worked great!

Create a "Banish IDK" Poster with the Students

I start with three questions that will allow any student to participate as soon as they are ready. Questions like these support our English learners in other classes and in their daily life.
Instead of IDK May I ask a friend for help? Would you please repeat the question? May I have some time to think?

Selfie Kahoots

We play a Kahoot I've made about myself on Day 1. They then get planning pages (download here) to bring in one question about themselves so we can make a class #SelfieKahoot.

There are many more ideas for Back-to-School Kahoots here. I also have many Kahoot ideas on this site and you can find ESL Kahoot ideas in these blogs on Kahoot's website.

At least One Structured Conversation with A New Classmate.

This quick video shows one of my newcomer classes on the very first day this week. We practiced the frame and all were willing to read this frame from their name tent. "My name_____. My family is from _______ and I speak ______." It is a little awkward as it is Day 1 but we are setting the norm of finding and working with different partners in the room.

This is not too bad for the first day! By the end of the year, everyone is very comfortable with one another. In fact, I get a lot of buy-in from the students by showing them videos of our students the year before.

They see that everyone is following the Social Contract and they are all collaborating. When I didn't have recent video of my own students, I used this video of Gerson Bermudez.

Your students can analyze the behavior and progress of the students in my class. I have many here.

Through all of this, and throughout the year, I am explaining the brain friendliness of the activities, and also stressing metacognitive strategies so they begin thinking about their thinking. They need to know that it will be easy to speak and understand English in the Newcomer class. And that the more they engage, the faster their progress will be.

I had so many things planned for my first week and we only got to a fraction of them. No matter. My main goal was to make sure students knew that I was happy to have them in my class. That goal was met.

Have a great back to school season!

Carol

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BAP033 Sarah Williams and a Strong Start

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If you're teaching an ESL or Newcomer class... you'll love this show! I wrote a blog post about this last year so I'm reprinting that below. I'm also including a youtube video on my top tips for starting the school year. This video is 30 min long and goes through my top tips in more detail.

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Subscribe at www.salvac.edublogs.org

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Check out Ep 66 of the Boosting Achievement ESL podcast at bit.ly/BAP066.  You'll learn about those compelling projects kids Can't NOT do. And how to manage them with limited time.

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Video and PPT on how to Start Your Own One World Club

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Video and PPT on how to Start Your Own One World Club

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SOCIAL CONTRACTS for Classroom Management

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SOCIAL CONTRACTS for Classroom Management

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Episode 15::
http://salvac.edublogs.org/2017/12/21/bap015-social-contracts-and-choral-reading-for-every-class/

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Dozens of Episodes on supporting SLIFE:  Link:  Bit.ly/BAPODCAST

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https://www.visnos.com/demos/random-spinners